‘A man who claims to be a woman’ or ‘A male who says he’s female’ are my preferred terms but if we use them on here when in discussion with someone who fits that category we are likely to be deleted.
I also usw ‘male with a non-male gender identity’ or ‘man with a special gender’ and ‘medically/surgically feminised male’ where that’s appropriate. Sometimes I use ‘medically transitioned male’ to describe someone who has been through the medical transition process but that one’s not great because they aren’t really transitioning from male to female or man to woman because that’s not actually possible.
After the Spectator’s IPSO slap I am going to propose a new description, ‘Man with a Special Certificate that prevents the press calling him a Man’ (obviously as a general term, not directed at any individual- no need to smite me, MN gods!)
I actually despise the post-modernist language war, constantly shifting definitions of old words and the creation of new terms that are acceptable to TRAs one day (womxn! AFAB!) and supposedly transphobic the next but I am willing to keep fighting the battle if it means women can keep talking.
I first arrived at FWR around the time the ‘talk guidelines’ were imposed and we’ve made loads of progress since, in no small part due to Maya, but also our own insistence on not shutting up (and JK not shutting up either, not even when the odious Vaush told her to).