FtM / MtF

FtM (female-to-male) and MtF (male-to-female) are directional abbreviations inherited from medical literature and early community spaces: assigned sex first, identified gender second. Start with the part everyone gets backwards: read the landing point, not the origin. MtF ends at F — a trans woman. FtM ends at M — a trans man.

The pair is mid-evolution. Fewer people introduce themselves this way now, for three main reasons: the format leads with assigned sex, so every self-introduction re-announces “here is what my birth certificate said”; the “from A to B” frame implies a gender that was swapped, when many people understand themselves as always having been this gender, with life simply catching up (see transition); and nonbinary people are locked out of the format entirely. Current usage favors trans woman / trans man — centered on who someone is, not where the paperwork started.

That said, in Chinese-speaking internet communities, “mtf” and “ftm” remain very much alive as self-labels and search terms — mutual-support groups on Chinese platforms are often literally named “mtf 小组” (mtf group). As always: respect how people label themselves; when describing others, default to 跨性别女性 / 跨性别男性 (trans woman / trans man).

Register note: dated-leaning but not slur-level — a context-sensitive term. It saturates older literature, forum archives, and group names; understand it, don’t police it.

Common misuse: reading MtF as “a trans man.” The abbreviation spells the direction; the identity is the destination. MtF is a woman; FtM is a man.