Cam Linn is a 19-year-old autistic, agender college student. They spoke about how they conceptualize gender and define what agender means for themself.
Alphabet Soup shares LGBTQ+ Missourians’ stories through portraiture and personal narratives.
Cam Linn: One day, I am sitting in the spare bedroom, there is Skyrim paused on my laptop, and I'm just thinking stuff about life and then my brain goes, “Wait a minute, where's my gender?”
And I realized that I just do not have a gender. That it was all kind of like a performing mask, and so that led me to now knowing that I am agender, which means, I don’t – like an absence of it.
I prefer the analogy of the cube. Some people's cubes are pink, some are blue, some are yellow, some are purple, some change color – I don't have a cube. I just don't.
But for me, definitions have always been a bit more loosey-goosey, I mean, humans do not easily fit into a box. It feels wonderful when you find a box, but also, I know as soon as I say the sky is blue, someone will point out that during sunset, it's actually red.
I'm still just a person. I may fall somewhere in the middle, but that's because, for me, that's just how I feel. I feel in the middle.
![An oily diffuser, a shrine space for the goddess Anat and Zagreus, one of Cam Linn’s plants, sit on a shelf in front of the promotional poster for the first football game they attended, a Steam Powered Giraffe band poster and their calendar on Wednesday, March 20, 2024, at Linn’s Dogwood Hall dorm room in Columbia. Linn, a student at MU, is pursuing a double major in cultural anthropology and religious studies.
“I'm also Jewish, which, when it comes to my queerness, has been interesting because I am 100% willing to pull out the fact that, (A), technically Judaism has six genders, and there's nothing you can do. But then, also, I had a panic attack when I went to a more conservative synagogue and they had to separate by gender. And I was like, ‘Great, so am I gonna sit in the aisle or [what?]’ I just sat with my dad,” Linn said. “I practice a form of Judaism called Canaanite Kabbalah, and each of the aspects of Bod and the universe is associated with a face, an ancient Jewish god from back when we were polytheistic. Similar to Buddhism, these faces help us to focus on and associate things with these aspects. Anat is the face of Gebura and is associated with the number five, fire, justice/vengeance, Mars and passion.”](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/0f0c415/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1750x1164+0+0/resize/840x558!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fd0%2F70%2Fcba36adb4b64af2d85da4800fa05%2F20240320-bas-queer-joy-cam-linn-0116.jpg)
In the end, all you really need to do is ask. The basic thing is just ask pronouns, use the pronouns given, please God don't quibble about “Oh, you know, they/them is actually singular, actually, not singular is plural.” Thank you. I've heard that 50 times this week. Moving on.
But I’m just another person. How I experience and interpret the world may be different – especially if you yourself are not neurodivergent, but just ask.
I can see queer joy as me finishing up an audio drama, me finally getting in that shipment of Iron Goddess of Mercy oolong tea – which is very good, I suggest you try it if you ever get the chance.
But it can also be more so as like, feeling joy about your identity, like, I know that there are a lot of people where if I just am open about my identity, I already kind of have like a family of people that I can rely on.
I felt joy about being able to express myself – especially when talking with my uncle who came out as gay during the AIDS crisis.
Him seeing my generation – we're struggling, things still suck – but we can be open now. We have spaces. We can more easily find community and family in each other.
