i'm v happy to discuss my partial & conditional male privilege as a trans guy. my frustration is that people are never asking this question in good faith.
by good faith i mean genuine curiosity and expansion of our shared understandings as people: these discussions never seem to be about how my experience can help illuminate the oppression of being a woman or what that consists of, where the line is, what our lived experiences are like. i have never seen people ask/assert "trans men have male privilege" in ways that weren't v obviously trying to give people permission to not think about us. trans men have male privilege i'd argue can be partially true, depending on contexts, but it should be pretty blatantly bad-faith that such a complex topic is treated as a settled issue.
we have male privilege, it's settled, that's it, and you never have to think about effeminate trans men, flamboyant gay trans men, the complexities of how we move through the world, what it means (in my case, for example) to be a guy who's generally seen as a guy, but has not had top or bottom surgery, has long hair, & what that means for how i get treated in different contexts.
what are we talking about? the privilege to not be seen/treated as a woman on sight? reproductive freedoms? respect in the workplace? economic security? etc.?- so many trans guys, even guys who have passed for quite some time, never experience so many of these things, and instead of having genuine curiosity about our unique experiences you want to slot us all categorically into the cis-het-white-man box so you don't need to think of us as people who can ever have power leveraged against us
people seem to have two settings, either "trans men are women and don't know what it's like to be a guy" or "trans men are cis men and never experience their own unique challenges," even though i think it's pretty obvious that we have a mixed/complicated gender experience simply by virtue of being trans
and every tguy i've ever seen say "i have male privilege all of the time" never brings up all the things he had to do to get & retain patriarchal power. having- idk, been a guy, it's so fucking disingenous to pretend like being a man doesn't involve a performance of ten thousand different choices & behaviors to make sure other guys continue seeing you as a dude. it's not just "having facial hair" or w/e, and if that's what you think then you are literally by definition a transmisogynist lmao. it's the high-and-tight haircut, the gym shirt, the workouts you did to build those arms, the ways you learned to socialize with straight-acting men so they feel comfortable, the things you don't express & feminine mannerisms you stopped using because it would get you clocked. IMO, participating in sexism is a system men participate in so they don't become targets of it.
like, insisting trans guys universally attain male privilege isn't an innocent statement, it's one that in my experience gives dudes a skewed idea of their own safety. what do you think happens when i have a scruff, deep voice, and people realize my boobs are not cis guy moobs? why do so many people think that i'm seen unilaterally as a cis straight man, rather than a mostly-man sort-of-woman you're allowed to condescend to & also physically fight?
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unwarranted Cis Opinion but I'm getting really uncomfortable w people responding to bathroom bills by posting pictures of trans men like DO YOU WANT THEM IN WOMEN'S BATHROOMS
bc like. no they're men. they should be in men's bathrooms unless that feels unsafe. but. it really feels like it's not helpful to lean into the idea that seeing someone presenting masc or being read as a man in a women's bathroom means You're In Danger.
like I know several butch women and NB ppl who are really scared around being on T or getting top surgery bc they're not men and they don't want to be in the men's bathroom, and in that circumstance stuff like growing facial hair or reading more androgynously can be really fucking scary when people are being primed by propaganda to be on edge and hyperreactive to anyone who doesn't look like their idea of a Cis Woman.
and I'm not laying that at the feet of the people saying "hey uhhhh trans men are men and don't belong in women's bathrooms" bc it is not their fault. it's the fault of a concerted effort to make it difficult and dangerous to be trans or substantively gender nonconforming in public.
but at the same time idk I guess it just worries me cause sometimes it feels like "you fools! you are worried about this group of trans people bc you think they're the Lurking Danger of Men In Bathrooms? WRONG! the Men Making You Feel Afraid In Bathrooms are actually THESE trans people!" when in fact neither of those groups using the fucking bathroom is a problem. just piss and mind your business. people need to go where they need to go.
anyway this country is a hot fucking trash fire that somehow accelerates its descent into open fascism more every day so it's all super good and normal. so don't take this too seriously tbh cause it's somewhere near #2535654476457899009765 on the list of priorities for Queer Discourse right now when the fucking human rights commission is actively rescinding protections from trans people. Please ignore my gibberish.
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