#asab language

[taliabhattwrites]

On the limitations of 'AFAB' and its attendant epistemic anxieties

Like, let's actually talk about the shortcomings of these linguistic tools, and how we--all of us--have been failed by those at the supposed bleeding edge of gender theory.

[granulesofsand]

I know when people refer to their sysmates as AFAB/AMAB, they’re referring to something like the visualized characteristics of the member or the felt sense of identity they hold.

But it’s funnier to think that another sysmate is ominously pushing up their glasses and clicking their pen ready to assign some newbie their sex.

[sydmarch]

I forgot to post these the other day but "outsider" pants aka my dad's old Levi's lol. want to paint more onto them but don't have other ideas rn so suggestions are welcome

[communistkenobi]

the other day I was going through the blog of a self-identified terf who had shown up in my notifications, and I saw them say that they wanted people to stop using asab terminology (assigned sex at birth) and instead use osab (observed sex at birth). which like at a basic level is very funny - don’t like the words being used to describe your body, hm? I can’t imagine what that feels like - but it does reveal this very particular commitment that anti-trans and anti-intersex reactionaries have to insisting that sex is just a natural objective fact, that all sexual and gendered violence is a result of men neutrally observing and then responding to the self-evident sexual properties of women. As if the act of observation is not political! It is a request to naturalise the assumptions of the people doing the observing. More fundamentally, it is a request to enshrine through language the assumptions of patriarchy, that sex is a complete and distinct property of the body that can be observed without interpretation, that it is self-evident. Observation itself is defined as a complete process; any part of the object under investigation that is not in view of the observer is rendered irrelevant. Thank god we’re just talking about sex, a very simple element of the human body that is easily cordoned off from the body its attached to!

And of course this wilfully ignores an obvious part of why trans and intersex people call attention to the assigned nature of sex. “Observed sex at birth” is already the first step in the assignment process, it is already implicated in the act of assignment, because the ritual of observing sex at birth is based on the assumption that this is a part of the body that is uniquely worthy of observation. The obvious follow-up question is why is sex worthy of observation in the first place? What assumptions go into the calculation of ‘worthiness’? If it’s so worthy of observation, who gets to be the observer? What are the consequences of this observation process? And if this is so important, how you do record the results of this observation process? Through a series of administrative, medical, and legal assignment procedures, perhaps? What if someone makes a mistake carrying out these procedures? What if the observer observes something they aren’t expecting (and where do those expectations come from)? What if they can’t observe anything? What do they do?

If you take this distinction seriously, if you insist ‘observation’ is somehow less politically or socially contingent than ‘assignment,’ you are advocating for a horrifically nihilistic worldview, one in where the ‘observations’ society makes about sex are all made natural. It is a request that is based on a political pursuit to fully enshrine patriarchy as a natural part of human life. I observe that the subjugation of women produces adverse educational, social, economic, and medical outcomes for them - I guess it’s just because women are naturally inferior. I mean what else could it possibly be? The doctors did a genital inspection on them when they were a baby. It says F right here on the birth certificate

[velvetvexations]

Hey, I’d like to gently push back against some of the ways you use ASAB language. I know this isn’t intentional, as you’ve spoken in favor of transfems AFAB and transmascs AMAB before, but saying that transphobes see trans people as their ASAB excludes intersex trans people, who get misgendered regardless of the letter on their birth certificate.

I think it might be more accurate to say “perceived ASAB” or “whatever sex they (transphobes) believe someone was assigned at birth” instead.

Thanks for everything you do, btw. The only reason I feel comfortable sending this is because of how receptive you’ve been to criticisms like this in the past, and how supportive you’ve been to intersex people in general.

That's fair anon! I for sure wasn't thinking of that and will try to keep that in mind.

Intersex people are still very new to me, tbh. When I was on Tumblr the first time, I don't remember intersexism ever coming up during all those years, so it was something I was just thrown into the middle of when I came back about a year ago. I continue to try to work them into my perspective.

[everything-transmasculine]

[Different Anon] Following up on that ask mentioning how trans men are for some reason encouraged to go into women's bathrooms to one-up the transphobes, even though we have been submitted to various forms of severe violence for doing just that:

I'm honestly surprised how this talking point is repeated so often both by supposed allies and even by other fellow trans people, with virtually no opposition coming from non-transmascs. Even by relatively prominent figures who should know better.

To put an example, maybe a month ago I was in bsky and there was some discussion about bathroom bills in the US, and I noticed a couple of things: 1) no mention at all from non-transmascs on how the bill also impacted trans guys negatively, and 2) only mentioned as rhetorical gotcha about how "big buff manly passing trans men" should storm the capitol bathrooms in a display of whatever the reverse of "owning the libs" is.

This completely ignores that the most likely result of such an action would be them getting accused of being creeps and then getting brutalized by police. Our erasure is not an accident, the point of erasing us IS cruelty, and IS a way to limit our access to resources, or even limiting the existence of said resources in the first place. It should not be mistaken for anything else, especially not as a "feature" of being transmasculine, because it's just not, the same way being hypervisible and transfem isn't a perk either.

But this, pardon my language, idiotically asinine and ignorant "hot take" got passed around and echoed by people like Alejandra Caraballo and Michael Hobbes, who have an enormous following for leftist bsky standards, and now I hear it repeated like clockwork by uninformed people every time bathrooms come up in the conversation.

And the response when they're informed that telling transmascs to put themselves in danger for the sake of a fruitless gotcha point is not a good idea? That transphobic violence is not targeted anywhere nearly as bad at transmascs. That we should sacrifice for our community to make an useless point since we're not vulnerable. Because we are men, and men are not vulnerable to the violence of the State, apparently.

I am mixed black and latino, and honestly, it couldn't anger me more when people pretend that when we transition our problems just vanish away, and especially the pretense that some of us can just walk into a women's bathroom to protest and still have the assuredness that we'll come out breathing. Hell, I would argue for some of us who experience intersectional oppression because of our race, the State violence against us increases with transition, not lessens.

Anyways, I'm branching out too much from my original complaint, so I'll leave it here. Thanks for hearing us out man 👍🏽

anon youve completely summed up my feelings on it in a way i havent been able to be consise with before. when someone transitions, that does not mean that they should de facto be the “shield” for others against attack - similrly to how one cannot compell another to donate organs, transmasculine people should not be compelled to endanger themselves in the name of “owning the bigots.” thats not how any of this works - a bigot is not someone who follows facts, or logic, or sound reasoning. someone who passes is not going to change their minds just by virtue of being in the bathroom that matches with their asab. a bigot isnt going to see a trans man in a womans bathroom and immediately go “aha! i see the error in my logic! of course this man needs to have access to the mens room!” theyre going to physically or sexually assault us because we are transgender, and they hate transgender people.

and thats without even touching on the intersectionality between race and transition - i fully agree with you that the risk of violence increases with transition for nonwhite transmasculine people, as the added scrutiny of the state and the society at large is going to increase with proximity to societally defined “manhood” as a whole.

[perisexpeoplebullshit]

i will drop kayfabe really quick - i think it's inappropriate as fuck for perisex people to use asab (assigned sex at birth) or casab (corrective or coercive assigned sex at birth) and while i am aware that you cannot "stop" people from doing whatever the fuck they like, i like to pretend that if i explain myself really well, people will have the empathy, sympathy and compassion required to make simple changes to their vocabulary.

because asab was termed as such by the medical practitioners mutilating our bodies in the name of normalcy and science. we are referred to as "a societal emergency" by surgeons because of our ambiguous genitalia or mix of sex characteristics.

and casab was our attempt at making new language when trans people decided that asab = observed sex at birth and populated it like crazy.

if this is confusing: if you are observed a sex at birth, they do nothing. if they have to assign you a sex, they correct you until you fit that assignment.

we came up with corrective assignment because that placed more emphasis on what the "ASSIGNED" part of assigned sex is.

i know it seems complicated but i promise that it isn't.

but if you're pretty sure you didn't get corrected medically, you weren't fucking assigned a sex. you were just looked at and deemed normal. not all intersex people have an assigned sex. the "assigned" sex you see in these old med textbooks is talking about the literal process of IGM (infant genital mutilation) and HRT (hormone replacement therapy) as well as blockers, because it was determined that you were abnormal and required sexual correction.

also? "i'm afab! i'm amab!" no, you're not. i mean, unless you're undergoing medical intervention to correct your intersex condition?

the correct use is "i was afab" or "i was amab" because it is a course of action(s) that happened to you, not a freshly printed laminated label they slap to your fucking forehead.

an assigned sex is active, an observed sex is passive.

i don't think many people will listen to this at all, and i do think our language has been so over-written that trying to get people to stop misappropriating terms is a lost cause. but just fyi, i'm intersex, and every single time someone says "i'm assigned sex at birth!" i go "oh yay i didn't know there were any other intersex people here!!!" and if you can feel things like shame and embarrassment then maybe be careful about what you're saying around other people

i have met people who use asab, and i have said "what do you think that means" and i have come away from conversations with people who now know more about the world, and that's great, but i'm tired and google is fucking free and how the FUCK are you taking "assignment of sex" from a book full of pictures of mutilated intersex infants and going hmm... i think this is for me! like... the colonizer jumped out idfk

and like, if you didn't know, you didn't know, right. we all learn and unlearn, all the time. but if you're not open to that then i can't help you. no amount of pleading or being nice or fucking painstakingly breaking everything down step by fucking step will not get you to listen anyways. so if you're angry that my tone is aggressive, consider perhaps the several decades of bullshit i have dealt with on the topic of my body and then consider that i might be entitled to that grief.

here's the book, by the way.

Neonates with Abnormal Genital Development Assigned the Female Sex: Parent Counseling 1994

"The assigned sex at birth based on the external genitalia of the newborn and the influence of the conviction of the parents that the child belongs to the assigned sex (Roeske & Banet, 1972; Money & lewis, 1979; Slijper, 1983)."

Moeny and Lewish 1979? oh, like John Money? if you don't know who john money is i never want to hear another word out of you about intersex people point blank. you're gonna learn today, if you don't already know.

"A team consisting of an endocrinologist, an urologist, a surgeon and a psychologist, all specialized in pediatrics, counselled eight pairs of parents of neonates with a 46XY karyogram and an external genital organ that was either completely female or hermaphrodite. These were children whose genotype was not in accordance with their phenotye. The authors discuss policy in regard to counseling and support of the parents from the time when the child's genital abnormality is first observed to its adulthood. The aim of the policy is to create the conditions required to achieve a good female gender identity for the child."

so.... tampering with someone's internal and external reproductive systems to make sure they're a female? i sure hope john money isn't a literal pedophile who mutilated and tormented his clients until they committed suicide

A 1997 academic study criticized Money's work in many respects, particularly in regard to the involuntary sex-reassignment of the child David Reimer. Money allegedly coerced David and his brother Brian to perform sexual rehearsal with each other, which Money then photographed. David Reimer lived a troubled life, ending with his suicide at 38 following his brother's suicide.

oh great. yeah we should definitely misappropriate the language of this group that is overwhelmingly sexually abused in the medical fields! i think it would be great to take language from the oppressors of a group you don't even fucking belong to. please rethink your lexicon, friends, because this language is loaded for people like me, people who were cut open repeatedly at their genitalia to be "cured" or "fixed". i have scar tissue, lack of feeling and i am unable to have sex.

He screened adult patients for two years prior to granting them a medical transition, and believed sex roles should be de-stereotyped, so that masculine women would be less likely to desire transition. Money is generally viewed as a negative figure by the transgender community.

so why are we still using language he helped write in blood?

Believing that gender identity was malleable within the first two years of life, Money advocated for the surgical "normalization" of the genitalia of intersex infants. Money proposed and developed several theories related to the topics of gender identity and gender roles, and coined terms like gender role and lovemap. He popularized the term paraphilia (appearing in the DSM-III, which would later replace perversions) and introduced the term sexual orientation in place of sexual preference, arguing that attraction is not necessarily a matter of free choice. Although often misattributed to him, Money did not coin the term 'gender identity'. Despite the pain and turmoil of the brothers, for decades, Money reported on Reimer's progress as the "John/Joan case", describing apparently successful female gender development and using this case to support the feasibility of sex reassignment and surgical reconstruction even in non-intersex cases.

In one paper, Money described trans women as "devious, demanding and manipulative in their relationships with people on whom they are also dependent" and “possibly also incapable of love.”

read his wiki page because this isn't half of it. he was an openly out pedophile. and they let him rape and abuse children because they needed to be "corrected".

watch Intersexion for free on YouTube, because it is by us, about us, FOR YOU. TO LEARN FROM.

tldr; if a doctor cuts your fucking genitalia open as a minor you're probably asab. if you are perisex and have no idea you're not actually supposed to call intersex people "hermaphrodites" anymore, you're most certainly not asab. you were observed at birth or in utero via an ultrasound, but nobody assigned you anything because nothing had to be assigned.

[lesbiangodsam]

HELLO!

Sam, Sammer or Kody! ageless & ageapathy

they/them , ⭐/🌙 & fem-masc-neu terms !

Radqueer , citrus rq , rad freak , doki queer pro transid, pro para, comp-c , rq4rq , ASAB (assigned stupid at birth)

We have NO DNI but we block freely!

LABLES!

Sexuality: Bi-lesbian, aroace, necrofluid (probably!)

Gender: multigender !

transIDs: TransCat , TransCodo , TransAge , TransFurryArtist , TransInterest , TransHobby , TransDigital , TransShipChild , TsansDDLCChars , TransRussianSleepExperiment , TransRussian (I don't support putin or smth!!!!!) , TransTatar , TransUkrainian , TransPolish , TransAccent , TransOtherParent , TransHealty , TransStar

CisIDs: CisPoorEyesight , CisProsopagnosia , CisDeaf , CisStupid , CisSociophobic CisParanoid , CisDelusional , CisHarmfulLesbian, CisHarmfulBi

trisIDs: TrisSomnophilia , TrisFemcel , TrisC.aiAddict

PermaIDs: PermaCozy , PermaVacation , PermaCodo , PermaScars , Perma2019 , PermaSleepy , PermaStable , PermaWeird , PermaSilly , PermaSH

BYI: We have some mental problems that make us a little bit slowpoke... Please be gentle and be patient with us! Also, we use English and russian language but here we talk mostly English!

[phiphieee]

A complete unknown

A/N: disclaimer english is not my first language! :) The reader is asab other than that i don't think there are any tw needed but pls tell me if i missed anything! Thanksss

The video starts with a clip of Timmy and Y/N laughing before abruptly stopping. Timmy clears his throat and Y/N bites the inside of their cheek side-eyeing him and raising an eyebrow.

"Hi guys I'm Timothy Chalamet" he said pointing at the girl sitting next to him.

"And I'm Y/N L/N" she says giggling making jazz hands.

"And we're here to answer your questions on..."

"A complete unknown!"

"A complete unknonw!!!" They say together laughing.

The screen flashes with the first question, Timmy is reading a cue card "how did Y/N join the project? Interesting, interesting, you wanna take that one?" he throws the cue card and she snorts at that. "Well" she says tucking her hair behind her ears "Timmy was already cast, and I think it was during the actor's strike?" she looks at him and he nods "And I was staying at Timmy's place at the time, I think most people know I'm not really an actress or anything I just happen to be friends with" she gestures vaguely with her hand "these types of people" Timmy laughs shaking his head and saying "she sings as well". Y/N shrugs "but yeah obviously, being the voice for joan was crazy, and uh, it pretty much all happened because the director heard me doing her harmony parts on a video Timmy sent. I don't think I match it perfectly to be honest i think it's just because I'm a soprano too. Not too say that the way Joan Baez sings is just like a soprano, she's got a much nicer rounder voice than me I think, and yeah" she turns back to Timmy to see him smirking. "Yeah her Joan is better than my Bob".

The screen flashes with another question: "What was the funniest moment on set?"

Timmy’s face lights up. "Oh, I’ve got one," he says, leaning forward conspiratorially. "So, there’s this scene where I’m supposed to be really intense, right? Like, full-on Dylan brooding mode. And Y/N’s just off-camera, watching. But instead of staying serious, they’re doing this..."

Timmy turns to Y/N, gesturing for them to demonstrate.

"No way," Y/N says, laughing nervously.

"You have to," Timmy insists, grinning.

Y/N sighs dramatically but gives in, puffing out their cheeks and crossing their eyes in an exaggerated parody of deep concentration. Timmy doubles over laughing, clapping his hands.

"Exactly that!" he says, pointing at them. "So, I’m trying to stay in character, right? And she’s just—" He imitates the face again, sending Y/N into a fit of giggles. "I cracked every single time. The director was ready to murder us both."

Y/N wipes a tear from their eye. "In my defense, you were way too serious. It needed some levity!"

"Levity, sure," Timmy says, shaking his head fondly.

The next question appears on the screen: "What’s the most surprising thing you learned about each other during filming?"

Y/N raises an eyebrow at Timmy. "Oh, I’ve got a good one for this."

Timmy groans, throwing his head back. "Here we go."

"So," Y/N starts, leaning in like they’re about to share a deep secret. "Timmy has this really weird habit of—"

"Don’t you dare," Timmy cuts in, laughing but also clearly nervous.

"—eating cereal with orange juice instead of milk."

The room erupts in laughter, Timmy covering his face with his hands. "Okay, first of all, that was one time!"

"Once was enough," Y/N says, grinning. "And it wasn’t even like, a weird experimental thing. You ran out of milk and just... decided orange juice was the next best option. It was unhinged."

"It was resourceful!" Timmy protests, though his ears are bright red.

The two dissolve into laughter again, the kind that comes easily between close friends, and the video fades out with a montage of bloopers from the shoot.

A voiceover from Y/N plays over the clips: "If there’s one thing I learned working on this project, it’s that Timmy Chalamet is just as chaotic as he seems... and I wouldn’t have it any other way."

Timmy’s voice cuts in, mock-offended. "Chaotic? That’s slander!"

The screen fades to black, leaving only the sound of their laughter as the video ends.

[arlosworld91]

Ask me Anything!

feel free to reblog to get people to ask you questions from this list.

General Questions:

Do you have a favourite time of day?

Are you an early bird or a night owl?

What’s your favourite food?

What’s your least favourite food?/most disliked?

What’s your favourite TV show?

What’s your favourite movie?

Do you consider yourself religious?

Do you eat meat?/Are you vegetarian or vegan?

Do you celebrate one of, if not all of these holidays: Christmas, Easter, Halloween?

What’s your favourite colour?/Favourite shade of colour?

Are you able to see all the colours?/Do you have visual disabilities with colour?

Do you have a favourite sport?

Do you have a favourite game to play?

What’s your favourite piece of clothing you have? What’s an integral part of your every day outfit?

Do you work/study, if so what do you do? (Note anything can be considered work)

What’s your favourite form of transport?

Can you speak other languages?

What number language is English for you?

Love Questions:

Do you currently have a partner or partners?

Do you desire to have a partner?/Desire to have multiple partners?

What’s something about love that you desire?

What’s something about love that you don’t desire?

Would you consider yourself to have close friends?

Would you say you love your friends to their face, or at least want to say that you love them?

Do you desire platonic connection over all forms of attraction?

What do you look for in a friend?

What do you look for in a partner?

Do you love your family? (This can include pets)

Do you fall for people easily (romantically, sexually, alterously, queerplatonically)?

Do you need a connection before attraction?

What do you find attractive about someone?

What do you not find attractive about people?

Do you experience aesthetical attraction easy?/Is aesthetic attraction your main form of attraction?

What is your ideal date?

Do you like the idea of kissing?

Is sex something you desire?

Queer/LGBTQIA+ Questions:

Note if you don’t consider yourself LGBT feel free to skip over this part.

What’s your main identity/identities?

How long have you been identifying as how you identify?

Do you consider yourself to be queer?

When do you first figure out your LGBT identity?

Do you plan to come out to people?, if so who to?

Do you consider yourself to be genderqueer?

Do you like the representation in media of your identity?

Do you think that your identity should be represented more?

Do you experience attraction?

Have had the need to coin a term because a term for your identity didn’t exist?

Do other parts of your identity influence your LGBT identity?

If you have had identities in the past but don’t use them anymore, why do you not?

Do you consider yourself queer with your pronouns? (For example: If you’re masculine or a man but use she/her*)

Do you like the pronoun set you were given**?

Do you desire surgery/transitioning into a certain identity?

If you have a complex identity system, do you have certain terms you just use 100% of the time because you know no one will understand or you find it hard to describe?

*Pronouns don’t necessarily equal gender.

**This can be referred to with your ASAB or the societally given set.

Comfy Questions:

How do you make yourself feel good?

Who or what makes you feel happy?

What’s something that you are looking forward to in life?

Do you have stuffed animals?/Anything soft?

Do you have fairy lights?/Do you want fairy lights?

What’s your favourite gift you’ve ever received and what’s your favourite gift you’ve been given?

Is there a movie/video-game/book character you wish you could be/meet?

What’s your favourite compliment you’ve been given?

What’s your favourite compliment you’ve given?

What do you love right now?*

What’s a smell that makes you feel at home?

What makes you blush?

What makes you laugh?

What’s something cute a friend does or that you do?

What’s your favourite memory?

What’s on your playlist right now?

What are your hobbies?

*Can be a person, a movie, a show, food, etc.

Celeb Questions:

Who is your celebrity hero?

Do you listen to celebrity gossip?

Do you care about celebs?

What constitutes celebrity to you?

Do you think there are celebs that are deserving of being celebs?

Do you have a favourite band?

What celebrity fandoms would you say you’re apart of?

Is there any celebs you think should be more well known?

Do you think there’s too much of a focus on celebs?

[tmasc-confessions]

FAQ!

This list will be edited as seen fit <3

“What is the purpose of this blog?”

This blog was created with the idea in mind to give transmasculine people a space to speak about their issues and struggles without our voices being drowned out by the rest of the trans community, considering how we are a smaller niche within it that often gets suppressed.

“Why didn’t you make the blog for all trans people?”

Most trans spaces have a very high focus on trans women and nonbinary people, even if it’s a subconscious bias. The point of this blog was to create a trans space where trans men and transmascs were in the spotlight.

“I’m not transmasc, but I’m [x], can I confess here?”

No, you can’t. Sorry, but this is a blog meant to give voice and prioritise trans men and transmasculine individuals. I can’t make exceptions because then I’d have to make exceptions for everyone. There are other blogs (@tfem-confessions, @tneu-confessions, and/or @intersex-confessions) for people like you!! And you’re always free to open one of your own for another specific niche if you’d like :)

“Am I allowed to give advice in the comments of a post?”

100%! In fact I encourage it! A very important part of what makes a community is being able to support each other. So feel free!

“Who are the admins/why won't the admins reveal their main accounts?”

Running a confessions blog, especially one subject to so much intracommunity discourse, gets you a lot of harassment. On this blog, it can be contained, and it doesn't have to spread to our mains or even worse, someone who may identify us in real life. We keep our mains private for safety reasons.

“Why hasn't my ask been posted yet?”

Both of the current admins are teenagers. We have our own issues. This blog is not a job and it's not a convenience; if your ask hasn't been posted, it's most likely we just haven't gotten to it.

Alternatively, your ask may have contained either rhetoric or language that is considered bigoted. (Some examples of dangerous language are the unironic use of TMA/TME, "transandrobros" or the variants, derogatory usage of slurs towards either us or other users, misuse of the term "C-ASAB", and such).

[tfem-confessions]

ive been reading more abt intersex experience lately and altho im perisex i rly feel for what intersex people have gone thru, both how it mirrors my own experiences and also how it involves deep trauma i could never know. i wanna raise a few thoughts that come up, which i raise in good faith and with a hope for resolution, abt the afab transfem conversation.

firstly... maybe we dont take seriously enough the gravity of intersex oppression. even if we say someone who was coercively assigned female, coercively reassigned male, and then transitions (back?) to womanhood is cis, thats still a horribly difficult experience, structurally deeply marginalised, that really aligns that person with trans womens struggle. maybe if we emphasised more that cis intersex women, however we define cisness, are very oppressed and share a lot in common with trans women, being The Exact Same Thing wouldnt be as pressing?

or... on the other hand. if youre coercively reassigned as male as a minor, arguably that cancels out your birth assignment. for perisex people birth assignment has a static significance, as the state and medical establishment measures you by it even after transition. we cant conceptualise being reassigned and that impact on our lives. if someone is coercively reassigned male when their body starts presenting testosteronised characteristics, thats going to be more defining to how theyre treated than the 'cancelled' birth assignment. could it be that we can understand someone to be AMAX (assigned male at x) even if AFAB

is any of this making sense or remotely helpful?

I understand where you’re coming from, but the only real answer to this is just to do away with the binaries of trans identity altogether. Assigned sex at birth should not be a consideration in whether or not someone should be “allowed” to identify any one way.

The only way to be a safe person for intersex people IN GENERAL is to expunge ASAB/AGAB language from your vocabulary and from your general consideration.

The only thing you can or should do is listen, respect, and live and let live. If an intersex person who was cafab, reassigned male and then transitioned back to womanhood calls herself a trans woman then she is a trans woman. No ifs ands or buts.

People— especially intersex people— deserve absolute and unquestioning authority and autonomy to decide and enact their own identities. The only person that matters in the conversation is the person whose identity it is.

As an intersex trans woman myself, I do not trust automatically anyone that places any significance on ASAB/AGAB language. I don’t trust anyone who argues about whether someone of any kind is “allowed” to identify in any way. Because the moment you are willing to question someone on their own identity, you are no longer safe for me to be around.

Absolute and unquestioning respect or bust, non.

- 🐺

[velvetvexations]

I've been going down a rabbit hole because I had the thought that surely it'll be possible to come up with a source for where CASAB language came from, it simply isn't that old. (And I could feel the inevitable "you can look it up!" that ended up coming in the time it took me to look it up.) And I was totally wrong, the origin was either offline, never indexed, or on now dead blogs. But that doesn't mean I couldn't find anything.

Some initial context: there is a fair amount of SAAB, DSAB, and least frequently ASAB around 2010. The phrase "assigned x at birth" goes back to at least 2003. The earliest use I found of both the phrase and acronym CAMAB was Feb 20, 2012. More uses start showing up quickly. The arguments on if it came from intersex people or trans women start in months. Interestingly, arguments as early as late 2012 claim that it was always CASAB and that ASAB was a de-politicization. Admittedly, the first uses of the exact phrase and acronym that I can find are in trans contexts (although many of the earliest are discussing intersex people and the medical abuse they face as well).

I then tried to find more about the concept of coercive sex/gender assignment. The earliest I was able to find in a trans context was from Sept 2010. However, I do quickly find fairly prominent feminist texts discussing coercive surgery of intersex people, as well as intersex texts discussing the coerciveness of the sex binary, from 2004 and 1999, at least, respectively. So the concept of coercive assignment quickly goes back to intersex people, regardless the exact phrase CASAB. All of this was interesting! LMK if you want citations. And now I'm going to close this information with a bit of a pivot.

This is the language intersex people have been using to describe going through coercive surgery in an attempt to force them into the sex binary. Most modern dictionaries say it's either exclusively or primarily for intersex people. ASAB is used much more frequently in trans contexts. I think perhaps there should be a long period of thought before coming to the conclusion that it's so important to signal that all sex assignment is coercive that the group of people that have faced direct physical violence in order to uphold the sex binary needs to either be forced to use another term or have their experiences erased through conflation with perisex ones.

10/10 no notes anon, thank you for sharing this. I'll put it in the tags.

[everything-transmasculine]

i just wanna pop in and yap on a topic that i initiatially wrote as a post, but am too afraid to post

___________

(based on a post from a transrasfem blog I've seen recently talking about transandrophobia)

___________

you people do realize that it's a very fucking weird thing to say that "trans men who still associate with femininity and their afab'ness are on their way to detransition and become TERF's"?

trans men still struggle with PCOS, trans men still stuggle with bad gynecologists, trans men still are affected by abortion laws, and saying that "well maybe you shouldn't care about abortion laws/feminism/insert something afab-esque affecting you because you just unnecessarily tie yourself to femininity, you are a man now, stop trying to get into womens spaces, if you want to get privelege from both sides so bad just go kys" IS STUPID AND HARMFUL and i hope i dont have to explain why

just imagine that you have this super insane condition that can kill you, disable you, make you blind, make you develop chronic pains, make your depression worse and etc etc (pregnancy) and the only ability to prevent it anyhow(abortion) is being stripped away from women, which ALSO affects you because of your anatomy, NOT because you are a detransitioner or "are secretly on your way to become a TERF", but when you bring it up, or say that saying that "imagine if men could get pregnant" is harmful to trans men, you are getting hit with a huge metallic hammer across the face a thousand times in a row, because howdareyou speak about something that affects cis women and tie it to yourself(are you a terf? are you a detrans in hiding? etc etc), you are a man now, you shouldn't even try to say that something can harm you or else you explode your nuts and die, you should solely focus your entire life's purpose on helping trans women and never caring about yourself

the problem is that trans women (and other amabs in general) don't really have the exact same problems that are tied to their anatomy that trans men do(imagine having ovarian cancer and being denied care for months if not more because you are a trans guy and a lot of gynos are uncomfortable with you, especially if you are on T and passing)

so i only suspect for them without knowing what PCOS is, it sounds like trans men unnecessary want to still secretly be women, which is wrong

anyways im tired of talking about it im gonna go sleep

i think i know what post youre talking about, anon, and ive actually been discussing it with my partner irl. the idea that transmasculine people are just one step away from detransitioning and becoming terfs at all times is… well, its transphobic to say the very least. theres no issue in having a relationship with your asab - i mean, i know i definitely have a complicated one myself! - but thats no reason to tell transmasculine people to stop caring about issues that still affect us. the reduction and removal of transmasculine people from reproductive healthcare is an ongoing struggle, and one that really isnt talked about enough.

however, i am going to push back against your groupings of transfeminine people and other people with male sexed anatomy (sorry for the weird language there, im trying to be as neutral as possible as to not be offensive) - the internal anatomy of the male sexed body often IS neglected and turned away similarly to transmasculine people. many proctologists and urologists refuse care to transfeminine people the same way gynecological care is refused to transmasculine people. its not an us vs them, but all of us vs the oppressive systems of healthcare in place that deny the most basic rights to non-cis (and non perisex) bodies. intersex people and trans people alike are often subjected to discrimination in the healthcare field, no matter whether they are transfeminine or transmasculine. i mean, i saw it plenty times myself when i worked in healthcare - they dont care about “what kind” of transgender you are, just that you ARE transgender, and that alone is enough to warrant discrimination.

[the-life-of-a-herm]

How do transandrophobes think anyone with even a little bit of intercommunity experience would take them seriously when they say shit like “intersex people have to be the asab they were assigned always it doesn’t matter what they did to you you’re your asab because the doctor said so” Itd be comical if it wasn’t such a popular fucking belief

PREACH! Like genuinely Idc what self hating intersex person is on your side, you are literally siding with the social powers that oppress and mutilate us, NO THANKS! All these people acting like they are being supportive to intersex people by outright denying us of language and community to talk about our own experiences.

[qweerhet]

meh I feel like (c)asab language can be useful as shorthand for “raised as a woman/man pre transition” but afab people don’t really exist as a class in the same way trans men or cis women might

one of the fundamental problems there is that it's not useful shorthand for that; plenty of people who were cafab were raised as men, and plenty of people who were camab were raised as women. it's a fundamentally intersexist idea to claim that casab language accurately signifies someone's gendered life experiences pre-transition. (also, obligatory reminder that not everyone was even assigned a sex/gender at birth.)

there's also the problem of it not being particularly coherent to claim that "raised as women/men" is, like, a gendered experience that is useful to flatten and signify as a singular experience. [brainbug: that sentence is not parsing correctly but i cannot figure out how to reword it right now.] i'm thinking again of my cis female developmentally disabled classmates back in sp'ed; they were "raised as women," but their gendered experiences were that of failed women, of women who were treated as in need of "fixing" by bringing closer to womanhood, yes, but as simultaneously forbidden from accessing gendered life milestones and experiences as a part of that "fixing"--quite frankly, they have more in common with trans women than with abled cis women.

i see casab language most often used to signify "being raised as a man/woman" with certain assumptions about what that entails--for example, assuming that people "raised as women" were encouraged to participate in female peer-bonding, expected to dress femininely and wear makeup, to be encouraged to act in nurturing and caretaking ways. and yet, cis developmentally disabled girls are frequently punished for wearing feminine clothing and makeup, pathologized for socializing with female peers, and discouraged from acting out caretaking or nurturing roles/behaviors. similarly, it's often assumed that those raised as men were encouraged to self-advocate and be assertive, become sexually active, and encouraged to participate in male peer-bonding; cis developmentally disabled boys are commonly punished for being assertive & taught they should never self-advocate, punished for expressing sexual desire or urges, and pathologized for socializing with male peers.

i do understand that there may be people out there using casab language in a way that, like, inherently includes "born with a uterus, discouraged from independence, pathologized for socializing with peers of any gender" as one of many typical "camab experiences," but 1) that's not how most people who use the language use it, so they'll find themselves having to re-explain from the ground up in nearly every conversation they're in; 2) it does, at that point, become a fairly useless label because it is conveying zero information about the experiences being grouped together. like, acknowledging that any combination of gendered experiences can exist in someone who was camab or cafab, regardless of which they were, also means you have to acknowledge none of the information being conveyed is useful, because the information being conveyed is "they have had any gendered experience in the world."