AFABs and AMABs.

Five years ago, this blog joshed about California outlawing gender-reveal parties as part of a "Gender Prenatal Nonassumption Act." Well, we're not there yet, but we're getting closer. 

No less a popular authority on medicine than the Cleveland Clinic is tying itself in knots over having to use terms like "man" or "woman," lest they offend women who think they are men and vice versa. The problem is, they're trying to write about health concerns that may only affect one gender or the other, and it's making them crazy. Pity them: Here they are trying to educate the public for its own good about, say, prostate cancer, but they can't say this affects men (although women have no prostates) because men who call themselves women will be offended and -- I'm not sure what. Ignore the advice? Be angry because it applies to them (they, having prostates)? 

One way out of this inability to tell the truth is the "assigned" gambit. Instead of calling human beings men and women, which has worked pretty darn well through history, we now can say "assigned male at birth" and "assigned female at birth." As if the obstetrician just made some arbitrary decision when yanking the baby from the mother (or "birthing person"). Even the baby has to be covered by gender newspeak. As the Cleveland Clinic writes: 

"The fetus gets its assigned sex around nine weeks of pregnancy, although your healthcare provider can’t detect it on ultrasound yet."

In other words, the growing baby's sex organs are showing at nine weeks of pregnancy, but they cannot be seen yet on ultrasound. Does the Clinic have any idea how weird their phrasing sounds?

If these geniuses have their way, we'll all be known as AFABs and AMABs -- Assigned Female At Birth and Assigned Male At Birth. Of course, it won't stay there -- it never does. Remember, terms like "handicapped" and "colored person" were once the polite terms, but once they became common they became insulting, and new terms had to be put into use. I suspect AF/MAB's days are numbered already.  

In the meanwhile, though, we can still celebrate true love in a modern way. Instead of Boy Meets Girl, of course, we will have:

"AMAB Meets AFAB"

 A Poem

An AMAB a-wandering near the windmills by the bay
Distressed by the eagles, chopped up below them lay
Was suddenly, like chance, taken at the flood
By a lovely young AFAB, xer eyes as dark as mud.

"That's my kinda AFAB," the youthful AMAB cried
"I must go and meet xer; I'll not be denied!"
The AFAB, quite lightly, trotted down the road
Xer coveralls, quite tightly, xer tuchus they showed.

"Hello there!" said AMAB, "And please pardon me!
I hope you have interest in an A. M. A. B."
"Why, yes," said the AFAB, "and you seem okay.
It's just about lunchtime; what do you say?"

AMAB and xe went to dine at McKlaus's
On hot roasted mealworms and crickets with louses
They toasted each other with beetle juice soda
And strolled to the lake by the People's Pagoda.

"You're just right for me," said the AMAB with heat
"What a great fortune we happened to meet!
What a great future we'd have! Can you see?
You, me, and unassigned baby makes three!"

"Cool your electrons," the AFAB said ruthlessly.
"I like you, but thus far I have acted truthlessly.
In fact, I'm an AMAB, but wished to be other,
So my assignment was changed by birth parent (mother)."

"Worry no more," said AMAB with a cry,
"For no more truthless has one been than I!
For I am an AFAB but lied on the form.
I'd say I was anything for your love so warm!"

They were bonded together in ceremony
No one was sure who was he or was she
But they vowed to be one if their hearts still were in it
And truth never entered their lives for a minute.