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Category: Project

Description: Feminist scholars have written for decades about the radical potential—if not the necessity—of ungendering for resisting gender inequality. Yet, the bulk of this work has been theoretical, and other scholars have questioned whether ungendering is even possible. Drawing on interviews with 30 asexual individuals, I present empirical findings that lend support to the plausibility of ungendering. Based on my findings, I introduce the concept of gender detachment, which refers to individually-held notions that gender presentation and/or identity is irrelevant, unimportant, pointless, and/or overall not a topic of great personal concern. I argue that the difficulty of navigating these feelings reveals gender as a compulsory system of categorization. I discuss connections to and differences from the concepts of degendering, ungendering, undoing gender, redoing gender, disidentification, nonbinary identification, and gender vertigo. I also consider gender detachment’s potential for radical resistance to gender (and the inequality gender produces) and the potential complications in realizing that potential.