A lot of folk are going to start going on about how one refers to sexual phenotype and one is about social gender but that isn’t coming from the trans camp. I will help simplify it from a trans lens.
Male and Man are basically interchangeable from a trans perspective because people use them basically the same way - as a social Category. Calling a trans woman “male” is doing the exact same job as calling her a “man”. These are not strictly scientific terms.
Male and Female are what are on legal documentation like licences or medical documents and you can get those changed and it’s important to have that flexibility because a trans man rocking a full beard and having an F sex marker on his passport can get him routinely flagged by police or security with the concern his documentation is fake or erroneous and potentially cause him to be treated like a criminal and his documents tested because he doesn’t look female.
Where the difference culturally matters is people sometimes do not like male or female in usage because it sounds depersonalizing. Like you are putting out an All Points Bulletin or talking about a prisoner or animal population or using medical sounding language to refer to them.
A lot of folk are going to start going on about how one refers to sexual phenotype and one is about social gender but that isn’t coming from the trans camp. I will help simplify it from a trans lens.
Male and Man are basically interchangeable from a trans perspective because people use them basically the same way - as a social Category. Calling a trans woman “male” is doing the exact same job as calling her a “man”. These are not strictly scientific terms.
Male and Female are what are on legal documentation like licences or medical documents and you can get those changed and it’s important to have that flexibility because a trans man rocking a full beard and having an F sex marker on his passport can get him routinely flagged by police or security with the concern his documentation is fake or erroneous and potentially cause him to be treated like a criminal and his documents tested because he doesn’t look female.
Where the difference culturally matters is people sometimes do not like male or female in usage because it sounds depersonalizing. Like you are putting out an All Points Bulletin or talking about a prisoner or animal population or using medical sounding language to refer to them.