Been reading up on intersex theory lately and came across your take on abolishing both gender and AGAB (in your intro post), would you mind explaining further? I’m really interested to learn more/gq
I'm not intersex myself but I've been getting into intersex theory in passing (I'm on a ban from buying books to get through the stack of unread books by my bed) but learning about intersex people and what they go through felt like escaping the matrix a second time (the first time being when I discovered trans and nonbinary theory).
It really opened my eyes to how a lot of perisex trans people never actually unpacked their gender essentialism. They simply went "trans people are included." This goes for how they perceive which AGAB you have too, and there's always been an obsession with finding out what a person's AGAB is within the trans community because there's this notion that obscuring it is "lying" about your true self. People sometimes ask "AMAB or AFAB?" but you'd also hear "MTF or FTM?" "transmasc or transfem?" (with the understanding of those labels being the same as MTF and FTM but supposedly more "inclusive") and "TME or TMA?" (this one is more complicated and is not a 1 to 1 replacement for AGAB, and was invented for an entirely different reason and is not supposed to be used this way, but trans and nonbinary people often get asked this in an attempt to get them to reveal their AGAB) Once someone knows your AGAB, they relax and think "Oh, I know what category of person you are. I was worried you were trying to hide your true self there for a second!"
And this hurts trans and nonbinary people and even cis people, because no, your AGAB is NOT a predictor for exactly the kind of life experiences, appearance, personality, and transition you're going to have. But then, when you introduce intersex people into the mix, suddenly AGAB isn't even a predictor for what kind of sex traits someone might have.
Trans gender essentialists refuse to think of intersex people, or have a very limiting understanding about what it actually means to be intersex. They apply their gender essentialism onto them as well, thinking "Well you still have to be male intersex or female intersex. You can't ACTUALLY be neither!" And it completely ingores intersex lived experiences.
What really made me think "we should abolish AGAB" was hearing how intersex people actually might experience the world.
Someone could be born with ambiguous genitalia, have IGM to give them a vulva, given an F on their birth certifiate, then go through a testosterone based puberty. What do you think it would be like to go your whole childhood "raised as a girl" but suddenly start gaining testosterone-based traits in your tween years? Growing a moustache? Hearing your voice drop? When everyone around you saw you as a perisex cis girl the whole time, your parents, your teachers, your doctors, your friends, and yourself. AGAB is not a predictor for this experience, and it actively harmed this person's life. What does insisting they're AFAB acheive?
Someone could be born with ambiguous genitalia, have IGM to give them a penis, given an M on their birth certificate, then go through an estrogen based puberty. Everyone around them viewed them as a perisex cis boy, then they start to grow breasts. They gain fat on their hips. They start to get periods, but they don't know that's what they are because they aren't "supposed" to get them. How is everyone around them going to feel and act? How are THEY going to feel and act? What might they go through? Their parents decide "the best thing" would be corrective surgery to give their kid a vulva to "correct" this abnormality. The kid gets no say. One day they are taken to the doctor and their genitals are altered forever. AGAB is not a predictor for this experience, and it actively harmed this person's life. What does insisting they're AMAB acheive?
Someone could be lucky and escape IGM being performed at them at birth. They get randomly assigned a letter on their birth certificate. Maybe they're part of the rare few who get no letter. They have ambiguous genitalia. They go through a puberty that gives them mixed traits. Doctors pressure them to "fix" themselves, pushing hormones and surgery on them, trying to figure out what their "true" sex is. AGAB is not a predictor for this life experience, and it actively harmed this person's life. What does insisting they have to "pick" an AGAB acheive?
There are people with ambiguous genitalia. There are people who go through puberties which lie outside the binary. There are people who's experiences don't "match" the letter on their birth certificate. There are people who had hormones and surgeries forced on them to change their sex traits. "OK but what AGAB are you?" is not helpful. You can't use that to understand a lot of people's lives. And the experiences I described above should be very relatable to us as perisex trans and nonbinary people, which is the worst part! Why can't we extend meaningful solidarity for people who mirror our lives so closely!
I see it on intersex blogs all the time. Intersex people obviously often don't want to plaster their AGAB everywhere! Especially when it doesn't correspond to the lived experiences it'll make people assume they had. But people insist "we can always tell." People get wildly different kinds of hate based on which AGAB the sender assumes the blogger has, and often the sender admits they are trans. And this also makes me notice how even within the trans community, we STILL view trans men as "AFAB men" and trans women as "AMAB women," and it's not progressive, not even a little. And all they can do for nonbinary people is put them in the "basically an AFAB man" or "basically an AMAB woman" boxes, or put them in the "basically cis" boxes. Your AGAB might map onto your life experiences sometimes, or even often, but it shouldn't follow you around like original sin. You should just get to be a person. Not "an AMAB" or "an AFAB" for the rest of your life no matter what happened to you or how you transitioned or how you see yourself.
It is nonsensical to view someone who says "Hey, I have atypical experiences with sex and gender." and roll your eyes and "OK but you MUST conform to ONE of the sets of stereotypes!" and we do this too much in trans and nonbinary communities. Perisex people don't deserve to be shoved into one set of experiences we get assumed to have either. Because life is complicated and not everyone had all the "normal" AFAB or "normal" AMAB experiences even as perisex people. I just think we should abolish this entirely and simply speak using clearer language. It's not hard, I did it in this post to describe a handful of experiences intersex people might have, and I never had to resort to using AGAB, masculine/feminine, or male/female. This is also what would happen in medical settings. You would simply have it noted which traits you have that might need specific care, your chart would for example say "has a prostate, needs that examined for cancer on occasion" or "can get pregnant, might need birth control options." I think this is the way forward for the trans community. Intersex people take the brunt of it but we hurt ourselves doing this as well. We truly do see "an AFAB" and "an AMAB" as types of people rather than events that occured and once you see it you'll never stop being mad.
Didn't touch much on gender abolishion but there's been a lot of writing on that already, I basically just think gender shouldn't be all that important. You should just get to be the type of person you want to be and have it be no big deal.
