I have a meet-and-greet no-obligations coffee date this week with a trans man, probably leading to him coming over this weekend if we hit it off in person. I’m a cis bi man, and I’ve never been with a trans man before. Obviously he and I are going to talk about mutual expectations and limits, safewords, etc. But are there any things that I should absolutely not do or say that are basically universal in the trans man experience? I want to get off on the right foot.
It’s so weird, too, i mean, what’s the point? Some of the most attractive people i’ve met where perfectly androgynous and with some of them i still have no idea what their AGAB is and if and in what direction they’re transitioning and that’s honestly part of the charm. I don’t need to know what it says on their birth certificate, mine says that i’m supposedly fucking tiny and weigh less than 4kg and that’s obviously complete and utter nonsense, why should the rest of what’s written on there have held up any better? Gender so easily turns into a trap, let people elude it if they want to.
[CW: Gender Essentialism/Binarism in the Form of Performative 'AMAB or AFAB?' Shit]
This is literally so damn true. I’m an androgynous-presenting AMAB enby and I recently met up with some IRL trans friends who know me as non-binary through our Florida-specific Discord server. One of them, in passing, found out that I’m AMAB because I said “I’m transfeminine” in some conversation one way or another, and they were shocked because they legitimately thought I was AFAB. As “yikes” of an assumption that is, it wasn’t in bad faith, and I think it definitely opened up this person to how little AGAB can mean in the grand scheme of things. Regardless, the “progressive” gender binary of replacing every instance of boy/male/man with AMAB and girl/female/woman with AFAB is toxic as hell. I’ve legitimately seen people say things like “Us AFABs need to stand up against AMABs to ensure our rights!” Now, THAT is a yikes moment.
more sorta off topic AMAB/AFAB essentialism
Local homeless services used to list trans people as “Trans Woman/MTF/AMAB”, “Trans man/FTM/AFAB”, or “Gender Non-Conforming” on all internal databases until very recently. I had to write the Joint Office many many letters and talk to many confused cis people about how unnecessary including AGAB was.
I am at the point now where I am actually questioning my orientation a bit given how attracted I am to androgynous people and anyone more feminine than that
I’m inexperienced anyway and never had any chance to experiment