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.
[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.