"AFAB Privilege" - A Problem With TME/TMA
This post will be addressing the progression of TMA/TME rhetoric towards the ideaology that people who were assigned female at birth have privilege over trans people who were assigned male at birth.
Disclaimer that, not all people who use TMA/TME rhetoric believe this, but I have good reason to believe that these arguments are a natural conclusion to reach from the TMA/TME binary.
If you're unaware: TMA = transmisogyny affected, and TME = transmisogyny exempt.
Generally speaking, only transfems are considered TMA, while everyone else is considered TME.
It is almost always believed also that you must have been AMAB to be TMA. This is where the concept of "AFAB Privilege" begins. By default, if you were AFAB, that means you are TME and thus privileged over those who are TMA.
People may claim it has nothing to do with AGAB, because cis men are also TME. But again, to be TMA at all you must have been AMAB.
"Literally everybody assigned female at birth has privilege over us."
Notice the claim that being AFAB, in and of itself, is considered a privilege - one that cis men don't have. And the claim that being AFAB is synonymous with "access to cis womanhood".
The claim that people who were AFAB are uniquely more likely to go out of their way to humiliate and abuse transfems. This is literally just claiming that people who were AFAB are more transmisogynstic on the basis of being AFAB.
Then we have the claim that people who were AMAB simply get held to higher standards, and are oppressed more when they break gender norms. At this point its not even transfems specifically, its all AMAB people, including cis men, that AFAB people supposedly have privilege over.
And then the game is given away. TME is straight up equivocated to "having a vagina". And the claim is made that they're more likely to be believed when raped. (Completely ignoring the existence of rape culture).
And we have plenty of examples overall of it being pretty damn clear that TME is more often being used to mean "non-transfem trans people" rather than all the groups it supposedly includes. Notice the distinction between cis and TME here!
I had more screenshots that I couldn't include because I hit the image limit, BTW.
Its not a stretch of the imagination to get from "Well, TME people are privileged over TMA people" -> "Only people who were AMAB can be TMA" -> "People who were AFAB are privileged over people who were AMAB"
It is, at its core, an ideaology of sex-based oppression, but where people who were AFAB have inherent power specifically on the basis of being AFAB.
I shouldnt have to explain why this is dangerous and misogynystic. But in short, people who were AFAB do not benefit from being AFAB. Assigned gender is an oppressive process, and being assigned female at birth often means you face misogyny from your literal birth.
There is no AFAB Privilege. Not being the primary target of transmisogyny is an advantage people can have, but this is not tantamount to being privileged for one's assigned gender.
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