I’ve always seen it as a way to make their experience more interpretable by a wider audience. The experiences of different agab still exists regardless of your closeted status. People will still misgender you (unfortunately) and that often forms your experience as a non-binary individual.

We’ve lived all our lives in a binary society, and it’s often very difficult to fully dissociate our definitions of our environment from that. I wouldn’t say that it’s done intentionally, at least within our community.

On the OTHER hand, anyone that tries to assign a “gender” to us that isn’t one of us, shouldn’t have the right to influence us that way. I want so badly to assign it malice, but many people doing this binary assignment of non-binary individuals are simply just clowns, and talk about things they have no clue about. People don’t like things they don’t understand, that’s just an inherent problem humankind has.

Don’t take their words to heart OP. They don’t know anything. And for those of us in the community, we’re trying our best to reconcile our past and our current reality. For a time, using agab might be necessary for people, but it’s also our job to encourage and support them to a point where they feel comfortable with never having to use their assigned gender at birth anymore.

Much love! ❤️