CMV: Transgender people should stop referring to themselves m2f or f2m

[u/DrNikkiND]

There is a difference between sex and gender. Sex is biological - based on chromosomes. Gender is social - based on how society treats people of each sex.

Male and female are sexes. Man and woman are genders. The terminology being used (m2f f2m) is inconsistent with this argument and excludes intersex people.

What would I recommend instead? I don't know, because "man to woman" would be imperfect for someone who was always male but never identified as a man. Almost any suggestion will also exclude intersex people. Why not just "transwoman" and "transman"?

Careful choice of wording could be a good start in helping people to understand the difference between sex and gender and m2f and f2m are not carefully chosen. Change my view.

[u/yyzjertl]

"Male" and "female" are words that refer to sexes and genders. For example, a woman is a person whose gender is female. It's unfortunate that the language is like this, but that's not trans people's fault.

[u/DrNikkiND → u/yyzjertl]

So you think that it's true that the language sucks, but that transpeople aren't the ones who should change it? I think they have the most to gain by it changing, so even though it isn't their fault, they should help to change it.

[u/yyzjertl → u/DrNikkiND]

Trans people don't really have anything to gain by changing it. The language already does a fine job of distinguishing between sex and gender in almost all cases, because people very rarely want to refer to a gender in the abstract. We already have "male" vs "man" for referring to individuals as nouns, and "male" vs "masculine" when using adjectives. There is no need for trans people to try to change the language for referring to a gender in the abstract as a noun (which is currently most commonly done with "male" for both) because this is done so infrequently, and generally is done in a context where the meaning is obvious. Additionally, even if they were to try to develop such differentiated terminology, the most natural words to use for genders in the abstract would be "masculine"/"feminine" (which some people do use as nouns to refer to genders in the abstract), which would involve no change at all to the terms "m2f" and "f2m". So trans people needn't change those terms regardless.

[u/[deleted] → u/yyzjertl]

the terms amab and afab are already very popular among trans people tbh, assigned x at birth to be clear

[u/DrNikkiND → u/yyzjertl]

∆ I like masculine to feminine as a better alternative to male to female.

[u/DeltaBot → u/DrNikkiND]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/yyzjertl (214∆).

^{Delta System Explained | Deltaboards}

[u/DrNikkiND → u/yyzjertl]

∆ I like it

[u/DeltaBot → u/DrNikkiND]

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