#and instead of using male/female they used amab/afab

[pregnantsecondo]

I think people should stop using afab/amab. I think perhaps we should just stop.

[our-queer-experience]

Thank you for answering so many asks and reblogging so many posts from intersex people. We're probably the most erased group in the acronym, and I'm happy to see someone use their platform to bring attention to us and our issues.

I want to give a few general tips & things to know for your average perisex person for how to be a good ally to the intersex community!

Include our flag in pride projects!

Do not try to force intersex people into a binary like tme/tma or afab/amab. Even cis & trans. We're sick of it! Afab/amab should only be used to describe your own experiences, not other people's. Stop saying stuff like "amab anatomy" & "afab childhood"

We do not like being called biologically nonbinary and most of us are sick of that joke

Stop calling intersex animals trans! It may seem harmless but this is a mild form of erasure. Maned lionesses, male calico cats, antlered does, etc, are intersex! They are not trans! Posts about intersex animals may point people to learn about intersex people, which is a good thing for awareness!

Don't lump us in with trans people! Don't conflate transness & intersexuality. Yes there is overlap between our struggles but we are different groups!

Intersex people can identify as cis but our society will never see us as cis, we do not have cis privilege.

Do not listen to TERFs who call us "DSD", this stands for 'Disorders of Sexual Development" and is NOT the preferred term by the community. It's important to note that this is the current medical terminology for intersex people!! We are fighting against this label and do not accept it! We don't like "Differences of Sexual Development" either because it's the same acronym.

Not every intersex person has ambiguous genitalia. And of those of us who do, we don't "have both", we have something between male & female. And regardless you're not entitled to know what's in our pants lmao.

Use the terms perisex, endosex, or dyadic (they all mean the same thing, but perisex is the most recent & revised term. Endosex & dyadic are better known among older people) when talking about people who are not intersex. The same way you use cisgender when talking about people who are not trans. This positions intersex as a natural variation vs a deviation from normal.

Support intersex advocacy organizations like @interactyouth! InterACT is a wonderful group! As is InterConnect!

Most bigotry intersex people face is medical abuse, please recognize that! Many otherwise reputable medical sources are wrong about us and NEED to be challenged.

Do not reduce intersex people down to "cis person with a disorder" (like what the medical field does) especially in the context of the person in question being subject to transphobia. I see this so often with trans people saying "transphobia affects cis people too" only to show a headline about an intersex woman being harassed. Intersex people are an intended target of transphobia! It is not "transphobia backfiring on cis ppl". Remove phrases like "cis men with gynocemastia" from your vocabulary. Instead say intersex men.

PCOS is considered an intersex variation by the intersex community, but not by the medical establishment. If you are someone with PCOS, you ARE intersex due to your body's natural hormone levels! (You don't have to take up that label if you don't want to!)

I didn't know this had to be said, but do not say futa/futanari. I do not care that it's a popular porn category, it's a slur for intersex people in Japanese. It's the same as calling us a hermaphrodite, only worse because of the fetishization. There are better words you can use. (Ex bigenital)

YOU CANNOT TRANSITION TO BE INTERSEX! You can transition to have mixed sex traits, but do NOT say you are intersex! Please! This is co-opting! Use words like altersex, nonbinary or salmacian! Even post-transition, you are still perisex.

Please realize that we are being violently erased via the medical system. They need to mutilate us because our existence challenges the status-quo of bioessentialism. The only way a dyadic society can recognize our existence is as a "problem" that needs to be "fixed". This should piss you the fuck off. It should make you MAD. If it does, you're better than most allies. It's not an unfortunate "I'm sorry about that :(" this is a WHAT THE FUCK kind of situation. The subdued reaction everyone has to intersex people being mutilated and forced onto hormones is just so bleak to me. It's like nobody gives a shit. You never see intersex people because our dyadic society doesn't want you to. This is purposeful.

^^^ listen to intersex voices!

[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.

[tirfpikachu]

are we just crazy or are lgbt spaces getting legit deranged?????

every unusual experience of sexuality/gender is a valid part of the bootiful qweer biodiversity of the world by default, but you can't be gay/bi/trans and not want to be called the q slur or see cishets say the q slur. and you can't say that you're afab4afab or amab4amab, that's just a creepy bigoted fetish you freak. unless you're transmasc4transmasc or transfem4transfem ofc, you get a free pass. but also kinkshaming is evil and deeply harms the most marginalized. but also make sure you don't have a fetish about genitalia... if you do, it's a "preference" not an inborn trait and you really can therapize yourself into liking it, just try hard enough. if you fail to you're a bigot, so just keep trying!! make sure to feel guilty abt it at least, you dirty homo. but getting beat up can be a cool sexual thing and bestiality or noncon is fine. but actual genitalia "preferences" are bigoted. if you don't call the genderqueer person pansexual instead of bi they'll chew their own arm off and hit you with it and call the cops but don't say you're a female trans man or that you're a trans guy lesbian or link it to being a female homosexual in any way ever okay?! you can't be at peace with acknowledging your sex/agab as a trans person!!!! or feel a connection to lesbian spaces as a trans man or gay male spaces as a trans woman!!! that's BIGOTRY and that's just feeding terf cunts you dumb theyfab. you can't link your cis womanhood to being afab AT ALL either bc that's transmisogynistic and dangerous rhetoric but every other group of gender marginalized folks can define their own identities and have a billion microlabels. you can't say you're not into girldick because not all trans women have dicks dumbass, surgical vaginas are defo the exact same as bio vaginas anyway so if you only like afab pussy & afab bodies you're a gross pervert mocking bottom surgery. and someone's upbringing as a male/amab or female/afab person definitely isn't a huge part of why homosexual ppl are into the same-sex/agab so you shouldn't give a single shit if a transbian flirting with you hasn't grown up facing misogyny or going thru afab/female body struggles or any of that, that has NOTHING to do with lesbianism between female ppl and has no bearing whatsoever on attraction you absolute psychopath. sexes/agabs is just a mix of detached body parts and you can play mr potatohead with it all and if you glued it good enough homosexuals wouldn't be able to tell at all that he used to be a mrs potatohead!! so they'd still hit that, right? homosexuals will go for anything anyway right?? homosexual love obvs can't be any deeper than genitals and fetishes. amab4afab ppl can be homosexual too anyway if they pass as gay irl too so homosexual isn't even a real tangible thing anyways it doesn't involve sex/agab at all and those ppl don't get to be their own specific oppressed class and do their own activism and have agency over their own identity bc they're super privileged worldwide and the enby living as a gender conforming woman in society dating a neckbeard looking for a third is more oppressed than a visibly gnc crossdressing bio guy holding hands with his normie bf. they might be gay but they're not qweer... except to the rightwing ofc!! oh and if you're trans and recently started passing as straight you're more privileged than an afab4amab couple who has lived as hetero til they transitioned! so shut the fuck up and listen to the New Gays. don't call yourself homosexual anymore or you're a cis bootlicker and if you're transmasc you're oppressing every transfem, including ones who have never faced misogyny irl a day in their fucking life!!! just be valid the RIGHT WAY!!!!!! be more queer you dirty normie homo!!!!!!

HAHAH i love it here

[yrfemmehusband]

Happy tourettes awareness month! Here are some things in no particular order I wish people understood about living with tourettes!

- We have to live with a constant fear of others thinking that we are on drugs or otherwise dangerous to be around. A lot of people tell us to not suppress because "you shouldn't be embarrassed!" But it's not about that. Having tourettes can genuinely put you in danger, and for many of us already has many times. It's not about being embarrassed, it's about being fearful.

- Suppression hurts. It's exhausting and it's hard.

- Coprolalia is more than just swearing. It can also look like saying "I have a bomb" when you're in an airport. Or "I'm a nazi." Or any number of things that are socially unacceptable to say. Coprolalia is about your brain attaching to words or phrases that you simply shouldn't say.

- Copropraxia is its lesser known twin, which is the same thing but with movements instead of words.

- Tourettes isn't just tics. Many of us also have rage issues and rage attacks, impulsivity issues, comorbidities like ADHD, OCD, and autism, chronic pain from constant movement leading to sore muscles, learning disability, social impairment, and much more.

- A clinical feature of tourette's is waxing and waning. Put simply, that means that sometimes we have a lot less or even no tics, and others we have a ton of tics. Waxing and waning periods can last hours, days, weeks, months or even years.

- Up to 50% of people with tourettes go undiagnosed in childhood

- You can keep talking while we are ticcing unless it's obvious that it's affecting our ability to hear (for example if I'm screaming.) we can hear you while we are ticking. Tics don't take up our entire brain space, in fact a lot of the time we aren't even thinking about the fact that we are having a tic unless you point it out

- In that vein, don't respond to, comment on, or overly pay attention to people's tics. Doing so will just make us have more. The best practice is to simply ignore them and treat us like any other person.

- A lot of us can drive.

- No, I don't think I tic my sleep. Some people do. But generally, how would we know?

- No, I don't tic during sex. And you're a weirdo for asking.

- Concentrating on something generally makes tics lesson or completely go away. So when you see someone with moderate to severe tourette's have really good eyeliner, or be able to draw or sing or dance, it's not an indicator that they're faking. It's a facet of the disorder that doing things we like lessons tics.

- Studies have found that people assigned female at birth or who otherwise have estrogen dominant bodies have less tics in childhood that gradually increase with age. Many of us are told in childhood that the ticks will go away, and then are taken by surprise when they get worse in adulthood. This isn't widely known, because most studies on tourette's until recently are done on people assigned male at birth

- Also on that note, afab people with tourette's are more likely to go undiagnosed than their amab counterparts.

- Tics don't inherently hurt. What does actually hurt though, or is at least uncomfortable, is the premonitory urge we get before a tic. This can feel like a buildup of energy, sort of like a cough or a sneeze, and gets worse the longer or more that we suppress a tic.

- Tics are both involuntary and controllable. This may sound like a contradiction, but breathing is both involuntary and controllable. You can hold your breath for as long as you can, but it will eventually force you to take a breath. Tics are the same

Fellow tourettics, please feel free to add more in the reblogs or replies :) happy awareness month!

[ghost-jester-sys]

i beg u teach urself to say "socialised as male" and "socialised as female" instead of "AMAB/AFAB"

AGAB is so fucking irrelevant because the subtext (and overt connotations) are all just about socialisation 90% of the time. (the other percentage is when it actually pertains to someone's genitalia which btw u cannot guess based on AGAB!!!!!! COMING FROM AN INTERSEX PERSON!!!)

it also pressures ppl into revealing their AGAB needlessly because u owe absolutely NOBODY that information

the actual use of AGAB terms should be in the actual context OF assigning sex at birth because that is when they are MEANT to be used

ESPECIALLY when intersex people like myself have been trying to remind folks that AGAB labels have been around specifically to erase us

AND STOP WRONGLY USING SAGAB AND CAGAB!!!!!! AS SOMEONE WHO WAS *ACTUALLY* CAGAB FFS JUST STOP

edit: turned of rb bc i have a lot of personal stuff going on rn. pls see notes if u want more input from ppl. im rlly done with ppl misinterpret my words. im semiverbal and i phrased parts wrong.

[genderqueerdykes]

As an AMAB Transmasc who’s also transfem it’s just infuriating that people can be so cruel about us and about AFAB Transfems

as an intersex transfem & transmasc person, i wanted to say from the bottom of my heart that i absolutely despise how people treat you, and AFAB transfems. the entire point of the trans community is that we DON'T CARE about what genitals strangers have or were born with. but instead, we've turned it around and become so obsessed with genitals that we force EACH AND EVERY TRANS PERSON to disclose what genitals they have in order to be "allowed" to identify as trans.

like think about it. i was assigned male at birth. then my biological sex marker was switched to female, and i was forced on estrogen. as someone who realized it was transmasculine first and had to struggle to be seen as masculine and a man, how does your situation offend me at all? you're going through the exact same thing. you don't relate to cis masculinity or manhood. why do i care about what genitals or gender marker you were born with? i was assigned male at birth and identify as transmasc. being intersex is not what gives me "permission" to identify this way.

you're not "stepping on the toes" of AFAB and intersex transmascs. you're showing people that gender is so complicated that even people assigned a gender at birth can be divorced from that gender due to societal or personal factors. people forget that assigned gender at birth doesn't define how that person experiences gender in practice. if you feel that you are transitioning into or have had to transition into masculinity, then i believe you. you are. i don't know what you're experiencing. i have no right to tell you what your experience is. and no one else does, either

people are especially harsh on AFAB transfems because of misogyny. like it all boils down to misogyny. people DESPERATELY want to treat AFAB people like shit for any reason. by any means necessary. and of course, with that person identifying as feminine and/or a woman, that compounds it and makes it worse. people just let their misogyny run free and attack and insult that person and tell them they're too stupid to understand what they're experiencing like. people who behave this way: you're not slick. we can tell that you're wildly misogynistic.

you being transfem shouldn't cancel out your transmasculinity, either. i know people must look at you and just straight up ignore your transmasculinity, but they don't have the right to. you are allowed to be both transmasc and transfem at once, not that you need my permission. i hate that people are forcing you into a position where you can't even express yourself in the queer community without people literally attacking you and forcing you to divulge your assigned gender at birth.

i really need to stress that, again, we are literally the "we don't care what genitals you have/were born with" community... and now people are literally FORCING strangers to divulge what genitals they have. people are NOT concerned about the gendered experience you've gone through growing up. they're concerned about your genitals. and its fucking disgusting. i'm sorry you have to go through this. as an intersex transfemasc person, you have all of my support, and then some. y'all aren't hurting anyone. people are hurting you, and it's fucked that they just don't care.

[punishedgwyndolin]

this is kind of a semantic pet peeve i know but i gotta say i still hate seeing people describe themselves in the present tense with agab. it rarely makes justifiable sense and almost always instead reads like someone just replacing the false binary of male/female in their head with amab/afab. “im afab nonbinary” no you are not an “assigned female at birth person”, you were (c)afab, this was a past action that was done to you on the behalf of an arbitrary and illusory patriarchal system not an identity or state of being and it does not speak to some essential or unchanging “reality” about you like male/female tries to, as we’re used to using it, we can get out of the pit

[feral-queercore-punk]

hate how afab and amab have become the woke male and female, instead of language to help us dismantle inherent arbitrariness of the sex binary

[foone]

I want to make the wizard in One Hundred and One Magical Pistols trans, but the problem is that he's not afab. Or amab. He wasn't assigned anything at birth, because he wasn't born. (nor was I but that's a different story)

Like all chronomancers one of the first thing he did was undo his birth, because that's a risk you can't afford when you're a time traveler. What if someone goes back and shoots your grandfather? You'd get undone, unmade, a living paradox. And that can really put a crimp in your day.

So I'm not sure how to describe his gender, and that's on top of the whole issue that he's a wizard. Yeah sure, he uses he/him pronouns, but he's a wizard. If he had a driver's license, it'd be like:

NAME: *redacted because he doesn't have a name yet*

BORN: no

GENDER: Wizard

If sex is what's between your legs and gender's what's between your ears (and they aren't) , the answer for both of his is "incredible arcane power". What's in his pants? Probably a wand, a gun, or a portal to the Elemental Plane of trousers.

So I guess you could say he's afabtnaab(nb)tmtw.

Assigned female at birth, to not assigned at birth (not born) to male to wizard.

That's like, triple trans. That's the thing about fantasy worlds with wizards and shit, they can be trans in ways that we on earth can barely dream of!

Remind me to tell y'all about that dragon-to-werewolf-to-human enby. Speaking of which, they're an interesting case too. Like, you might think you'd call them an afab enby, but the thing is, they were born (well, hatched) as a dragon. Dragons only have one gender, and it's Dragon. They're very much like wizards in that way (which isn't a coincidence). So they didn't have a binary gender when they were a dragon, but when they became a werewolf, they got one (semi-arbitrarily: they got the gender of the werewolf that infected them). Or at least, they got a feminine body. They're still non-binary, because they're still a dragon, even if they have "female body".

And then when they turned into a human, they kept the female body, just... A human instead of werewolf version of it. So you could call them AFAB except they weren't assigned anything at birth, they were just assigned dragon at hatching.

So yeah. Gender, won't you?

[velvetvexations]

saw a post at some point of someone saying that forcing people to disclose themselves as afab/amab is bad but their reasoning was because it can exclude intersex people. and they said that everyone should use tme/tma instead. but then they faced backlash for that and the Honest to god solution they proposed was making people self-identify with their chromosomes and genitals. they wanted people putting shit like "he/him, XX, vagina" in their bios/carrds/whatever. and there were so many people agreeing with them???

it's just fascinating to me how people need to sort trans people into their own seperate little boxes of the good and pure and oppressed ones vs. the evil ones who are faking it

Ah, male and female with extra steps.

[dhddmods]

You are not immune to being intersexist. Being anti-mutilation & anti-hormone abuse isn't enough.

We are so sick of radfems/TERFS/SWERFs and perisex queer people claiming to be intersex allies, while perpetuating intersexist ideals. We have had to correct some of these behaviors within ourselves over the years (ie; making intersexist jokes, using the H-slur while being unaware it was a slur, etc), because its so ingrained in society.

You are not immune to spreading intersexism. If you are still doing those things, learn now to stop and do better.

-

Gatekeeping intersex variations & traits is intersexist.*

Calling intersex variations & traits conditions, disorders of sexual development/DSDs, urogenital deformities/disorders, hormone disorders, or chromosomal disorders is intersexist.**

Claiming intersex people can be sorted into a binary system ("female intersex" & "male intersex") is intersexist.***

Using f-ta (*u) or b--ddel (*ae) is intersexist and a slur.

Using h-rmaphrodite/h-rm (*e) - yes, even on animals - is intersexist and a slur. Use cosexed or intersex instead.****

Labelling altersex or cosexed characters as "intersex" is intersexist. Treating intersex variations as synonymous with cosexed is intersexist.

Identifying as "transintersex" is intersexist. Intersex & perisex are not a choice. Use one of the countless other terms to describe transitioning to mixed or null sex traits instead.

Lying about being intersex to get access to sex affirming care is intersexist, and isn't any "safer" than outing yourself as trans or altersex.

Claiming that intersex people can't be trans, or gatekeeping how they identify, is intersexist.

Mocking menstruation & pregnancy in people who aren't female-perceived (ie; mocking mpreg) is intersexist.

Calling intersex traits "too complicated" to bring up in basic biology class and sex education is intersexist. It only takes an extra 30 minutes to teach the basics of it.

Using small dick, no balls/small balls, or low T as insults is intersexist. Mocking people for having the "wrong" secondary sex traits (breasts, hips, muscle mass, body/facial hair, voice pitch, etc) is intersexist.*****

Calling HRT feminizing and masculinizing is intersexist. Using AFAB/AMAB interchangeably with mulleripathian/wolffipathian is intersexist.

-

*Intersex describes a wide spectrum. This includes penile traits, urethral traits, ambiguous genitals, the agenital spectrum, reproductive traits, hormonal traits, and chromosomal variations. It is not just "mixed parts." You can read about them in our guide.

**Yes, intersex people often have comorbid disorders, but that does not make their intersexuality a disorder. Yes, sometimes (keyword SOMETIMES) urethral traits need surgery in order to urinate, but that doesn't make it a deformity, it just means that evolution isn't a conscious being.

***Yes, some intersex people have mostly mulleripathian traits or mostly wolffipathian traits - but that doesn't change the fact that they are intersex. Also, some intersex people are extremely ambiguous. Are you going to tell a person with XX-XY chimerism, ovotestes, a uterus, and a penis that they can be categorized into a binary sex system?

****Use cosexed when referring to animals who primarily have mixed sex traits (ie; slugs, snails, certain bugs, etc.) Use intersex when referring to animals who have a mulleripathian & wolffipathian variant, but fall outside of that (ie; a gynandromorph beetle or bird, a hyena born without a penis or pseudophallus, a calico cat with XXY chromosomes, etc.)

*****All of those are intersex traits. In fact, all of those things are genderqueer/varsex (trans, GNC, altersex, etc) traits too. Joking about people's bodies in general is just bigoted and disrespectful, why are you using body shaming as a punchline anyways?

[tirfpikachu]

when someone says that women weren't allowed to do xyz until a certain date mainstream tras might give a side look like hmm :/ this isn't inclusive of trans folks... but otherwise leave it alone.

but if you say that specifically cis/bio women and transmasc ppl weren't allowed to open their own bank account until 1974, suddenly you're making the transfems feel a bit too privileged and it causes a riot bc you're pointing out that amab/male folks used to have an INSANE amount of privilege on the basis of being born "amab" and even if they were super gnc, they still had that privilege from birth. to this day, cis/bio men and transfems do NOT go thru many specific struggles that cis/bio women and transmascs experience. but that's somehow controversial as FUCK to say in most tra spaces. why?

fr why is that? why?? why are transfems so fucking oversensitive to anyone pointing out that they're not oppressed on every single axis of oppression? meanwhile transmascs are bending over backwards being super fucking supportive of transfem rights and having so much nuance about things without much knee-jerk defensiveness at all. could it be that perhaps... hmm... "amab" upbringing does not teach amab/male folks what it's like to face misogyny, so they often do not enter feminist spaces, and now that they enter leftist spaces they don't know that we're all about intersectionality and nuance and acknowledging the ways one might be privileged in some ways and disprivileged in other ways? instead of showing allyship to cis/bio women and transmascs, transfems and their more extreme allies instead sit on their thrones and get offended whenever anyone implies that they might need to be good allies too. why is that?? why are cis/bio women and transmascs enabling that behavior so much?

hmmm it's almost like how afab/female folks are conditioned to excuse inappropriate behavior from amab/male people from a very young age... almost like the stereotypical One Of The Boys (in this case Males) trope, trying to be a Cool Girl (or Cool Trans Boy) to be validated by the ones in charge, the amabs, who are just poor sweet misunderstood cinnamon rolls uwu. i think mainstream tras really idolize transfems. which comes from a sweet place, and might feel good, but also means you're infantilizing them like precious perfect little princesses who can do no wrong. that might be validating for transfems ─ who doesn't like being coddled every now and then? ─ but also means not holding them accountable the way we're supposed to hold EVERYBODY accountable in leftist spaces. or at least that's what we generally pride ourselves in, right? isn't that supposed to be a leftist thing? intersectionality and all that?

and this is why so many cis/bio women and transmascs are joining radblr. this is why even some transfems are saying okay, this is too much now, and actually seek out female/afab voices and hear their povs and apologize for how they're treated by tras. the tables are starting to turn. people are too fed up with this shit. we are getting muzzled for talking about the most basic feminist stuff ever, things that back in the day oldschool trans folks were WAAYYYY more likely to see as common sense and feminism 101. systems of oppression are complex. you can talk about how hard transmisogyny is, and you'll get sympathy from most of us, but you gotta listen to how hard anti-female/afab misogyny is and how we're uniquely persecuted in specific ways you aren't. and you gotta work hard to learn how to be a good ally to us, you gotta research, you gotta learn. so many transfems have no fucking clue how to do that. so many cis/bio women and transmascs are acting like their loud guard dogs too, coddling them, speaking for them, enabling them. it's leading to really bad shit to happen. it's enabling transfems-on-female/afab abuse and bigotry... and you just sweep it all under the rug, say it was just a "terf" roleplaying, it must be a troll, it doesn't matter. it's just one or two victims, why should we even care about them? why make any changes to prevent further victims? that's such a classic male apologist mindset!!! this shit is not okay. we will never accept that bs.

you need to clean up all the misogyny and homophobia in your spaces or the only sane folks will come to radfems and find actual nuanced discussions about oppression, and you'll be left with crazies. if y'all are gonna act like oversensitive toddlers then radblr is gonna be where it's at for real leftist activism. enjoy your little tra circus ig 👋

[self-winding]

In another post I talked about the drawbacks of using "afab" and "amab" as euphemisms for biological categories, because "amab" does not necessarily correspond with having a penis or testicles or XY chromosomes. So, "enlarged prostate is a common issue affecting older amab individuals" is kind of a nonsensical statement. "amab" means there is an M on your birth certificate. There are people who have a prostate but don't have an M on their birth certificate.

And a common response was that, yes, people should strive to use anatomy/biological process-specific language instead. i.e. "enlarged prostate is a common issue affecting older people with prostates." Which, while feeling a bit redundant, is pretty straightforward. Because yes, you need a prostate in order to suffer from an enlarged prostate. Can't argue with that.

Or if you are specifically discussing menstruation and want to be inclusive to intersex and trans people, then referring to "people who menstruate" is not weird.

But outside these contexts, there are drawbacks to the broad use of anatomy-specific language such as "people with penises," "people with prostates," "people who menstruate," "people with estrogen-based puberties" etc. as opposed to the more general terms male, female, or intersex.

One of the issues with this anatomy-specific language is that if you attempt to do this with any degree of rigor or consistency outside of those specific contexts, it very quickly becomes cumbersome and awkward to an almost comical degree.

Perhaps more significantly, a lot of people don't like being casually referred to and categorized by their genitalia or reproductive organs or hormones and this strikes me as a pretty understandable thing.

"But why?" you say. "Body parts aren't dirty or shameful, we should get comfortable with saying their names and talking about them!" Okay, so if a stranger came up to you in the street and asked, "Hey, do you have a penis or a vulva? Or both?!" or, "Do you menstruate? Do you ejaculate?" you'd be okay with that, right? I mean, they're just body parts and natural processes! Are you ashamed of your body, bro?

Of course, this is rhetorical because most people would not be okay with this. Not necessarily because they think of their genitalia as shameful, but because they think of their genitalia as private and find it presumptuous and uncomfortable to have a stranger casually asking about or referencing those parts, regardless of that stranger's motive. This is where a lot of the discomfort with casual use of anatomy-specific language comes from. Of course, there is a difference between discussing "people with testicles" in a general sense and looking someone in the eye and referring to them to their face as a "person with testicles," but you get my point.

And this can be extra distressing if someone has dysphoria. If you feel bad about your penis or your uterus, maybe being referred to as a "person with a penis" or "person with a uterus" is not the type of language you'd prefer. Maybe it actually feels worse than just being referred to by a more general categorical term. Which is not something I often see brought up.

[genderqueerdykes]

hi hope you're well !! um so I was thinking, perisex people aren't really ?? assigned anything, are they ?? like afab / amab, they're obviously intersex terms that've been taken and continuously misused, I know that. But it got me thinking that like, when you're born and a doctor " assigns " you a gender, if you're perisex they're more of js observing what you are and adding that to your birth certificate, it's not assigning you one gender or the other it's just .. giving you Male or Female based on you physically ?? so, I as a perisex person, was not AFAB or AMAB, I was js .. observed and written accordingly .. ?

whereas intersex people are assigned one or the other, because they don't fit one or the other clearly, and have to actively be assigned one ?? am I understanding this right ?? I'm trying to like, unlearn and relearn lots of stuff rn lol, so js asking for clarification on this ..

good question. everyone is assigned a gender at birth, it's not just intersex people. perisex people would not have a gender marker if that were not the case. no matter if you're perisex or intersex, you're still forced to be assigned male or female at birth. i would say that there's not really a lot of difference between the two experiences, especially considering that a baby can be born looking perisex, but then grow up to develop intersex conditions down the road.

we're all assigned a gender at birth and that's the core issue. it's an assumption made by a doctor. if we weren't assigned genders at birth, our medical records would read something to the effect of instead of saying female, saying things like "has a vagina and uterus" or instead of saying male "has a penis and testes", or whatever. there would be transparency about that person's actual situation instead of obscuring it behind an arbitrary assigned gender

plus, perisex trans people still fit into and benefit from this term because they were assigned a gender at birth but it doesn't mean it lines up with theirs. i hope that makes some sense- while this definitely affects intersex people in a very bad way, it affects us all. perisex trans people are heavily affected by this, and even some cishet people are. it's a practice that needs to be removed altogether given how strongly it affects us all

i hope that makes some sense! take care

[luxiomahariel]

just had to see with my own eyeballs someone say the term "afab-presenting" and yall have officially lost the fucking plot.

non-intersex people are no longer allowed to use afab and amab. yall are just enforcing the sex binary with intersex peoples language at this point.

ive come up with terms that are infintely more helpful. start using those instead.

"fabs" (female-assumed by society)

"mabs" (male-assumed by society)

"inabs" (inconsistently-assumed by society)

"anabs" (androgynous-assumed by society)