@MaxSpin -- it's ok, I'm just updating "zero information outside of a textbook" to "someone said something interesting and I'll look for more info."
@Alway -- I appreciate your critique.
Still trying to wrap my head around it. Mostly about terms like AGAB - because it seems to always been used in a negative connotation, when for many people the letter on their birth certificate matches how they see themselves. So it's "almost always correct" in the statistical sense (high 90s percent)... so it has always struck me as odd the way it seems to be used (and to be fair I've only encountered its use online, so...)
Yeah, so the specific term AGAB as seen in online discourse is used to describe a tension between how you were assigned and what you are, so it's going to represent strong negative feelings for many people. When people clock you as having a different gender than the one you were assigned, that can be the moment before things get violent, or just interpersonally nasty.
There are lots of trans people like Alway said who don't have especially negative feelings about their AGAB, who don't experience gender dysphoria. But the term, "AGAB," almost always comes up in those moments of tension. The difference between who you were made to be and who you are if given half a chance.
So yeah one of my questions was - "what does it mean if someone gets your gender wrong?" It's less clear than the question of "what does it mean if someone gets your sexuality wrong" because that clearly impacts the practicality of physical relations. I guess if people always assume your gender (appearance/behavior) matches your physical activity preferences, that's where the conflict really arises (even moreso than association with child bearing/siring)?
Your mileage may vary on the following. I'm writing about my experience and I don't claim that it's generalizable. And sorry for the long post.
In my particular situation, I don't identify as a woman but I sort of look like one. I say sort of because there are a lot of changes I've made from how I was told as a child to behave
or else. Let's look at some of the things a person can do gender without medical intervention:
- Hairstyle
- Personal grooming (shaving or not shaving things, for example)
- The pitch/manner/style of their voice
- The way that they walk, sit, stand. Do they hold doors open for women? For men?
- Word choice (how they talk about themselves and about other people, cis or trans.) (have you ever heard this person say "ladies and gentlemen?")
- Word choice part 2: one of the ways that one signals "mutual cisgenderness" is by indicating that specific trans people are confusing/sending mixed signals, in private. A person who won't shit on a trans stranger and who can read their gender signals is sometimes treated as though their behavior is suspect.
- Speech style: direct? blunt? making space for others? with a habitual tendency for understatement?
- Clothing -- not just "masculine" or "feminine" styles, but emphasizing or de-emphasizing aspects of their appearance, like the trans femme empire waist dress or the trans masc "dysphoria jacket;" or choosing clothing that now encodes transness itself, eg the famous outfit of blocky glasses, thigh highs and skirt or skinny jeans, an anime t-shirt, and birkenstocks or doc martens.
- Clothing part 2 -- tucking and binding.
- Gestures; how often do they smile? do they take up space? glare openly at people who are being annoying? hold your gaze?
- Job choice -- public-facing? gendered? the kind of job where one can be hidden from view?
- The people with whom one associates. Mostly men? mostly women? mostly queers? a mix?
- Handwriting
- Hobbies (frequently gendered)
- Who they date and in what way. How did the lucky meeting happen? If you're trans, it was probably on the internet.
- The books and movies a person is familiar with and the characters that they relate to.
- When questioned, do they understand a fundamental distinction between male and female? Or do they make telling mistakes?
When examining the overall "signal" that a person puts off, there are many people who defer to perceived AGAB without thinking about it. Others see a discrepancy between the perceived AGAB and social signals and say: "aha, a trans person!" Sometimes this is good, and sometimes this is very, very bad.
(For example, when a child asks their parent, "mommy, is that a man or a woman," and the parent looks at me very closely and says "Uh... I don't know, sweetie," that is a happy experience for me. But most people wouldn't like to have that experience with any regularity)
I can pass as a cis female with effort, but many of my signals on the above list are mixed, opposite, or "confused." On the above list the "non-trans" signals for me are: I don't bind, I have pretty handwriting, I have lots of stereotypically feminine hobbies, and I am caring towards others. I wear femme clothing sometimes -- which is different from "female" clothing in the sense that most women don't wear that style either, but they are wearing "female" clothes.
Anyway, regardless of what I put on, the gestures, overall personality, and "vibe" all read wrong. When I wear femme clothes, people who I know often cannot recognize me, and think I am a different person. I get lots of compliments. It doesn't confuse trans people, though, who know what's up, and usually say something like "I dig your costume."
But when I wear what I would normally wear without thinking about it, and act how I normally would like to act, sometimes people get angry because they can see my AGAB but they think I would be a bad mother or wife. Or because they find it confusing, because sometimes I look like a woman, and sometimes I look like something else that they don't have words to describe. There is a distorted signal. I certainly don't look like a man, but I don't look like a woman either. Luckily, I don't identify as either of those, so that's the intended effect.
And sometimes, I do things that are seen as belonging to the sacred domain of men, like stepping into a conflict to protect other people, and I'm not just criticized for it -- it's as though it didn't happen, it's a scar. It's removed from the public record because someone like me could not have acted like that, because if that goes on the record, I am no longer cis, and it's agreed in cisgender society that it's important to overlook the little things that make a person not-cis.
And more importantly, there are certain things that you just can't do, the deep gender taboos, the fundamentals, and in those moments the perception crosses over, and I am not just a "confusing" or "gay" woman but a woman who, sometimes, performs the social role of a man correctly. I earn my gender over and over again until it can't be ignored and it can't be made coherent in anyone's mind by claiming either "that's a man" or "that's a woman." Eventually people treat me with respect, and they can finally see me. But it takes time. Usually years with any group of people.
So let's talk about the people who don't just defer to AGAB and who aren't angry about it. Trans people can usually clock me instantly as "some flavor of trans." Cis people who are told that I am trans but saw me as cis through perceived AGAB become unsure of my AGAB.
And then there's the more interesting ones: the trans women who consider me to just be male, full stop, the gay men who read me as a gay male (piloting a woman's body), the straight cis men who decide I'm a he/him even when I'm wearing a dress, the lesbians who say I am unusually feminine for a nonbinary person, it goes on and on.
So, why not just be perceived as a woman? Why should I be?
Why not be perceived as a man? Why should I be?