into more detail. I'll add them here, but before I do that, feel free to ask me <aclass="footnote-reference"href="#asking-bad-questions"id="footnote-reference-2">[2]</a>.</p>
<p>So, let's get into my gender!</p>
<divclass="section"id="what-am-i-feeling">
<h2>What am I feeling</h2>
<p>I feel reasonably fine. The better question is: what am I <em>not</em> feeling? I do
not feel gender – I don't relate to being man or woman, I am just me. The
ideals of "stereotypical" man or woman feel foreign to me, and for as long as I
can remember, I haven't felt "wo/manly".</p>
<p>Before I thought about it, I would tell you that I was one of the classic
genders. Passively, that would be my best guess: – my given name is that
gender, my ID says I am that sex, etc.</p>
<p>But then I thought about it, and pretty much didn't find the answer to "how do
I feel my assumed gender?". I read some classical descriptions, and didn't feel
like I match. I even considered, whether I would want to be treated as the
opposite gender, but the answer was something like "nah, sure it would be
different, but that has its own set of problems and I don't see any wins there
either."</p>
<p>That's the short timeline, I will share more details in a separate post. If I
write it, that is.</p>
</div>
<divclass="section"id="how-to-behave-towards-me">
<h2>How to behave towards me</h2>
<p>Important disclaimer: Especially this section <strong>only talks about me</strong>, other
agender people may feel differently. Do <strong>not</strong> assume anything about other
<p>The first thing that comes to mind is the language. In general, I don't like
being titled with gendered words when referring specifically to me (i.e. I am
not a "boy", "lady", "man", "daughter" etc.) – please prefer general words like
"person". When addressing me together with other people, I will not complain to
be included under general statements like "ladies and gentlemen". This means
that there should not be too much that changes in this regard.</p>
<p>Pronouns – everyone's favourite topic – are a bit tricky due to differences
between languages I speak. In English I slightly prefer they/them, but any
traditional pronouns (he/it/she) are also fine with me.</p>
<p>In Czech, due to inflection of names, first start to referring to me as
LEdoian, because my given name would sound very weird in other grammatical
genders. And then probably still keep using masculine for me (LEdoian is
declined the same way as "pán") – while I am open to experimentation <aclass="footnote-reference"href="#grammatically-neutral"id="footnote-reference-3">[3]</a>,
I have not figured out the details and would like to arrange individually (at
least at first). If you want to be part of the experimentation, ask me :-)</p>
<p>I do not consider my given name to be a deadname (at least for now), you can
keep using it and don't need to feel bad for doing that. However, don't use the
name in a different grammaical gender, that would sound weird. And unless we
already use some variation of my given name, do not try to invent a new one.</p>
<!-- I could put here a table like at pronouns.page (or other pages), but I am
afraid it would be too visually appealing for people to avoid reading the
text. And I can definitely not put everything in it, so it might cause more
harm than without the table. Sorry. (It's like four paragraphs anyway, so…) -->
</div>
<divclass="section"id="in-relation-to-others">
<h3>In relation to others</h3>
<p>I am not completely out yet – in fact, sharing with "whoever on the internet
actually cares about me enough to read my blog" currently seems like one of the
wouldn't like it to be the "gossip of the day" either (it's not a good talking
point and I am giving way too litle detail here for anyone to be able to
represent me accurately anyway). Don't out me just because you can <aclass="footnote-reference"href="#coming-out-to-some-people"id="footnote-reference-4">[4]</a>.</p>
<p>If somehow the talk comes to this topic and you need to reference me
specifically, I think the best thing is to hint that I am <em>non-binary</em> as the
reasonable compromise between misrepresenting me as any binary gender and fully
outing me. Also try keeping in mind that the term "non-binary" is an umbrella
term that conveys even <em>less</em> information about feeling of self than "man" or
<p>If the listener knows me, you can tell them to ask me if they are interested in
more. That is more preferred approach than referencing this blogpost, because
that lets me represent myself better and in a more concise way than this post
can.</p>
<p>On a related note, you may find yourself in a discussion that misrepresents me <aclass="footnote-reference"href="#idk-how"id="footnote-reference-5">[5]</a>.
While I understand that you might want me to feel good and included, I would
like you to <em>not</em> stand up for me too explicitly. I don't want to it being the
big deal, if I am present, it is way more comfortable to be accidentally
misrepresented than having the conversation take a bad turn and becoming weird.
(See <aclass="reference external"href="https://youtube.com/watch?v=auXqQp-jWsk">this episode of Couple-ish</a>
for a maybe-not-too-exaggerated example of a derailed discussion.) Probably the
best thing is to ignore the misrepresentation or dismiss it with something like
"that is actually more complicated". If I am present, let me do most of the
speaking (or ignoring) – I think I know how much I want to stand for myself in
a given situation. (Standing up for non-binary/trans*/genderqueer/… people in
general is fine if you want to do that, just please don't make that inherently
about me <aclass="footnote-reference"href="#being-ally-is-more-acceptable"id="footnote-reference-6">[6]</a>.)</p>
<p>That being said, referring to me as LEdoian is fine (I think most people know
that this is my nickname, even if they don't actively use it), if we decided to
use a different grammatical gender for Czech, it's both fine to use that and to
fall back to masculine if that feels it would fit the conversation. <aclass="footnote-reference"href="#incompatible-agreements-maybe"id="footnote-reference-7">[7]</a></p>
<p>The fun part is interacting with me, which follows completely different rule:
if you think I am misgendering <em>myself</em>, please tell me you think so. This
helps me be more mindful about when I use gendered language. (If I misgender
someone who is out or you are allowed to out them, also please tell me, it is
probably unintentional.)</p>
</div>
<divclass="section"id="other-stuff">
<h3>Other stuff</h3>
<p>It's nice to be able to represent myself in forms, so I like being able to
choose the third option for gender (if you need to ask). I don't particularly
mind whether it is described as "other" or "not specified". (Just maybe don't
try to be too clever about the choice, <aclass="reference external"href="https://genders.wtf">or else</a>.)</p>
<p>While I am not very proactive about my gender (as in, I don't have the urge to
tell anyone on sight), I am quite open about my experience. Feel free to ask me
if you are interested. If you think it would be too weird to ask out of the
blue (or you just want to let me know you read this blogpost – I appreciate
that!), ask me what my hair colour is :-)</p>
<p>And again, please prefer asking me to assuming stuff about me (or possibly
anyone). Gender is weird, there is a lot I am not telling in this post and a
lot of nuance that can be hard to convey to general public.</p>
</div>
</div>
<divclass="section"id="the-queer-quirks">
<h2>The queer quirks</h2>
<p>I understand not everyone has studied queer-sensitive language <aclass="footnote-reference"href="#ally-year-ago"id="footnote-reference-8">[8]</a>,
so let me put here a few basic rules for talking about queer people. (Again,
just a quick rundown, I may write a separate article about this.) As opposed to
the above, <strong>this section is general</strong> and represents the current usage of
language, to the best of my knowledge.</p>
<p>Parts of speech: Most labels like "agender", "transgender", "non-binary",
"genderqueer" are used as adjectives (like e.g. the word "blue"), so they are
used like "an agender person", "the transgender flag", "they are non-binary".
<em>Do not</em> say ~~"flag of agenders", "they are a genderqueer"~~ or even ~~"John is
transgendered"~~. Some labels can be also used as nouns, and <em>some people</em> also
reclaim <em>some labels</em> to be used as nouns, but others may not think that is
appropriate usage for them. E.g. the word "enby" belongs to the former group,
but "gay" belongs to the later (acc. to <aclass="reference external"href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gay#Usage_notes_2">wiktionary</a>).</p>
<p>This usage differs a bit in different languages, though. In Czech, most labels
are still adjectives, though. Usually labels are not inflected, except when the
word is "Czech-compatible enough": „vidím transgender ženu“, „s nebinárními
přáteli“.</p>
<p>Labels: Labels itself are mostly useful as approximations of what someone
feels. They are useful to relate to others and in communicating, but almost
never give full information themselves. Some are
umbrella terms for many experiences, which may have their own label; however,
<tr><tdclass="label">[9]</td><td><em>(<aclass="fn-backref"href="#footnote-reference-9">1</a>, <aclass="fn-backref"href="#footnote-reference-10">2</a>)</em> Kudos to you if you recognise this reference :-)</td></tr>
