In recent years, the LGBT+ community has garnered increasing support in the United States of America. With the legalization of same-sex marriage to the united uproar against controversial transgender bathroom laws, we have begun to see our people band together to fight for LGBT+ rights (although there will always be the wrong-side-of-history bigots). And even with the support for the members of the LGBT community, the members and the issues of the “plus” are often forgotten about.Our predominantly cishet society is familiar with what it means to be binary trans, but when the concepts of agender, non-binary, and genderfluid come up, they often reject them. Moving forward, it’s important that we hear and amplify the voices of the members of the less talked about intersection of the LGBT community. In an effort to do this, I decided to talk to agender teen activist, Twitter personality, and YouTuber Sage Rose (@MADBLACKTWINK on Twitter) about being agender and the issues that come along with it.
“I knew I didn’t fit into the gender binary system when I was younger when my stepdad kind of forced me into football,” Sage explained. “I didn’t want anything to do with typical ‘guy’ things.” This is this case for many children across the globe. We think everyone has to fit perfectly into male or female; we think there is no in between. And this is undoubtedly due to the lack of gender and sexuality education we have. “I only first learned what agender was when I really got into social justice Twitter last year. I immediately knew that’s how I identify. The education system doesn’t do enough when it comes to queer topics. They need to teach LGBT history, genders outside of in-between the binary, and same sex intercourse.”
Thankfully, Twitter has proven to be a solid educational platform to learn about gender identification where our education system has come up short. Without it, Sage and many others probably wouldn’t know how to identify. And even though parts of the Twitter community are educational and welcoming, the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily follow suit. “My family is still struggling with my attraction to males. I don’t think they’re ready to grasp the concept of the gender binary. I don’t know if they’ll ever understand. They’re very old school.”
Another issue, as I mentioned earlier, is the neglect of the agender community when it comes to LGBT issues. And being black doesn’t help either. “I haven’t felt any support for being agender from my gay male counterparts. I’ve seen and experienced a lot of anti-blackness and transphobia within the LGBT community. Being any form of trans puts you in the back, and being black pushes you back even further.”
The LGBT community, especially the agender community, will always receive hate for simply being who they are, but that isn’t going to stop Sage from enjoying their life like any other person. “[Agender people] are here. We’ve been here longer than you probably think. Your opinion won’t stop us from existing, so you can sit in your sad corner while the rest of us enjoy life living and loving.” After all, agender people are just like you and me.
