Somewhat Against Trans-Inclusive Language About Biological Sex

"People with vaginas"? Well, maybe

I have complicated feelings about trans-inclusive language about biological sex.

“Assigned female at birth” (AFAB) and “assigned male at birth” (AMAB) are intended to refer to whether the doctor¹ looked at your genitals when you were a baby and declared you to be a boy or a girl. However, few people use these terms to refer specifically to the effects of birth assignment. Instead we get statements like:

“AFAB people need to do breast self-exams to check for cancer.” Well, no. People with an estrogen-dominant hormone system rather famously grow breasts. And—again, rather famously—there’s a surgery that many trans men (and some cis women) get that means they don’t have breasts anymore.

“Well, I’m just attracted to AMAB people and not AFAB people.” Somehow I think you’d be pretty unhappy to discover that your partner has breasts and a vulva.

“AMAB people need to step back and listen to AFAB people about misogyny.” I was assigned female at birth but I socially transitioned when I was nineteen. There are many, many trans women who have far more and more recent experiences of misogyny than I do. This statement is frankly transmisogynistic—it assumes that trans women’s experiences are the same as men’s.

It’s true that all three situations I discussed are unusual: most AFAB people have breasts, experience misogyny, and are unattractive to heterosexual women. But most AFAB people are non-intersex cis women. Many people’s usage of AFAB and AMAB only include people who aren’t biomedically transitioning and who live as their assigned gender—a relatively small fraction of trans people. These sentences, ironically, exclude more trans people than they include.