Anti-trans RadFems, AKA Trans Exclusionary RadFems (TERFs) – not to be confused with non-hate radical feminism (AKA, feminism) – claim that gender is a fallacy. As an ironic (though the irony is completely lost on them) substitute, they’ve invented a binary system they call FAAB and MAAB. Once someone is Male Assigned At Birth (MAAB), they are endowed with a privilege that can never be removed, degraded or overcome. A homeless monolingual undocumented transwoman escaping her country of origin due to anti-trans violence has more privilege as a MAAB than a rich, white Female Assigned At Birth (FAAB) corporate banking attorney. The transwoman proves this by demanding access to the same homeless shelter space as non-transgender women. If the transwoman uses the same restroom as the FAAB corporate banking attorney might, the rich attorney is being oppressed by MAABness. Also, if the transwoman gets frustrated by the FAAB corporate attorney taking the transwoman’s picture and putting it on her blog to “warn” FAABs of a MAAB who’s gaining access to women’s spaces, the transwomen has just proven her MAABness through “male rage.”
See? Gender is an illusion and we’d all be better if we could understand this. FAAB/MAABness is real, omnipresent and can’t ever be changed and we’d all be better if we could put our everlasting faith into the inerrancy of the MAAB/FAAB doctrine. Whatever a FAAB needs to do to free herself from MAAB oppression, is morally correct: she’s fighting against male violence. Male violence looks like transwomen exhibiting any of the behavior FAAB TERFs exhibit because that proves that she’s MAAB.
While this ham-fisted substitution for gender is often mocked for its logical inconsistencies:
Here’s one for all the TERFs out there.
gender abolitionist: we are here to abolish the genders
reasonable person: oh, so we won’t use gendered pronouns anymore?
gender abolitionist: no keep those
reasonable person: gendered clothing?
gender abolitionist: no thats ok
reasonable person: segregated bathrooms?
gender abolitionist: no those are important
reasonable person: so we’re going to do something about the gender binary, yeah? We’re going to attack the idea that gender is intrinsically linked to one’s anatomy, and we’re going to boost the visibility of trans* and intersex people, who face the most violent consequences of the sex and gender binaries – yes?
gender abolitionist: no
reasonable person: Then what are you going to do, exactly? What is your plan? How are you going to accomplish this?
gender abolitionist: abolish gender
reasonable person: How?
gender abolitionist: abolish it
Trans woman — as contrasted with natal woman — means a male-assigned-at-birth (MAAB) human who subsequently internalized and aligned himself so intensely with the results of being female, aka “womanhood,” that he seeks to be treated as a female is treated. He does so by applying the term “woman” to himself, despite the fact that he has not experienced the female conditioning of compulsory heterosexuality from birth.By hijacking the word “woman,” trans ideology seeks to erase or invisibilize the presumption of female-ness that constitutes the core criteria informing the word itself. Trans reduce the word WOMAN to a social construct and identity — one that they can appropriate at will, have socially and politically supported merely on their word, and then legitimized legally in a relatively short time (usually just 2 years). For trans, it is not a contradiction for a MAAB to adopt the term “woman” and the often-repeated mantra of the community is “trans women ARE women.”
– Defining WOMAN.*, RadFem Hub Archive
