#if you don't know: agab = assigned gender at birth

[socraticcryptid]

I think, for me, being genderqueer is like realising that i want to change careers. Not because the job has a toxic work environment - although, maybe, later on, i'll look back and realise that it did - but because it just doesn't suit me.

It's like i grew up with parents who ran a bakery, and i was helping out in the bakery since i was young, and i left school at sixteen to work full-time. And maybe i tell people that I'm unhappy with my work, and they tell me that i should open my own bakery, or try pastry instead of bread, and i can't work out how to tell them that i'm not a baker. That i don't see myself as a baker, that i'm happy to dabble in it, but the idea of a future where i'm still baking bread every day when i'm sixty fills me with despair. That i respect the fact that many people who used to bake bread are happier now that they're baking cupcakes, and i'm happy for them, but that wouldn't work for me.

It would take time and effort and money to change careers. I would always be explaining to family friends that yes, i used to work in the bakery, but i switched to a different profession, and i'm much happier now. And it would be worth it.

Maybe i could live as my AGAB. I don't know. Maybe i would settle into it again as i grow older, or find a way to make it work for me. But i can't see a future where i only ever live as my AGAB and am happy with it. And isn't that enough?

[trans-axolotl]

my gendered experience growing up as an intersex person was overwhelmingly defined by my responses and resistance to everything that got me labeled as a failure: failure to quickly get a gender assigned at birth, failure to go through a normal puberty and grow up into a woman, failure at meeting the standards for "complete womanhood" because of my intersex sex traits, and yet simultaneously failing to ever be acknowledged as a "real man" and being treated as a threat when I expressed I wanted to transition.

before i realized i was a man and came out as trans, the ways that girlhood was denied to me was very often humiliating and painful. locker rooms filled with other girls were a frequent source of shame. there were many big and small ways that i was told that my intersex body made me insufficient, incomplete, broken. i was forced onto estrogen, forced into shaving my body hair, and was constantly being told to change myself to better fit this mystical idea of a "normal woman." and even though I ultimately ended up becoming a man, the denial of girlhood was painful.

but i think that these things would have been even more difficult to navigate as an intersex girl if on top of everything I already said, i was having to cope with the denial of my girlhood while i was forced into boys locker rooms. if my doctors were forcing me onto testosterone hrt and refusing to even discuss estrogen, if all my legal paperwork had "M" on it and was a logistical nightmare to change, if every support group for my intersex variation labeled it as a "men's support group," if the LGBTQ community spaces i tried to join were misogynistic towards me often to the point of exile, if my self determination as an intersex girl was denied in most spaces of my life, and on and on and on. while listing all these things out i also don't want to make it seem like it's all about suffering and pain--so much of transition for me has been about joy in my self determination and how much it feels like a reclamation of autonomy to decide what I want my body and self to be like--i know this is an experience i share with so many of my trans intersex friends.

as an person who was AFAB, although there were many ways that trying to grow up as an intersex girl were a painful, logistical nightmare, many times and places that i was excluded from woman's spaces, etc. however, there was a simultaneous affirmation that i was right to strive for that in the first place. which is logic rooted in some fucked up compulsory dyadism, but also which would have made some things slightly easier or even possible at all if i had wanted to embrace being an intersex girl within this fucked up system.

pretty much every time i've seen people on tumblr talking about "afab transfems" in an intersex context, people seem happy to collapse these experiences and act like there's no meaningful distinction or point in distinguishing between different types of intersex embodiment. it seems incredibly extractive, to be perfectly honest with you--taking terms already used by a community to make meaning of their experiences and to expand and dilute that term enough that it means something pretty different than the original.

it's making me think about the concept of epistemic injustice, which is a term coined by Miranda Fricker to describe oppression related to knowledge, communication, and making meaning of the world. There's two subtypes of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Testimonial injustice refers to the dynamic where marginalized people are labeled as not credible, excluded from conversations, and their testimony and knowledge is labeled as unreliable, even when they're the ones who are experts and have first hand experience of what people are talking about. (this is why i probably won't make this post rebloggable--i've noticed this pattern on tumblr many times where trans men speaking about transmisogyny get lots of notes and are given a lot of grace, where trans women are silenced, attacked for not having perfect wording, and otherwise delegitimized.)

the second type is called hermeneutical injustice. it describes how marginalized people are denied the right to make sense of the experiences in their own lives. this can look like preventing people from building community, terminology, a political understanding of themselves, and the interpretive resources needed to process how you live in the world.

this is a form of injustice that I think almost all intersex people are very familiar with--we are denied community and interpretive resources to the point that we're told we don't even exist, that intersex isn't a real word, and so many more examples that leave us isolated and with very few options for understanding what we're collectively experiencing. as an intersex person i really intimately understand how frustrating, confusing, and painful it is to not have words for your experiences, your identity, your life.

so it makes me really sad and pissed off when it seems like intersex people seem to be replicating this exact same type of epistemic injustice towards transfems and specifically towards intersex transfems. pretty much every time recently i see people talking about "afab transfems" they're doing so in a way that seems to deny that trans women even have the right to make sense of their own experiences in the world. there seems to be this mindset that these political frameworks, these interpretive resources that transfems have built up are just up for grabs for anyone. and then on top of that has come with it a lot of cruel, hateful language and direct attacks towards many intersex transfems who are facing so much harassment right now.

an important value to me is this idea of reciprocity as a foundation for solidarity. to me reciprocity means that we're prioritizing the ways we care for each other, we're thinking about how we can uplift each other, and we're watching out for extractive or exploitative patterns where one group is constantly expected to be in "solidarity" with another group without getting the same respect and care back toward them. i think that there could be so many ways that intersex people of all genders could share our overlapping experiences and actually be in true, meaningful solidarity with each other, but i barely ever actually see that happen on tumblr. and that pisses me off, because i do think that there's so much we have in common that we could celebrate and support each other with. i feel so much kinship with so, so many of my trans intersex friends, and ways where i see our lives converge. but i don't think that can happen in an environment where there's no acknowledgment of the ways that our experiences will sometimes (often) differ from each other, and the ways that we have unique needs.

another frustration i've had based on this most recent couple months of transmisogynistic intersex posting on tumblr is how intersex people have been mostly ignoring intersex community resources and devaluing the existing intersex terminology that people created to try to meet our needs. so much of what i've seen people describing on tumblr seems to really line up with the term ipsogender. Ipsogender is a term coined by an intersex sociologist Cary Gabriel Costello, and is used to describe intersex people whose gender matches the gender they were medically assigned at birth, but who might not feel like cis or trans fits them, might experience dysphoria, and who might feel like they've ended up transitioning medically or socially in some ways. this is a word that exists that an intersex person put time into coining because they wanted other intersex people to feel seen, embraced, and have ways of understanding themselves and communicating to others, and that's something that's super meaningful to me! and yet, i've rarely seen anyone reference it, and also seen multiple people making fun of it in other spaces online.

there's also intergender, which is another intersex specific gender term used to describe when your gender is inseparable from your intersex traits, and that your intersex identity is intertwined with your gender identity in some way. some people just identify as intergender, others use it as an adjective and exist as an intergender man or woman. intersex terminology like this is really important to me, especially because we're so often denied the right to make sense of our own experiences.

i think ultimately what i wanted to say with this post is just that when i think about intersex community, some of the most important values of intersex community for me are solidarity, care for each other, and affirming our right to define our own existence. and i don't think that can happen in a community where people are acting in extractive ways, harassing and attacking their fellow community members, and being dismissive of the realities of other intersex people's lives.

[genderqueerdykes]

met a trans woman who was going to be a potential new roommate. she wanted to see a picture of me to know i was a real person. after seeing my selfie she asked me "AFAB on T?" i felt the most dysphoric i had felt in years- its one thing to have cis people ask me things like this, but it's a huge slap in the balls to hear things like this from other trans people.

we are in the "nobody cares what gender you were assigned at birth" community. don't single people out or try to assume their AGAB- if you're trans and don't want people asking you about your AGAB, the other trans person almost definitely feels the same way. respect people's privacy and identity- attempting to profile other trans people by what their bodies look like is violence.

[hiiragi7]

I've been seeing quite a lot of discourse lately defining transness as "identifying as a gender opposite to/different from what society expects you to be".

This is incredibly vague, and I feel misses that, for many people like me, there is not exactly a clear gender in which society expects us to be, nevermind a clear "opposite" or "different" gender which we can identify with. Many intersex people have experiences in which one person calls us a "failed male" while another calls us a "DSD female". Many of us have been assigned, reassigned, degendered, reassigned again. In this sense, for many intersex people, it would appear that no matter which gender we are we would fall under this definition of trans if we so choose it; society so often does not expect us to conform to a singular gender, rather they expect us not to exist at all. Even for many intersex people who identify as cisgender, their gender and sex are constantly brought into question and suspected of being inauthentic, an imposter of a different gender/sex "pretending" to be cisgender. In this sense, any gender we choose is "opposite" of expectations, even cisgender identities, because we are intersex.

And yet, the discourse I have been seeing lately has been attempting to sort intersex people into easily digestible and simplified boxes based on AGAB ("AFAB intersex" and "AMAB intersex") and trying to claim what kind of intersex person is allowed to call themselves transfem based on their AGAB, as though this event at birth always determines what gendered expectations are set for you and where you can transition to after.

Which of my gender assignments should I refer to as my "assigned gender"? The choice made by the medical professionals at my birth? The choices made by my parents? At which time? By which parent? And why does it matter to people so much that I have an assigned gender to refer to when it's all so messy anyway? Why must I invent convenient acronyms to describe it to you for your judgement? Why is it not enough simply to say I know my own experiences and identity best and that it's none of your business? Why are you trying to decide for me what I should call myself?

All this to say, I wish people would stop making assumptions about and policing other people's identities. I will readily admit I don't always understand an identity, and this is a good thing; it means there is an infinite variety of us and an infinite amount to learn about each other.

I wrote this post with the recent intersex transfem & afab transfem discourse in mind, but it quite honestly applies to a lot of the very exclusionary and rigid attitudes I've seen in our community lately. Once again, why are we using the actions of oppression (for example, the action of nonconsensual gender assignments; AGAB) to define our trans identities, to the point of excluding each other within our own community? How are we helping each other in doing this?

(I do have similar questions regarding the divide in language between "AFAB transfem" and simply "transfem" - Why specifically the label of "AFAB transfem" rather than just "transfem", if the argument is that AGAB does not determine gender? Personally, I would like to move away from AGAB language altogether.)

I've never had a clear gender to transition from; I only hope that in the future the community will support people like me in using whatever language we find best to describe the gender we are transitioning to.

Trans is a word open to anyone who identifies as such. That's the best part of it.

[certifiedsexed]

What's the point of using AGAB language if not for genitals then?

I've seen it used and used it myself for discussions of gender on mental health (I could also talk about sexism but I never do so I can't use for this example), like "symptoms of autism in AFAB people" rather than "symptoms of autism in women", because I know they're talking about how women are raised that makes their symptoms different than in men; I'm supposed to be included in the "women" because I was raised like a girl, but I'm not currently a woman, so it doesn't apply to me, hence why I say that I'm AFAB instead, because that's what would affect my symptoms if it's about how I was raised for this case (I hope it makes sense)

It seems pointless to say that I'm AFAB to refer to my body instead of just saying what matters for the conversation. Like I'm not judging if anyone feels better that way, but it's like saying you were short as a kid: it doesn't say what you are now.

I just want to know if the use I give it is also intersexist and if so then what's the actual use AGAB lanaguge is meant to have

It's to discuss how everyone is assigned (with no consent) a certain sex/gender at birth, sometimes regardless of their genitals and how that affects the rest of our lives.

For example, saying: "I was AFAB but I'm a man and haven't managed to get that assignment removed from documents, which means I have to deal with a lot of transphobia when my records come up!" or: "I was AMAB but I'm intersex and transfem which made going through puberty really rough with the mix of intersexism and transmisogyny from everyone."

What you're describing are both intersexist and transmisogynistic ways to be using AGAB language!

Yes, there are differences between how women and people assumed to be women are commonly treated in society but there is no explicit way that changes the actual symptoms of things like autism. Studies and discussions like that are talking about different ways symptoms more frequently show up in women and people they assumed to be women that they studied.

That doesn't just include people "AFAB" and specifying that they're talking about women and then explicitly excluding trans women is definitely not what you want to be doing.

You can say you were AFAB but altering discussions of mental health to exclude intersex people and trans women/fems is fucked and actually exactly the type of thing I was talking about before, unfortunately.

You don't need to say you were AFAB. You're correct, just say what matters in the discussion, that's fine.

In discussions like you're talking about, what's important is that they're speaking about women and people they assume to be women-Unless the research behind the discussion explicitly says, "We only accepted people AFAB", don't say that!

[If it does say that...Maybe ask yourself why they're explicitly excluding lots of intersex people and trans women/fems from that research!]

For example: "These specific symptoms of autism are more commonly recognized in women and people assumed to be women."

I hope this makes things a little clearer! If not, let me know and I can try to break it down some more. <33

[sirenium]

Hello! I saw your post about TMA/TME being another binary and it being intersexist. I genuinely want to understand why you think so because the way I’ve seen it being used wasn’t meant to create another binary. It was just for people who experience transmisogyny to have a term for themselves. It’s not based on your agab or your sex. You don’t have to be (amab) transfem to be tma. Plus, in the spaces I’ve seen it being used, it’s understood that being tme/tma can change. One’s relationship to the term can be complicated. I’ve shared my point of view so if it’s okay, I’d like to understand yours.

I don't know how else to tell you this, but any framework that's essentially oppressed/not oppressed, at least in the way it can easily get used, is eventually going to char intersex people in the desire of perisex (and, let's be honest, widely white) trans people to come out on top in the oppression olympics. even if some people can actually acknowledge us for once, there are others who act like only perisex trans women can be 'TMA' and to hell with everyone else... except those who happen to be 'AMAB'. I've actually seen an intersex person in favor of it admit that it's completely based on what you were born as.

'"...maybe intersex people who were assigned female can be tma" literally NO THEY CAN'T the whole thing about transmisogyny is that it's based around your assigned gender'

that is the direct quote. do you see how this gets intersexist? intersex people assigned female at birth can be affected by transmisogyny, but some people don't want to think so because then their viewpoints explode. you say someone's experiences with TME/TMA can be complicated but I've seen more than enough people water it down to 'AMAB only', so whether or not it was not intended that way in its creation, it is still at risk to be used as a weapon to try to push everyone into gendered and often sex based boxes which, say it with me, hurts intersex people. it happens too much to just be coincidental.

if you want to listen to more intersex people about this, I suggest looking at this post (link) as well as this one (link). I'm tired of perisex trans people acting like us saying anything is such a fucking affront to them (/nay); they cover up their intersexism with cries that the person calling them out on it is simply 'transmisogynistic' and I'm tired of it. We're never listened to and used as a talking point when it suits perisex trans people if ANYTHING, and when we dare have a back bone about blatant intersexism in the trans community, perisex trans people lose their minds because we dared not stay in the shadows while letting the perisex people rule the conversation.

[trans-androgyne]

"No one male/female socialization."

Oh. Yikes. Okay. Glad to know you think everyone is raised gender neutral all the time always.

Funny how you can quote my words and then say something they don't mean and that I've never said. Of course most people are raised in a gendered environment. They usually have gendered expectations placed on them that correspond with their sex assigned at birth. People afab are often raised to be feminine women, and people amab are often raised to be masculine men.

But that is not always the case. Other complicating factors exist, like your culture, your family, your environment, and intersex status. And even outside those factors, the way gendered ideas are pushed do not look the same across all people amab and all people afab. I was constantly instructed to be ladylike growing up. Some other people afab were encouraged to be masculine/tomboyish instead. Two people don't necessarily have the same experiences with gendered socialization just based on their shared agab.

I fight against the idea of male/female socialization because of the harm that they can cause. For starters, it is blatantly TERFy. TERFs use the idea of socialization to mean gendered destiny--someone afab will always end up more like a woman and someone amab will always end up more like a man. The idea that "trans women are male socialized" gets used by even other trans folks to say awful things like "and that's why they talk down on other people, it's the old male privilege." What about trans women amab raised to never speak their mind? I know that's the case for my transfem girlfriend, she sure as hell doesn't have an ounce of "male entitlement" in her and I would throw bricks at anyone claiming she does. Birth assignment makes certain experiences more likely, but it does not mean one always has a certain set of them or specific traits as an adult.

[rwuffles]

You can't just make up an AGAB. You weren't 'assigned puppy at birth', why are you mocking the language/acronyms used by intersex people to discuss intersexist oppression? Do you just hate us? Do you think our struggles are a joke? That these acronyms we use to convey the way we were abused and forced into a violent binary are just cute little labels for you to play with? These aren't like genders, xenogenders, literally fine. I'm xenogender. But I'm also intersex and I recognize that AGAB terms are important in discussing how we are harmed by the world around us. Please stop mocking our language.

neo agabs are a microlabel that were created in order to reject agab binaries and remind people that they're 1.) not entitled to tell everyone what genitals they have ( which, telling people your agab doesn't do in the first place ) and 2.) that agabs are a harmful binary that the medical system sorts us into. if you're going to be upset about the usage / coining of neo agab terms, then why only attack me instead of everyone else who uses them? i know multiple intersex people who are fine with the usage & coining of neo agabs, which is why i continue to use them and coin them for myself. there is also a very high chance that i'm intersex myself, anon; i say i'm perisex because i literally cannot talk to my doctors about it without putting myself in danger due to my family situation.

i am aware afab / amab were created by intersex people, but i wasn't totally aware of that 5 MONTHS AGO. WHEN I MADE THE FLAG. i was also told by an intersex person at the time that making the flag would be fine, which was why it got loaded into my queue in the first place.

i'm not trying to erase nor talk over intersex voices. if you worded this nicely to inform me of everything, it would be fine and i would post it with new information for people to know. the assumption that i made apuab in bad faith is also like, seriously? to assume i made apuab because i thought it was a "silly little label"? i made it because of how i view myself and my physical body due to trauma; i shouldn't have to clarify or justify why the fuck i identify as it because you assume i'm using it in bad faith.

i am not personally holding the intersex community back and yelling "no!!! stop talking about your oppression!!!! stop using my silly terms to talk abour your oppression!!!!" i know what it's like to have my language taken and told it's not significant or that it shouldn't be used. i want to use my platform to uplift everyone's voices, and by being an asshole when you're trying to "inform me" you're not doing jackshit.

if you're going to be an asshole when "informing me" about anything, don't send a fucking ask at all.

[this-is-exorsexism]

I just saw a post about how transmasc and transfem aren't labels you can "opt out of," how if you transition like this then you ARE transmasc and if you transition like that then you ARE transfem, whether you like it or not. Because it's just a "fact" about your transition, not an identity.

And it just made me so sad. I'm transneutral. Sure, my transition might look binary to an outside observer. Yeah, people might look at me now and see me as far more masculine than I was before I transitioned. But that's other people. Not me.

Does this count as exorsexism? I feel like it does but I'm also worried that they're right, and maybe my identity is offensive and maybe I AM lying for not calling myself transmasc. I don't know. I just feel really bad and insecure right now.

this is exorsexism.

through and through.

i'm assuming this post was by a trans person, because cis people tend to be less educated about trans terminology in the first place, and will often just parrot whatever is popular but not think of it any further.

a lot of trans people, even some nonbinary people, seem to be really invested in upholding the gender binary in its various forms. "these are the two options you have, and you cannot be neither" is just gender binary 2.0.

people want to group especially nonbinary people by our AGAB, because a lot of people can't handle the fact that us simply saying "i'm nonbinary" doesn't give them any information about our AGAB, about "where we came from" the way that "trans woman" or "trans man" does. never mind the fact that some intersex people who were (c)afab are trans women and some intersex people who were (c)amab are trans men, but these people usually aren't just exorsexist, they're intersexist too. if the term "trans woman" doesn't necessarily tell you what gender someone was assigned at birth anymore, apparently the term loses all its meaning, since everything hinges on AGAB... somehow. but i digress.

and people have definitely started using transmasculine and transfeminine as "acceptable" shorthands for AGAB language, whether they admit it or not. if you were afab, your only options are cis woman, trans man or transmasculine nonbinary, and if you're transmasculine nonbinary we treat you like a man anyway, and vice versa for amab folk.

bonus points if it all hinges on transition steps, i.e. if you were amab and take oestrogen, you're automatically transfem regardless of how you identify (and if you don't take enough transition steps you're basically cis anyway - their line of thinking, not mine).

because we're definitely dismantling cissexism by still acting as if hormones are inherently masculine or feminine. we're definitely deconstructing the gender binary by just changing the words from male and female to transmasc and transfem. (heavy sarcasm)

so much of it goes back to people really just upholding cissexism and the binary, probably without even realising it. by saying it's about "what we were born as" or about how we transition, people are just using the same violence on nonbinary people as cis people use on all trans people. just because cis people assume you're masculine, trans people somehow think it's what you want and do it as well.

transmasc and transfem nonbinary people obviously exist. it's part of many people's identity. others actually do just use the term as a shorthand to what they're transitioning from, where they're transitioning to, how they're transitioning, certain experiences of transmisia, etc. and that's fine - if you use it like that for yourself and don't force it onto others.

and people also love framing words that have a heavy nonbinary association as somehow offensive, dirty or otherwise bad. people will go so far to avoid saying the word "nonbinary", they hate the word "enby", in fact, they hate when we have any term that is more specific than nonbinary, and they also hate our trans- terms, be it transneutral, transandrogynous or the many others. they really hate when we're actually somewhat equal.

[voredere]

Did you know:

-agab is decided arbitrarily, sometimes by a doctor, and sometimes by the parents, based primarily on their best guess as to which gender will work out best or which surgery has the "best" prognosis.

-agab is not necessarily determined by the baby's genital configuration, hormone profile, or genetics. it is literally just whatever the doctor and/or parents thought sounded good at the time.

-sometimes agab is reassigned equally arbitrarily due to childhood genital injury.

-some people do not have an AGAB

-some intersex people used agab colloquially to refer to whichever sex they personally consider their "birth sex" regardless of their actual AGAB.

-some peoples agab does not actually align with what they, or society, would view as their "biological sex"

-(this is because "biological sex" as a concept is pretty bullshit to be clear)

-some people do not discover that their sex was reassigned at birth until adulthood

when we discuss concepts like TME/TMA, we need to keep these things in mind. TME/TMA are great terms because they're explicitly inclusive of intersex individuals. but there's an alarming amount of people misconstruing the words, using them as synonyms for AFAB/AMAB, or defining them based on AGAB, which accomplishes very little beyond shutting intersex people out of a conversation that very much includes and impacts us.

i understand TME intersex people absolutely exist, and absolutely are capable of perpetuating transmisogyny, but there are also intersex TMA people out there and we are constantly, CONSTANTLY shut out of conversations and viewed as invaders by the trans community, by the queer community at large, with our struggles viewed as collateral damage of someone else's struggle that we, without exception, are never allowed to claim.

we are viewed as filthy, alien creatures by everyone we meet, even in "queer leftist" spaces. our bodies are fetishised and commodified, and there are dozens of wild assumptions about us. we are never real men or women or even people, just some third category good for porn or shock value to be rejected and disposed of and speculated about like we aren't there everywhere else. we are relegated to sex work and freak shows. and yes, we are excluded from sports, locker rooms, restrooms, "lesbian"/"womens" spaces, queer spaces at large, housing, employment, medical care, and so on.

some of identify as cis, but a lot of us never had the option to be cis. many of us are essentially assigned tranny at birth and that was the end of it. many of us were called slurs before we were old enough to know what they meant.

we are not collateral damage. we are not invaders. we are not appropriators. we are part of your stuggle, we are your siblings, and if we don't stand up for each other, trust me: no one else will.

[jellyfishhhhhhhhhhh]

I genuinely don't understand why you would need to know someone's AGAB.

It really isn't that important. You're not their doctor. You aren't about to have sex with every person you come across. You really don't need to know.

We've (trans people and cis allies) turned AGAB and TMA/TME into a new gender binary. For intersex people, it's not that simple. Your gender assigned at birth is something that happened to you, not who you are. For intersex people, their AGAB may not match the way that they navigate the world.

Let's call out the "what's you AGAB?" "are you AMAB or AFAB?" questions out for what they are---they're just the new, "polite" way to ask someone "So, um... what's in your pants?"

I reiterate, you do not need to know someone's AGAB. If someone chooses to tell you, that's their prerogative. But just because someone has a penis does not mean they are AMAB, just because someone has a vulva/vagina does not mean they are AFAB. (I also think some of y'all forget that---when talking about trans people---some trans people have had bottom surgery.)

To the intersex people that see this post: I hope you're doing well. I promise to not let our community invisibilize you, so long as I breathe.

[genderqueerdykes]

I saw your post about AMAB Enbies and how non-binary isn’t a monolith and wanted to say I appreciated seeing it. As a 25-year-old socially anxious, autistic, and ADHD AMAB enby person, it’s hard for me not to feel like a lot of trans and LGBT spaces treat me like a fox in the henhouse, especially when there are physical attributes I can’t change, like my height and build, and how “manly” things like my hands and face are. I can’t exactly change my facial structure, nor do I think it’d be authentic to myself if I did or could. (Apparently, it’s a problem to have a well-kempt and styled beard?)

Unfortunately, when I interact with the local trans community, most conversations circle around whether I’m planning on medically transitioning or “getting some work done.” I don’t feel like I have something to transition to; I just need to work on improving my physical and mental health. They also often ask if I’m happy with my style/aesthetics, which I’m not. But it often feels like a catty jab because, one, who has the money for a professional boy-mode-ish wardrobe, a boy-mode/family-safe wardrobe, AND a gender-affirming wardrobe? There is some overlap between those three concepts, I know, but still… I can’t wear a tank top, fun/crazy button-up, and a pair of khaki booty shorts in an office setting, or god forbid, around parents or certain friends. XwX

A lot of my autistic and ADHD tics were “corrected” in harmful ways that have made me more restrained and subdued to a point where my excitement might seem a bit disconcerting at times. I used to talk with my hands a lot and fidget a lot, but since it wasn’t something “good boys” did, the behavior was “corrected” by my parents and the community I grew up in. I’m always kinda anxious and paranoid now in groups of semi-strangers that I’ll make a major faux pas and everyone will hate me or dogpile in correcting me.

Anyway, thanks for letting me ramble in your asks. I just wanted to say thank you for speaking out because some of us are afraid to. ^^;

hey i just wanted to say thanks for sending this ask! i really appreciate it because it irks me that people just participate in this behavior and act like that's what's to be expected or right. it's not okay, and i'm sorry you have firsthand experience with this, but i absolutely do not blame you at all whatsoever. it's fucked up that a lot of spaces for people who fall outside of the gender binary are beginning to police AGAB which is just. absolutely outrageous behavior from a community that is supposed to embrace and celebrate diversity in identity and how we experience gender outside of the binary...

but instead toxic people become obsessed with the biological sex binary. i don't know how to put it any other way than it is transphobic as fuck to say you don't feel safe around an entire group of people with/born with one specific genitals. their genitals have nothing to do you with you! nothing! those are their genitals, leave them the fuck alone! this is LITERALLY the "we don't give a fuck about AGAB" community and bioessentialists and transphobic queers are loudly and proudly excommunicating anyone from the community who was born assigned male at birth or has a penis in general.

i'm sorry to hear that people are so uptight about your body and physical appearance. the thing is that we are supposed to be embracing diversity in our bodies and appearances and experiences but yet they see someone who is... tall? or has a defined chin? or an adam's apple? or dense muscle tissue? or facial hair, like you mentioned? and suddenly they're... a threat? what the hell is this? it's transphobia, that's what it is!

you shouldn't have to transition if you don't want to. the thing about being non binary is that you presenting that way, especially if it's how you want to present, is literally challenging and stepping outside of the gender binary as we know it today. you are not required to go over the top and be the most femme person to have ever walked the earth. you're not required to have surgeries done or take hormones or dress different or change your voice... you don't have to change anything about you that you don't want to. that's one of the core principles of the trans community and we are letting down such a massive part of our family by behaving this way.

you really hit the nail on the head by bringing up your tics. i am so sorry that you have to deal with that worry- a LOT of people who are hostile toward amab transfems, trans women, and transfemmes in general target them specifically because of their mental health and/or neurodivergence. i've noticed this in person, especially if the amab non binary person in question has a loud voice and doesn't notice or has hearing damage and has to speak loudly, if they have tics as you mentioned, if they talk a lot or enjoy long conversations, if they try to explain... anything, people will target them for being "hostile" or for "arguing" when they're doing nothing wrong

people have gotten too comfortable in calling people with these features, especially people with deep voices, facial/body hair and penises, make someone "scary" or "dangerous". people are literally gladly applying radfem logic to the nonbinary community and not questioning it. radfems are attempting to rope in nonbinary afab people as they view them as "confused women," so the more we support this behavior, the more we lose grasp on our own family and community. we can't allow people to think this is okay behavior

i don't understand why people are okay with cis butch women but not okay with butch or gender non conforming transfems, trans women and amab trans people. i despise the notion that amab and intersex people can't be gender non conforming. why is gender non conformity reserved for afab people? has everyone forgotten (or patently ignored) the rich history of amab non binary and gender non conforming people we've had over the many decades of recorded history throughout our community in this modern era?

amab people should be allowed in these spaces, because there are just as many ways for amab people to step outside of the gender binary as there are afab and intersex people. everyone is capable of stepping outside of the binary for their identity and nobody has the right to police what that looks like. nobody. if one genuinely has trauma being around people of certain body types, seeking some type of therapy is crucial, because this is projecting one person's specific trauma on to an entire group of people, and it's spreading like wildfire and becoming the default in these spaces

this is not an attempt to derail, but rather to point out that this affects ALL trans people: fearing these traits in any person of any agab affects trans men, transmascs, intersex people, and other trans people in general. someone can have these features for a variety of reasons. also, if we're leaving out trans men & mascs, and we're leaving out trans women & femmes, AND we're leaving out AMAB people in general... how the HELL is that a trans community? there's no community to be had there whatsoever! that's an echo chamber! that's a radfeminist belief breeding ground!

we cannot let radfems and transmisogynist let nonbinary spaces become "gender non conforming women, afab trans people and people with a vagina only" spaces, because at what point, why are you calling it the nonbinary community? people need to be brutally honest and call those spaces women's spaces, or EXPLICITLY tell people that they are made only for people assigned female at birth. that wouldn't be ideal but it would at least make this transparent so people would know to avoid that and possibly start up their own safer spaces for ALL trans people

leaving out amab trans people no matter how they identify means your space is not safe for ALL trans people. it needs to be safe for every trans person no matter what they were assigned at birth. we are failing a huge portion of our community for no reason other than for people to project their trauma onto a group of people that haven't hurt them. we can't let down our family like that. it affects us all. we are stronger together and the nonbinary communities become more nuanced and develop better resources and enable all trans voices as opposed to 1 very specific type of trans person

thank you for this ask, sorry for such a long winded reply but i am so sick of people being awful to amab trans people in general. you deserve to be able to be non binary openly and talk about it with other queer people. i hope you're able to find safer spaces to be who you are, you deserve that just like any other queer person. you don't deserve to feel like you're walking on eggshells the entire time you're around other nonbinary people because you were assigned a different sex at birth, and you have different genitals than they do... that's literally antithetical to transness as a concept and queer community on the whole

you don't have to adhere to a strict binary just because you are amab and trans, i hate how people tell you and other folks in your shoes those exact things. you know who you are, you are a non binary person, and i hope more people begin to challenge this behavior and speak up for others, because this is literally not queer community. this is petty infighting being influenced by transmisogynist politics that does not belong. that has nothing to do with queer community, that is an attempt by radfems to disassemble our community at every possible level.

please for the love of god stop giving them that. it's hurting us all

[wolvesbaneandbuttercups]

imma be real, I hate the terms TMA and TME. It divides trans people much in the same way AGAB does (which, ur assigned gender at birth is honestly imo only important for doctors to know), yes trans women and trans men and nonbinary folk all face seperate flavors of misogyny, but instead of dividing it up on "who has it worse" Trauma Olympics™️ style we should work together to uplift eachother instead of creating a divide away from eachother. Stop dividing us up into categories based around who experiences the "Worse" oppression, because we fucking all face it and we all are fucking dying!! Community infighting makes this shit worse.

Trans women get killed because of transphobia

Trans men get killed because of transphobia

Nonbinary people get killed because of transphobia

Instead of TME/TMA labels why don't we, idk, fucking help eachother not die???? Instead of creating labels like those and fighting over it fucking help eachother instead, dosnt matter what flavor of trans you are because to the transphobics and TERFs we're all dirty trannies.

Uplift eachothers voices, stop putting eachother down with pointless community infighting and trauma olympics

[certifiedsexed]

I have a question about using AFAB/AMAB to describe genitalia. I'm perisex and trans, and I have in the past used agab labels specifically in the context of sex to identify the equipment being worked with. For example, "I had never hooked up with someone who was amab before". I was definitely under the impression that both the flaw in gender assignation and the usefulness of the term was that it was entirely dependent on the genital configuration displayed. Thus, someone with a penis who has had one since birth is AMAB. Is this not accurate?

I've stopped using that language since, but I'm a bit frustrated not understanding why it's considered innaccurate. Especially since I know some trans people who use it as shorthand because it's less dysphoric than talking about their genitalia by name when it's not needed.

And I have an answer! No, that is not accurate and not how AGAB language is supposed to be used.

Just to start, I think you should know there are people AMAB who were not born with penises.

ASAB [Assigned Sex At Birth] is not even supposed to be used to refer to what genitals someone was born with, it's simply used to refer to what sex a doctor "assigned" you with at birth. Genitals can vary.

There are plenty of people who were AMAB who do not have penises anymore as well as people AFAB who do not have vaginas anymore.

There are also plenty of people who were AMAB who have vaginas and people who were AFAB who have penises-Saying you've never hooked up with anyone "AMAB" to mean you've never hooked up with someone with a penis literally doesn't make sense.

Both because there are people AFAB who have penises and because there are people AMAB who don't.

Assigned gender at birth has nothing to do with what genitals someone has. And that language is largely used and originated in the intersex community (mostly to discuss intersexism!), so using it that way is fairly disrespectful and very intersexist.

If some trans person personally wants to use it as shorthand for their genitals because of dysphoria, I understand the why but that's still an intersexist use of the language.

I understand being frustrated because that's what you're used to [and you don't understand why you shouldn't use it] but part of fighting bigotry is being aware of the language you use and being willing to switch things up.

If you want some alternatives, feel free to ask! Hope this helps. <3

[gor3sigil]

genuinely curious as someone who is questioning gender, how do you know if it's a trans thing or just uhhhh not being sexist. My conservative parents tell me 'woman' means being and feeling feminine and wearing dresses, having long hair, feeling like a 'girl', feeling 'womanly.' I don't have that feeling I just Am. I don't feel like anything, I wear what I want and have short hair. does that mean I'm not a woman?

No necessarily. I think that gender feels different for everyone, whever you're trans or not. By definition, being trans is not aligning with your gender assigned at birth. That can mean a lot of different things for each people. The questions, at least to me, aren't about if you like things that are (stereo)typically aligned with your agab or behave in ways that are (stereo)typically aligned with it, more so how you feel about it. How does it sit with you to be called a woman ? How do you navigate the world as one or as someone who is perceived as one, how would you like to nagivate the world if it's different from your current situation ? If you had no physical, financial etc limitations, who would you like to be in the future (near or distant) ? Do you care about how people perceive you ? How do you perceive yourself ? How do you feel about gender in general, what place does it hold in your life, in yourself, in others ? Of course, these questions are just examples. And the link between your assigned gender at birth and your actual life and how your treated can be lose or tight, it really depends on some many things. You could be a gender non conforming cis woman. You could be trans, you could be non-binary, or agender, or you could just not give a crap. The matter is how can you be comfortable in your own body. Because that's what it boils down to: if you were in an empty room without anyone but yourself, would you like yourself how you are now ? Just a few things you can think about. :)

[filmydidii]

HIIIIIII I had a quick question for you! If you don't feel comfortable answering that's totally fine but I'd really appreciate you answering!

What exactly are your beliefs on this entire transphobic, trans, terms stuff? I'm just sorta wondering because I've seen your posts with other people and was sorta confused! If you could just clear it up for me that would be amazing!

Hi. Thanks for questioning in good faith.

My beliefs are that no one is entitled to their assigned sex at birth. They are only entitled to individual experiences.

Saying "I am afab" brings baggages of implications, such as "the world has been unfair to me" and "i struggle biologically (gestation, periods, etc)"

And that's pretty lame.

You see, there is this idea in all of us, that "male and female" are opposites. These ideas have been beaten into us since childhood. "Male is big, female is small. Female is nurturer, male is stoic" etc. "Male and female are opposites."

When someone says "I am afab," they are telling you to assume their life as the "average female life."

And here is my issue:

At my birth, A doctor looked at my genitals and said that I am male, which I am not!

When someone says they are "afab" (thus "female," emotional, understanding, quiet, nurturing etc) they are automatically saying "I WAS GIVEN THE FEMALE ROLE AT BIRTH. YOU WERE GIVEN THE MALE ROLE AT BIRTH." And so, I become "amab" (thus "male," stoic, violent, scrutinising, mansplaining etc)

But the main problem?

I am a woman. I am female. And I may be trans, but that doesnt make me any less female. I do not have male privilige; I have been physically and sexually assualted my entire life because I am a woman, and I have been silenced my entire life because I am a transgender woman.

If you believe that a trans woman being assigned the male gender matters, then you believe that she, somewhere, in some way, is male.

Cisgender men benefit the most in conservative environments where they are gladly ready to carry out the succesful male roles handed out to them. And women find it hard to speak in these environments.

But here is the thing.

Almost no transgender woman gets to adorn those successful male roles. We don't perform those roles.

We do not get male privilige because we don't perform those roles.

We get called faggots and sissies. We get our clothes pulled and we get groped. We get yelled at and we spend all that time confused, and wondering if we will ever be allowed any empathy. We learn to get by our lives as masculine women who are percieved as male. We get into unhealthy relationships. We disassociate and fall into deep depression. We can't take good opportunities because they all require you to be hand of the patriarchs.

I personally had become an extra wife of my single father, he would beat me and yell at me and make me do all the chores. He didn't talk to me either. (If you let your thoughts wander into the previous points, you will know the dynamic taking place here.) And, I had to literally do sex work in my boys only highschool to survive the hostility of the boys.

—

In queer environments, queer people take refuge from the patriarchy and cisheteronormative judgement; The patriarchy is bad, the patriarchs are priviliged, and so they do not get to speak.

When you say "I am afab" you are putting fake privilige on the transgender woman. You are calling her "amab." You are saying that she is priviliged, and thus, does not deserve to speak.

Trans women can't speak in queer environments, and can't benefit from male privilige either. We learn to stay put and learn our places as doormats. And no one saves us.

This, is called Transmisogyny.

—

Also, as someone who is intersex, I want to make another important point:

Your AGAB does not define your life, your genitals, your body type or the rest of your life.

I was assigned male at birth without any confusion, but it turns out I have ovarian and uterine tissue in me, and that I might have XX chromosomes.

Alot of intersex people are assigned a different gender, without their consent, later in life.

And sex is social. And a spectrum.

Stop spreading misinformation, everyone.

Respect trans women and intersex people a little bit more.