Agender and Third Gender

Agender is a term for people that feel they do not align with any gender, or feel a distinct lack of gender. It's often confused with being asexual which is not a requirement of being agender as gender identity and sexuality are unrelated. Many agender people prefer singular 'they' pronouns as well as a number of other gender-neutral pronoun groupings instead of he/she eg. 'they walked to the store'. Gender nullification surgery is one surgery used almost exclusively by agender people because some desire a body that lacks sexual characteristics.

In 2010 a British citizen was the first person to be officially recognized as genderless. Norrie May-Welby was born a man but had a sex change operation in 1990 aged 28. After then being unhappy as a woman May-Welby decided to become a 'neuter'. The 48-year old is now recongnised as a person of no specific gender. Officials have altered their birth certificate to include the new no-gender classification after doctors were apparently unable to determine their sex. May-Welby says "The concepts of man or woman don't fit me. The simplest solution is not to have any sex identification"

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Looking at agender has helped my project because it again supports the idea that post-modern feminism puts forward that gender is a socially constructed concept and sex doesn't bear relation to the gender norms we should act in. For one of my experimental makeups I would like to try making someone 'gender neutral' to see if it is possible and how someone looks without normal gender markers such as hair etc.

Third gender is the concept that individuals are categorized as neither a man or a women, as well as the social category present in societies who have three or more genders. Biology does usually determine a humans biological sex as male or female at birth, the state of how the person or society identifies someone as belonging to neither male of female gender is considered relative to the individual's gender role in society, gender identity and sexual orientation. To different cultures or individuals, a third gender can represent different things such an intermediate state between a man and a woman, a state of being both (eg. spirit of a man in the body of a woman), the state of being neither and the ability to cross or swap genders.

The term third gender has been used to describe the hijras of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, the Fa'afafine of Polynesia and the Sworn Virgins of the Balkans among others.

53 - Sworn Virgin

54 - Fa'afafine

55 - Hijras