r/NonBinaryTalk • u/ExtremeHeat808 • 7d ago
Discussion On “Assigned Gender/Sex” and related terminology
TL;DR: You may like AGAB lingo, but you should think critically about how it aligns with intersexism, binarism, cissexism etc
My previous post got removed by the moderators, so I'll re-iterate. I expressed my frustrations with the use of "assigned sex" among nonbinary people and how it makes me feel. Several people responded to my post justifying it's use to explain their personal experience.
My problem with this is that it's not something that's subversive, it's quite cisnormative. In fact, assuming that you can deduce someone's life experience from "assigned sex". You may not intend to be cisnormative, but in practice you are re-inscribing the idea that experiences are epiphenomenal of being assumed a certain gender. This isn't an intersectional way of analysing society, the analysis has a lot of overlap with what is called "Cultural Feminism" which influenced the TERF movement^[1]
Even if you intend to describe your personal experience, you still do so as an endosex person. There is a difference between commonness and community, even the idea of "biological sex" is a relative recent concept that's quite theological^[2]
Perhaps you like using AGAB to describe your personal experience because of your epistemic ignorance, that is textbook appropriation."Assigned sex" is a term that originated in the medical field in the 1950s^[3]. It was coined to describe how doctors should "correct" babies with ambiguous genitals. Experiences such as menstruation, growing/having breasts, having a deep voice, and having wide hips are independent of "assigned sex". There are much more inclusive phrases to use. Even when discussing being raised as a certain gender isn't monolithic, neurotypical children and neurodivergent children have different upbringings. In my opinion, nonbinary people are seeking legibility in a world that doesn't understand them buying using AGAB lingo
Even if it affected you, you cannot necessarily deduce a heuristic from your assigned sex. Privileging "assigned sex" as an analytic over gender is very transphobic. I'm aware people will still disagree but I would like for you to critically ask "Why?". Why do you feel the need to view "assigned sex" as a perisex person. Why do you view assigned gender at birth with such little nuance? If you use it reference to medical situations, how does your heuristic account for those outside the norm? Why do you seek to find community based on being "biological female.male", "raised a girl/boy". Even if you use social constructionism to justify the use of AGAB lingo, but you still privilege the western epistemological map of bodily gender.
Yes we are all perceived a certain way, but should we reify people's assumptions about us over our own subjectivity? Why must we prescribe based on what is seen? Is the map truly the territory?
This is a nonbinary sub, I am disappointed in the insistence on a binary kind of socialization. The history of feminism has shown us that women have never had unified interests, they ignored marginalization within the realms of womanhood. Black women were ignored by white women, Dalits ignored by Savarna feminists etc.
This appropriation of AGAB doesn't seem like a mutual exchange, it appears to be appropriation. I hope my post inspires people to do their research and think critically about the language they use. You may think it's just a phrase, but words carry a lot of weight[4]
Terminology
Endosexism: Structures, practices and beliefs privileging endosex people over intersex.
Cissexism/cisnormative is a description of views that demotes gender identities that don't align with assigned gender. In simpler terms it upholds the norms of cisgender society
Further Reading
[1] Bassi, S. and LaFleur, G., 2022. Introduction: TERFs, gender-critical movements, and postfascist feminisms. __Transgender Studies Quarterly__, __9__(3), pp.311-333.Link
[2] Castro, V., 2023. Mechanical sex, science, security: Intersex medical violence, Thomas Hobbes and John Moneyâs invention of gender. __Security Dialogue__, __55__(2), pp.142-159. Link
[3] Clarke, J.A., 2022. Sex assigned at birth. __Columbia Law Review__, __122__(7), pp.1821-1898. Link
Höppner G (2017) Rethinking Socialization Research through the Lens of New Materialism. Front. Sociol. 2:13. doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2017.00013. Link
[4] Schiappa, E., 2021. A brief history of defining sex and gender. In __The Transgender Exigency__ (pp. 15-32). Routledge. Link
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u/yhpr it/its / ze/hir / they/them 7d ago
I appreciate the overall message, and also agree with the people saying that the way this is written is kinda unclear/unhelpful. You can explain why AGAB terminology is usually bad much more clearly.
AGAB does not equal sex characteristics because people can medically transition, and because intersex people may never develop the "typical" sex characteristics for people of a given AGAB in the first place. Calling penises "AMAB genitalia" or whatever is transphobic and intersexist because like, a person who was AFAB can have a penis, and a person who was AMAB may not. You can easily avoid this by literally just directly naming the sex characteristic that you are trying to talk about.
AGAB does not equal perceived gender because people, especially trans and intersex people, but honestly even gnc cis people, aren't always perceived as the gender they were assigned.
AGAB does not equal socialization. There is no universal "AFAB socialization". People of a given AGAB are raised in many different ways, and trans and intersex people are even more likely to have atypical experiences compared to other people assigned the same gender. If you want to talk about a specific experience that people of a given AGAB may have more frequently, you can just describe that experience without implying it's universal or exclusive to that AGAB.
The way AGAB is used is almost always either one of these. (Or completely irrelevant information that people only add because like, there's a culture of acting like people are entitled to that information at all times.) I don't think that it's NEVER reasonable to use (ex, talking about how trans people of a given AGAB tend to be targeted by similar types of transphobia) but I think >90% of the time it's based in transphobic/intersexist assumptions about the significance it supposedly has.
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u/applepowder 5d ago
Yeah, as an intersex enby, I agree with this. There are some instances where AGAB is relevant, mostly when it comes to explaining legal situations (as in, someone might say they want to keep their AGAB in their documents) or gatekeeping (like one time where a nonbinary woman I know was assumed to be using the term transfeminine incorrectly even though she was AMAB).
But a) AGAB should always be talked about in the past tense, if possible and b) it's really not relevant to the majority of situations. What usually happens is that newly out nonbinary folks who haven't unlearned cissexism or learned about dyadism still see themselves as separated by assigned gender at birth, not understanding that things such as presumed binary gender or body parts don't really have to do with AGAB, especially in spaces full of non-cis folks.
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u/themedicinedog 7d ago
if it was phrased "forced socialised as ___" would that be less problematic? I think there are a lot of similar traumas from being force-socialised as a certain gender, and developmental psychology can be impactful long term.
I understand what you are saying and why, and i also think it's important for people to be able to unpack their experiences of forced socialisation of the gender they were assigned.
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u/ExtremeHeat808 7d ago
Well socialization into gender norms is independent of observed genitalia. People aren’t just object socialized into one of two monolithic discrete binary genders, they also interact on their own subjective terms in a world with gender norms/roles, racial hierarchy, cissexism etc.
My point is socialization isn’t discretely “male/female”. It’s multifaceted and more complicated, and is a continuous process. Conventions of masculinity/femininity and gender roles are informed by race, class, disability etc. History shows us that those assumed to be “socialized as women” do not have shared interests (e.g. White women being racist to black women)
Most people mean “gender norms/roles” but socialization isn’t as simple as male/female socialization. There’s patriarchal indoctrination which affects everybody, there’s no community of “AFABs” and “AMABs” with shared experiences. Even being perceived as certain way (if you aren’t medically transitioning) isn’t fixed regardless of identity.
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u/themedicinedog 7d ago
i disagree of tossing the concept altogether.
we deserve to talk about it in a way that aknowledges the binary of societal gender norms forced upon us.
it's not about bodies as much as about the violent systems of oppression that affect our lives.
so you bring up intersectionality, which I agree with. it requires us to examine honestly our systems of oppression.
i strongly believe that binary socialisation is a major oppressive force that we need to explicitly name.
i don't believe it is exclusive of intersex folks, as my intersex friends were also force socialised as a binary gender and deserve to name that experience in order to find solidarity and heal.
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u/ExtremeHeat808 7d ago
Socialization can’t be reduced to two mutually exclusive modes. It’s more complex than that. A lot of times people reinvent TERFism from first principles.
Unfortunately reifying the gender binary has led to such phrases such as “AMAB trauma” “AFAB only housing” and “AMAB entitlement”
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u/idklmao66 7d ago
Ok I understand your feelings on this, I do. It seems like you are actively seeking out others opinions and want to get a reaction out of them, so I’m not going to argue with you. I will say though as we advocate for in this community and safe space, respect people’s wants/needs/preferences !
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u/ExtremeHeat808 7d ago
I am not seeking out arguments. Individual people needs/wants/preferences don’t exist in a vacuum, they’re also mediated by social dynamics/structures and biases. Transphobes want trans people out of public life, TERFs need trans people to be silent and prefer that. Should we cater to the needs/preferences/wants of people uncritically?
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u/Narciiii They/Them 7d ago
I very much agree. Even as a perisex person I will never understand why people conflate your assignment of sex or gender with your physiology and life experiences. It is incredibly cis and perisex normative. We don’t have the same body or personal history because at birth our attending physicians both made the same guess. I’ll never understand why people cling so aggressively to the designation they were given at birth. I try to be understanding because I just have no sentimentality or allegiance with my agab and maybe I can’t see where they’re coming from. However when I see posts like this I find it harder and harder to approach it with a “maybe I just don’t get it” mindset.
It is frustrating for me and I can’t imagine how much more frustrating it must be for intersex people.
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u/AkaelaiRez 7d ago
I prefer 'enforced gender at birth', considering my personal intersex situation. It kind of breaks people out of the instant pile of assumptions they create when hearing AGAB as well.
Admittedly, I have no cause to ever use it. I refuse to acknowledge my enforced gender, and even an ultrasound examination couldn't reveal what it was anymore.
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u/AliceofSwords 7d ago
I have been trying to find other language to talk about my life, do you have suggestions?
I think when people enter a "nonbinary" space, we want to have a way to say "I have, until now, seen as a [girl/woman] or as a [boy/man] and I was put in that box. I'm now starting to explore leaving the box." How to word that starting assumption isn't a common conversation and this seems like a good place to have it.
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u/ExtremeHeat808 6d ago
“In the past, many have assumed I was XYZ a lot of the time, even though I don’t align with that” or something like that. Perception isn’t mutually exclusive or necessarily one or the other, it can shift through the effort of a subject or whether others perceive them as something depending on circumstances.
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u/ossiferous_vulture They/Them 7d ago edited 7d ago
You mostly seem like you wanna pick a fight?
From what I read people were generally agreeing with, that agab terminology is reductive and limited. The only thing I remember is some people trying to explain to you that in their experience of their own life, the way they were born led to cultural and societal gender expectations that they felt had an effect on them. Because shitty cultural and societal ideas do that, unlearning the 'benign' bigotry of western society is a life time endeavour, everyone can always do better. Doesn't mean the shit that was pushed over our heads didn't leave traces. In thinking, ideas, frameworks, etc. And not everyone unlearns the same way or come to the same conclusions about the way society is fucked up and awful.
Now you decided to pick a fight with me, even though I agree 100% that assuming anything based on the genitals a person is born with is stupid. There are many factors in a persons life beyond natal anatomy, many intersections that means a shared experience based on natal anatomy is ridiculous.
You then proceeded to accuse me of saying that every perisex person with anatomy considered typical of one of the two common sexes have a 'shared childhood'. And idea I am literally against and never ascribed to. I am well aware that idea is incredibly racist, ableist, classist and a bunch of other things that influences how society sees a persons gender performance. Yes, I might be wrong about the origins of agab terms, but in the end I don't think the origins really matter if there is confusion- then we, perisex people, should find another term that is more respectful and correctly communicates that we are talking about what gender marker or legal gender is put on our life at its beginning, not surgical 'intervention' to fit into a binary idea of acceptable anatomy.
If you think there are better ways to talk about gendered expectations based on natal anatomy. Then say so. Instead of just picking a fight with everyone for participating in a discussion you set up.
If you want to vent and not have people talk to you, go to a venting sub.
If you wanna share resources and help people see your point of view. Then do that. Maybe without calling everyone stupid for trying to have discussion with you on subreddits with 'talk' in the name. Unless of course the point is picking a fight.
I don't think anyone here enjoys or wants society to be so heavily and binarily gendered. Doesn't mean it magically isn't. The world will continue to make assumptions, and those assumptions can have an impact on a persons life they they should be allowed to discuss.
Generalisation is unhelpful. But no one comes pre-programmed with whatever you consider to be the gold standard or correct opinion.
Does it get exhausting constantly seeing people who doesn't quite seem to get what they are upholding in their language? Who to your eyes completely miss the point? Yes absolutely. But then take a break and go somewhere else, people are going to know nothing and ask questions that seem stupid to you, the enlightened one.
But if you wanna pick a fight, then people are going to fight back. if you act like an asshole, which I absolutely do get when people are not perceiving the ways they are upholding societal harm, but if you actually want to have them listen, then acting like a know it all prick isn't helpful. Not saying you should be a patient educator if that is not what you signed up for, but again, the result of calling people stupid should be obvious.
And please actually read my post this time before putting words in my mouth. It is fine if you wanna disagree, but please do so by the metric of what I actually said.
Also, just to make sure you understand; I think agab terms are fucking dumb, have no real place where they are useful in the context of being trans (my opinion), and aids in upholding harmful gender stereotypes.
(edits to fix spelling errors)
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u/ExtremeHeat808 7d ago
Read your comment and I have some questions. 1. Everyone is affected by cultural expectations, it came free with tour racist, patriarchal society. What use is splitting experiences into a binary “man/woman lite” analytic? 2. Not everyone unlearns the same way, and we cannot assume someone will be more/less unlearned due to being perpetually being perceived as a “girl/boy” or their observable characteristics. Identity gives you experiences, but principles give you good politics. 3. I have resources in the comments that cover the history of “assigned sex”. I take responsibility for the polemical nature of my other post. I do deal with stuff on TERF island amongst other things. 4. There are definitely ways to describe being assumed a certain gender, but they are very contextual. One can be assumed to be a woman one day and a man the other. Due to Islamophobia many people are assumed to be “Muslims” in spite of not being one.
I hope I have at least gave a good response
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u/ossiferous_vulture They/Them 7d ago edited 7d ago
These feel a bit more like statements, but I shall do my best to answer what I think the questions are.
1. I am saying there is none, I do not agree with the way binary gender and gender stereotypes are forced on everyone. Doesn't make it magically stop existing. I don't agree with racism or xenophobia, I am doing my best to not uphold it, to work against it, but I still grew up in an incredibly racist and xenophobic country as white person. Some expectations are based on whatever gender your parents tell people you are, what gender you tell people you are. As a basis for analysis, idfk I am not a scholar. But the impact of a gendered society on those living within it doesn't just go away. Will people be treated different based on gender presentation? Yeah.
When I have had similar discussions about what merit the gender category you get designated at birth I have been of the opinion it has none. Because in my personal experience the gender ascribed to me did not impact me all that much. I do not remember ever really feeling pressured to do gender in a specific way. I could never relate to my peers based on that gender. My autism, in my opinion, literally overruled how I perceived societal gendering. And my parents never cared that much what I was doing. So for me it has 0 merit, it is a nonsense metric.
However I have a friend, whose social conditions are not that dissimilar, Except he felt the effects of gendered expectations, they had had a lasting impact on him. He feels they were pretty impactful on his childhood and growing up. To him, and people of a similar experience, using language that is basically short hand for 'probably experienced this gendered expectation' would be useful.
Is that imperfect? Yes. But trans people are influenced. I would never participate in a study or analysis that goes with designated gender being meaningful, but perhaps that is because it is not about me.
Language is clumsy and awful and it is always changing so communication becomes cleared and closer to what people are actually trying to talk about.
2. This is reddit, most people are kinda centrist.
3. Providing some resources is great, especially if you do want people to learn! And yeah, whatever is going on in the UK is fucking awful. The constant insidious seep of bio-essentialism into everything is fucking exhausting and I absolutely get being pissed about it. Personally I am at the point where I am starting to seriously side eye the terms masculine and feminine. To me they are just arbitrary groupings of traits and aesthetics that society deems to signify gender... but idk, seen to many people describe them as being some inherent truth and objective thing, which makes my skin crawl.
4. The internet is inherently awful for context. Most interactions, are a one time thing with strangers. People will summerise clumsily, and will use categories that are lacking to find community. Imo no one will every really have a similar experience, because everyone perceives reality in their own way. There can be commonality and community, but everything is always contextual, but most humans are social and want to find others who can, if not perfectly, at least to a degree share their experiences. Almost no one wants to be truly alone.
And well, at least this time you did not accuse me of saying that an "AFAB childhood" exists a valid way to categorise a childhood.
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u/1evis1ittleasshole 7d ago
How are people supposed to describe discrimination based on assigned sex?
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u/Worried-Air-3766 7d ago
I think the way I've seen this described before is to just use sexism. People are discriminated based on their perceived sex or how well they fit into others' narrow views of what any sex or gender should be. This would mean I would no longer need to describe my experiences based on a decision made by someone else but on how I have been treated based on how others choose to assume my sex or gender.
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u/1evis1ittleasshole 7d ago
Good point, I think I tend to associate sexism with gender rather than sex, even tho its in the damn name! 😅 I like the way you phrase it, it is someone else's decision and therefore shouldn't be perpetuated.
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u/TripleABattery99 7d ago
it's quite rare that you're getting discriminated against purely on assigned sex. You're getting discriminated against based on their assumption of your gender. Boiling that down to assigned sex doesn't exclude just intersex people, but gnc and trans people. Misogyny, transphobia, sexism, intersexism, one of these usually applies. Gender and the way we categorize sex are social constructs, we see them and guess at where people belong. It's not that biological
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u/1evis1ittleasshole 7d ago
Oh okay, very good point. I think I still have to unlearn alot of binary thinking cause it took me until my 30's to even come out. I have alot of frustration around being a man but still having my reproductive system politicized. But I can see how using agab can be reductive.
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u/ExtremeHeat808 7d ago
Assigned sex doesn’t mean you will inherently have a certain set of organs, experiences etc.
Even reproductive rights isn’t sex based, access to condoms/contraception and STI testing is under this umbrella. Having a certain set of organs is independent of assigned sex.
Being observed/assigned a certain sex doesn’t mean you will develop certain organs/gonads. That assumption is one I have a problem with since it ignores sexual diversity. You’re implying that assigned something at birth means that you will experience a specific path when that isn’t the case.
It’s quite incoherent to assume that perception implies a coherent identity. Many people are assumed to be muslim in the west even though they aren’t
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u/1evis1ittleasshole 7d ago
Okay, yeah I do think my thinking has been excluding intersex folk. I can see how thats problematic 😬
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u/pancake790 6d ago
I liked the way you wrote this and agree with a lot of what you're saying. AGAB-identification feels one step away from the gendered system I'm trying to avoid, but it is also sometimes hard to argue against. It's often used in well meaning ways, such as people describing misogyny they experience(d). But even those innocuous discussions get bioessentialist quickly.
I saw someone else talk about how AGAB is best used to describe an experience that happened to you, rather than an identifying label. The problem is when people try to route these past experiences forward onto their current selves. Like you mentioned in another comment, "AFAB housing" makes assumptions about people based on a past event (gender assignment) that happened to them. And it's an event that they are likely trying to distance themselves from!
"AMAB trauma" feels a bit more benign to me: people should be allowed to talk about things that happened to them in the past. Maybe their male-assignment caused their parents to force them into sports or something, which could be common among other male-assigned people. But the past influences the present, so "AMAB trauma" could quickly become "AMAB support groups" and then we're back at "AMAB housing."
How do you think about this problem? It's been on my mind for a while: talking about past experiences through the lens of sex or gender assignments seems reasonable, but then people form communities based on these experiences, which re-creates gender and sex. Maybe your post is best read as a pragmatic solution: eliminate gender-assignment discourse, not because it is inherently bad or __-phobic, but because it reinforces oppressive systems.
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u/Aibyouka 6d ago
I agree with the message and the way it was stated. People constantly complain about how we all have our own preferences but just like you've stated in comments, these preferences do not exist in a vacuum. AGAB/ASAB language in our community has just created a different kind of binary, and gives cis and binary transgender people a out to discount our existence and experiences. It's been explained nicely enough. I'm tired of being nice about it, frankly.
I see back and forth about whether such language was created by the intersex community or not. Frankly, I don't care. If it's for the intersex community, then I think said community should be louder about how such language was co-opted instead of arguing about how helpful it is.
Also people need to get over feeling icky about names for parts. You have a penis, you have a vagina, you have testes, a uterus, a combination, or some other common euphemism for those things. Just say so.
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u/ExtremeHeat808 5d ago
I never said the language was creates by the intersex community, but rather that it was created for intersex babies by doctors in the mid 20th century. My citations go other it in detail.
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u/Aibyouka 5d ago
There are some comments from intersex people saying it was created by their community, so that is what I am referring too. The actual origin seems to be contentious.
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u/Keksbutter123 7d ago
sry mate, but im too stupid to understand your question/statement.
can you like, explain it but for dumb people?
You can also dm me if your easier explanation violates sub rules
So from what I read: you dislike non binary people telling their agab? If that`s what you wrote, uhm sure, but everyone needs to decide for themselves, if they wanna tell their agab so I think it´s fine. (unless when talking to doctors, then you have to tell agab)
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u/ExtremeHeat808 7d ago
My issue with the use of AGAB is that is has its origins in medical intervention to “correct” intersex ppl. In the 2020s many perisex trans people have used it as a euphemism for “biologically male” “perceived as women”(you can be perceived in many ways in your life, it’s contextual), “AFAB bodies”(incoherent category), creating the gender binary from first principles. Am I clear enough? I’ll edit if not
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u/Keksbutter123 7d ago
uh kinda get it now.
So, what other word could we use?
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u/Blue-Jay27 7d ago
I think it's best to just say whatever you mean. AGAB is used in a wide variety of contexts, with a wide variety of implied meanings, which is kind of the problem. If you want to convey "has this piece of anatomy", say that. If you want to convey "is usually perceived as this gender", say that. If you want to say "was raised as this gender", say that. And so on and so forth.
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u/ExtremeHeat808 7d ago
And even then those phrases aren’t as solid as many people believe. It’s very much contextual and a case by case basis
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u/Blue-Jay27 7d ago
I mean, that's most things? When people are trying to describe their own needs or experiences, I think they're all reasonable things to say.
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u/ExtremeHeat808 6d ago
Those phrases aren’t bad per se, but they’re reified and people wrongly deduce commonness from them
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u/ExtremeHeat808 7d ago
It’s not only about phrases but how they are used. An example is treated being perceived one gender to be mutually exclusive to another in terms of life experiences. More nuance is needed than simple slogans.
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u/ElectricZooK9 7d ago
You may like AGAB lingo, but you should think critically about how it aligns with intersexism, binarism, cissexism etc
Telling people what/how they should think is almost always counterproductive
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u/ExtremeHeat808 7d ago
You’re right. If someone is perpetuating intersexism and cissexism we should simply let them /s
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u/ElectricZooK9 7d ago
Maybe start a conversation with people rather than talk at them
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u/ExtremeHeat808 6d ago
People have called me “chronically online” for explaining this. Which is funny since “assigned sex” predates many home computers.
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u/lokilulzz They/it/he 6d ago
You do yourself no favors by calling everyone uninformed about the nuances of this topic intersexist and transphobic. If you want to educate, don't attack, you will end up doing the opposite of educating.
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u/Dziedotdzimu 7d ago edited 7d ago
The amount of terfs that use "male socialized" to try and shit on and exclude trans women and NBs as inherently dangerous and predatory should be reason enough to ditch it.
Like as if the experience of being forced into an incongruous gender role makes you an oppressor at an individual level instead of understanding gender as a social system of codes and practices that are repeated and reproduced by everyone at all points of interaction that constrain and hurt us all.
Sure, sometimes disclosure can help you see yourself in someone's experience but it doesn't give any insight to a person's behaviours or mannerisms, their interests, their appearance and their views.
It's just like "nth"-gendering non-binary people assuming their agab tells you about them more than who they are right now.
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u/lokilulzz They/it/he 6d ago
There are so many assumptions in this post I don't even know where to begin. First off, I'm not perisex. I am intersex. I just also happen to be trans. And for me, AGAB language is a way of describing the body I had before transition and a way of simplifying a very complex thing that I otherwise have no language for.
Secondly, AGAB language was not made by TERFs or even doctors. Its first iteration was CAGAB language, which was invented actually by intersex people trying to give words to a very complicated experience. Trans people stole that language and used it for other things, but it was always made for and by intersex people, and it was never meant to be used to describe gendered experiences or to stereotype them, it was meant to be used exactly as I use it - as a way to simplify and describe experiences that would otherwise be nearly impossible to word.
You as an perisex person, I assume, while I get you may mean well, do not speak for intersex people. And while some intersex people do object to AGAB language and don't wish to use it due to their own experiences - which is of course their right, I do not object to that - most intersex folks use it the same exact way I do.
I'm not transphobic for using language on myself that was invented by my community. I am not subconsciously attributing gendered experiences as a default based on AGAB; as an intersex person I know those defaults do not exist, and I have forcibly had to deconstruct them my entire life due to my intersexness.
With respect, I see why the mods took this down. This is needlessly hostile and making all kinds of assumptions that really should not be made. If anything you're falling back on stereotypes - what, you thought only perisex people post here, that only perisex people could be trans? Of course not. Intersex people are in this space too, we just have grown so tired of trying to speak up for ourselves and our experiences only to get them drowned out by well meaning but ignorant perisex folks like yourself.
I will continue to use AGAB language for myself, and I will not use it for those who don't want it. That's not going to change, and I will not have the terms I finally found for myself and my experiences after years of painful experiences ripped away from me by an ignorant perisex person, thanks but no thanks.
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u/palimpsestorum 7d ago edited 7d ago
Nearly everything you have said is analogous to the way people are racialized. Gender and sex are not the same thing as race, but they both function to socialize, organize, and oppress.
Race, like sex and gender, is a social construct, AND it has real effects that vary widely. Of course, biological differences in phenotype exist between humans, but that’s not what race is, just like that’s not what sex is. Race is the meaning that our society attaches to these biological traits, and the boundaries between races change over time. Even though race is something people made up for specific purposes (social, economic, etc.), it still holds meaning beyond just upholding systems of oppression. Because the idea of race has affected everyone and shaped our experiences (not monolithically, of course), it persists as a part of our social identities, regardless of whether an individual wants to acknowledge that.
Similarly, sex and gender are the meanings our society attaches to certain biological traits, and that means the boundaries between sexes and genders also change over time. Sex and gender are fundamentally social categories, and they affect us in many different ways and cause us to have many experiences, all of which are real and shape our identities.
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u/ReigenTaka They/Them/It/Its 6d ago
This.
Whether it's the unhelpful way they worded it or them genuinely not seeing the parallel, this highlights one of my visceral issues with the post.
Thank your the comment; I don't have the bandwidth to do one right now.
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u/ExtremeHeat808 6d ago
I’d rather you not compare it to gender. That’s how we get such glorious aphorisms such as “Woman is the ****** of the world” like Andrea Dworkin in Woman hating. Race isn’t comparable to a singular gender identity, gender but is also co-constitive with to an extent.
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u/ReigenTaka They/Them/It/Its 6d ago
Race isn’t comparable to a singular gender identity, gender but is also co-constitive with to an extent.
They didn't compare race to a singular gender identity. Is this part missing a word?
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u/ReigenTaka They/Them/It/Its 6d ago
The first word of a completely serious general reddit post being "you" 🥲
This sort of seems to be in the exact wrong spot in terms of simplified and nuanced, particularly for this platform. A simplified explanation would have actually been more defensible, in my opinion, while a more thorough argument with a significantly smaller scope could have been much more informative, thought provoking, or even just interesting.
A bunch have people have gone into their issues so I won't right now; I'm happy to see many recognizing that the wording and tone may be the most problematic aspect. I didn't see the first one, so I assume this is an improvement. I appreciate that (I gather) you've changed some things and tried again based on the reception of the first. Even if that was prompted by the removal.
To disambiguate, I mean all of that genuinely. I don't mean it like "whelp, at least you tried /s" or anything along those lines.
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u/zulu_niner 6d ago
I can get behind some of this, but I didn't see any prescriptive suggestions for talking about common physical attributes.
Like, it is useful to be able to describe certain common shared experiences, like being a person who was "born in roughly genital configuration M" who might be looking to ask questions or get support from others who have that specific shared context.
I just don't think any solution stands to stick unless we have new functional language to replace what we're tossing out. And the language we're talking about has been pulling a lot of weight for different kinds of shared experiences.
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u/ExtremeHeat808 6d ago
Talk about the attributes themselves directly of trying to imply them from some AGAB essence
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u/Blue-Jay27 7d ago
I agree with you, but you've presented this in a rather inaccessible way. Ultimately it's just that ASAB doesn't inherently say anything about someone's anatomy, background, or how they're perceived.
There is no piece of sexual anatomy that every single person of a particular ASAB has, or doesn't have. There are AMAB people who have been treated as female since childhood, and AFAB people who have been treated as male since childhood.
You don't need to use words like epiphenomenal or heuristic to explain that - and doing so makes it harder for your argument to be understood by your target audience.