for a few years now (like since at least 2021) i’ve been occasionally seeing isolated individuals try on “AFAB trans woman”, “AFAB transfem”, “AMAB trans man”, “AMAB transmasc” and dreading the possibility of this becoming an inclus/exclus thing where there’s a huge vicious debate and a ton of people develop calcified stances that it’s “valid” because they are straight ticket voters on uses of language being “valid”. i’ve recently come across multiple fairly high-note promotions of each of 1) yeah, sure, anyone can be a trans woman (normal understanding of the language of AGAB, replaces meaning of “trans woman” with “someone who is a woman and also trans” or, worse “someone who identifies with the vibe of trans womanhood”) and 2) your AGAB is whatever you decide it is, maybe even a neolabel (completely opposite the concept of gender assignment at birth). i’m crossing my fingers that these uses somehow go no further, or that if they do the ensuing fight blows over quickly.
as an individual topic, it’s frustrating because it points to the complete failure on a lot of people’s parts to absorb or understand the basic premises of this idea of transgender.
we live in a world where, when humans are born, the adults around them decide what role they are going to have in a system of male/female boy/girl man/woman. usually they pick based on a quick look at the child’s external genitalia. if the quick look doesn’t match their idea of what a baby boy or baby girl is supposed to look like, they might or might not do further physical investigation, and either way they will pick a role for the child. if the child doesn’t look one of the ways expected, they might enforce this decision through surgery to conform the child’s body to their ideal for the role they chose. whether the decision was immediate or after deliberation, whether surgery was performed or not performed, this process of role picking is coercive. a first act of coercion in a childhood of coercion in a lifetime of coercion.
children are raised to the roles they were assigned. sometimes this involves the deliberate imposition of a lot of restrictions and expectations about how the child will look and behave, sometimes fewer, sometimes almost none but that they will agree that they are what the adults said they were. even if it is only the last, the child will sooner or later feel the weight of much greater expectations, because they will become aware that wider society says girls should look girly and do girl things and boys should look boyish and do boy things. sometimes it becomes apparent that a child’s body is growing to not match the adults’ idea of what a male body or a female body is supposed to look like or do. if this happens, the adults might allow or force the child to switch roles, might ease or double down on their expectations, and might or might not give the child a choice in whether they biomedically intervene in the child’s physical development.
sometimes, a person grows to refuse the role they were assigned and adopt a new one. sometimes they only refuse the role they were assigned. sometimes they only adopt a new one. sometimes they only refuse the expectations and restrictions. sometimes they refuse being a boy-male-man or girl-female-woman. sometimes they first do this as a child, sometimes as an adolescent, sometimes as an adult. sometimes they conform to the expectations and restrictions for the role they adopt on purpose, other times less so, other times not at all. sometimes they seek to change their body. rejecting one’s assigned role is an opportunity to escape the pain of the old coercion and find new joys in new, chosen ways of being.
to adopt a new role is simultaneously to adopt that role and to adopt the social position of a role-adopter and the social position of one-who-has-moved-from-that-role-to-this-role. these social positions come with expectations and restrictions in addition to the ones associated with the role adopted. having rejected the assigned role, more possibilities are available to a person. there is a great deal of free choice available for those who are willing to make it. sometimes there are special roles that are never assigned at birth and can only be taken on by someone conscious enough to choose.
gender assignment at birth isn’t an identity, it’s an act of coercion. trans womanhood isn’t a feeling, it’s a particular confluence of adoption and abandonment in a social system premised on gender assignment.
the prospect of discourse fights over “AFAB trans girls” and etc. is unpleasant because they’ll suck super bad and exhaust tons of people for nothing, but more present and disturbing is this even being an issue. understanding the nature of gender assignment is such a keystone in trans theory that i genuinely do not know what models of transness people are functioning on without it.
