Couple of days ago, I was reading this Tumblr conversation between this friend of mine and a singlet who was asking about multipliticy. Friend of mine’s a dude in another system. Singlet was transgender. At some point in the conversation it came up that my friend is in an AFAB body—for those who don’t know, that means Assigned Female at Birth. So this trans person was asking why my friend didn’t identify as transgender when he fronted, ‘cause he’s a self-identified dude in a female body, so doesn’t that kinda make him trans? Dude’s response was that he just kinda thinks of it like wearing somebody else’s clothes.

But it got me thinking, why doesn’t that make me trans?

I mean, I’m in the same situation, right? I’m male. I’m a member of a plural system that’s housed in an AFAB body. Anshin identifies as trans, but I’ll let Ansh explain that side of things later. ‘Cause it’s complicated. Anyway, I fit the basic description, don’t I?

So here’s my explanation. I’m male. I’m AMAB. (If you’re keeping score at home, that’s assigned male at birth.) Yeah, I have a past, I have a childhood, I have my own birth certificate and history and everything. It’s just not here. And likewise, I have my own body. I can’t bring it with me to the front, obviously, since there’s already one there. And I can’t just change the body to match mine, ‘cause magic and this reality don’t line up very well. So I’m stuck borrowing an AFAB body for the time being. It isn’t my body, and I know there are trans people who will say that too, but I mean, I have a different body someplace else. I don’t have any claim at all to this body, or its sex, or a lot of things about it, like race and hair color and eye color and height and all that.

Let’s put it this way. You own and drive an SUV. You go on vacation and the rental car you get is a sedan. You wouldn’t say you’re a sedan driver just because you’ve got one for a week, right? You’re an SUV driver, because you own the SUV. You’re just borrowing the sedan.

It’s exactly the same thing. I’m not transgender when I front because I’m not the body’s owner. I have my own, and my body matches my gender, which makes me cis. In the same way, I’m pretty sure if a trans girl came in here, she wouldn’t identify as cisgender when she fronted just because the body’s AFAB. The body doesn’t belong to us. We’re just along for the ride.

-DGH