systems of gendered/sexual oppression generally don’t care about identities that aren’t historically coherent to it. if i’m panromantic shdjsjsnensjsidissexual snjjdidjsbootycheek-gender and i am still perceived as a woman i’m getting hit by misogyny and maybe even getting some spoils of straight priv if i’m with someone who reads as a cis man. not a big deal u guys smh u don’t gotta lie bout this on the intanets
*sarcastic but genuinely wants to know how OP feels voice*
so do trans women who haven’t transitioned or who don’t want to present ‘femininely’ benefit from male privilege in this respect?
hey, so i wanted to address this since a lotta sj bloggers probably aren’t familiar with the context of this post! i don’t subscribe to black-and-white privilege politics. i regularly eschew them completely because they are far too simplistic, do not give me the depth i prefer when speaking about social issues, and have been commonly, unfortunately bastardized into weapons one can use as a moral bludgeon where it need not be used. privilege politics (in the blogosphere, at least) have also been disemboweled of the social forces they were intended to describe and instead have become associated with reducing serious oppression into checklists devoid of their historical context. i mentioned ‘straight priv’ in my original post cuz i was being lazy and didn’t expect sj tumblr to agonize over this lol. but that’s okay. i’m willing to explain more.
trans people (as well as some cis people to different extents) have a complex relationship to patriarchy, and every individual trans person’s relationship will be different even though many of us may share some commonalities in being trans. i’m a cafab intersex transsexual who has been struggling with medical and social transition by the way. my post was addressing gender/sexual identities that are not coherently profiled under patriarchy nor colonialism - like bootycheekgender and other offshoots of that nature. if i take on Bootycheekgender for myself, no one is going to read me that way because Bootycheekgenderhood is not and has not been targeted in a way by patriarchy nor colonialism that would constitute oppression. sure, i may be made fun of and that sucks and it hurts, but discrimination, while harmful and always worthy of objection, isn’t always tied to oppression (furries are discriminated against but we don’t need a #FurryLivesMatter movement do we). in that situation, how people perceive me will be aligned with the myriad ways that we are socialized and coerced under patriarchy - so in my situation i’ll be treated as a woman.
building off of what i mentioned earlier which addresses your question - transgender people all have complex relationships to patriarchy that may not always be static, and are quite nuanced. i think it is a mistake to say that certain presentations of trans men and trans women and non-binaries will undoubtedly constitute one singular experience, and it isn’t something i argue. that being said, i can only speak for myself in this example and others like me, but when i used to be a trans man full time nothing was externally different for me as i hadn’t transitioned or drastically changed my appearance yet. i was still experiencing misogyny in my community and outside of it. it wasn’t ‘misdirected misogyny,’ however, the ways i was coerced under patriarchy did alienate me with regard to being trans, so i also dealt with transphobic stigma that caused me loads of confusion. no one knew at the time that i was trans, and i made no effort to speak my piece because i had fear.
some trans people who have been in the same predicament as i was can relate to it i bet. and i know there are trans people who have been in the same predicament who walk away with different outcomes, effects, and experiences. all of those avenues of existence are sound and deserve to be spoken for, and we all need to allow a healthy amount of complexity in our analysis that genuinely accommodates these avenues without badgering each other into upholding one singular experience as ideologically pure and all the rest as ideologically worthy of scorn. this is the primary reason why i don’t seriously utilize privilege politics, especially in a fashion that is dogmatic.
hope that can be of some help to you. if you have any further inquiries i can talk about that too since i’m in the mood lol.
I can see where you're coming from, but I do think that "privilege politics" have an important place in discussions of oppression. After all, it is counterproductive to talk about the ways in which people are oppressed in society without also talking about who gains from said oppression, and in what ways.
One thing I really can't let go here is how you seem to think that the way you appear in society is directly tied to your privileges and oppression. This is completely false. Are you saying that bi people in "het-passing" relationships have straight privilege? Or that femme lesbians like me also have straight privilege because of how we look? The point is, the way you look at first glance is not an indicator of your privilege or oppression in general. It, as you said, is far more complex and nuanced.
For example, a trans woman cannot have male privilege because no matter how she looks, she will still be the target of misogyny, not to mention the violence that is uniquely directed at trans feminine people specifically. Why is this? Because at the end of the day, what matters is how you fit into society's predetermined roles, and whether you are breaking any rules it imposes. Superficial appearance is irrelevant in that regard.
Also, on the note of socialization, "male" and "female" socialization do not exist as separate entities. Regardless of the assigned gender of a child, they will be raised to know and understand the ways both boys and girls are supposed to behave, and then are forced into one of those roles based on their assigned gender. No matter how they come to identify as they grow up, they will carry with them the knowledge of how each binary gender is supposed to act, and this will influence their choices and behaviours.
Sorry if I'm a little rambly, I'm just trying to get my thoughts out. Anyways, just please be careful with speaking to experiences that you do not share, otherwise you could seriously hurt and/or alienate people in our community.
