Pitfall of morning twitter to wake; trans friends reposting TERF material to laugh at. Exposes me to it, sometimes rabbit holes me to identity threat dysphorically deconstruct and analyze. In this case, came to a clearer phrasing of what may be a useful insight, and which I had also pre-transition.

As noted, I use sex and gender interchangeably to reference human relating to (in action, perception, emotion, organizing…) people based on sexed characteristics, including biological and social ones, the latter including self-identification, overriding others via opt-out, opt-in. It is a social construct (so are chromosomes, says molecular biologist Sofia, but it is even clearer for “sex” as a whole). As culture and language shifts so does its meaning. To me and most people in the societies where I am at home, my sex is female, I am a woman. This is what matters most. To those with a more narrow definition (same-label contruct “sex” but referencing only some or a single bodily sexed properties like karyotype or position in a reproduction tree), I may not be.

The culture change is a shift towards the use I favor. Trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) centrally reject this shift, and demand the labels be narrowly defined to reference specific sexed bodily properties as essences of male/man, female/woman. In so doing they also deny the legitimacy of trans or cis modality (the latter by default) as they consider these properties unchangeable. This is a conflict which resolves eventually, and I think the presence of trans people in public spaces is how it is resolved, by anchoring our existence as fact in the eyes of the majority.

My hypothesis now is that a subset of assigned-female-at-birth (AFAB) TERFs (aside from conservatives, etc.) reject the label shift because in principle they are trans in denial. Specifically, AFAB agender nonbinary trans. This may sound arrogant and projecting. My view comes from having occupied an analogous space for long and recognizing the emotional tone of the rhetorics used. During my two decades identifying as agender, I would have subscribed largely to the TERF talking points of “gender is irrelevant” and “sex is solely specific biology and external oppression, otherwise empty of content”.

I would have subscribed to these as such a gender nihilism and sex minimalism made it possible for me to push away my discomfort with being seen (also by myself) as having male sex. My central dysphoria coping mechanism was the frantic denial of gender and the minimizing of the importance of sex (except an obstacle to be overcome by feminism). So long as I could do that I could function, though not happily. Any ascribing of any content to the gender/sex labels beyond that – unimportant biology, external oppression – felt terribly dysphoric, like being drowned or transformed into a non-being, like being forced into an identity that othered myself to myself.

Isn’t this exactly what drives a large segment of TERFs? Trans people (and I remember the very same fear and reaction myself) are terrible implications of a scenario of sex/gender being something more than that, an intrinsic rather than extrinsic identity. They like I cannot endure that idea because it is (socially, existentially) dysphoric.

What then is the solution? What this subset of TERFs need – freedom from a misaligned female/woman gender/sex assignment – is achievable by opt-out under the wider construct model: by considering themselves AFAB agender, the labels no longer will apply to them (and they will face the same challenges all other nonbinary trans people do, but this is already the case in their lives as they live in patriarchy with the rest of us). The oppressions many/most women face (externally by the actions of others, internally by our limited choice of role models, internally by properties such as having a uterus and an estrotypical body) are faced also by non-woman AFAB people, and we need to become better at recognizing and verbalizing this fact as part of the trans agenda. That is to say, AFAB nonwomen not passing as cis men experience misplaced misogyny (and AMAB women experience rightly placed misogyny variably depending on what we pass as).

So in the best of resolutions, the trans community should highlight and welcome agender people (AFAB and AMAB alike), recognize how a more complex (i.e. respecting opt-out, opt-in) sex/gender construct lets also those trans people reduce their dysphoria, and at the same time, not fail to highlight how under patriarchy, misogyny is directed both at women and at non-women being read as women. The fight against misogyny is ours to fight as feminists, all of us. We must also not fail to recognize specific challenges faced by uterus-bearing people (including many trans men). We do these things already, but we can get better at them. And in so doing, we are also creating a better home for those wayward agender siblings of ours currently shoring up the TERF ranks.

The issue thus, said TERFs demand to keep the sex/gender woman/man, male/female labels for their minimalist/nihilist project. But really their need is not as great – they need it only to negate it, and can accomplish the same by transitioning agender. Whereas for binary trans people as myself, we really cannot flourish at all without access to that label. So the only end point of this culture shift I can be OK with is the one I work towards. However, our opponents can, as outlined above, in many cases find equal flourishing there.

So you whose involuntary womanhood really does not define you other than as having XX karyotype and a uterus and experience of misogyny, and for whom any other labeling feels oppressive and painful, come be my agender trans sibling. Let’s fight patriarchy together.