Growing up, Cody Daigle-Orians didn’t identify with their gender.
“I was told that I was male,” the 48-year-old writer and educator from Columbus tells TODAY.com. “I always felt like being considered a boy, being considered a man was something I did not do successfully.”
For much of life, Daigle-Orians felt like they were “performing gender inadequately.” But as an asexuality educator, they met a number of queer people and educators and learned that there were “a whole new range of identity labels and experiences.” They did some exploring before finding the term agender, which they started identifying as a year and a half ago.
“I feel any connection to a gendered experience,” Daigle-Orians explains. “Agender operates as a way for folks to describe a feeling of being outside of those gender constructs, not really being part of either or not moving between either.”
What is the meaning of agender?
“It’s a more specific kind of way of describing your gender to really say that you don’t have a gender or that it is neural, genderless,” Zoe Stoller, a social worker and educator, tells TODAY.com. “(Agender people) don’t connect to that concept of gender.”
Agender “is often a label that falls under the nonbinary gender identity umbrella,” says Kyle Teller, a public training manager at the Trevor Project.
“There are lots of ways to be agender,” Teller tells TODAY.com. “It’s an identity that exists on a spectrum.”
While Stoller believes people have identified as agender throughout history, the term agender likely emerged with the internet, when people of various gender identities could more easily find one another and communicate how they were feeling. Stoller points to an article from Medical News Today that notes the first use of agender occurred in a UseNet form in 2000.
“I definitely believe that there were people out there who … might have experienced identities similar to what we might define or understand as agender,” Stoller says. “Maybe they didn’t have the word agender to describe it.”
Teller agrees and adds that historically many agender people might have felt it was dangerous to share their gender with others.
“Unfortunately, like many queer identities and labels, our experiences have often not been a safe thing to share in society,” she says. “What we’re seeing now is not that this is a new experience but that people are feeling freer and hopefully more hopeful to share and name that experience.”
Teller says many people assume agender people are asexual but that is inaccurate.
“Anyone who’s agender can hold any sexual orientation,” she says. “They can identify with other gender labels. They can express themselves in any way. Another stereotype is if they’re agender, they may present themselves as more androgynous or more neutral attire and that’s just not really true.”
The best way to support people in the LBGTQ+ community, including agender people, is to believe and support them when they share their identity, according to the Trevor Project’s 2024 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People.
“The top answer was, ‘Trusting that I know who I am,’” Teller says. “That’s what I really want to focus on — trusting that people are who they are and can name their experience.”
What’s the difference between nonbinary and agender?
When many people think about gender, they think of men and women, but gender can be more than that, experts say.
“There’s more possibilities to gender than just the gender binary of man and woman,” Stoller, who uses they/them pronouns, says. “The term nonbinary refers to any gender that is outside of that gender binary.”
Some nonbinary folks feel that they move along a spectrum from male to female while others are “completely separate from it,” says Stoller. “Some people also just use the word nonbinary as gender identity and really enjoy the expansiveness of that.”
Stoller says, though, agender exists outside of the binary.
“The way agender really specifically differs is that it is separate completely from the gender binary of man and woman. It is an additional option,” they explain. “Agender does fall within the nonbinary umbrella. It’s … a more specific way of describing your gender to really say you don’t have a gender or that it is neutral.”
Agender, bigender and demigender
Being agender looks different for each individual, Teller says. Some agender people might identify as bigender or demigender, though they each have their own meanings.
“Bigender means that you have an identity that’s a combination of more than one gender,” Teller says, adding that it can be related to the term gender fluid.
On the other hand, demigender menas that a person has a “partial connection to a gender” and “could be more of that umbrella term,” Teller explains.
“So in the agender spectrum, you might say, ‘I am agender but have a partial connection to another identity,'” she adds.
Agender pronouns
Agender people might use gender neutral pronouns, such as they and them. But some might use she/her or him/his or neopronouns, such as xe, xir, xirs, ze, zir, zirs, for example.
“Agender people can use any pronouns that feel right for them,” Stoller says. “There’s no one set of agender pronouns, which I think is pretty cool because it gives people the chance to find what language makes them feel best, what makes them feel most affirmed.”
Teller agrees that pronoun use remains personal for most agender people. “It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to use they/them or other variations of gender neutral pronouns,” she says.
What it’s like to be agender
At times, Daigle-Orians feels they are expected to act in a gendered way, and that can feel overwhelming and contributes to a “cumulative kind of stress.”
“I certainly do feel like the society pressure to adhere to … male gender norms and perform masculinity in the world,” they say. “That shows up in my relationships, that shows up my work environments.”
Sometimes people think that agender is not real and that is hurtful, Daigle-Orians says.
“The one that I encounter the most is that being agender is something the kids made up in order to feel special,” they say. “The assumption is … that’s not a real thing, and what I find the hardest is the immediate dismissal.”
While that pushback can occur, they note that many people are empathetic and curious about what agender is, and in those situations Daigle-Orians will happily answer questions.
“We know gender is much more complex,” they say. “There are so many ways that one can inhabit gender.”
But Daigle-Orians does have moments in life where they’re able to experience agender joy, and that feels affirming.
“When the people in my life use my correct pronouns and steer clear of calling me ‘guy’ or ‘dude’ or other gendered terms, and they’re open and accepting about how I understand and define myself, I feel at home in the body I’m in,” they explain. “I don’t feel like I’m pushing up against some expectations about how I’m supposed to be in this body and what I’m supposed to do in it.”
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