M
M — A gender marker for male. The M in BDSM is for MASOCHISM.
see also: MALE; SEX (n.); GENDER (n.); BDSM; X
MAAB — Acronym for MALE ASSIGNED AT BIRTH, a variation on “Assigned Male At Birth (AMAB).”
see also: ASSIGNED MALE AT BIRTH; CAMAB; DMAB
MALE — A sex assignment or descriptor, associated with masculinity in opposition to femininity and “femaleness.”
Male and female are defined by their opposition to each other.
Maleness is purported to be an exclusive and complete set of sexual characteristics: penis, XY chromosomes, testes, androgen-dominant hormonal makeup, masculine gender identity. However, human biology is not dimorphic, so to insist that there are clear boundaries between male and female—and further that these boundaries are visible and obvious—is incorrect.
Male is an allegedly biological, scientific term, but it is coded with gender. When people suggest that trans women are male, they are implying that there is a biological reality which stops them from being female and women.
Trans men are male; trans women and other AMAB trans people are not.
MALE ASSIGNED AT BIRTH (MAAB) — A variation on “Assigned Male At Birth (AMAB).”
see also: ASSIGNED MALE AT BIRTH; CAMAB; DMAB
MALE GAZE — The objectification of women and non-binary people by men.
The male gaze refers to the gaze of individual men, male-dominated institutions, or patriarchy at large.
The objectification of non-men can take many forms, from negative comments on their appearance and the implication that they are disgusting, to “positive” comments and fetishization and the assumption that they exist purely for male consumption. In all cases their lives and gender expressions are policed. Men, by contrast, are not subject to a gaze on the basis of their gender—though they might be subject to one on the basis of other marginalized identities.
see also: GAZE; PATRIARCHY
MALE PRIVILEGE — The lack of structural oppression from patriarchy. Freedom from misogyny and sexism.
Trans women and other assigned male at birth (AMAB) people who aren’t men don’t have male privilege. If they are assumed to be men, they might be afforded an absence of certain direct violence, or even a presence of benefits for their perceived maleness; for example, they’re more likely to be hired if they have a masculine name and gender expression. However, this comes with a significant caveat because in being told constantly that maleness is desired and superior, they are being told that their femaleness and femininity are bad. On top of that, they’re also told (as we all are) that transness, specifically trans femininity, is disgusting and bad and unnatural. For a trans woman or other AMAB non-man to perform hegemonic masculinity—and to repress their femininity—well enough to survive isn’t a privilege.
see also: PRIVILEGE; PATRIARCHY; ERASURE; TRANSMISOGYNY
MALE TO FEMALE (MTF, M2F) — An outdated term for trans women and other trans people who were assigned male at birth.
The MTF terminology positions femaleness as an objective and a destination, with transition being a journey to that point; but this is extremely reductive, and most trans people do not experience their transition this way. Many trans people never identified with their assigned gender. A trans woman, despite being assigned male, may have always been a woman whether or not she had the vocabulary to explain that experience.
This nomenclature also suggests that female and male are discrete categories, and that after a particular medical intervention (euphemistically called “the surgery” by ignorant cis people), femaleness is achieved. The reality is that many trans people don’t have trans-related medical intervention; and there are those who pursue a wide variety of treatments, some of them ongoing for the rest of their lives.
Rather than describe themselves in terms related to their transition, most trans people prefer to use words which accurately describe their genders, such as “demi-girl,” “gender fluid,” or “woman.”
see also: TRANS WOMAN; TRANSGENDER; TRANSITION; BINARY; SEX (n.)
MAN — An adult who identifies with the cultural and social norms of masculinity and feels an affinity for manhood.
Gender is messy and elusive, and difficult to define. Man is defined in opposition to woman, and is not a monolithic category or experience. Manhood is not defined by body parts or assigned sex at birth.
see also: GENDER (n.); MASCULINITY
MAN OF TRANS EXPERIENCE — The preferred term for many men who are not cis, but who don’t necessarily center their transness in their manhood.
Alternative terms include “trans man,” “assigned female at birth” or “assigned-female,” “transmasculine,” and “trans masc.” The terms any individual uses to describe themselves will be based on personal preference and subcultural connotations, and should be respected.
see also: TRANS MAN; TRANSMASCULINE
MARGINALIZED — Disenfranchised, structurally discriminated against, and disallowed access to public life.
Marginalization and its associated kinds of violence exist on a scale: some are more marginalized than others. But attempting to quantify marginalizations is a bad project which creates a false hierarchy of oppression, rather than working toward our shared liberation.
see also: OPPRESSION; INTERSECTIONALITY
MARRIAGE EQUALITY — The right for adults to marry, regardless of their genders.
Marriage equality has been the focus of LGBT+ rights in the past decade, despite it not doing much to help the most vulnerable in our communities.
Marriage equality was an important issue during the AIDS crisis when same-sex couples could not get married and were dying young, which meant that their partners had no legal rights to visit them in hospital, or to their life insurance policies or to inheritance. Marriage equality became an LGBT+ issue so partners could have legal rights and control over their partners’ care, funeral, and estate.
Marriage equality is also a trans issue, though this is often overlooked. In some places, the state will legally divorce a couple if one of them changes their gender marker; and in others, the spouse of a trans person has the so-called “spousal veto” and can deny the trans spouse the right to change their gender marker.
Marriage is a tool of the state to consolidate power and resources: wealth, property, citizenship.
see also: LGBT+ RIGHTS; ASSIMILATION; HOMONORMATIVITY; SAME-SEX MARRIAGE
MASC — Short for masculine; a queer masculinity.
Masc has its cultural and aesthetic roots in butch, both of which are defined in their opposition to femme.
see also: MASCULINE; FEMME; BUTCH
MASC 4 MASC, MASC4MASC — Shorthand on dating and hookup apps to indicate that the subject is masc and looking for other masc people.
It is often accompanied by phrases such as “no fats, no femmes” and a list of acceptable or unacceptable races.
There has been a pushback against masc4masc within the gay community in an effort to appreciate femmeness, but mascness is still prioritized in general—and femmeness might be “appreciated” but it is also commodified.
see also: STRAIGHT ACTING; FEMMEPHOBIA; FATPHOBIA; GAY CULTURE
MASCULINE, MASCULINITY — A set of cultural norms and behaviors. An aesthetic. A power structure based on subjugating the feminine Other.
Any deviance from hegemonic masculinity is to invite punishment. Masculinity is fragile and constantly needs to be reasserted, often by degrading the feminine.
Masculinity is not inherently oppressive, but most iterations of masculinity (especially hegemonic masculinity) are.
Masculinity is seen as gender neutral compared to an allegedly more performative femininity. Even in queer spaces, queer masculinity is prized over queer femininity.
see also: GENDER (n.); MAN; BOY; FEMININE; TOXIC MASCULINITY
MASOCHISM — A sexual interest in relinquishing control and being subject to the will of another person, possibly including the use of pain, humiliation, and/or abuse.
Masochism was first popularized in Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s 1886 Psychopathia Sexualis.
see also: SADISM; BDSM; PERVERT
MEDICAL TRANSITION, MEDICAL INTERVENTION — see: TRANSITION.
MENTAL ILLNESS — A cognitive or behavioral pattern which causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning.
Queerness has long been pathologized as a mental illness, despite not being a problem on an individual level—it is only a “problem” in so far as it threatens the cisheteronormative status quo. It wasn’t until 2001 that the American Psychological Association declared that “homosexuality and bisexuality are not a mental illness.”
Viewing queerness as a mental illness, especially transness today, affords queers some legitimacy as a protected political class, to be pitied and supported rather than discriminated against. Some queers do see their queerness as mental illness because they are unable to comfortably function in a society which hates them, and so their anxiety, depression, and stress are directly tied to their being queer. It should be obvious here that the problem though is society, not the individual.
see also: DISABILITY; TRANS HEALTHCARE; NEURODIVERSE
MEN WHO LOVE MEN (MLM) — Men who are sexually or romantically attracted to men, sometimes called “Men who have Sex with Men (MSM).”
MLM is different from gay, bisexual, and queer because it’s centered on behavior instead of identity. This makes room for men who are hesitant to claim queerness to describe their sexual and romantic life, and is especially important in a sexual health setting.
It also flattens out different queer identities, which is useful for solidarity and describing the shared experience of being a man who loves men.
see also: MAN; GAY; IDENTITY POLITICS
MINCE — To walk affectedly or effeminately—from Polari slang.
Mincing is an aspect of gender performance, and highlights the weight placed on non-verbal gender cues.
see also: POLARI; GENDER (n.)
MISGENDER, MISGENDERING — To incorrectly gender someone, by calling/referring to them with the wrong pronouns or an incorrectly gendered word.
Deliberate misgendering is an example of transphobia.
see also: GENDER; PRONOUNS; DEADNAME
-MISMIA (suffix) — “Hatred of,” used as a more accurate suffix to replace -phobia.
Rather than implying a “fear of,” -mismia names bigotry as hatred. Examples include transmismia, homomismia, Islamomismia, bimismia, lesbomismia, queermismia, and fatmismia.
Using -mismia instead of -phobia eliminates the possibility of conflating mental health problems with bigotry—homophobia is not an illness, agoraphobia is.
This represents a shift in language and using deliberate language, but language is slow to evolve and -mismia is not yet in popular usage.
see also: -PHOBIA
MISOGYNY — The hatred of, and discrimination toward, women and things associated with womanhood and femininity; the subjugation of women and non-men under patriarchy.
Misogyny takes many forms: discrimination against women; the assumption that women are less qualified than men; slut-shaming and body-shaming; double standards and extra scrutiny of women over men; street harassment; expecting women to be beautiful and unconditionally emotionally supportive; only valuing women for their beauty or the emotional support they give you rather than as complex people; and gendered and sexual violence.
The gendered division of labor is another example of misogyny. Feminine labor is devalued literally and figuratively: most unpaid labor (i.e., domestic work and care work) is feminine-coded. Further, everything done by women is considered less legitimate and less credible, even when that labor is supposedly “women’s work.” Fashion, for example, is derided as frivolous and not treated seriously as an art form, but the people who profit most from it are men—the top designers are men, and the top stakeholders in the industry, like in every industry, are men.
Internalized misogyny positions women against each other, highlighted in the “I’m not like other girls” attitude. It makes femininity a competition where everyone loses.
Misogyny is compounded when it intersects with other oppressions: racism, classism, transphobia, queerphobia, agism, and fatphobia.
see also: SEXISM; GENDER (n.)
MLM — Acronym for MEN WHO LOVE MEN.
MOGAI — Acronym for “Marginalized Orientation, Gender Identities, And Intersex.”
MOGAI is a long, ever-expanding list of new “sexualities” based on increasingly specific particulars (e.g., gerontoqueerplatonic: the queerplatonic attraction to elderly people). MOGAI includes, among other things I’m no doubt oblivious to, being otherkin, having mental illness, being a furry, enjoying erotic fiction, and morally unacceptable sexual inclinations like pedophilia, necrophilia, and bestiality. All of these have (usually hilariously poorly designed) “Pride flags.”
Being allegedly marginalized for a sexual preference—while also being straight and cis—is apparently appealing. “Cishet” is not a very nuanced term to describe gender and sexuality, and many cishet people are quick to suggest that being polyamorous or into kink is comparably marginalized to being queer—or that being polyamorous or into kink means they too are queer.
MOGAI conflates other marginalizations with marginalization based on gender identity and sexuality. Mental illness is stigmatized, but having mental illness does not make someone LGBT+. There is an interesting discussion to be had about the ways that sexuality and gender identity are policed in people with mental illness, and about what queerness is and its intersections with mental illness, but those are not the discussions happening under MOGAI.
Human sexuality is complex, and we don’t necessarily need to categorize every individual type of attraction or repulsion. It’s okay that not every queer woman is attracted to the same women in the same ways, under the same circumstances. Having a language to describe sexual preferences is wonderful, but shaping identity around it is misguided. There is utility in telling prospective partners what your sexual inclinations are (e.g., are you a top or a bottom or vers, what are your kinks, what are your boundaries?), but these things are preferences, and even where they are uncommon preferences, they are not marginalized identities.
Many of the MOGAI labels are created by sock puppets who aim to delegitimize the queer community (e.g., by inventing a pedophilia “sexuality” to bolster the narrative that queers are immoral, dangerous, and perverse).
see also: MARGINALIZED; SOCK PUPPET
MOLLY HOUSE — A place where queer men could meet other queer men—in use in 18th- and 19th-century England.
Molly houses could be pubs, coffeehouses, taverns, or private residences. Though there was sometimes a heavy undercurrent of having sex and finding sexual partners, Molly houses were not necessarily brothels.
The Molly house was an important part of queer subculture, and can be seen as the precursor to gay bars in a time when homosexuality was criminalized.
see also: GAY BAR
MONES — Short for hormones; see: HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY.
MONOSEXISM — The assumption of a hetero/homo binary that everyone must be attracted to either (and only) the same or opposite gender as themselves.
Monosexism alienates bisexuals and asexuals, and agender and non-binary people. Monosexism contributes to the erasure of different genders. When ace or bi people are in relationships they’re assumed to be either gay (in an exclusively homosexual way) or straight.
Monosexism as a term risks conflating heterosexism with homosexuality by placing heterosexuality and homosexuality in the same “privileged” group. Obviously, homosexuality does not occupy a privileged position like heterosexuality, but it does benefit from the reductive assumptions of monosexism in ways which other sexualities do not.
see also: MONOSEXUAL; BIPHOBIA; SEXUSOCIETY
MONOSEXUAL — Sexual attraction to only one gender.
Monosexual as a term implies an equal leveling between being exclusively homosexual and being straight, which is obviously not true; but it also highlights that bisexuals, pansexuals, asexuals, and other non-monosexuals experience specific issues of erasure and fetishization.
see also: POLYSEXUAL; BIPHOBIA; GAY; LESBIAN
MSM — Acronym for “Men Who Have Sex With Men.”
see also: MEN WHO LOVE MEN
MTF, M2F — Acronym for MALE TO FEMALE.
MUFFING — Gently massaging or pushing the testicles in and out of the inguinal canals for sexual pleasure.
Sex for people with penises, whether they are trans or not, is focused on erections and penetrating and ejaculating, which is a very narrow understanding of sex.
Muffing is one way for people who have penises and testes to have receptive sex, along with receptive anal sex or oral sex. Assigned male at birth trans people might feel dysphoric if they have penetrative sex with their penis, and trans people who take feminizing hormone replacement therapy might not get or sustain erections.
Like most sex acts, muffing should be done gently and slowly at first, and may take some practice to get right.
Putting the testes into the inguinal canals is also a tactic used to tuck.
Muffing is a term coined by Mira Bellwether in the 2017 zine Fucking Trans Women (FTW), which is about sex acts for pre- and non-op trans women.