Unsayable

[Ptero]

Hello all,

This is my first post but I don't think you need to know me to understand the matter.

After years of questioning about my gender identity, I finally found out (some years ago) that I'm just agender. I don't feel female nor male. At all. I was born female but it never fitted me and I absolutely can't imagine myself as male. Even if it relieved me for some time to "find myself" in a way, now I'm stuck again because it's like that finding is useless.

How can you "declare" yourself genderless ?! No neutral pronouns exist (especially not in French, my native language). When somebody calls me mademoiselle or madam I can't correct them because there isn't any neutral term. It really hurts me to be misgendered, and obviously happens constantly.

And what bothers me the most is that I feel completely unable to tell anybody how I feel, who I am. Even my brother. The only person I told is a friend who is himself quite queer. I had a girlfriend for some months and it had become so difficult for me to deal with the fact she saw me as a girl and not being able to tell her it wasn't true that I began to avoid her. And of course this was unbearable for her and she felt that something was wrong with me. So she broke up with me (do you use this expression in English ?). And it always finish like this when I have a girlfriend or a boyfriend. I can't stand to play the role of a cis-girl. And I can't say anything.

I feel completely stuck and really alone facing this. How do you deal with saying who you are, as non-binary, in a world "everybody" seems to be male or female and consider you have to be one or another ?

[sorry about my bad English...]

[JulieBlair]

Your English is fine.
Français est, de par sa nature même sexe et romance centrique. Ni femmes ni hommes doit sembler très bizarre de vos compatriotes. Je ne parle pas suffisamment la langue pour savoir, mais y a-t-il entre les sexes pronoms neutres? 

That was hard, I hope you don't mind if I stick with English, It has been a long time since I was in High School, long enough that I'm not sure that google did the translation correctly.

In the states we use a variety of plural pronouns to denote androgyny kind of like using  ils  to describe someone without intending to denote plural.  French is a tough language to strip of gender identification, can you substitute less gender driven pronouns from English or perhaps Dutch or Norwegian?  And if you can would anyone acknowledge them?

I'm very sorry to hear that you lost a love because of her inability to accept gender neutrality.  It happens here too.  It has happened to me.  I have no idea if this is at all helpful.  There are other non-binary forums out there in cyberspace that might be useful for you that you also may wish to explore, and I wish you good luck. 

By the way welcome to Susan's 

Julie

[Dread_Faery]

Your english is excellent, please don't worry about it

I really wish I could help with the gendered language, getting people to acknowledge you and actually do that in the language they use is really important to our mental health. The only thing I can think of is have you tried some french language queer support spaces? This is a US centric and english centric space and obviously the same issues with everything having a gender don't occur.

[Ptero]

In fact the pronouns are not the only problem. I think even if we could use "hen" or anything borrowed from another language, the thing is that most of people, I think, can't even conceive anybody that is NOT gendered. And how could I blame them ? myself I never met anybody who would be non-binary. It's a lot more because of "agenderness" being inconceivable than because no word exist that it's impossible to say. How to declare that without seeming mad ?!

@Julie : I like Google translate so much ! the translations are always funny. (but I think I could understand the idea behind the strange formulation).
btw, my girlfriend didn't broke up because she couldn't stand I'm agender, but because I was avoiding her constantly (not able to explain her what was the matter... *feels like a coward*)

[Kendall]

I am unfamiliar with french transgender activism, not being able to read French. I wonder if anyone has said anything concerning the language gender structure, and mentioned possible solutions somewhere. Wish i could search and look to help out.