Are You An AMAB?

Definitions are very elusive; today’s definition might not be tomorrow’s definition. The website OutshineNW.org takes a stab at definitions for the trans community.

Gender is complicated and no one has it completely figured out. This is part of the reason that transgender vocabulary has exploded with a variety of words to express a countless number of genders and facets of gender experience. Gender is extremely personal, and trying to express our understanding of gender is personal and complicated. These words help us express those things in ways that each other can understand. Our hope that this primer will help smooth that process.

And what does AMAB mean?

Assigned male at birth. It is sometimes written as MAAB. This refers to what gender someone was assigned at birth. This is used when talking about a range of transgender (and cisgender) people who experience a set of common issues based on their birth assignment. For example: “AMAB people face high rates of harassment when outwardly expressing themselves in what is commonly understood as a feminine manner”.  AMAB is also used by many trans people to talk about their gender experience without having to use narratives about “what gender they used to be”, as many transgender people never identified with their birth assigned gender.

The article goes on to define many of the words and abbreviations that we use daily but other may not know what they mean.

I remember once I was staffing a table at a wellness conference that is annually sponsored by a local television station. The table was for True Colors a LGBT family and youth service agency and what surprised me was most of the people who stopped by the table didn’t know what LGBT meant. We used the abbreviation almost daily and think that everyone knows what it means. The jargon that we use is known only in communities associated with the LGBT community and not the general population.

I like how the article ends, it matches what I say when I give a workshop…

Transgender language is always evolving to help us express our lived experiences. We try to keep this primer updated with the latest acronyms and terms…

I have a slide that I use in my presentations when I discuss definitions.

• Every culture has their own language 
• Definitions evolve
• Words can have different means to different people
• Some people are very passionate about labels

Some of the more common definitions (At least for today) are…