Assigned Female at Birth - AFAB

[ShugarTits]

AIBU to get the actual rage every time I see this written down? Often in reputable sources.

Obviously this has come about due to people differentiating between gender and sex - I understand needing clarity between those two when talking to or questioning people.

but every single bloody time I read it I can only think of the horrific female infanticide statistics. AIBU to think ‘assigned female at birth’ is fucking offensive to women, as so many of us are killed at birth ONLY because we are female. Nobody assigned those infants a female sex, they didn’t just randomly pick half of the babies and murder them.

can’t we agree as a society to call out AFAB and AMAB as being horrific and change it? Happy to hear alternatives. Observed female/male at birth sounds reasonable to me if you need to specify birth sex vs gender.

Sex is established at conception and recognised at birth.

It's really scary isn't it.

I think we've lost sight of any sense of guiding principles for society. All we've got is a sense of individual rights. Which of course is important, but it's just coming down to who shouts the loudest, takes control of the narrative.

There is absolutely zero acknowledgement from the TRA contingent that their desire y

Whoops

their desire to be treated as women impacts actual women in very tangible and negative ways.

They don't care. They just want the conversation to be all about them.

Why do the TRAs/ MRAs always start talking about race when they have nowhere else to go?

The Britain First types want brown people to leave the country. I don't know any gender critical or women's rights people who want transwomen to leave the country. We just want them to leave single sex spaces, sports teams, refuges, changing rooms, etc. There are other sports teams and changing rooms available for them.

A growing number of transwomen appear to be sex offenders. Why aren't other trans people speaking up to condemn them?

When the balance of domestic abuse/sexual assault/rapes are committed by trans women than males living as males, I will agree that’s an issue.

Instead of directing your ire at trans women, direct it at males, and society’s attitude to them that allows some of them to commit atrocities against women. Or other men. And let’s address domestic abuse within same sex relationships. I bet they’re pretending to be lesbian/gay to get access to people they can control.

The thread started complaining about some letters on a form. A few people said meh it doesn’t bother me and suddenly we’re back in men desperately living their lives as women to get in a ladies loo. What am I meant to do when a very butch appearing female is in the ladies loo when I am?

In the early 80's a friend was training as a nurse at Gt Ormond Street - I can still recall her astonishment at the first intersex new born that she worked with - 40+years on.
Admittedly most of the patients were transferred there, but it turned out to be far from unusual.

You can tell a baby’s sex in utero at 9 weeks from a blood test. Sex is not changeable or assigned, it’s a biological fact.
YANBU

TW are men and there is no evidence they commit assault at a lesser rate than other men.

What am I meant to do when a very butch appearing female is in the ladies loo when I am?

I expect you’ll do what 95% of women would do & say nothing because we’ve been brought up all our lives to understand that men are bigger, stronger & more prone to violence than women and therefore you don’t put yourself in a dangerous position if you can avoid it. You can tell TW are men because they take women’s silence when they come into our spaces as agreement rather than what it actually is, fear.

Instead of directing your ire at trans women, direct it at males, and society’s attitude to them that allows some of them to commit atrocities against women. Or other men. And let’s address domestic abuse within same sex relationships. I bet they’re pretending to be lesbian/gay to get access to people they can control.

Transwomen are males. They offend against women at the same rate, if not higher, than other males.

Why would any woman want to compromise their safety by letting them access their spaces. Why should women make themselves less safe because of some totally unscientific, unverifiable idea in a man's head?

And fundamentally, according to self id, this is inviting ANY man who likes into women's spaces. All they have to do is say they 'feel like a woman' 🙄

Instead of directing your ire at trans women, direct it at males, and society’s attitude to them that allows some of them to commit atrocities against women. Or other men. And let’s address domestic abuse within same sex relationships. I bet they’re pretending to be lesbian/gay to get access to people they can control.

Trans women are males. That risk doesn't change because they put a dress on. When you find a magical way of females being able to tell the bad males from the good males (trans women in your opinion) then please, let us know.

In the meantime all males, regardless of how they identify, can stay out of women's spaces.

YANBU

Gender was only assigned when it was not clear - this was less than 0.01% of births - stolen medical language 🙄

When the balance of domestic abuse/sexual assault/rapes are committed by trans women than males living as males, I will agree that’s an issue

Eh so you expect the less that 1% of males (who identify as women) to commit MORE crimes against women than the 99% of males who do not identify as trans before you will think that trans women are a risk to women, whilst ignoring the fact that statistically this is not going to happen and ignoring the evidence that shows that trans women commit offences against women at at least the same rate as any other man?

@DontLeanOnTheKeyboard it is male crime that is the problem. Males who have special women identities are no less likely to commit crimes against women than any other male. In fact proportionately more trans women who are in prison are in there for sexual crimes than other males.

We want single sex spaces for women because ALL males are a risk, including trans women. It is not because they are trans it is because they are male.

If a woman identifies as a trans man then given she is female she can use the spaces she sees fit. If she feels uncomfortable in women's spaces that is not really the problem of women to fix.

There is no such thing as intersex.
DSDs have nothing to do with gender ideology.
DSDs are all specific to either male or female sex.
People who have DSD have asked repeatedly to not be used and exploited in this way.
I wish people would stop repeating this misinformation about a tiny minority of people who are born with a genetic condition.
I hope your friend was better informed by the time they qualified.

Please do tell anyone who uses AFAB that they need to sit down and listen, too, and that they need to be more respectful of women who were born female, and are thus WOMEN.

The real problem, in my view, is that AFAB tries to redefine people who don't want to be re-defined. If you want to talk about yourself as AFAB for some reason, go ahead, but don't expect us all to follow and contort ourselves into thinking being a woman is just some random thing a doctor wrote on a notepad. That really is denying reality, and it's actually disrespectful to deny other people's reality. Walk a thousand miles etc.

No one is obliged to sit down and listen to someone who denies their existence and belittles a defining characteristic as a random thing that's mainly in their head. Sex is real. Gender is a societal expectation. Chromosomes don't lie.

Signed: Assigned female through DNA at conception, not after birth through an administrative error.

Bonus question: if sex is assigned at birth, do the doctors give out penises and vaginas? How do they stick them on? 😜

What am I meant to do when a very butch appearing female is in the ladies loo when I am?

Nothing.
As you say they are a butch FEMALE in tbe ladies loo. You already know it's OK for them to be there.

It's offensive because it introduces the misogynistic idea that people can change sex. The pretence that people can change sex is being used to attack hard-won women's rights. There's no need to use the 'at birth' or the 'assigned' bit because sex doesn't change. Hence male at birth, male forever - better captured by saying just 'male'. Male is about body and not an identity statement so no need to get offended.

I think perhaps those people just have to write N/A when asked whether they were AFAB or AMAB.

And very soon, all the little black bins began to be told that they weren’t black bins after all… unless they stuck that same ragged piece of paper to themselves declaring it. They’d been so proud of their true nature and purpose as a black bin, and now, suddenly, it had been replaced by a label they didn’t want!

The SFTRBB (Society For The Rights Of Black Bins) was especially concerned. Black bins had struggled for years with green bins calling them worthless because of their function - „You’re full of rubbish! Look at us - we make a useful contribution to society, with our worthwhile contents! You’re just trash!“ - and the Society had evolved to combat this view. It was an important issue, as black bins were often abused for what they were, physically attacked, destroyed! But, now, the Society could no longer explain why this was and could no longer speak for all black bins.

Because black bins were no longer recognised as existing in their own right, existing as who they felt they truly were. They were being told that any abuse was because of that little piece of paper they had to choose to stick on to be seen.

And it wasn’t because of that at all.

PS

The SFTRBB has asked me to clarify in light of the above:

In defending the status of the black bin in society, the SFTRBB are often accused of "bin essentialism" and find this infuriatingly disingenuous. They point out that black bins have, for many years, presented and found fulfilment in a multitude of ways (graffiti-ed, half-painted, welcoming being filled with glass, compost and occasionally drunken teenagers...) This never changed their proud membership of the community of black bins and the prejudice they faced because of it...

...Until that community's very existence was denied.

@Catiette

They were and it went straight over that posters head 😀

i did like the story of the little green bin that could…

Excellent post catiette

🗑️

It does actually work really well as an analogy. I may use it in future (while being very clear that it, rather wonderfully, presents all humans indiscriminately as bins of different varieties 😂, & that this was first suggested by someone arguing from a TRA perspective).

The phrase "semantic label" is spot-on as an expression of what we find so distressing: the wealth of female experience, with its potential, glory and unspeakable suffering reduced to a semantic label - a label that, what's more, has been imposed with the stated intent of advancing the offensive idea that these experiences are, in fact, wholly arbitrary.

On that basis, I, personally, refuse (geddit?) to condone AFAB & cis-.

When the balance of domestic abuse/sexual assault/rapes are committed by trans women than males living as males, I will agree that’s an issue

TW are over represented in the figures for sexual offences when compared with other men. Check your facts!