#category: agabs

[mortelum]

Assigned Fungus at Birth (AFnAB)

[ pt: Assigned Fungus at Birth (AFnAB) /end pt ]

[ id: a rectangular flag with four evenly-sized horizontal stripes, in the following colors, from top to bottom: off-white, light dirty yellow, muted light brown, and medium brown. /end id ]

[ id: a divider made up of mostly pixelated roses of varying sizes. There is an animal skull in the divider as well, sitting amongst the roses. /end id ]

AFnAB: A neoAGAB for when one has been assigned a fungus at birth.

@radiomogai / @neoagab

Divider Credit

[revenant-coining]

ACoAB

(pt: ACoAB /end pt)

ACoAB; a neoAGAB where one is assigned confused/confusion/confusing at birth!

for anon!

tagging; @radiomogai

[nataref]

Been thinking on it more recently, and.. I'm so sick and tired of AGAB language and its substitutes. I'm sick of AGAB being used as a cudgel against transwomen, I'm sick of division and binaries, I'm sick of seeing people misattributing traits/behaviours to the genitals you are born with instead of attributing these traits/behaviors to societal structures and to the individual as a *human being* not "AMAB" not "AFAB" just human. Just a person. Because that's all any of us are. The only meaningful difference in human sexual dimorphism is how it impacts your reproductive capabilities & healthcare needs.

A trans man is abusive or toxic? Cool, thats because hes an asshole. Not because hes a transman. Anyone can be abusive or toxic. Its not attributable to his AGAB/Transition history/gender. He would be shitty either way.

A trans woman is sexist? Cool, its because shes a woman who happens to also be sexist. Alot of women are. It's not because of her gender, or her AGAB, or any other aspect of her gender identity. Guess what? Anyone can be sexist, it came free with your worldwide systemic misogyny. To single out a trans woman as being sexist *because she's trans* is transphobic. Shes sexist because shes a person who is sexist. Thats it thats the whole story case closed, can we all stop with this ridiculousness now?

My point being, the toxic traits and bigotry, whatever they might be, are NOT STORED IN THE GENDER. It is stored in the person. The individual, and the larger sociopolitical structures which enforce these ideas. The toxicity is stored in the human person in front of you, to try and endlessly argue otherwise betrays a tendency to dehumanize, degender, and categorize (usually trans) people. To see their behaviour as a reflection of a group rather than the reflection of that person, you know, the full human being you are talking to/about.

I just... I hate this. I want people to put their money where their mouths are and understand that gender being understood as rigid categories that largely dictate how a person behaves, looks, and feels, has always been the fucking root of the issue (transphobia, sexism, misogyny, intersexism, etc). I'm sick of boxes I'm sick of persistently being told who I am, and who other people are, because of AGAB. I'm sick of it in every form it takes. So sick in fact I've honestly decided from now on I'm never telling anyone who doesn't already know my AGAB what I was assigned. Because it doesn't fucking matter. It's never mattered.

And maybe, just maybe, if you don't get to pry that information out of me- and other trans folk- at every possible opportunity anymore, you'll start seeing me as a person first, and transgender second. A person with flaws and strengths, a person who is whatever way I am *because I'm me* and not because I'm part of whatever category you want to shove me into. And maybe, just maybe, it'll make some of you stop and actually seriously think "why do I even want to know so badly?"

Thats all rant over goodbye 🚶

[burinazar]

recently i've switched back to browsing the twitter feed of my old main acct since i had the impression the accts i followed there were more serious/political and would have more gaza info. and weirdly that isn't true? for some reason currently the feed on my fandom account (which has become my main at this point) has a lot more?....but what they *do* have on the old one's feed is tons of gender discourse stuff that make me feel stressed and bad

[apas-95]

the fact that so many people are still stuck on the 'gender and sex are separate, gender is Fake and can be whatever you want, but sex is real' thing is crazy. there's a lot of people who can talk the talk with AGAB terminology without understanding the point of said terminology, i.e. that gender, sex, et al are social categories justified with medicalisation, not the other way around. anyone who says 'biologically male' or 'biologically female' just believes, in a slightly more complicated way, that being transgender is a mental delusion, rather than a genuine analysis of and position in the social system of gender.

[vampiremogai]

[Image description: Two identical images, both a rectangular flag with four equally sized horizontal stripes. The colors in order are beige, violet, soft crimson, and dull navy.

The third image is a pale pink lace-like horizontal divider. The fourth image is a pale pink dashed line horizontal divider. End ID.]

[PT: AVAB.

AVAB / Assigned Vampire At Birth: A xeno agab for those who were assigned vampire at birth.

Rq'd by anon. ^^ Don't tag as xenogender!

Please read my rentry before interacting! Don't repost! End PT.]

( 🎀 ) :: ❝ AVAB ❞

— ❝ AVAB / Assigned Vampire At Birth ❞ :: ❝ A xeno agab for those who were assigned vampire at birth ❞

( 🎀 ) :: Rq’d by anon ^^ Don't tag as xenogender !

Please read my rentry before interacting ! Don't repost ! ♡

[our-queer-experience]

you do not need to know someones agab

you do not need to know someone’s genitalia

you do not need to know if someone is pre or post op

you do not need to treat gender and sex as opposite and irrefutable categories that determine anything about a person

you are not owed anything about a stranger’s body unless you are a doctor or in a situation where knowing what’s in someone’s pants is immediately relevant, like in a sexual context. it’s not appropriate to ask and you do. not. need. to. know.

[mortelum]

Assigned Mushroom at Birth (AMushAB)

[ pt: Assigned Mushroom at Birth (AMushAB) /end pt ]

[ id: a rectangular flag with four evenly sized horizontal stripes, in the following colors, from top to bottom: medium muted red, off-white, light brown, and medium brown. /end id ]

[ id: a divider made up of mostly pixelated roses of varying sizes. There is an animal skull in the divider as well, sitting amongst the roses. /end id ]

AMushAB: A neoAGAB for when one has been assigned a mushroom at birth.

@radiomogai / @neoagab

Divider Credit

[revenant-coining]

AAltHAB

(pt: AAltHAB /end pt)

AAltHAB; a neoAGAB where one is assigned alterhuman at birth!

for anon!

tagging; @radiomogai

[busket]

"masculinity is praised and rewarded in society"

masculinity is rewarded for cis men. in cis women, trans women, and trans men it's mocked. femininity is also rewarded for cis women. but for cis men, trans women, and trans men it is mocked. it's not masculinity that is rewarded in society, it is conformity. it's a very specific type of masculinity that must be performed by cis men, and a very specific femininity that must be performed by cis women. if these things are performed by people who don't belong in those narrow boxes, or if anyone practices a variant non-conforming expression of masculinity or femininity (or androgyny) they are a target of mockery and scorn and often violence in society

femininity is more often derided, that's true. that's an aspect of misogyny. but another aspect of misogyny is that masculinity is also mocked when it's performed by people that society does not consider to be men, which includes trans women and trans men. to patriarchal society, trans people exist as an aberration; another category of gender that is worthy of mockery regardless of how we perform gender. trans women get scorned for either being too masculine or too feminine, being told they need to "actually try" or that they're "putting on a costume of women". the same goes for trans men, if we are too feminine than we're "not really trans and just doing it for attention" and if we are too masculine we are "ugly, bald, fat, mutilated."

there's no winning in how we perform our genders, because our very existence doesn't conform to the regimented cis standards. its not about masculinity versus femininity, it's about following the oppressive rules that are forced on us based entirely on our agab.

[sodomit]

There are a lot of trans people who miss the relative comfort of being cis and try to re-generate the same sense of simplicity (often in a form of very rigid gender expectations or an us vs them mindset), and this isn't a phenomenon exclusive to any gender identity or gender assignment.

There are a lot of trans men embracing the trad-like strongman "defender of women" role and deriving gratification from hurting other trans men. There are a lot of trans women who embrace the "proud misandrist" role, often piling it up on top of unconfronted hatred towards the idea of "giving up womanhood". There are a lot of nonbinary people who aligned themselves with the artificial "non men" category and self-appoint as gatekeepers.

It is possible to talk about this phenomenon, about trans people having values rooted in cis values, without claiming these people are somehow identical to their cis counterparts (either by identity or by agab).

Don't lose sight of that.

[anarcoyote]

i think many people who talk about gender politics fail to understand what "transmisogyny" really means. i see a lot of people who've taken it to mean "when someone is mean to a trans woman", and so, conversely, when someone is mean to a trans man, they must have a term for that too, like "transmisandry" (or "transandrophobia").

but transmisogyny describes something more specific: the interaction and intersection of the social forces of transphobia and misogyny.

and it's the "social forces" bit that people seem to overlook. this is what people mean when they say "misandry isn't real". they aren't saying "nobody is mean to men" or even "men do not experience oppression". they're saying that men do not experience oppression structurally, as a category. men are not oppressed solely on the basis of being men.

when men experience oppression it is by intersection with their manhood. black men, disabled men, fat men, effeminate men (!!!), and endless others all may experience oppression, but none of it stems from being men.

and this applies to trans men (and more generally transmasculine people) just the same. i have not seen any examples of "transandrophobia" that are anything more than "transphobia directed at a transmasculine person". and yes, that may look different than transphobia directed at a transfeminine person, but that's because transphobia is usually based on people's assumptions about our AGABs. mislabeling that experience as "transandrophobia" inhibits our ability to connect with each other and share our struggles.

i don't really have a thesis statement here i'm just tired of seeing people argue about terms they don't seem to understand.

[a-polite-melody]

I don’t have the full brain power necessary to really write the post carefully and thoughtfully like I want to

But I keep having the idea of a post brewing

Because I keep seeing the whole “AFAB privilege” thing, which gets explained as “having the privilege of being assumed to be something worth protecting as delicate, weaker, smaller, daintier, more fragile, not as aggressive, the victim, etc.”

And that doesn’t match my “AFAB experience” AT ALL as an early growth spurt and early pubescent fat person growing up

I was (and as a result, around anyone who knew me as a child, still often am—a very small example of this is how people who meet me now think of me as short but even people a head+ taller than me now who grew up with me say I have “tall energy” still that new people who meet me don’t see at all) constantly seen as the more intimidating, more aggressive, bigger, physically stronger, etc. compared to my peers

Even when I was the one being bullied, I was assumed to be the one causing the problems. I’ve never been sorted into a “victim” category based off of my AGAB or how I look

But I was AFAB so I actually mustn’t have the experiences I’m saying I have because the trans community apparently has decided that gendered socialization is a thing when we change who we target with those accusations.

[jellyfemmedyke]

I hate agab language so much. It gives me hella dysphoria and anxiety. Why can't we just say "uterus, vagina, penis." when talking about reproductive rights, we could say reproductive rights, instead of pushing everyone into fucked up categories that don't tell anyone anything. the gender I was assigned says nothing about who I am currently or my gender.

[faint-petrichor]

gender/sex abolition is a very worthwhile thing to aim for, but it cannot be done by wishing it away--it is done through the full dissolution of the patriarchal system. based on that statement it sounds like we are far away from that, and that is indeed the case. and more crucially, it means this cannot be achieved by wishing it away and pretending it does not exist. transmisogyny, for example, is an institutional force that we are faced with every day. this is the exact value of tme/tma as terminology--not to reinforce a sex binary, but to describe an oppression by literally naming it directly.

i sympathize with the desire to be rid of amab/afab as labels. in a certain context there is value to this, where those labels have been used to repackage biological determinism. but discarding them fully is bound to fall short, because we are still bound to systemic (rather than biological) circumstances based on our agab. that is the arena of this terminology. if we were to discard them, we would discard a piece of essential language towards understanding the oppressions trans people face. to put it another way, whether we like it or not we are bound to these categories by hegemonic society, and to that end it is sometimes useful to name them. and while tme/tma is not a synonym for afab/amab, it exists for the same purpose. and all the same, if we did not have it we would be lacking a critical piece of language to describe oppression.

so when trans women use these terminologies to have critical discussions about transmisogyny, we aren't trying to reassert the gender binary or biological determinism. we are trying to have critical discussions about transmisogyny! something we cannot solve by pretending it does not exist.

[hiiragi7]

Reminder that y'all should just say what you mean instead of "AFAB" or "AMAB".

If you are referring to penises, say penis.

If you are referring to having a period, say the word period.

If you are referring to being raised female or male, say that.

If you are referring to the ability to get pregnant, say that.

And so on, and so on, and so on.

The terms "AFAB" and "AMAB" do not tell you anything about a person's reproductive, hormonal, or chromosomal profiles. It does not tell you what body parts they have. It does not tell you anything about their life experiences or what gender they were raised as.

Using "AFAB" and "AMAB" as if they are synonymous with [perisex] "female" and "male" excludes intersex and trans people. Using the terms "AFAB" and "AMAB" in this way is only recreating the sex binary of female and male but masking it as more progressive when it really isn't. Just say what you really mean.

There are trans people who have the same equipment as a cis person of the "opposite" assigned sex. There are intersex people who were assigned a sex at birth while having completely different internal reproductive organs or hormones, or who were raised as a different gender than the sex they were assigned at birth.

There is no such thing as "AFAB" or "AMAB" experiences. AGAB language only describes what you were assigned at birth. It says nothing about your body or your life experiences.

I know that people tend to shy away from using direct language when talking about anything related to sex (even as it relates to biology and not anything actually sexual) but using the actual terms for these things isn't bad. It's extremely counterproductive to movements to view sex as a fluid and broad category when you use AFAB and AMAB as if they are anything more than a sex designation given at birth.