[CW: Discussions of Transphobia/Unsolicited Sexual Behavior]
A “leftist feminist” who disagreed with something I said accused me of having “male privilege” even though she knows I’m transfeminine. She said that “all male people have male privilege,” with the term “male” there including transfeminine people. To do some harm reduction, she said "I didn’t say anything about your gender, just your maleness."
What’s really the kicker is that, even if you like to use this awful “sex and gender are different things” as a means of trying to have one foot on the transphobe side and another foot on the trans ally side, the idea of transfeminine people having male privilege from a systemic point of view is just deeply unserious.
I lost my family, got called queerphobic slurs by them in the process, dealt with extended periods of joblessness while also fearing the potentiality of being homeless with basically no support but Hexbear, and have gone through various other abuses because of my transfeminine identity, including uncomfortable sexual scenarios with men, and I have male privilege?
Well, let’s not forget that she was also 
The differentiating between sex and gender is definitely transphobic but I don’t see a problem with a trans person menioning that they were amab or afab. I think that the difference in which male presenting and female presenting children are treated are important topics to talk about, also for trans people (if they want to obviously).
I view my experiences of sexual assaults and aggressions when I was a child as part of growing up while presenting as a girl. These events would not have happened if the perpetrators did not see me as a girl. And these events have had a huge impact on who I am today, and I need to share the afab part to anyone that is important enough to me that I want them to understand who I am and why I am who I am. Transphobes will use it to disregard my gender, but anyone smart enough to be able to distinguish gender identity and assigned gender at birth will understand what I mean when I tell them that my assigned gender at birth was female.
Idk if I need to add a disclaimer that I recognise that sexual violence can be a part of a boys’ childhood as well same for trans children who present as boy or non binary. It’s just that in the violence that I experienced my female presentation was very explicitly the reason why I was assaulted. I’m pretty sure that the median cis woman gets most frequently sexually harassed when she is a child (for me it was between ages 10 and 16), so sexual harassment is a pretty big part of growing up when you are perceived as being a girl as well.
I’m talking about the shit like “queer household looking for roommates, afabs only” that’s just the woke way to call transfems men and transmascs women.
Ew, I’ve never seen that but that’s very transphobic
“AMAB” and “AFAB” are absolutely not inherently bad, but they’ve been tainted by certain kinds of people, being used as some sort of “woke” loophole for misgendering. For instance, since trans women and transfeminine people are undeniably AMAB by definition, people find that using “AMAB” instead of “man” isn’t misgendering even though it can still be incredibly toxic. This could manifest as people disgustingly saying things like “AMABs tend to be more violent than AFABs.”
Yeah, it can be a useful descriptor sometimes, but way too often it’s just used by people who believe in the sex/gender dichotomy as a substitute for male/female
Yeah, it can be a useful descriptor sometimes, but way too often it’s just used by people who believe in the sex/gender dichotomy as a substitute for male/female
I know this probably isn’t what you meant, but I wanted to say it anyway. Nothing about you or your appearance can be blamed on you. It was the responsibility of your assaulters to not attack and hurt other people. It’s done by people who think they have a right to someone else’s body.