Assigned at birth language and other shorthand
There is are people online who try to police and nitpick anything a queer person has to say. Particularly, what a trans person has to say about their own marginalisation and the subsection of the community they belong to.
It does not matter which words you use or new terms you come up with on the spot, they will find something to nag about, because the goal is to make you more reluctant to speak up or silence you altogether.
And sadly there are fellow queer people who pull this as well. It is not just bigots who try to play divide and conquer with the LGBTQ community.
I try to avoid afab/amab language when possible, but I will use it when it applies or is the most convenient shorthand.
The fact remains that at this time we are all assigned a gender at birth by the attending doctor or midwife. This gender is then reported to the state and becomes part of our medical history whether we agree or not. No one can opt out. It is marked on every state ID we get issued. This system literally perpetuates systemic sexism, because it gives way too many individuals and organisations access to this piece of information about us. This includes clerks at a liquor store and waiters. Making it easier to change this marker is good, but the presence of said marker on IDs still perpetuates the notion that anyone with a smidgeon of authority is entitled to see this information.
Yes, this system is the worst for intersex people, but it affects everyone. Its original purpose was and is to control women and their fertility. Forcibly normalising intersex people was and is done to uphold the gender binary, because allowing exceptions or ways to opt out undermines a system where anyone who could potentially give birth is accounted for and access to male privilege is strictly gatekept.
I am very much in favour of stopping assigning people in this way at birth or severely restricting who has access to this information. This would mean M/F/X would no longer appear on IDs and would no longer be issued to schools and prospective employers etc. It would be strictly need to know in as few instances as possible.
However, at this time, this is the system we live in and it has very real consequences for everyone, perisex people, intersex, cis and trans people. I am not going to deny the power these social constructs hold over us, because they can have literal life and death consequences.
Moreover, I am not going to write an entire essay like this one every time when I want to write a 1-5 sentence comment when a simple abbreviation will do. All words are imperfect, but using them is better than not communicating at all.