Yesterday, I spotted someone saying the quiet bit out loud while relitigating the utility of terminology referring to sex-assigned-at-birth: That they used 'AFAB' as shorthand for 'anyone perceived as a woman'.
So we did it, everyone! We found the mythical AFAB transfem, and apprently I was her all along. Round of applause, let's all pack it in and go home.
For anyone paying even the slightest attention, however, it becomes pretty obvious why this is absurd: plenty of trans women are perceived as women, and the assumption or idea that we aren't stems from an unexamined belief that our 'maleness' is always evident or perceptible. We Can Always Tell in pseudoprogressive jargon.
This, here, is the fundamental issue with sex-assigned-as-birth, as queer communities and putative trans allies use it: 'AFAB' and 'AMAB' are considered to be more homogenous, meaningful categories than they actually are. 'AFAB' means 'women and diet women' to many, and 'AMAB' just means 'men and those playing dress-up'.
I've stated this in longer terms elsewhere, but I'll just be blunt: 'AFAB' is considered to be a relevant category even by many trans people because they want to talk about reproductive exploitation. They conceptualize misogyny as synonymous with the process of being regendered, of presumed gestational capacity and the way patriarchy lays claim to the reproductive autonomy of such individuals while marking them inferior.
This synonymization leads naturally to presuming 'AMAB' to be an equally-relevant category, because surely trans women, due to not experiencing this reproductive exploitation, share something fundamentally in common with cis men, whether in terms 'socialization' or societal treatment? Surely, the unsaid subtext goes, trans women are women-but-less, because the misogyny trans women experience (if people even admit that trans women experience misogyny at all) is of this lesser, less severe kind?
These assumptions are both disappointing, infuriating, and lie at the core of a lot of erasure inherent to transmisogyny. Cis men oppress, exploit, violate, beat, and otherwise thoroughly exclude trans women, making it known that trans women (and even many queer cis men) do not have a claim to the same kind of manhood that they do. Our affinity for and claims towards womanhood may not be honored with recognition, but they are punished with violence, and the idea of 'AMAB' being a meaningful grouping at all is ludicrous.
Meanwhile, the obvious remains unstated: while this supposed commonality in reproductive exploitation is the rationale underlying the presumed relevance of 'AFAB', not everyone assigned female at birth can gestate. Yet, there are not lengthy debates on the womanhood of such individuals, or whether they're subject to misogyny---no one entertains the idea that you stop experiencing misogyny when your tubes are tied, or you experience menopause.
So perhaps it's obvious that reproductive exploitation, while central to how we organize sex-castes, is not the be-all-end-all of who is subject to misogyny and womanization, and perhaps we should stop reinforcing the idea that sex-assigned-at-birth fully describes the kinds of patriarchal violence one experiences. We can be more precise, more inclusive, more feminist, and less essentialistic all at once.
You just have to stop clinging to cissexism.
jacobvanloon
kianamaiart
izzy806
