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[Maximum Spin]

I don't remember my life before school very well, but I think it was similar in some ways?  We lived remotely and my parents were pretty egalitarian about stuff.  For some of the time my dad was home more than my mom, early computer job, despite us being in the middle of some woods.

But like, I'd visit my mom's friend's kids.  And watch Sesame Street.  I had strong androgynous women in my life, but I also had my hyper-feminine aunts and rugged farmer men.  Gender was everywhere, enough that even I saw it.

Yeah, I mean, it sounds like my case was just stronger. I didn't have things like that. Anchors, I mean. I didn't have media like that, and I didn't have people who were clearly classifiable in those terms at all. Not family, friends, or neighbours. I honestly have lots of reasons to think that the environment I grew up in was particularly weird, though, so it's not much of a surprise to me.

[alway]

What's the modern take on use of language like "gender assigned at birth" versus simply "gonads observed at birth."  Or more generally - is gender so closely tied with gonads and other presentation?

Or is gender orthogonal to primary and secondary sexual characteristics?  Or is it sometimes orthogonal and sometimes linked?

Or the ultimate extreme - does gender matter anyway? If so, why? If not, why do we make such a big deal about it? What does "getting gender wrong" actually mean, aside from side effects like in most cultures a history of oppressing the feminine?

My very naive fundamental question: if being a woman isn't related to bearing children, and being a man isn't related to siring children, just what is gender anyway?

1. Terminology like AMAB/AFAB are.... kinda cringe? In that way of someone explaining something badly, but not quite badly enough to call them out on it. They're generally used as stand-ins for several peices of information which may not be true, with a veneer of being polite by not talking directly about what is meant. As mentioned, current stats suggest intersex people outnumber trans people, or are at least a comparable quantity (many are both; intersex and transgender have high odds of occurring together). Birth gender assignment is either based on a very small subset of features, or is coercively applied by doctors deciding to 'fix' the ambiguity and force a child down one of two binary paths of the doctor's choosing. So people are assigned one of two labels, but those features implied by those labels may not actually be present. Of the trans folks I know, it's been like 50/50 odds on whether they even need T blockers because their bodies just don't produce it. If you need to know about biology, don't ask about gender, or even assigned gender, as they are largely orthogonal.

2. Gender is complicated. Best to think of it as... attempts to label clusters within a high-domensional space consisting of dozens of attributes (most of which are not biological). Most forms of categorization within human language are similar. This is why, even within a society, you won't find widespread agreement on what genders there are or what they consist of.

3. Gender, like society, religion, and philosophy, are fake. And like those, and other fake things, they go on existing nonetheless because they are of utmost importance to people everywhere.

4. Relatedly, it matters a lot. It is one of the core concepts of self, and relates to numerous attributes, and exploring that space is a very good way of figuring out the person you are and the person you want to be. Gender is tricky for precisely the above reasons: it is a stand-in for a number of attributes which may or may not even be present in a person with the gender those traits are associates with.
This covers some things to ponder: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1342553808178716672.html

Likewise, while some cling to bioessentialist views on gender, it is notably very funny when they encounter the real world and can't make heads or tails of how to correctly categorize me personally. They believe gender and sex are two different things, that gender is made up and sex is concrete and binary; when in reality my biology does not fit a binary, and that is by choice. My hormones say estradiol is the order of the day, and so my body fills it out as requested. Once upon a time, this was not the case; and so I have a delightful mix of features. My biology doesn't fit those silly false dichotomies surrounding the idea of 'sex' as one of a binary set.

[Maximum Spin]

It's important to remember that "intersex" can also be considered a derogatory term! Many, very probably most, people with DSDs (differences/disorders of sexual development) do not accept an intersex identity. This is particularly true for the most common DSDs. For example, I have happened to become familiar with the community of individuals diagnosed with Klinefelter syndrome, or (47,XXY); these individuals almost always identify as male, do not have any genital ambiguity, and are often indistinguishable or barely distinguishable from (46,XY) men. In general, the people of this genotype whom I have met stridently reject the label "intersex" and consider themselves to be male. I understand that the equivalent situation applies to Turner syndrome (45,X) females. XXX and XYY are reportedly even less likely to be phenotypically noticeable.

I'd also like to add that the common figure of 1.7% for "intersex" conditions is widely regarded as invalid by doctors, because 88% of that estimate consists of cases of late-onset adrenal hyperplasia (affecting an estimated 1.5% of the population), which, as the name implies, is not present at birth, does not result in genital ambiguity, and is not considered a DSD or "intersex" condition by doctors. Individuals with this condition (which can coexist with any sex chromosome configuration) have hormonal disorders which are usually mild, but are otherwise physically the same as unaffected individuals with the same sex chromosomes, and generally continue to identify as such. Another condition which is included in that estimate, but which is not regarded as an "intersex" condition, is vaginal agenesis, in which the female reproductive system develops "normally" internally, but fails to breach the skin surface. This is clearly a disorder of genital formation, but does not result in ambiguity, and such individuals are clearly phenotypically "female" and in fact just as fertile as anyone else except for the 'access' problem. Some researchers also do not include aneuploidies (all the things I mentioned in the last paragraph, where there are unusual configurations of sex chromosomes) among "intersex" conditions, which apparently results in an estimated rate of those conditions of approximately 0.02% of the population.

Even individuals with other categories of DSDs, including the most classical "intersex" conditions of CAIS (when an XY fetus develops a "female" phenotype) and CAH (when an XX fetus develops a "male" phenotype) [each about 0.008% of the population], do not usually adopt an intersex identity, although the best estimate I could find for both was "less than a fifth", which isn't as specific as I might like. So basically, to sum up, I recommend against using the word too freely!

[Vector]

I am not really sure I understand your point about ppl with DSDs. I don't see why "intersex" would be something you identify with, any more than one "identifies" as diabetic. It's kind of like if somebody had a medical transition and then said "I don't identify as trans." Like, sure, ok, but the world is going to identify you as trans whether you like it or not. You may not identify with the term, and it may not be important to you as a political category, but as a descriptor of what has happened with your body it's kind of ironclad. One doesn't identify as having particular genitalia anyway... one identifies as a gender.

I guess I have never heard "intersex" used as a slur except when a person wanted an ugly word for a trans person (what I mean is I have never heard anyone who wasn't trans or being clocked as trans called intersex as an insult). There was a lot of nastiness about micropenises a while ago but I'm not talking about that, I'm mentioning only the i-word.

This might be partly a problem with having put "intersex" into LGBTQIA+... I think more or less everyone in the community understands that the "I" may want nothing to do with us and uninterested in finding common cause, much like large numbers of "A" people don't consider themselves queer (and large numbers do and are welcome to participate, to be clear). But perhaps others don't know that it's supposed to be a welcome mat, not a wedding. For "I" it's a declaration of allyship and openness more than anything else.

Anyway, I'm not sure if it's clear from my post but I'm curious about this and interested in learning more.

[Maximum Spin]

-lol I just remembered that Vector doesn't like to be quoted, two hours later, sorry, I always forget that, too used to quoting everything-

Hm, I wouldn't have a clue where to point you to in terms of resources, but certainly, my understanding from the people I've spoken to is that they do firmly consider "intersex" to be an identity which does not apply to them. I can't speak for them in terms of whether they consider it to be a gender, though. I agree that it doesn't seem like the same thing to me. I suppose you could also use the word "label", although "identity" is the term I've seen used - it's possible to imagine that someone might not want to be labelled as a diabetic, and, if there were conditions that were in some sense like diabetes but arguably distinct - maybe diabetes insipidus could qualify? - it even makes sense to imagine someone with such a condition arguing about whether it falls under the label. In this case, the point that opens the debate is really that some of the most common DSDs are not even medically regarded as "intersex", at least not consistently, so there's certainly room to argue the label.

I don't think the people I've spoken to would mostly regard "intersex" as a slur either - the story I heard was more typically one of frustration toward well-meaning people using the word in a way they considered inaccurate. So I agree with you on that part, as far as I can say.

In any case, surely one can identify as having particular genitalia? Gender isn't the only form of identity. Ultimately, the point is, there are people who are often categorized as "intersex" who do not feel that the word describes them.

ETA: Like I said, I learned most of this from people with Klinefelter syndrome, and I understand there is a similar situation around Turner syndrome, so I guess that's who would be best to talk to. Neither is exceptionally uncommon so there are reasonably-sized communities around them.

[voliol]

I don't really wibe with statements such as "gender is fake/a social construct", when it does not explicitly refer to gender roles. Part of it is that I believe myself to feel some gender, but it is also very similar to the "gender/sex-based sexualities can't be real" that comes naturally to me as a pansexual. Thing is, neither statement lines up with testimonies of now-living people, nor the historical record. Even if we consider the ways genders and sexualities play out to be influenced by contemporary understandings - some sort of social constructs - people have still "chosen" to live out roles which were transgressive and oppressed, in all times and all places. And that strongly implies that it is not all a choice. Because who would arbitrarily choose a more painful life to live out?

Just to be clear, I'm not saying only those "out" are homosexual or transgender (using modern terms). Rather, that in a world where we can't just ask gay people "does gender-based sexuality" exist and get a "yes duh", because we don't trust them to give an answer independent of what social constructs surround sexuality (or similarly with trans people and gender), we can still deduce there is something there, causing what would otherwise be very strange behavior. And denying this "something" is denying the experiences of those people.

I'm sorry if I'm misrepresenting any of you, just to make it clear I think it is a very easy trap to fall into. Both from a position where you truly aren't affected by this "something", due to being agender or bi/pan of some kind. But it's also easy if you are ostensibly affected, but it doesn't pull you against the grain.  Like, how many cis and/or straight people have you not met who deny gender and/or sexuality? There's obviously some reactionary response here as well, but part of it is unwillful ignorance. Because it doesn't come naturally even if people have gender or sexuality, when they aren't forced to think about it.


Re: intersex I don't know that I know any people with DSDs, but statistically I should know someone with late onset adrenal hypoplasia. Don't feel I have much to add, but it's interesting for sure.

[Vector]

@Max Spin: *thinking noises*

@McTraveller: as you can see lots of other people have replied. Here's yet another viewpoint:

What's the modern take on use of language like "gender assigned at birth" versus simply "gonads observed at birth."  Or more generally - is gender so closely tied with gonads and other presentation?

I agree with Alway but I'm going to embellish a little.

So, "assigned [foo] at birth" is a term that the trans community actually took wholesale from intersex people. The "assigned" part was originally about ambiguous genitalia that were then declared to be [foo] and then your parents would raise you as a [foo]. LOL.

"Coercively assigned..." was originally a way of nodding at a surgical intervention. I have seen some trans people misappropriating this (well, misunderstanding it) and using that language to explain how angry they are at having been made to be [foo]. The last time I saw it misused was a long time ago, though.

Now. Trans adults, almost all of whom right now have had to experience socialization and childhood as a gender misaligned with their sense of self, use AGAB as a way to talk about childhood and formative early adulthood experiences, or experiences around misogyny for example, see below. I think discourse around AGAB and the reason to say it that way matters more, makes more sense, whatever, when you don't pass as the thing you're trying to live your life as, or when you're trying to explain "I think I might be trans, can someone talk to me about it" and you don't want to have to say "I'm a man" or "I have body parts [bar]." In that case, you aren't a trans man, or whatever, yet. You were assigned female at birth and you're trying to find out what happens next.

Something that happened IRL recently: two cis women and two nonbinary people in a room. The cis women start talking about how work is always left to women. The nonbinary people nod. Later when the enbies are kvetching one of them angrily says, "she was right though, why was it all AFABs?"

There's other AGAB discourse, usually around intracommunity arguments. I'm not going to air them out here for public consumption but you can find them on Twitter.

An important note is that AGAB is more or less only socially acceptable as a thing to talk about explicitly for: 1. online conversations between 2. people who don't know each other IRL, who 3. are talking about RL events where 4. perceived gender rather than actual gender is relevant, and most importantly 5. there is no photograph of the person available.

It's generally considered to be Bad Form to describe trans people in terms of their AGAB, especially nonbinary people. There's some nuance to this situation but the main thing is that if you are talking about someone who is nonbinary to a third party who hasn't met them, like "I just met my kid's new teacher, Mx. so and so," you should absolutely not respond to further questioning with "Oh, they're AFAB" or "Oh, they're AMAB." Provide the information that the other person gave you and maybe other elements that are 1. chosen and 2. visible (the person's gender presentation, like "Mx. Anderson has a crew cut and a skirt"), and ideally nothing else.

First, you might be wrong. But one of the reasons why this is so very cringe is because nonbinary people historically have unequal access to medical transition and hormones, although we are getting more of it in recent years. So in some/many cases you are drawing attention to somebody's inability to get healthcare or a deliberate choice they are making in case they need to "pass" as something binary for safety.

In other cases, like cases where there's a lot of ambiguity and mixed signals, many trans people really don't want to be informed that you clocked them as one thing or another. Once again... ya may be wrong. Just let it go...

Or is gender orthogonal to primary and secondary sexual characteristics?  Or is it sometimes orthogonal and sometimes linked?

I think it's more that it's a linked variable, meaning that one's sex has something to do with it, but it is not entirely determined by externally visible sex characteristics. There is some evidence that trans people are basically "created" by hormones gendering the brain in utero not matching hormones which gendered the body. These are separate waves of hormone baths.

Or the ultimate extreme - does gender matter anyway? If so, why? If not, why do we make such a big deal about it? What does "getting gender wrong" actually mean, aside from side effects like in most cultures a history of oppressing the feminine?

I think it matters. We're not getting rid of gender anyway, not without getting rid of all our books and all our history. Most cisgender people seem to really enjoy their genders, too. The best we can do is try to open it up so that people can play with it and make something new from it.

I'm not really sure what you mean by "getting gender wrong." Do you mean, what side effects are there to getting gender wrong? Or do you mean, "what is it to get gender wrong?"

My very naive fundamental question: if being a woman isn't related to bearing children, and being a man isn't related to siring children, just what is gender anyway?

"Gender" is "genre." (In other romance languages, they are literally the same word) Two of the popular genres in our culture are the "soft baby lullaby song" and the ... the "inseminator's song" (I was going to say "warrior's song," but whatever). If you're agender maybe you're noisecore.

The thing is that what seems fundamental to you does not seem fundamental to many others, and I don't mean trans people. For example, I've heard that "being a woman or being a man comes down to the role you want to play during sex and that's the only difference." I've also heard that it's about "caring for children while men are away" vs. "being called upon to go to war."

And then, there are the signs and signals which are used to show "my privates are hidden under my clothes but be aware that I could sing a lullaby if necessary, if ya know what I mean" and so on, which also become part of gender. A lot is made of handkerchief and carabiner codes but, well, I won't keep writing, you can finish the sentence yourself.

So gender is also, in a sense, about signaling normative sexuality, or tied to those expressions. It's a big fuzzy cloud, remember, a big fuzzy cloud full of nonconformists.

My point is that I have heard both of the dichotomies above as being the one and only thing that matters most about gender and exclusively determines gender. You can't all be right, so most people usually use a definition that kind of includes all of these things at the same time. And then boom, you have The Feminine and The Masculine in western culture, and Traditionalism, taran tara!! and a bunch of gender non-conforming people, and the transgender riot.

[Maximum Spin]

Re: intersex I don't know that I know any people with DSDs, but statistically I should know someone with late onset adrenal hypoplasia. Don't feel I have much to add, but it's interesting for sure.

I know, right? It's interesting that it's so common. I have family members with hyperandrogenism, which might be that, but could also be caused by other conditions.

@Max Spin: *thinking noises*

I'm sorry to say - I'm not interpreting this as you making any statement, I'm just using it as a convenient backreference to the conversation - that I can't give you anything more than that. Honestly, I tend to be uncomfortable speaking for other people so I probably wouldn't have brought it up at all normally, but it just happened to twig the memory for me and, already being in a little bit of an overly gregarious mood today, I thought "oh hey, I know something about this!" and felt like it was a good idea to share it, and now I'm a little uneasy about that, so uh... well, that's not your fault, that's just me, but I hope it gives some kind of context. Also, I'd like to add, not to you specifically but just in general, that I also wasn't assuming anyone meant anything harmful by raising DSDs in the first place.

[McTraveller]

Thanks for the discourse, everyone. An advantage of posting at my end-of-day, when you all seem to be in different time zones 

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...)

I think part of it is also that I don't personally tie my sexuality or gender role or nationality or career so tightly to my sense of identity... so trying to understand why for so many people some aspect of life like that is so core to identity is something I'm trying to understand - because I just "don't get it"; I don't get offended if someone assumes something incorrect about me in that way, for example.

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)?

Is the social impact really as simple as "society uses gender as a shortcut people use to decide if they want to hook up with each other, so when those associations become less clear, people get sexually frustrated and that bleeds over into other expressions of frustration"?  Sure it's got nuances, but isn't that really the core of what gets people so bent out of shape?  Or maybe even if it isn't about hooking up, just a general violation of expectations*? Messing with expectations is always a good way to generate conflict...

Incidentally, I am in the camp that thinks gender is as "real" as any other social construct - it's not "fake."  Perhaps there's an argument that it's arbitrary, but it's definitely not "fake."

Spoiler: * A side thought (click to show/hide)

So I want to contemplate this line of thought a bit more, but the post is already getting long...

Basically, the thought is that people have a lower physiological stress when they know what to expect from a situation, especially social situations. So things like social norms based on gender, which provide a kind of shortcut, reduce cognitive load and stress.  If "gender norms" are no longer "norms" - that is, if every individual has to be treated uniquely, this is a massive stressor for everyone (likely it's subconscious, even) because everyone has to spend much more cognitive effort attempting to figure out how to behave in a social setting.

This seems to manifest in "I don't want to have to keep track of everyone's pronouns" discussions. I don't think people really care what people's pronouns are, I think they care about having to keep track of it in a way that isn't necessarily tied to easy-to-remember social cues.

So there's the tension between self and social friction... maybe in another life I'd study this with more academic rigor.

[Starver]

Late to this rather rapidly evolved question/answer session, but my take on it. For what it is worth.

Using the addage of "Gender is what's between your ears, sex is what's between your legs, sexuality is who is between your legs", all three things (themselves not even striftly binary, linear or otherwise uncomplicated) are, IMO, perpendicular.

Gender cannot really be detected at birth, so is provisionally assigned based upon the observed (or assumed, presumed or even wishfully-thought) sex.

'True' gender may reveal itself later, but (as mentioned) social conventions/expectations may do as much damage as the surgeon might previously have done to the inconveniently non-standard sexual features. But physical sexual characteristics is the golden standard for society to take its cue from, even if not really supposed to be actually on full display for impromptu checking by strangers.

Sexuality shouldn't really (certainly not involuntarily) come into things until(/after) puberty, and as such might be inevitably described in terms arising from the way sex and gender have ('male-brained female body' and 'female-brained male body' both map to 'queer', despite being different in so many ways apart from perhaps the shared sense of 'otherness', and not necessaily a predictor of the choice/non-choice of partners), becoming what might be the most socially obvious label presented in maturity[1]. Given how both sex and gender can be presented differently (whether going to the extent of full-blown top-and-bottom surgery or merely living life as whoever you think you want to be to the greatest allowable extent), it is still contextually tied into what people want to think of it, and perhaps change as easy as any relationship status might, but who two people are (or seem to be) who are holding hands/kissing seems to be what most people latch onto easiest.


I was citing some of my life experiences (or, rather, of people I know who have relevent life experiences) to back up my philosophies in this subject, but it started to get a bit too involved and closer than comfortable to identifying those I wouldn't really wish to be anything more than an abstract anecdote. The two easy to boil down cases are of a friend's son who played with feminine toys at a very young age and grew up to be gay yet otherwise happily male (SFAIK), whilst someone else who I never knew to be anything other than a 'lad' eventually went through the full(?) surgical process to a very passable trans-female (but, last I knew, apparently fully and contentedly asexual in a carer relationship). Not great support for my wider views, and woefully short of any AFAB cohort, but showing enough of a mixing-it-up to untie some of the common fallacies (phallusies?) about sex/gender/sexuality cross-pigeonholing.

Myself: unambiguous with the bits and pieces, I don't believe I have any relevent dysphoria and my practical sexuality is pretty much of towards the V. planifolia. Not worthy of citation, and perhaps then makes me a bad person to opine upon the actual complexities. But here are my 'qualifications' anyway, should you feel the need to respond to my diatribe.


[1] Clothes do complicate this. In a given time and society that vehemently denies ambisexual/androgynous clothing options, the person wearing a man's clothing is perhaps most conveniently deemed a man, regardless of everything else, and vice-versa the person in ubiquitously female attire. But clothing styles and options change so much that exceptions to the standard probably just feed into the battle between polarisation and ambiguity of the next culture along, or across any other narrow divide.

[None]

I shouldn't be posting before I've had coffee, but... in place of actual community members.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think gender dysphoria is largely the missing component in your analysis, McTraveller. Gender's not as big an aspect of your identity because you have no point of friction with it. It's there, it's well enough yours, and it doesn't prickle, chafe, or obstruct you in being who you are. For someone to whom gender constructs are constantly causing strife, be it with how one is able to express oneself, or contention with one's own body when it doesn't look the way it's supposed to, or especially when someone else is making a life-threatening ruckus based on how they observe your gender, it's going to mean a lot more. I think that's also part of why so much emphasis is put on gender and on the reclamation/celebration of it in queer communities. And that's a good thing! We generally culturally understand that gender stereotypes can be incorrect or harmful, so to claim it individually and celebrate it as claimed individually takes that power away from the generalizations that have caused friction already.

As far as pronouns go, sure brain heuristics are going to want to generalize in a way that is quick and lazy, which sometimes means we jump to a conclusion about a person's gender or pronouns. Providing pronouns upfront immediately subverts that, and with cisgender people, shows thought and solidarity for queer folk. It isn't or won't be something you see all the time (or even most of the time), which is why the show of solidarity helps so providing pronouns isn't something exclusively relegating to being queer. I don't know that we'll be free of, broadly speaking, 'gender norms,' but what's normal or abnormal for each gender may change, as will the way we discuss it. Same goes for assigned gender at birth - if one has no qualms about their assigned gender, they won't discuss it in that way, and it'll never come up since the heuristic works. It can be an important point of reference where there's deviation or transition, and when there's transition, there probably is negative connotation because it's carried a friction with how one sees oneself for all their life.

I dunno. I get misgendered probably once or twice a year. It's jarring because you suddenly get a snapshot of how someone else generalizes you and when that's outside your sense of self, which is again jarring because we apply these heuristics to ourselves, too! In my context, there's been no malice behind it, it's interesting to note when I'm in the company of friends and I get offhandedly referred to as 'she' (and it's immediately corrected and moved on). And again, it's lazy brain heuristics, so probably not worth reading into, but it does make me wonder how they see me, y'know?

I hesitate to make correlations between biological faults or disabilities, but to draw a parallel- I cannot eat chicken, because I have a weird allergy. People frequently don't believe me when I tell them this, and it's led to the navigation of awkward social scenarios (for example, a work lunch at Chick Fil-A). I need to make special requests to hosts in order to maintain my wellbeing, or quietly go hungry when that's impossible. My health counts on not eating chicken. Largely speaking, most people don't wrap 'ability to eat chicken' in their identity or sense of self because it's perfectly mundane to do that. It's something I have to be aware of all the time when I eat, and I'm fortunate that there's a social acceptance for vegetarianism because that frequently gives me safe food alternatives- they're allies, if you will. I have to be cognizant for me; infrequently I need you to be cognizant for me for my wellbeing. I don't want to be referred to just as 'that person that cannot eat chicken' because I'm more than that, and to generalize me specifically as that is rude. Fortunately, my dietary restrictions do not get scapegoated for political reasons and nobody is passing legislation to force a drumstick down my gullet, but if some political party was going to overturn legislation that requires ingredients to be listed or obfuscates allergens like tree nuts, I'd be raising an unholy hell or leaving for safer lands because that would be a fight literally for my life. Oh yeah, I'm dangerously allergic to hazelnuts, by the way.

Now, I'm pretty cisgendered so if I've got the wrong ideas here, please call me out. I'd like to be a better ally whenever possible.

[alway]

On intersex stuff, most of my education on that comes from talks and presentations at a local trans & intersex art festival. Some of those were people talking about their own lives, in which doctors effectively picked a binary gender for them, and forcibly enacted surgery on them as very young children to make them physically conform to that. This was then followed by hormone treatments, which were never really explained to them, or about which they were misled/gaslighted. Even with all this, some of them described not finding out this had been done to them until they realized something was odd in university.

But that's only a part of it. Intersex conditions often aren't even something people are aware of having, as they usually don't manifest in ways people notice. For example, the folks I mentioned who went on feminizing hormones, whose first hormone blood test prior to starting revealed 'oh yeah, your body just doesn't produce testosterone as we would expect it to.' As was also mentioned, things like XXY and other chromosome differences often don't manifest all that differently phenotypically because chromosomes just don't control development as much as the zeitgeist tells people they do. We don't normally get a good inventory of where and what all our internal organs are; nor is it standard to test hormones or genetics. In one particular case study, a perfectly normal woman gave birth to a daughter; in her late teens, the daughter has a screening related to late/incomplete puberty, and was found to have XY chromosomes. They then tested her mother, who was also found to have XY chromosomes, without it affecting her phenotype. This is the point I'm making about intersex conditions: they often aren't a big deal, and often don't affect how someone goes about their life; but nonetheless, they do quietly invalidate AGAB-as-biology assumptions, just as things like trans people taking hormones does.


As for gender being fake: I say it specifically in the way The Hogfather mentions that you won't find a single atom of hope, love, or justice in the universe. Gender is fake, in that it isn't tied to any particular measurable thing, but is instead how humans have chosen to subdivide and classify. Likewise, this doesn't imply it isn't a matter of choice: I don't believe in a gender binary or cis-normativity. That doesn't mean I get to live outside of all the systems society has built around those things or even that I am free of that influence over both my thoughts and presentation. But at the same time, different societies see gender differently; see different dividing lines on what makes up gender; find different meaning in what gender is. It is all too easy to get caught up in one's own culture's narratives and forgetting any others ever existed.

Underlying all of this, that same high-dimensional space of attributes that get all bundled up into "gender" exists; how you subdivide, or even which things you include as part of it, is all surface-level labelling and classification. The trouble comes when society moves from passively categorizing and labelling, and into the realm of declaring "because it is of this gender, it must have these attributes." Whether that's gender roles, biological, or social in nature. Some of these things aren't chosen; some of them very much are chosen, in an attempt to become closer to the person we want to be.

As an aside, I do disagree with this bit:
"It's kind of like if somebody had a medical transition and then said "I don't identify as trans." Like, sure, ok, but the world is going to identify you as trans whether you like it or not. You may not identify with the term, and it may not be important to you as a political category, but as a descriptor of what has happened with your body it's kind of ironclad."
I know it's not the point it's making, but incidentally, transgender isn't a bio-essentialist descriptor; it's equally valid to be a trans woman who takes hormones as it is to be a cis man who takes hormones or a cis woman who doesn't take hormones or a trans woman who doesn't take hormones; everyone should have that autonomy over their bodies regardless of gender and regardless of whether they actually want to make use of that autonomy. Like, if you want to make your body more in the image of what you would prefer it to be, and it is generally safe to do so and the tradeoffs are worth it, go for it. This distinction is an important one as it decouples the question of body modification from the question of gender: changes should be made to one's body specifically because they want those changes, rather than it being expected of them as part of a gender, trans or otherwise. When I was starting hormones a bit over 5 years ago (holy wow it's been that long already? dang), I was nervous as everyone is about "is this the right decision? what if after exploring it I turn out to not actually be a woman??" To which I had the realization: It doesn't actually matter; the real question that matters is whether I would prefer my body the way it was, or the way it would become. From this, I immediately realized: even in a worst-case scenario of detransitioning and being a cis man for the rest of my life, any lingering changes would be welcome over the way things were. (since then, of course, the changes from hormones have gone beyond the best hopes I dared have about them; can't even imagine a life without them).

went through the full(?) surgical process to a very passable trans-female

As another aside, most trans women don't actually get surgery to any part of them which is visible to society. It's sort of a spontaneously generated mythology built by cis people who don't understand how people can completely change their body's appearance without surgical intervention. 90% of the heavy lifting is just done by hormones: it changes skin, hair, nails, smell, facial structure and the shape of bodies on every level above the skeleton (and even a couple there), causes breast development, and so on. A good number get breast augmentation later, as wider shoulders from testosterone puberty tend to make those appear smaller; a few get FFS to shave a bit of the facial bone structure. Bottom surgery is still less common than not (though around a slim majority do want it at some point; there's a lot of hurdles for that one) But for the most part, it's just presentation and hormones. The transtimelines subreddit shows this off quite nicely if you want concrete examples.

[Vector]

@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?

[TD1]

I just find it humourous that people are afraid to say 'man' and 'woman' now. I say this because I'm currently reading an article which references 'people who own a vagina' and 'people with a penis'

And I'm just like

.... lol?

[GadgetPatch]

I think the ownership wording is a little awkward, but it's more accurate. Socially-constructed genders like Man and Woman don't comport with bodies, for innumerable reasons. People come in more shapes than that binary.

I'm all for streamlining communication, and (as a former med student of trans experience) I can still see the utility of inventing new shorthands for the medical state of a body, for a limited set of circumstances.

But hey, I also prefer a slightly clumsy but more accurate language, to a false oversimplification.