As I have told y’all more than once I play a mobile game called Rise of Kingdoms. I have inform the people who I play with on a regular basis that I’m non-binary. I really enjoying playing with this group of people because they all are willing to learn and not be afraid to be part of my journey as a non-binary person. It is nice when you have many different places where you feel validated and accepted. The picture above is what I use as my avatar/profile picture. One of my alliance members created if for me after I asked someone to use our normal alliance avatar with the agender flag. This has actually stemmed conversations in our kingdom chat area of the game.
There have been people that know exactly what it is and will private message me and ask me what pronouns I use. There are others that ask what the colors in my T are. I will reply with, it’s the agender flag. One day when I said that someone typed, ‘I never heard of that.’ I didn’t have to even explain myself, there where people that chimed in. One said it means merf (which is the name I use) doesn’t identify with a gender. This then brought about the conversation about gender identity and gender pronouns.
I have also told y’all that this game includes people from all types of countries, nationalities, languages, religions and many other points of views. Every time these conversations start, I just wait, and see if people are going to be mean. And, if so, will there people online at the time that are going to stick up for me. On this day, when the person didn’t know what the flag was and what agender was, the conversation was amazing. People started sharing there gender pronouns, real names, and where they lived. After all that, people started sharing other LGBTQ pride flags. This was so refreshing. I have found another place besides church, home, my in person gaming group and close friends homes that I can be me.
There is a difference with this group, I don’t expect them to use merf over and over while typing about me. I have decided to use they/them pronouns in this place. This doesn’t feels as good as when I‘m in person with people and hear “Meredith” or ”mer’ in place of she/her, but it still is nice not to have people type she.
Hey Meredith, would you write sometime about the difference between using the term "non-binary" and using the term "agender"? Agender strikes me as more positive in the sense that it doesn't have to refer to the common binary framing of gender. I'd appreciate hearing your experience or perspective, or what it being used in various places and why.