[pt: Problems with CAGAB’s Epistemology in a larger font /end pt]

The (trans)gender of who coined CAGAB is irrelevant, it doesn't exempt the terms from critique, especially when the foundational theoretical framing is flawed.

According to Mahdialynn, the trans woman who came forward to dispute false claims about its origins in 2015 (link), the coining was focused on “trying to find a way to talk about gendered experience,” continuing with how she was “trying to make sense of trans ppl’s relationships to birth assignment.” She explained that “[what began as] ‘non-consensually assigned X at birth' became 'coercively assigned X at birth', probably just for the sake of an easier-to-pronounce acronym,” prioritising linguistic convenience over theoretical accuracy.

The issue lies not in authorship but in epistemology: the way CAGAB was conceptualized reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the language it draws from, a language born out of a system in which coercion is not conditional or occasional, but inherent and structural. The concept of sex assignment at birth originates from intersex contexts, where it names a specific regime of biopolitical control often enshrined into law. This regime is defined first and foremost by violations of bodily autonomy, where consent is structurally impossible and harm is retroactively justified as medical necessity. Including, but not limited to, irreversible, non-consensual medical interventions, prescribed rape, and mutilation, rather than the medical neglect, gatekeeping, coercive control, and social conditioning trans people also face.

Framing coercion as a way to make sense of trans experiences isolates trans trauma as uniquely coercive, suggesting that non-coercive assignment exists. It overlooks how gender roles are forced onto everyone (especially queer individuals) and that perisex trans people face the enforcement of gender throughout their lives, whereas intersex individuals face both the enforcement of gender and the construction of the sexed body itself from birth. The phrase claims to address gender, yet conflates it by re-encoding sex categories as if they were gendered experiences. The terms originated from a conceptual misunderstanding of AGAB that equated multiple distinct axes of gendered experience, and their meanings have long since collapsed through perisex misuse. The conflation of coercive control, Socially Imposed Gender (SIG - link), rearing, and birth assignment into a single concept seen as indistinguishable and one and the same is driven by the majority perspective.

It is not just misuse—it reflects a broader pattern: a majority misapprehends a framework originally shaped around minority experiences, repurposes it for themselves, and erases its original connotations in the process. A member of the relative majority took an inherently coercive system, misunderstanding and unaware of its depth; treated it as something that needed changing, and reshaped it to fit her own experience because she didn’t grasp what it meant in the first place. I can’t help but be reminded of the similar phenomena regarding "racist Karen"—as if "Karen" didn’t originally mean a racist white woman weaponizing her white privilege against racialized (particularly Black) people. The terms have been appropriated to such a degree that their original meaning has been obscured—so much so that people now treat what was already inherent as if it were a distinct, additional feature. For these and further reasons, many intersex individuals consider the terms inherently intersexist. On a separate note, as a species, we are required to eat to sustain ourselves, but we understand being "forced to eat" to live is different from someone being forced to eat by being force-fed.

She didn’t develop it from a place of reckoning with the medical system’s coercive control over bodies; she borrowed the language of intersex trauma and reformatted it to describe her own, without grasping its original weight. Her goal didn't seem to be about illuminating systemic violence, but to make describing trans experiences linguistically convenient.

When used by perisex trans individuals, these terms function as misnomers, category errors, and forms of conceptual appropriation (borrowing a concept and applying it to another context in a way that changes and distorts its meaning). Under this framing, “coercively assigned” misrepresents a system in which coercion is not incidental, but both foundational and systematic—a rule, not an exception—by portraying coercive assignment as unique to trans individuals, rather than acknowledging how coercion disproportionately targets them. Perisex trans people are not coerced into "correcting" their sex characteristics to be assigned a sex systematically in the same way that intersex people are coercively subjected to nonconsensual sex characteristic manipulation. Medical intersexism is rarely used to impose sexual characteristics onto perisex individuals—cases such as botched circumcisions resulting in vaginoplasty are nearly unheard of outside of David Reimer cited as the sole example. There have been perisex trans individuals with developed uterovaginal structures—particularly those transmasculinized—forced to take birth control in an attempt to feminize them, however, such events occur after infancy and target the enforcement of characteristics rather than the erasure of sexual characteristic nonconformity.

While the experiences are very real, more often than not the abuse described aligns with established patterns of coercive control. Using CAFAB/CAMAB to convey violence that occurs later in life and unrelated to nonconsensual sex characteristic manipulation obscures the specific language needed to describe distinct forms of violence intersex individuals face, such as forced, coercive, or "corrective" manipulation of their sex characteristics. If these terms are generalized, what remains—“surgically assigned”—leaves behind those who were subjected to forced exogenous hormone treatments to explain their trauma in explicit detail rather than having a colloquial shorthand. For some survivors, the shortest is: medicalized violence, medicalized rape, prescribed rape, being raped with medication, and legalized incest.

I've been trying to figure that out, too.

I was pretty sure that the origin was in postmodern academia, but I didn't know much more.

I have never formally engaged with Queer Studies, nor with Gender and Sexuality Studies,so I had no idea where to start.

Someone on #jumblr (I regret that I don't recall who) pointed out this collection of essays, Poisoning the Wells: Antisemitism in Contemporary America.

Chapter 2 is "Pinkwashing Antisemitism: The Origins of Queer Anti-Israeli Discourse by Dr. R. Amy Elman.

I'm way outside my wheelhouse here, despite holding a degree in one of the social sciences.[1]

I'm going to try to summarize this in a way which is shorter and more digestible than reading the whole thing, but there's a link to the whole thing at the bottom of this Very Long Post.

Disclaimers:

1. Acknowledging the depth of my ignorance:

I don't have the contextual knowledge to know with confidence if this is an intellectually honest argument, or even if the history is fairly presented. If anyone on Jumblr has more experience studying this topic, I'd sure welcome their thoughts.

2. A note to LGBTQ+ readers on "queer":

I understand that some in the LGBTQ+ community don't care for the term "queer," and some regard it as a slur. I have tried, for this reason, to cease using this word in my daily life. Below, I'm going to use the word "queer" a lot here, however, because Elman does and the scholars she discusses do. If you're among those who dislike this term or find it hurtful, I hope that you will not see my doing so as a slur or an insult

3. My editorial comments are in blue.

4. This is long. Not as long as the article itself, but long for Tumblr. You are forewarned.

Got a coffee or an energy drink?

Continue below the break:

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(a.k.a. Invisible Girls II)

Alright, pull up those chairs again, because it's going to get long. I could write volumes about youth and queer culture (real world, pop, etc.), but I do have other things I need to be writing. Feel free Ask or continue the discussion in Comments.

Invisibility as Queer Adolescence

Agnes’s refrain of being invisible maps onto one of the most recognizable queer experiences. A lot of isolated queer kids start here: unseen by their families, unacknowledged by peers, and unsure of how to even recognize themselves. Invisibility is both protection and prison. For Agnes, it is painfully literal. She tells Orloff and the body parts of how she feels, but later tells Wednesday (and Enid) why: that her mother has left her behind for a new normie family, either unable or unwilling to deal with having a "mistake" of a daughter who can vanish as she does. Ignored (though also monitored) by her father, she does not exist at home, so she struggles to exist anywhere else.

This invisibility hits harder because of her age. At 13/14, Agnes is right where identity exploration begins to press forward. These are the years when crushes, attachments, and first attempts at self-definition take shape, and when figurative social invisibility can feel unbearable.

Projection: The First Step Toward Identity

Agnes latching onto Wednesday means more than just ‘psycho fangirling’ because Wednesday embodies what she cannot claim for herself: unapologetic difference (and indifference, since it's Wednesday). This projection is the first step of queer coming-of-age: Queer kids at 13 or 14 often idolize or obsess over figures who seem to live openly/freely not because they want to consume them, but because they see in them the possibility of their own reflection.

This is why her fangirl obsession isn’t just comedic exaggeration. It dramatizes that awkward, desperate stage of identity-seeking where admiration, envy, and desire blur. At this age, those feelings are especially heightened: Too big for the child self, not yet shaped into the adult self. This can be said of any of the three girls, by the way.

From Invisibility to Recognition

The heart of the allegory comes when Agnes admits that she feels more invisible than ever at the Some of Your Parts support group. This is the hinge moment of queer coming-of-age. Invisibility is no longer sustainable. The longing shifts — from projecting onto others to demanding recognition for the self. It is the step between hiding and claiming. Agnes embodies that fragile, formative stage: when the invisible child starts insisting on being seen.

Finally Seen by a Peer: Preceding the Dead Dance

Technical nitpick: I wish Marshall had included a close-up of Ortega's face in its shocked expression. We can barely see it from this angle.

Agnes spends most of her arc trying to be seen through mimicry: first by orbiting Wednesday, then by attempting to “become” Wednesday with her full-on Single White Female stunt. In Episode 7/”Woe Me the Money”, the cycle breaks: Enid stumbles upon a crying Agnes, the failure of her costume transformation laid bare.

Instead of ridiculing her or dismissing her obsession, Enid does something Agnes has never received from a peer: She listens and acknowledges her. She pushes Agnes not to vanish into someone else’s identity, but to embrace her own. Even though Enid doesn’t phrase it as directly as “I see you,” the sentiment lands with equal force: a peer finally recognizing Agnes as more than an invisible shadow. It's fertile ground for queer exploration and is only amplified in the next few scenes where Agnes asserts herself to Wednesday by telling her that she no longer cares what she thinks about her, echoing a queer coming out moment: The defiant shift from craving approval to claiming one’s own visibility, the instant when a young queer person stops begging to be validated and instead begins to live their truth.

These moments matter because it reframes Agnes’s invisibility: Recognition doesn’t come from authority figures, but from a peer struggling with identity herself (as Enid fears for her future as a possible Alpha). The Dead Dance becomes a symbolic rite of passage: a queer allegory where one girl tells another that it’s okay to exist in her own psycho, messy, searching self. For Agnes, it is the first flicker of visibility that doesn’t rely on projection or imitation, but on being acknowledged as who she is.

Experimentation: Orbiting Enid

In the last episode, Agnes didn't fully mirror Enid’s bright style or extroverted warmth, but she edged toward it. After the disastrous attempts at trying to be “seen” by Wednesday, she then orbits Enid after the dance, testing out what belonging might feel like without fully crossing into imitation. This is another recognizable queer stage — the blurred line between “I want to be like her” and “I want to be with her.”

At 13/14, queer crushes often start here (and a lot of times, earlier). Admiration and attraction fold together, leaving the young person unsure where one ends and the other begins. Agnes’s near-glomming onto Enid captures that confusion perfectly. (If you watch her after Enid kindly rejects her offer of a list of boys, you can see acceptance and a glimmer of curiosity; as if she's still trying to figure out how to be valuable to Enid. Old habits, as they are.)

Belonging Among Peers

What cements Agnes’s allegorical weight is how her arc parallels Wednesday's and Enid’s. Season 1 centered around mother-daughter tensions: Enid’s yearning for maternal (and pack) acceptance, Wednesday’s struggle under Morticia’s shadow. Agnes belongs in that same framework in Season 2. Her invisibility and maternal abandonment position her as a peer in the show’s meditation on what it means for young women to come of age under pressure, rejection, and difference.

By placing Agnes alongside them, we recognize her not as a joke or a side plot but as a crucial figure in the larger allegory of visibility. Her arc insists that queer identity is forged not only in flamboyant declarations, but in the quieter, painful journey from erasure to recognition.

Media Literacy and the Importance of Reading This as Queer Allegory

Why does this matter? Because media often disguises or misdirects queer longing. Characters like Agnes get written off as creepy fangirls or comic relief when beneath those surface tropes lies allegory and to stop at the surface is to miss the point. Media literacy — the ability to read subtext, to ask what invisibility and queer longing might represent — is the tool that transforms Agnes from a caricature into a symbol.

For queer youth around Agnes’s age (13/14), this practice is more than analysis; it’s survival. It gives them permission to see themselves in characters not explicitly labeled queer, and to recognize that invisibility, awkward crushes, or clumsy attachments aren’t pathology, but part of the universal arc of queer becoming.

Actual media literacy teaches us that Agnes’s story isn’t disposable or comedic background; it’s an allegory of identity-in-motion. It shows that visibility often begins in longing, projection, and the painful confession of being unseen, and for queer kids watching, that allegory can provide the mirror they may not find anywhere else.

Sidebar, with Enid: A Popular Example of Adolescent Identity Exploration

I'm gonna interrupt here for a minute to tell you all that queer TV has been showing us this queer youth questioning identity for 25 years, and I can think of one winding link back from the current day media that we have: Ryan Murphy’s Popular (his cackle-worthy YA comedrama precursor to Glee) which aired on the WB during Y2K. It featured not one, but several episodes featuring LGBTQ+ youth (and adults) and the identity issues that they faced back in the day. Character Harrison John’s mother was a lesbian, whose relationship he wanted to hide from his friends. There was a 🔥decidedly🔥 gay🦭 “new kid” Adam Rothchild-Ryan portrayed by Wentworth Miller; there was an episode devoted to a trans shop teacher who was transitioning from male to female (and in other episodes, LGBTQ+ and gender identity issues were explored).

But the one relevant example I’d like to use is Lily Esposito’s journey to self-discovery, because the heart and tone of Agnes’s journey made me remember this particular scene (which is what the scene between Enid and Wednesday in the lupin cages also reminded me of):

Two things: Lily Esposito was an excellent character (they all were, they had a perfect ensemble cast) and excellent Latino (Mexican) and social justice representation (she was a raging SJW a decade before the term became pejorative). Secondly, the hilarious little bitch who asked about tongues being involved in the kiss is Nicole Julian, portrayed by Tammy Lynn Michaels who, right after Popular ended, went on to film the short film D.E.B.S. in 2003. The original D.E.B.S. short film was Angela Robinson’s USC film school project that was her way of breaking into the industry and planting a queer narrative in mainstream genre film. As many of the queer fans know, Robinson directed “Hyde and Woe Seek” and “Woe Thyself”, the body switch episode that is beloved by a lot who have watched.

This wasn't allegory, it was explicit, but for queer kids watching, they could certainly feel that confusion and frustration of not knowing what’s up or down or where they belong. Invisibility isn't just literal, as it is with Agnes, but it's spiritual as well, and Lily was, as she admitted, just exploring her identity. Everybody wants to be seen, but all teens are struggling to find their identity at that age, and this struggle also includes Enid Sinclair coming to terms with her possible Alpha wolf status. (And for the record, the girls in this video were mostly a lot older than 16 and 17; cosplaying high school aged teens is not at all new. A few of them were pushing 30, like Hunter Doohan was in Season 1. There was a joke about older people playing teenagers in-universe.)

The de Mille Echo: Her Name is Deliberate

Agnes de Mille was a woman asserting power and artistry in a masculine sphere in 1940's WW2 wartime America. In her memoirs, she often reflected on how she was dismissed or underestimated, forced to carve out her own space to be taken seriously; not only as an artist, but as a woman working in a field dominated by men. Sound familiar?

The choice to name her Agnes resonates beyond coincidence. Agnes George de Mille (1905–1993) was an American choreographer who revolutionized Broadway by weaving ballet and modern dance into musicals like Oklahoma! and Carousel ; she was a key advocate for the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts, and by her name and profession she becomes a meta-shadow here in both Enid and Agnes’ identity arc.

Enid’s brief solo ballet sequence before her first Alpha wolfout invokes that same tradition of movement as character revelation: Dance as a language of becoming. Later, the namesake’s own moment of visibility arrives when she dances with Enid at the Venetian Masquerade Gala. In queer terms, both moments stage choreography as a connection between repression and release: Enid’s solo dance preludes her transformation, Agnes’s joint dance is a dance of freedom for recognition. Together, they fold de Mille’s legacy into a queer allegory of visibility, desire, and self-making.

Striking a Pose at Nevermore: Queer Visibility from Vogue to The Dead Dance

The whole gala sequence doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Its visual language borrows from a decades-old lineage of queer-coded pop culture spectacles, most famously Madonna’s 1990 MTV VMA performance of “Vogue”.

Madonna orchestrated the performance with the same type of 18th-century court styling as the gala: justaucorps/frock coats, panniered gowns, and baroque poses transformed into voguing choreography. It was a queer reclamation of aristocratic aesthetics, channeling drag and ballroom culture into the mainstream.

Although Madonna’s performance was styled in a Marie Antoinette-inspired French Rococo mode and the Venetian Gala draws on Italian masquerade tradition, both share the exaggerated silhouettes and theatricality of the 18th century. For queer readings, the distinction in geography matters less than the shared act of camp reclamation.

For queer young adults in 1990, Madonna’s “Vogue” was more than a hit single: it was a lifeline, both a psychic salve and a call to arms to cast off one's inhibitions and to live freely as who you really are. At the height of the AIDS crisis when gay identity was stigmatized and often invisible in mainstream media, Madonna took the drag ballroom culture born in Black and Latin queer communities and elevated it unapologetically for the mainstream media on a global scale. For countless young queers around the world, seeing voguing presented as art, beauty, and empowerment meant recognizing themselves in a culture that had previously been underground.

The lyrics of “Vogue” mattered, too. Lines like “It makes no difference if you’re black or white, if you’re a boy or a girl ” spoke directly to those who felt marginalized for their identity. The song reframed difference as something to celebrate: “Strike a pose, there’s nothing to it.” For the queer teens at the time (myself included, as I was the same age as Enid is), those words became a mantra: a call to visibility, to step into the light even when the world tried to erase them.

Visually, Enid’s and Weems’s dresses in particular at the gala evoke that same mix of Madonna’s 18th-century styling with camp theatricality. Their looks rhyme with Madonna’s court-drag styling and two generations later, with Lady Gaga’s own citations of the performance in her video. For queer viewers, the connection is immediate: opulent historical fashion being queered through performance, exaggeration, and parody.

By placing our invisible girl Agnes into this visual and lyrical tradition, the dance aligns her allegory with this longer queer history. She’s not just dressing up to be seen; she’s moving through a space coded by queer artistry, from ballroom vogue to pop spectacle. To read the dance (and her arc) this way is to understand that visibility is never neutral: it’s forged and sustained through the resilience of queer culture across generations.

This is why the dialogue between Madonna’s performance and the Venetian Gala/"The Dead Dance" is more than visual; it’s spiritual. Enid and Agnes are framed in baroque poses and voguing gestures that visually cite Madonna’s legacy, but the deeper connection is a reawakening and a convergence that carries her original message forward, turning queer invisibility into presence.

The scene thus becomes not just a masquerade, but a queer-coded ritual of recognition, summoning the spirit of Madonna when she told queer youth everywhere: Screw the haters. You are seen, you are beautiful, now let your freak flag fly. In the biology lab before the dance, Enid all but conjures that same spirit for Agnes, reminding her that visibility doesn’t require imitation: it requires the courage to stand as yourself.

Closing Thoughts On Agnes (also a TLDR;)