Fiona

There’s a lot of trans-medicalism in your post comrade.

Not really, no. I’m talking about biological sex, not gender.

A trans woman is a woman, full stop.

For non-medical and non-biological cases: Yes, and no one say disputes that.

The thing is that there are some people who don’t believe that for the other cases. I’m pointing out that while it is indeed a bit more complicated and takes some work to fully get there, trans women can even medically/biologically be women.

HRT and bottom surgery doesn’t define a person’s gender. Only affirm it.

Indeed. They change the biological sex, which helps affirming gender.

That said, I do like pointing out to transphobes that I have less testosterone and more estrogen than my afab girlfriend thanks to gender affirming care.

Which makes you biologically a woman. I really think we should hammer that point home and not let people get away with it by limiting our criticism to the choice of words, when we are scientifically in the right.

Amab and afab are equivalent to biological male or female, just less explicit I suppose.

That’s the point: They are not! Any sensible interpretation of a biological sex has to look at the whole system and we have comprehensively proven that biological sex can be changed. It’s a spectrum to begin with. Refusing that is like refusing that irrational numbers exist and claiming that every number can be written as a fraction: Understandable if you subject-matter education ends in 7th grade, but not if you actually looked into somewhat deeper at all.

Would you still argue that you are more biologically female than male if you considered that your DNA in every bit of your body still has the male set of chromosome?

For starters, define male set of chromosomes. If you say XY, then you will be interested to learn about De-la-Chapelle-Syndrom and Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome.

But even if we put that aside, the thing is: Chromosomes really don’t matter all that much. The relevant differences primarily lie with organs and hormone-levels. Now, there are things you can do with gene-therapy (there was for example that trans girl who used CRISPR on herself to get her testicles to produce E instead of T). So it’s not that they don’t play any role at all anymore when you are an adult, but what matters much more is the overall metabolism and HRT is absolutely capable of switching that around.

Like: Name the difference between a post-op transwoman and a cis woman who received a radical hysterectomy. Their metabolisms are functionally identical and both will have to substitute the same amount of Estradiol, because both lack ovaries. Chromosomes really don’t affect anything here, so insisting that they create a biological distinction, when they clearly don’t have any effect anymore is completely arbitrary.

I’m not arguing against you, more so arguing that the distinction doesnt much matter and could be argued either way. I’d rather just take someone’s word for it when they say who they are. Thats the whole point isnt it, acceptance?

The thing is: That is about accepting someone’s gender, which is usually indeed the more important thing.

But biological sex of course also exists and the important thing for many of us is that it can in fact be changed and the claim that it can’t is deeply problematic and harmful.

I haven’t even had bottom surgery yet, but thanks to HRT my metabolism is much more in line with that of a typical woman than that of a man. Meaning that it is much more accurate to refer to me as a biological woman than as a biological man. So saying I’m the later isn’t just insulting, it is even scientifically incorrect. A trans woman who has received bottom surgery is in fact for pretty much all intents and purposes the same as a cis woman who has received a radical hysterectomy. Unless you call that kind of cis woman a biological man, doing the same to the trans woman is just as nonsensical.

And yes, this really affects pretty much everything: The treatment of things like brain tumors depends on biological sex and if you treat a trans woman like a man you are going to see the same bad outcomes that treating a cis woman like a man would have. Because again: Trans woman are (from a certain point in their transition onwards) biological women. Yes, it changes, get over it.

The reason to talk about amab/afab is specifically because they are the only terms that are reasonably consistent in all edge cases, except clerical errors.