Language is hard. We have inherited more words than we know what to do with and still can’t seem to convey a fraction of what we’re trying to say to one another. In queer circles, language is a constant discussion — and, depending on how important you consider it, disturbance — that permeates the present tense of our lives, love or hate it.
I realised embarrassingly recently that my writing work has been preoccupied with language for years, which indicates that against my better judgement I still believe words have the power to do something important, perhaps even something radical. I guess I would not be writing at all if I didn’t believe this in some way either, so here we are.
In trans world, we have a lot of words, and argue about those words a lot, which I would call a sport if it was not inviting the apparently inherent accompanying outrage. The words we use for ourselves and our histories are important because they can invite recognition, visibility, and solidarity, but none of these are simple or agreed upon things. I want to talk for a moment about birth assigned gender, also known as Assigned Gender At Birth or Presumed Gender At Birth, because this is one of the areas that has become a point of some concern and confusion, and reveals what I think are important tensions across trans communities.
The concept of AGAB emerged at some point in the past hundred years, give or take(1), and without any of its baggage can be read as describing the gender that you were assumed to be in the minutes after birth based on your genitals(2), and as a result what sex was recorded on your birth certificate. I first came across it in trans women’s online spaces as the term ‘CAMAB’ (with the C standing for Coercively), and have also seen ASAB (Assigned Sex At Birth) and DSAB (Designated Sex At Birth) used in the same way in different times and places. I have also seen discourse among intersex circles about its use, but that’s not an area I can speak to in any detail.
In trans circles, there was a period of time where I saw this emerge as a way for non-binary people to describe individual bodies, primarily their own, such as when accessing reproductive healthcare, but it almost immediately escaped containment and has lead to quite a lot of mess. There’s a few key messes I want to go into here. First, there’s a general confusion around sex, gender, and biology that I unfortunately must touch on briefly; secondly, there’s how assumption hides behind the myth of clarity; and lastly, I will briefly interrogate how we always seem to reinvent the binary and, in doing so, do the work of our enemies.
Do we have to talk about sex and gender again
I’ll keep it brief, but even very gender and queer literate people can struggle with this. Liberal LGBT ideology of the past 15 years has try to sell us a dream of simple gender legibility. I’m sure you’ve seen it in a slideshow or diagram with a unicorn or biscuit character or some other vague nebulous metaphor: gender is what is in our heads and sex is what is in our pants, or gender is our identity and sex is our biology. I’m sure this market tested well with people who only learned last week not to say the f slur at work, and so got pushed into production around the global north as an easy way of showing that diverse genders exist.
But! It’s not true, or at least, it’s just not that simple. Gender is a lot of different things to different people, and sex is even more things to even more people, and literally no one can agree which is the real one (if you’d like to know more, you can read more of my thoughts about gender/sex here).
I mention this because some people have told me that AGAB is just describing sex, and I am here to tell you that they’re wrong. In fact, they’re falling into the trap of thinking it means something clear at all.
The clarity myth
When I have talked (and argued) with people about AGAB, a response I often hear is that it’s a real thing. While yes, people are assigned a gender when they’re born (or before), what is meant by it being real is that this label tells us something clear and/or immutable. However, when you peer under the surface, assigned gender is spinning forty different plates, and mostly unsuccessfully so.
I have asked many people to try and explain further how the term says something clear about them and also retains that clarity when describing others, and no one has succeeded, but rather than relitigate those arguments I’ll try to explain so myself.
I’m a woman, and I’m transgender, so it follows that when I was born a doctor saw my penis and thought I was a boy. I don’t refer to myself as AMAB, but I suppose one could use it for me. If the term was only describing that moment, it would perhaps be true, but I now live a life where that moment has no bearing: my birth certificate has an F on it and everyone who was present for my birth (not to mention everyone else) relates to me as a woman(3). However, this is not how I see the term used. In my life, I have had it used to assume concrete facts like that I still have a penis (when I do not), that I am able to get someone pregnant (which was not true even before I had genital surgery), or that I have a Y chromosome (when I am unaware if I do or do not, as I have never had a karyotype done), preferences such as whether I top or bottom or am dominant or submissive, and to assume more varied experiences, such as my experiences of sexism, violence, or misogyny, if I’m safe to be around, or how I was treated as a child.
A note on socialisation
This last one, often referred to as socialisation or gendered socialisation, is a particular mire. To describe myself once more, it’s true I was not brought up by parents, teachers, or friends who viewed me as a girl. However, two other things are also true: 1. that while I was not seen as a girl, I was extremely conscious and aware of the ways both boys and girls were treated, while being unable to articulate why this was very important to me, and 2. that I was seen, particularly at school, as a strange aberrant kind of boy, definitely gay, and perhaps distant enough from boy to be something entirely other (and to be appropriately punished for that).
I note this to show that, even if we unthinkingly accept this as a form of male socialisation, that the breadth of what socialised male means is very large. If you add to that men from different class backgrounds, places, cultures, familial structures and internal lives, the concept of “socialisation” becomes practically useless in its broadness. The same can be said for female socialisation.
Instead, I’ve previously proposed the concept of “gender socialisation”, that is as children we are each socialised with all of the gender roles and expectations of our local place and time, with the ability to enact or reject them depending on who we are and whether they fit(4). I believe this also adds a dimension of place-naming to describing our gendered selves: my gender socialisation is deeply rooted in a 1990s colonial, middle class, global north setting. To use this approach, it follows that my gender socialisation can be seen as much closer in similarity to someone assigned female at birth who was brought up in the middle class global north in the 1990s than someone else assigned male at birth who does not share those contexts.
Returning to our false clarity, there are places and times where discussing our gender histories, or gender modalities as Ashley has helpfully suggested is important. But assuming that AGAB tells us something clear, consistent, and pertinent leads us to the hydra of gender work: binaries.
Binaries and biology
So often we find ourselves back here, reinventing the wheel. I have seen it so many times: a person enters some LGBTQ+ education or self-learning with the belief that there are two entirely separate groups: men and women. After a while, they’ve come around to sex and gender being different: okay there are multiple genders, maybe even more than 3, and then there’s sex, which is either male or female, but rude to ask about. They go under the radar a bit more, they get people’s pronouns right. Maybe, with luck, they read a bit more, make a few more genderfucking friends. Hold on, they say: sex doesn’t work like that! The gender unicorn is a scam! People are their gender! But I also just find it helpful to know if someone is AFAB or AMAB. You likely know this person, or may even be this person.
From this viewpoint, all that has changed is that each step they have found a new, more acceptable way to maintain their initial belief that there are two separate groups, and that there is still something inherent or biologically true to hold onto. Let me be clear – there are not two clear categories: socially, hormonally, biologically, bodily, or otherwise, as Julia Serano has repeatedly shown, but the idea emerges again and again. I object to this not only because it’s not true, but because it’s the narrative of our oppressors.
If we take a moment to try and see the power structures that are upholding this concept, they’re right there in plain sight. The domineering, patriarchal, colonial, homophobic and transphobic power structures grow more powerful when we accept that at our most fundamental we can be categorised as one of two groups (and, as often follows, that one group is more powerful or dominant). But there are not two groups, and our liberation requires us to destroy the part of ourselves that clings to there only being two.
There is a lot more to say on these subjects, and if this is of interest I might continue to write here on it, but for the moment I’ve a few final thoughts. If you feel a strong attachment to using AMAB or AFAB for yourself or others, I really warmly recommend asking yourself why – what do you want these terms to convey to others, and what might they be saying that you don’t intend or haven’t considered?
I’ll let you in on a secret because you’ve made it this far: we can never win gendered liberations (be it queer, trans, or feminist) by continuing to uphold this idea that there are two entirely exclusive groups of people. Words are important, but they are also still just tools, and tools need to be used with care so as to not render them unusable by anyone else.
My main issue with AGAB comes down to this: it is used define groups under the false assumption that we are more similar to those assigned the same gender at birth than we are to those who are not, and by grouping ourselves in this way, we reenforce that perception of difference and reduce our ability to see both the huge number of differences within those groups but also the many similarities we all share.
I’m not a gender abolitionist at heart, as much as I think it would make things easier. I am glad to be a woman and to be in community and solidarity with women. I am glad too to be a dyke and to be in community and solidarity with dykes. I am glad even to be trans, for all of the various difficulties it has entailed, because I find great community and solidarity there too. To me, these are the categories we make and strengthen by finding our points of similarity, and not ignoring our difference but seeing it with a curiosity that allows us to grow closer.
If you enjoyed this piece, please consider donating to the Trans Justice Project or a local trans surgery fundraiser. You can also email me a reply, though I can’t promise I will respond.
Footnotes
1. It really bears to use here to be more specific – it likely emerged in multiple different sites in multiple places, such as medical settings, intersex communities, trans communities, and more. I can only speak personally from a trans perspective here.
2. I use this definition as the most accurate - AGAB rarely has any relation to other sex characteristics like chromosomes.
3. Well, everyone that was there not because it was their job.
4. Forgive the simplistic definition here, I am curious to write on this more in the future.
