MTF

MTF stands for male to female. It is shorthand for a trans woman, or for the direction of her transition, and like its counterpart FTM it comes from an era when transition was written about as a move between two fixed categories.

It remains common in medical settings and in communities that have been running since before the current vocabulary settled. Many trans women use it about themselves, particularly those who transitioned when it was the standard term.

It has the same problem as FTM, and for the same reason. Male to female frames a trans woman as having begun as male, which is not how most trans women describe themselves. Transfeminine has largely taken its place, describing a direction without conceding a starting point.

It is written MTF or MtF, and turns up constantly in the names of forums, subreddits and clinic paperwork.

As with FTM: fine as a self-description, poor as a label for someone else. Trans woman works in almost every sentence where MTF would, and asks nothing of the person being described.

MTF is a description of a direction, not of a past

The literal reading, that someone was male and became female, is the reason the term is fading. Most trans women would say they were always women and were assigned male, which is a different claim about a different thing.

It stays in circulation because it is embedded in the names of long-running communities and in clinical language, not because anyone is defending the framing. Reading it as an old label rather than a statement about someone's history is both kinder and more accurate.

Saying it well