DISCUSSION OF RELATIVE PRIVILEGE AND US CENTRISM IN TRANS SPACES
Vaguing about a post i saw which in isolation is not saying anything wrong but suggests a very frustrating trend. Blogger compares incomes of trans men and trans women, the study shown displays trans men make more relative to trans women. If you find the post don’t be mean about it on my behalf please, there is a reason i chose not to engage.
Disregarding the validity of the study and what Kind of trans people are included in what percentage and amount (are the trans men mostly passing? How about the trans women? What is the racial makeup of the study? Is anyone closeted? Etc), let us assume that all my questions ARE answered and confounding variables are addressed.
Assuming that, indeed, the study validly shows trans men have some financial privileges over trans women invites a discussion of relative privilege. I believe claiming that “we are all treated the same” is in many ways wrong, and OP pointing it out is not necessarily incorrect — even baseline transphobia looks rather different between transfeminized and transmasculinized people in any given specific population, for example the self mutilating women VS predatory males angle often pushed in these discussions. The violence these labels inspire does not look the same. Broadly stating that we are all faggots in the eyes of the state is unhelpful advocacy because we must pinpoint specific oppression points when fighting transphobia, and often, those points are not experienced by all of us.
First, assuming the study is not flawed. Is finance the only aspect we should care about? Provided this is true, i would absolutely say that yes trans men have some financial level over trans women, but when discussing subjects like reproductive autonomy, is it acceptable and fair to point out relative privilege trans women experience? I am unable to answer that, specifically because the problem lies in how we talk about this — financial privilege is taken as All privilege, as in trans men are privileged over trans women period, but if we use reproductive autonomy the same way, i think i do not need to tell you that this leads to TERF-like ideology VERY quickly. Trans women are Not more privileged than trans men. Trans men then are Not necessarily more privileged than trans women either, yet they leverage financial privilege, which DOES matter and plays a HUGE role in how we live — i do not advocate we dismiss this, because money affects food, medical access, shelter. My question is if leveraging one type of oppression as the *only* one that matters is accurate. When addressing financial inequality, we must be equitable, we must focus on WHY trans women earn less MORE and engage in financial support programs and fight workplace discrimination in specific suited for them ways. Trans men need to be specifically singled out in reproductive healthcare and advocacy and resources need to be allotted so another guy wont die of something that doctors point blank refuse to treat, etc. Advocacy is not like a painkiller pill, it should address the source of the problem based on the issue — the wound you stitch up first should be the one you are bleeding more from.
We must all be able to tolerate that in some aspects, someone has it harder or easier, without feeling invalidated as marginalized people as a whole. But there is a crucial point that i have not mentioned, and that is a GLARING missed conversation. Because let us say that yes, financial privilege as i discussed, affects MANY aspects of life is serious ways. Perhaps we SHOULD single out financial inequality first and foremost, I would not necessarily disagree.
THE STUDY MEASURES INCOME IN CENTS.
Do you see the issue? The study is inherently LIMITED to the United States. This is what makes me roll my eyes. Even if trans women in the United States did suffer more than trans men in almost every aspect where stating that trans men leverage privilege over trans women in general would be accurate, this IGNORES the trans people in the global south, hell it ignores trans people in non US cultures in general. WHY DOESN’T ANYONE CARE? The rates of forced and child marriage, sexual violence, honour killings, education inequality, employment inequality, and more are IGNORED. Trans women are not the ones forced to bear children at 13, are not denied education, are not disallowed real work, and are not treated as property. This happens to people classed as women based on their assigned sex, like cis women and trans men. It is not wrong to say this. Sex is used as an aspect of enforcement of cispatriarchy and it should not be considered misgendering and malicious to discuss this. Misogyny affects everyone differently based on a multitude of factors.
Broadly, in many places, this conditional safety relies on closeting. A trans woman will often be killed if she is found out, not just trans men. It’s likely that the murder rates for those found out look very similar. The difference is, a closeted trans woman can try to get employment, move away, change her material conditions enough to perhaps one day transition. If she is careful, she call remain a human in the eyes of those around her long enough to make this work. A closeted trans man will remain property. His condition will worsen if he comes out. He has almost no chance to influence this. His safety and social mobility will hinge on his father, his husband, brothers, entire neighborhood. If neither of these people ever come out and the trans woman is stuck living as she is, she still has a better life than a trans man.
And yet I would consider it asinine to say that trans women are more privileged than trans men despite this. How does it help an American trans woman murdered and deemed a pervert if she could at least get a job if she was born in Afghanistan? When i enter bars as a non passing ftm with my non passing mtf friends, i reflexively scan the crowd with a concern for HER safety above mine, because her appearance alone is cause for extreme violence where i live now. I just look like a tomboy. I leverage relative privilege above her, i know i am less likely to be beaten.
How does it help a trans man in Sudan slaughtered by his own family that trans men in the US earn 10 cents above trans women? Does he care about the white trans men from USAmerica who got to transition as teens and proudly declare that trans men do not experience misogyny?
If we pooled all the money in the world, i have no doubt that trans women earn more. Many if not most trans men will never see a cent in their life. But we cannot feasibly focus on everyone so broadly. We can best support those in our immediate reach. If a trans woman says she is extremely financially marginalized in the US, she is saying the truth, she needs help. She is not to refuse money and starve just because someone has it worse. I don’t want people to suffer.
But it hurts to see that no one cares. If racialized people are included in advocacy at all (and they usually arent), they are Westerners. In the eyes of the West, it is in the very nature of usually brown and black foreigners to suffer. It is a fact that their nation is exploited and some of them aren’t allowed to leave the house because of what genitalia they have. It doesnt matter. They arent real humans. A real human has access to the internet, a car, and speaks english. It matters not that there are statistically more people in those areas than in North America and Western Europe, because you do not see them. They aren’t to be included in our advocacy because we can’t help them nor should we bother. That trans man forced to sleep in a “menstrual hut” afraid of snakes isn’t a man at all because he is too busy dealing with That to post on tumblr. That trans woman spending hours assembling the phone you post from btw will probably never afford her transition. You do not consider their pain equal value to yours. And part of me hates this entire community because of this.
I agree with discussing relative privileges. I refuse to leverage the pain of my brothers to get out of standing up for my sisters when i see i can help. If US trans men earn more than US trans women, this is a real thing and not transandrophobic to point out, its reality. Since migrating i know where I stand in this class ladder. But i can’t help but look down. I am begging you stop making generalized global statements based on your personal experiences to shut down entire demographics or specific people. I am also begging you stop hiding behind those among your gender who have it VERY BAD to get out of acknowledging you YOURSELF may have it easier than those NOT in your demographic. If you asked me which trans people globally have it worse, id say the ones among whom more people MUST wear a burqa. But it doesn’t change the fact I am afraid for my sisters around me and feel safer than they do, my immediate reality may in many aspects be relative privilege over trans women. These statements coexist. Stop being self centered and stop being fucking western imperialists. Before you smugly talk about how you are the most oppressed consider both your material reality AND global consditions. Its not that hard. The privilege you have to ignore most of the world or use those people to shield yourself from criticism sickens me.
a) someone saying with their whole chest that having been assigned female at birth is not an axis of marginalization
and
b) someone else, in an argument with a t*rf, confidently saying "cis women have the same rights wherever they go!" and then hastily amending this to "in the west," neither of which are true as can be evidenced by a cursory glance at, for instance, the United States lmfao? (and then replying to a mention of female infanticide with a smarmy little "well clearly YOU, and 99% of women in the world, were not a victim of that")
like Jesus fucking Christ yes obviously argue with t*rfs for the fact that they downplay the oppression of trans women and exclude them from resources they desperately need access to as a marginalized gender and communities where they could find belonging as women.
but don't claim patently untrue immediately disprovable things to try and dunk on them good god. you muddle the argument and are throwing the baby out with the bathwater when you try to dump every line of feminism they have co-opted and weaponized. the major error of t*rfs is their platforming and justification of violence and suppression of trans people in the name of their incomplete version of feminism. this does not mean every single thing they have ever mentioned is Inherently Untrue and Evil, but that we must untangle how they have been twisted to discredit trans people.
and i understand this is an instinctive recoiling reaction to seeing these particular arguments misused to exclude and berate trans women! but like. holy shit look outside your western bubble for one moment; cis women certainly have privilege over trans people on the basis of their cis-ness, but at the same time they cannot be claimed to be Unilaterally Gender Privileged Everywhere They Go because um. yes actually that birth sex assignment despite aligning with their gender is also used to justify violence against them.
which, one can say, is also the case for trans women, that their birth sex assignment is used to justify immense violence against THEM! but somehow people are unable to hold two non-competing descriptions of oppression in their head??
i think a lot of people are under the impression that naming a false category imposed by a bigoted system is the same as being a bigot oneself. yes, sex is a social construct, yes, assigned sex at birth is violently physically imposed on intersex people and is weaponized against trans people to define them out of their genders.
no, naming the category that in this binary system, under the patriarchy, is systematically singled out as immediately lesser, is not reifying asab itself.
yes, actually, in the majority of the world -- including parts of the "western" world though it disturbs your privilege to think of it as something beyond a Third World Issue -- babies afab and people who go through, at the very least, their early lives and education socially imposed as female, are at heightened risk of physical harm and neglect, their educations are deprioritized or completely stripped away, and more, because they are expected to fall into the category of homemaker/babymaker/husband-pleaser, starting from when they are too young to even consciously articulate their opinion of this gendered role.
obviously, a trans man is not female if he does not identify with the term, but the circumstances of his early childhood long before he could articulate his true gender are in fact shaped by this social imposition and expectation. certainly, it does not account for all of the discrimination he faces upon transition -- because then it is compounded with other forms of bigotry -- but it is a general starting point of disprivilege on the very basis of this false category constructed by the patriarchy.
somehow you have fallen into the impression that fighting for an ideal -- the abolition of asab, the liberation of all trans people (all of which, obviously, I desire as well) -- means that talking about how asab is used as a justification for the stifling of half the world's population is now taboo.
i refuse to concede this rung of feminism to the t*rfs because i think we are all perfectly capable of understanding that significant harm is done to trans women, and harm is also done to all people cis or trans forced into socially imposed girlhood/womanhood from childhood, and that the reason for the latter is in fact, largely dictated by this arbitrary sorting of infants that the oppressor has latched onto, regardless of it being a social construct. race, too, is a social construct (there is no significant physiological Brain Difference between races), but we understand perfectly well that going around claiming to be colorblind does not actually fix the existing oppressive structures that punish marginalized races.
you conflate discussion of a false construct with the upholding of it when there is no way we can also dismantle it without discussing it. it is bigotry to say "this marginalized group has worse outcomes in something because of some inherent deficiency in their kind". it is not bigotry to say "this marginalized group has worse outcomes in something because they, as an arbitrary category boxed in by the oppressor, tend to have been systematically denied the rights and opportunities of other groups."
I do think its interesting seeing the take that transandrophobia is just misogyny and doesnt contain any hatred/disregard/disgust towards masculinity, and that the anti-masculine sentiments are such a niche issue from within the queer community and not widespread enough to be worth talking about. Which is a take I've seen variations on multiple times now. Because, first of all, I've been in multiple irl queer spaces, across all age groups, and gender/ sexuality spectrums, in multiple different cities and states, from major metropolitan areas to small rural communities (though, all in the us still). And it absolutely is not a small isolated issue. It is not just 'terminally online'. It is in every queer space I've been in, every queer space my friends have been in. And it absolutely can be violent. I personally have had another queer person threaten to rape me because they wanted to "fuck the man out" of me. Their exact words. I've talked extensively on here about the things I've had people say to me, in queer spaces, specifically because I am a man. Its not a short list. And it's full of incredibly harmful things, often combining other forms of bigotry with the idea that bigotry is fine as long as its directed at men. (i.e. "trans men are always retards" another exact quote that I was told directly, in response to my saying that I am autistic)
I could fill a book with the terrible and traumatizing things that have been said or done to me at the hands of other queer people because I am a man, but thats not the point.
The thing I can't understand, can't wrap my head around is the sheer level of cruelty it takes to look at even a single trans man whos opening up about his pain, begging to be heard, saying 'I can't find a place in cishet society because I'm trans but when I come into queer spaces, spaces that are supposed to be safe and accepting I'm ostracized and driven away because I'm a man, or because I'm masculine and at this point I don't know what to do, I have nowhere to go, no community, and I'm considering suicide because I can't see this ever changing and I can't stand being this isolated', looking at that person and saying 'that doesn't matter/ isn't really an issue/ isn't worth talking about' ?
i think there is a phenomenon where sometimes a trans person will go “hmm. i am treated as a man when it is convenient for others, and a woman when it is convenient for others, and often as a freakish third thing excluded from the advantages of both. surely, because of the gender binary, the Other Type of trans person experiences the opposite: they reap the benefits of maleness and femaleness at once.” like babes no they can do it twice
@/sexism -is- real is a t*erf trawling the transandrophobia tag, block em.
they deleted my comment on one of their posts calling them out on it and deleted their first post right after that because it was the most blatantly t*erfy one (saying their blog was specifically welcoming of trans men and detransitioners but not of "men of any kind") lmao
"trans men aren't female, female empowerment movements aren't for your benefit" "trans men and mascs have no right to talk about feminism, it's not for them, they abandoned femininity"
ah i see so one day when we get the Time Window and are able to see what people look like in their futures we're all gonna point the Time Window at the babies that have been autoclassified as Inferior Group by birth and go:
future you is a woman? ah yes you're allowed to access the human rights that "female empowerment movements" (feminism) won you!
future you is a man? sorry, feminism does not apply to you :) yeah it's morally okay to infanticide you now sorry :) you can't vote. go be a housewife at 12 :)
watching westerners talk about how all transmascs will one day reach a stage* where 'misogyny will no longer affect them' really makes me understand why theres such a big 'feminism is no longer needed' sentiment within western countries. You really think the main body of oppression is just 'are there people who dislike you'. Which is a part of it yes, but thats not like IT?
Misogyny permanently alters your life path.
There are binary trans men who pass today who still suffer from after-effects of fgm which a lot of the time cannot be cured.
There are binary trans men who pass today who do not have the basic education needed to advance in the modern world.
There are binary trans men who pass today who cannot walk/are permanently disabled by misogynistic practices in their youth.
There are binary trans men who pass today who will live in poverty forever because they were forced into marriages young
There are binary trans men who pass today who will never achieve their dreams because they were not allowed to play instruments or sport or early life skills that cannot be 'caught up' later in life
There are binary trans men who pass today who cannot have children because of reproductive violence
There are binary trans men who pass today who missed out on critical promotion years because they were forced to be wives/mothers
And this is not a #sadcore #never transition post, because all this stuff does not mean that you cannot live a happy and fufilling life, it does not mean that there isn't joy in transitioning or that the world is hopeless.
This idea that in order to be a happy man you must deny the role of misogyny in your life is such an insidious lie because it forces trans activists to either shove every single one of these men (plus all the ones who dont even pass/transition/know they're trans now) under the bus, or discourage young boys from transitioning.
Hint: Pretty much everyone chooses the 'lets throw these trans men under the bus and blot their brains out to the reality of transmasculinity' option.
Literally. Some of you heard this quote 'How many Einstein’s have spent their lives washing dishes, how many Mozart’s bent over stoves instead of pianos, because they had the misfortune of being born a woman?' and said: But the moment you find out you're a man it can all go away!
Anyway this is getting long and disjointed but my point is basically summed up with: misogyny permanently alters your life path and there is not such thing as 'graduating' from the affects of systematic oppression
*the idea that half, let alone ALL transmascs have access to transition let alone transition to the point of 'passing', let alone all the complexities of stealthing is absurd in and of itself, but thats for another post.
wanted to bring people's attention to the new anti trans bill that's been proposed in India. This bill literally erases our identity and our autonomy so it would help if more people were aware of what is happening to us in this country
^Community-led Mobilisation to Reject Trans Bill 2026. Please look into it.
Collective Statement on Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill 2026.
Note: Translations of this statement in multiple I
Maybe I should've been more assertive making this post but
THE RIGHTS OF INDIAN TRANS PEOPLE ARE GOING TO GET TAKEN AWAY IN JUST A FEW DAYS. I THINK ITS NOT TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR EVERYONE TO AT LEAST CARE.
I know I was being vague in the original post, and i apologise, genuinely. But to specify, this bill takes away our rights for self identification. Our identity will no longer be in our hands, no longer ours to determine, no longer our own but for medical institutions to determine. It's plain erasure.
Our lives are miserable enough as is in this country so it literally takes nothing for the 90% white userbase of this site to sign this petition or spread awareness. That's all that it takes from your side.
Fellow indian trans people or allies can use this this link to email your member of Parliament about the Trans Bill, made by members of the Queer Against the Trans Bill Collective.
sometimes, when i bring up my experiences with gender growing up a South Asian girl, i have been told by well meaning white and western-centric trans people on here that ah yes, you're indian? here's this particular transfeminist theorist, she must cover what you're talking about!
i have read some of her work. she has well written academic discussion about her experience as a trans woman and the Hijra community in india. her social media presence also shows she is ridiculously willing to weaponize other axes of privilege to win an argument.
so forgive me if i do not concede to her as the Intersectional South Asian Gender Expert.
let me explain. there are certain transfeminists who have resorted to, essentially, the insistence that trans women are the Most Oppressed group in every instance, that the further intersectional oppression some trans women face is the same oppression an otherwise more privileged trans women would face. The Trans Woman Is Basically The Black People Of The Trans Community. The Trans Woman Is Basically The Dalit Of The Trans Community.
and while this is very likely born from the sheer painful desperation and anger of the world simultaneously exerting and yet refusing to recognize transmisogyny, it is not correct. for instance, white trans women must uplift Black trans women and WOC but not appropriate their oppression to try and win themselves a free ticket out of thinking about what privilege they do have. (and this goes for trans men too -- like i keep saying, white trans men, you have to recognize your privilege comes first from your race).
but i am not going to talk about race. i am going to talk about caste, and remarks that are why although i agree with some swathes of this particular writer's published work on feminism, India and the positioning of the Hijra community, i really cannot give her additional credence as A Representative Voice Of Trans People From The Global South because her off the cuff posting is indicative she does not consider other intersections of oppression in the context of her own privileges -- except to position herself as always under siege and her critics as mere racists. i am laying this out because people like to tokenize her as the ultimate representative of trans voices from South Asia, and because academia and this site are very western-centric, they all miss the fact that while she can certainly speak to the oppression of trans women like herself, she is willfully blind to other intersections unless she can repurpose them for rhetorical advantage.
again, you are all very western. most of you do not understand what caste is apart from maybe "kind of like racism" and if you've heard the word Dalit you may think "ah, this means The Most Oppressed Person, surely I, a white trans person, can appropriate this word to center the conversation around myself!" (which i have, in fact, seen online.)
no. caste is an entrenched feudal system violently and viciously reinforced and justified in Hinduism (and has even bled into other religious communities in South Asia through pervasive contact). caste is a hierarchy in which the only possible mobility is downwards and never upwards. in the "ideal" execution of the caste system, all people Know Their Place even if that place is as literal beasts of burden, and all the other wealth and other privilege in the world cannot uplift a "lower" caste to have any kind of authority or power over an "upper" caste because there is no mobility, only what is in your blood, and if your blood is inherently impure then you cannot participate in society (though you grease its wheels) you cannot raise your voice (only seen and not heard) you cannot even participate in religion (but of course, "you should practice it, obviously, but you aren't allowed to say the same hymns as us!").
frankly i am more willing to forgive the non-Indians who muddle up the concept because yall rarely know any better. but from a south asian woman who knows perfectly well what caste is?
"transfeminized people are considered casteless, ie untouchable, ie the very lowest rung of society btw."
this is a misguided appropriation that allows people with significant notable privilege to claim the oppression of others just because they share a different axis of marginalization. or rather:
regardless of your positionality, you cannot be letting the savarna babies talk like that.
for full transparency, i am not Dalit and if i overstep and someone from that background wants to correct me, please do. i have no idea if this writer's name is a pen name or indicative of her caste background, and im not about to investigate that because that would be bizarrely creepy. however i personally am avarna, which is the word that literally (gasp!) means "casteless". as in "outside of (and therefore below) the system of the upper castes" (the upper castes being "savarna") and traditionally considered untouchable. in government terms i am OBC (other backwards caste) which is a widely varied category. my ancestors did have caste privilege over Dalit communities, while simultaneously also facing caste based oppression themselves as, actually, falling under the "untouchable" label.
i can see why the comparison to caste oppression was made, because there ARE several resemblances. there have been some reported cases of trans women in some Indian villages being denied drinking from the shared water supply, which is a very familiar form of discrimination to anyone who's read on caste oppression -- the "lower" castes are seen as dirty and polluting, thus people prevent them from coming into contact with literal food, water, persons, or even religious sites (hence the rhetoric that particularly stigmatized castes are "untouchable"). yearly there are hundreds of reports of literal schoolchildren abused and beaten to death for going to get water because they were thirsty. fun fact, if you look at an 1800s census for the part of India im from, there is vivid description of how caste was so rigorously enforced people of "lower" castes including mine had to stay a certain radius of distance from the oh so pure "upper" castes. even my great grandfather, who was wealthy in the early 1900s (wealth that was earned by exploiting the labor of people from castes even less privileged than his), was still considered "polluting" enough that he was not allowed to even walk past the entryway of a temple, because even economic privilege cannot override caste. until 90 years ago i would have been denied entry to major temples in my home state.
in another parallel to the exploitation of trans women, "lower" caste and especially Dalit women to this day are also frequently sexually abused while simultaneously being considered lesser. they are heavily stigmatized, and at the same time, the stigma both makes them ripe for fetishization as excitingly "taboo" while also marginalizing them to such a great extent that their brutal murders and rapes are often left unresolved and unattended by the justice system, as people who the system does not care about. hey fun fact, when the upper caste women in my part of India started wearing blouses and upper-clothes to cover their chests due to European influence, lower castes including mine were legally outlawed from doing the same -- not because they were Socially Enlightened and Sticking It To The Whites, but because in this newly imposed paradigm of body-based shame, they were to be always placed in a permanent position of humiliation.
there are resonances that ring familiarly indeed.
and these parallels should be a source of solidarity between people oppressed similarly. but a writer from a major Indian city with the privilege of significantly more access to resources, though still harmed by transmisogyny, should not be appropriating the terminology of Dalit struggles for the context of gender, or opening up this appropriation for others to weaponize rhetorically, whatever her caste positionality is.
gender does not work like race. gender does not work like caste. while all three are social constructs, the discrimination against the latter two compounds over generations, which a lot of yall do not seem to understand. if you are a "privileged" race or caste, you have more likely benefited from generational wealth, and if not wealth, the promise of mobility to "better" yourself. economic mobility, high education, hell even English language education, are all easier to access if upper caste. this is not to say if you are a trans woman in these more privileged groups you dont experience the terrifying and shocking stripping of other privileges, or that a visibly trans woman won't also struggle with social and economic mobility. but it is not the same because it is not accumulated and inherited over the lineage of your whole family. your fathers forefathers and children are not just as oppressed as you, though they may face some stigma for association with you.
racial and caste privilege does give you a much easier starting point than your siblings. you insult your sisters who do face the intersection of trans womanhood and dalit identity when you from your English-language, able-to-enter-academia, bolstered-by-family-mobility, less-encumbered-by-this- generational-trauma position, when you claim your other axis of oppression is equivalent to theirs.
It is frustrating because in the academic writing of the person im talking about, she calls out so-called feminist writers who try to deflect from their own privileges -- in one article, she very effectively dismantles the distorted stats published by an African writer in a feminist journal for eliding the fact that she is from an incredibly privileged family, and can access statistically far more rights than the average woman in her community. oh the irony! recognition of the other but no recognition of the self.
what's even more galling is that she is entirely aware of the exploitation and horrors of caste. the entire context of this post of hers claiming All Transfeminized People Are Basically Dalits was her responding to another trans person's criticism of her arguments about the position of the Hijra in Indian society. i am not remarking on the criticism itself, but the reaction to it: instead of countering that actual criticism, she latched onto the fact that that trans person was contemplating celebrating a Hindu observance and went on a long rant about how said trans person is specifically evil and appropriating for being a white person converting to Hinduism, and don't you know Hinduism has been used to endorse untold horrors?
girl. i agree with you. any hindu whether born into the religion or converting into it must be conscious of how it has been used as a cudgel against oppressed castes and other religions. i would also agree with you except for your little addendum at the end where you essentially position yourself as equivalent to the caste groups most brutalized by Hinduism simply via your gender and not your actual caste status, which serves to recontextualize your entire discussion of how Hinduism has done harm as a bad faith bid to position the other trans person as an aggressor: "see, my GENDER basically renders me into the 'untouchable' caste, so this Hindu convert is doing harm to me by existing!"
it turns out to be an entirely self serving analysis of caste rather than real intersectional discussion of privilege. it turns out to be a weaponization of Dalit and other caste-based oppression to win an unrelated argument while eliding her own positionality.
and to anyone who says "why are you bringing up caste, you may have been born there but live in the west, you're bringing up an irrelevant form of oppression just to rag on a trans woman," perhaps you need to learn how caste works, too. maybe look up the cisco caste discrimination suit that took place in California. if you grew up in a South Asian cultural context, you very much can still have casteist biases even if you're not hindu or presently in South Asia. no, you are not immune to exploiting and appropriating this oppression just because you call yourself an "apostate" of this religion. do we not agree an atheist who grew up in a culturally-Christian context of course has ingrained opinions they still need to unlearn? the blithe denial of this is what I am pointing out. there is plenty of literature on casteism seeping into other religions and communities in India and surrounding regions. paraphrasing ambedkar (father of the indian constitution/lawyer/major figure in the movement for dalit rights): everywhere the Indian goes, caste also goes.
so yeah next time i mention i am trans and south asian, dont tell me Talia Bhatt is the one true intersectional authority on me :)
Seeing people go in circles arguing about the idea of whether or not trans men and transmasculine people experience misogyny or not really reminds me of how much all this discourse is based within the perspectives of (mostly) white people from the global north. There are trans men and transmasculine people around the world who suffer female genital mutilation, are forced into child marriages, are actively abused for being seen as women, are not allowed to move around or leave the country or even their own homes without having a cis man by their side, are trapped within their homes forced to be housewives, who cannot pass down birth citizenship to their children, and more.
It really shows a position of privilege to be ignorant to the realities of our trans siblings who suffer overbearing misogyny in the global south and instead to be arguing about the handful of trans men and transmasculine people who might be able to gain the most surface levels of male privilege within the global north. Any queer analysis of the experiences of trans men and transmasculine people that does not bother to account for the material realities of our siblings in the global south is mediocre theory at best.
there is this absolutely bizarre and dangerous idea that trans men who are trying to talk about how they're affected by misogyny are just whining because they're "SUPPOSED to be Big Strong Oppressors like the cis men they clearly betrayed womanhood for transitioned to become but the patriarchy keeps LUMPING THEM IN with these GIRLS and that's so unfair because we're not SUPPOSED to be treated like this (but the girls are!)"
which is. a mind-boggling accusation to level at an entire group of marginalized people, that they are so covetous of privilege that they are all merely angry at being "mistakenly" marginalized (unlike the people who, what, "should be"?) this is how you get the rhetoric of "misplaced misogyny," that whatever trans men get is just splash damage compared to what the REAL women (both trans and cis, because i have seen trans and cis people of all stripes saying this) get. psst, don't look at the pile of dead bodies buried under female deadnames for daring to step outside the woman box.
it is a frighteningly increasingly prevalent argument used against trans men. Men Cannot Face Misogyny (never mind the fact that the patriarchal system is trying its level best to retain trans men afab in a class of controllable docile breeding stock), therefore you're an MRA incel pitching a fit at not being able to oppress anyone properly. Men Cannot Face Misogyny, therefore actually YOURE the t*erfs rubbing your uteruses in people's faces for bringing up the fact that you tend to have/have had a certain set of reproductive organs (never mind the fact that the reproductive oppression of those organs was born from misogyny). Men Cannot Face Misogyny therefore YOU'RE "inevitable detransitioners" upset that lesbians won't "make themselves sexually available to you" just because "we are actually being so pro-transmasc by reminding you you're a man and therefore can't be a lesbian" (never mind the fact that a trans man id'ing as a lesbian has nothing to do with compelling YOU, SPECIFICALLY, to partner with him. never mind the fact that i have read a post like this with the follow-up tags "he/him lesbians are different, of course." what fucking of course? while their internal landscapes and genders are different there are plenty of he/him lesbians and trans masc lesbians who, lined up side by side, would be virtually indistinguishable. and somehow i am supposed to believe that misogyny only targets one of them by understanding The True Crystal Of Gender within?)
hell, even jude doyle implies (in his essay titled "transmasc misogyny and the red six of spades") that the misogyny and transmisogyny exhibited by some trans men claiming to be feminists must be because these trans men simply must inherently rankle at being misogynized like Those Nasty Girls and have to take it out on them. this by no means is me excusing misogyny or transmisogyny from trans men -- plus i agree with much of the essay otherwise -- but this interpretation of their motives continues to imply "X Group Of Trans People have some kind of Patriarchy Contamination within them that may be activated like a sleeper agent." some jealous covetry of the ways cis men wield power, and therefore some inherent danger, greater than any other marginalized gender group, as if we have not also suffered under it the same as you (but of course, any argument as such is "misgendering ourselves".)
the net effect of this spreading claim is that the trans man who tries to carve out a space where he can also be supported in feminism, saying "we are also victims of misogyny," is automatically characterized as being in the tone of a whiny crybaby, footnoted by "but im a boyyyyy!". as if shadowboxing the "tboy distressed that he Simply Cannot Oppress" is a relevant use of time when discussing the fact that trans men very much face misogyny and us talking about it isn't some kind of hissy fit at "losing out on privilege." rather it is us making a very necessary loud noise at no one else seeming to raise the alarm for the types of oppression we DO face just like our sisters.
and yet people want to act like we're doing some kind of stolen valor on misogyny instead of being frontline victims of it same as you.
The damage Julia Serano did to transgender feminist dialectics when she was 20 years younger and clumsily positioned gender conforming femininity as something hated and abused by gender nonconforming and nonbinary feminists is nearly insurmountable I swear.
Like, I do really believe that the way Serano positioned binary, gender conforming femininity as an oppressed status within feminist activism in opposition to the works, identities, and activism of butch/gnc/nonbinary/trans masc feminists in Whipping Girl is a huge contributing factor as to why there are swaths of binary, gender conforming trans people who are so dismissive and even vitriolic towards masculinity, butch identity, nonbinary identities, and trans masculinity right now.
I've said it before and I'll continue to repeat it, but if you are familiar with both of their works Serano's disdain for and discomfort with Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity absolutely haunts the narrative of Whipping Girl in a way that is very hard to ignore and any discussion of Serano's theory without that acknowledgement lacks historical transgender feminist perspective.
the less gender conforming you are the more likely you are to die sooner. if a trans man doesnt pass or want to, you have no idea thats a trans man out and about and neither does a proud misogynist. the more you conform to the gender binary the more likely society at large is likely to accept and listen to you. if you are visibly genderfucked, even if youre desperately trying to pass, youre more likely to be followed, harassed, hurt, and killed, and thus isolate to some degree for your own safety.
trans men dont have any kind of easier time passing than any other trans person. youre just way way way more aware of the ones that survived long enough and were lucky enough to do so. those of us that dont pass are beaten or killed into silence and isolation more often than those that do manage to pass.
progressive feminists seeking to be seen as allies, desperate to broadcast their inclusivity of trans people, tack on "and trans women!" to their discussions of systematic sexism and misogyny, to their panels and academic papers about misogyny. which, to be clear, is an excellent starting point! trans women are women, trans women meaningfully experience various forms of misogyny, and their voices must be included and uplifted in these conversations of feminist issues; we cannot allow ourselves the TERF mistake of overlooking the very real experiences that indicate misogyny very much affects people regardless of asab.
however. these progressive feminist allies then go on to exclude trans men and transmascs, to say shut up and stop speaking over women, to say stop making women's experiences "about men". how dare trans men say they sometimes experience harsher punishment than cis women in high-control patriarchical environments! all people afab have it bad in those contexts, how dare you say you might have an additional axis of oppression and suffering to contend with (even though for some reason we recognize that asab-non conformance invites harsher treatment for those assigned male, but oh don't you stupid tboys realize, you actually had it good compared to everyone else of your asab!)! this is also a glaring mistake. we have successfully and goodly recognized misogyny can target people regardless of asab, but for some reason we are overcorrecting and forgetting the coexisting reality that misogyny can target people regardless of actual gender modality.
i keep saying this but there are two broad umbrellas of misogyny, one that developed out of the other. misogyny did not originally develop to to target some abstract notion of femininity (not in the least because such a concept is entirely societally dependent and does not account for the similar ways sexism has developed across multiple societies with different norms of femininity). misogyny originally developed to subjugate people afab in a bid to control reproduction, and out of this, all things commonly associated with people afab -- things now recognized as "feminine", ranging from domestic care all the way to (in many but not all societies) long hair -- became stigmatized and belittled so as to prevent this designated reproductive subclass from trying to regain any power. thus we have the two umbrellas of misogyny: targeting the body afab, and targeting those who come into association with this subclass by means of association with femininity or womanhood. both are exerted with violence and cruelty. while as trans people we must understand asab is not the measure of a person and does not taint a person forever with "Original Gender Sin", so long as societally enforced asab exists in the world, then yes, it precisely remains an axis of misogyny experienced by people predominantly-afab, which includes transmascs and men, even those with completely masculine gender expression. it does not diminish the manhood of a perisex trans man afab to acknowledge that he is oppressed by at minimum this form of misogyny. it does not diminish the womanhood of a perisex trans woman amab to acknowledge she is not oppressed by this particular form of misogyny (though very much is targeted by many other forms of misogyny that target her femininity). anyone, then, who is "tarred by the brush of woman-ness" (for lack of a better phrasing) -- whether that is feminine gender expression, identity as a woman, or even former (imposed or not) identity as a woman is affected by various combinations of misogyny. the two umbrellas overlap but are not the same. trans women can and should and must be given space to discuss the misogyny they experience in common with other misogynized peoples, as well as the specific transmisogyny they face. trans men can and should and must ALSO be given space to discuss the misogyny they experience in common with other misogynized peoples, as well as the specific asab-targeting misogyny they face, also warped by transphobia, whatever name you want to give it.
yet we have eager feminist allies who diminish the voices of trans men, many of whom not only do have (at the very least, prior) equivalent experience in everyday "feminine-expression-targeting misogyny", but also are predominantly affected by things like uterine reproductive oppression, like the mistreatment and medical neglect of pregnant people. it's a knee-jerk "in the name of 'these are women's issues,' it just looks bad to involve men in the conversation!" is it so hard to simultaneously recognize trans women and transfems suffer under misogyny, and that trans men and transmascs ALSO suffer under misogyny, and in some cases the former more than the latter, and in other cases the latter more than the former? is it so hard to recognize a label past or present cannot automatically save a trans person from the misogyny all trans people face on various sub-axes?
but probably this is not even a mistake on the parts of these feminist allies. this is a punishment unconscious or conscious imposed on the transmasc for daring to "align themself with the oppressor," even though they share in the same disprivileged position of being violently and constantly misogynized by society. a trans man or transmasc's identity is not a tool for erasing or denying the effect misogyny may have had on them, and it is certainly not a punishment or "natural consequence" for the fault of winding up an oh so terrible man. i refuse to concede that my voice somehow suddenly matters less in feminist conversations just because how i perceive myself has changed, because that does not immediately and automatically change how the rest of society, for the majority of my life, has perceived me.
(no, of course, you're such a trans ally, you told that [trans] man to shut up on a post about how feminism/intersectionality/spaces for trauma recovery should prioritize cis+trans ✨femmes✨ over everyone else who, clearly, does not share their gendered oppression. never mind the fact that he's been catcalled the same way the cis and trans women have been, with the same violent misogynistic intent :) )
the dominant strain of transfeminism has popularized the sentiment that transfems and trans women never experience male privilege, understandably as a reflex to TERFs and transphobes accusing trans women/fems of being inherent male oppressors trying to take up "female resources". the goal has always been to make sure trans women and transfems have access to the resources any marginalized gender should -- for instance access to domestic violence shelters and the ability to report sexual or intimate violence without being dismissed -- because otherwise these resources are, broadly, classed as "for (cis) women" in a way that tries to push them out. but because the mode of argument has been "all trans women have never experienced male privilege" it bleeds into the inverse "trans men always experience male privilege" to the point where it strips away the ability of trans mascs and trans men to even PARTICIPATE in discussions of how they have faced -- and in plenty of cases, still do face -- misogyny. it enables cis women, too, to punch down at trans men and claim they're punching up at The Man by respecting his gender, even though all misogynized people share several forms of oppression.
the thought terminating cliche is "you're a man, so you have male privilege," and now it is rapidly metastasizing into "you're a man, so you cannot be a primary target of misogyny." but of course, we're ignoring the "trans" part. "stop whining about mpreg jokes", though those directly belittle an actual medical reality for transmascs in which they are threatened with impregnation via rape to "put them back in their place", and even in the case of consensual pregnancy, in which they face significant increased risk of transphobic violence, not to mention the "regular" risks to the body that pregnancy engenders. "stop claiming that being called ugly and unrapable doesn't actually protect you from being raped!" even though it's a basic feminist tenet to understand rape is a tool of violence also employed against undesirable persons. "stop saying not all men!" except trans men and mascs have never been, throughout "thousands of years of tme history" as that one fucking post says, been in a position of power or had the tools to architect the patriarchy that, for the majority of human history, oppressed and killed us as misogynized peoples.
and to all the trans men who claim this is a problem of whiny tboys "clinging to their afabness" in some apparent bid to oppress trans women, does it hurt you to accept the fact that other people who share your identity do, in fact, experience lasting consequences from misogyny imposed at a young age? that perhaps your financial situation, or your position in the western imperial core, or location in a community where feminism has had at least enough of a foothold where you can wear jeans, is a position not of trans male privilege, not gender or sex based, but of financial/race/locality? does it hurt you to reckon with the fact that so long as societally imposed asab exists what oppressive power you do have has never come from your gender but more likely your race? there are forms of systematic deprioritization and oppression that leave people who are misogynized from birth due to their asab with lasting effects that many can't just discard and leave behind after transitioning -- forms of physical violence, being denied education, healthcare, for the fault of being someone expected to grow up into a woman.
i would argue yes of course, trans men who pass completely and are regarded in society and at work as men access male privilege in some aspects (wages, having their voices prioritized) even when they face medical misogyny or interpersonal misogyny from doctors and people who knew them pre transition or disadvantaged by prior loss of educational or career opportunities through sexism. i would also argue trans women boymoding, and trans women who go through large parts of life before realizing who they are and transitioning, also experienced male privilege (wages, voices, the priorities of modern medical research) even though also grappling with dysphoria or the toll of absorbing transmisogyny, and later on being disadvantaged by more blatant stripping of resources once they are out. moreover, the privilege/loss of privilege dichotomy also depends on timing of said transition. i did not realize i was trans until i was in the middle of my twenties, already finished grad school, already in a career. all else being equal, if there was an identical person to me who lived until my exact age thinking they were aligned with their asab -- and in their case, as a male -- they still would have experienced privileges over me to date, because my input and voice has been belittled perceived as a woman in STEM, because i have been faced with direct suggestions from people i know that i should stop focusing on my education and get married already, and more. i have been targeted with forms of misogyny that a woman whose womanhood was not recognized until date structurally could not have -- just as that woman would have borne the brunt of other forms of misogyny that i, as a non-transmisogynized person, structurally could not have.
BUT. what i am saying is, simple access to male privilege does not an evil person make. popular transfeminism has backed the whole community into a rhetorical corner with "x has never experienced male privilege = and therefore checkmate, TERFs, they ARE 'safe' to allow into crucial 'women's resources'". however our argument should be no matter if someone has or presently still can access male privilege, this should not exclude them from accessing these very same -- non-gender-locked resources. if you are the victim of rape or misogynistic harassment or seeking safe shelter, you are in need of safety. moreover, a marginalized gender is one that the patriarchical system has not set itself up to support, and that includes every trans and nonbinary person, because the patriarchy is built to favor the pericisgender man. we have backed ourselves into an indefensible rhetorical corner, excluded any trans woman or transfem who doesn't wholly conform to the Good And Proper Victimized Femininity this argument demands, and in the mad dash to try and defend it, are purposefully and cruelly cutting out transmascs and trans men from safe avenues where they can discuss the lasting misogynistic trauma they've also faced. this is unsustainable.
any trans person depending on their situation -- race, class, timeline of transition -- may or may not have had access to male privilege. any trans person, also, is under threats from various combinations of misogyny and deserve protection from this violence and discrimination. the former is not a basis for exclusion from the latter.
a lot of conversations surrounding trans men having male privilege made me realize just how Eurocentric and white most people's view of trans people is, because it doesn't take into account so many countries where women are prohibited from pursuing education, refused independency or forced into child marriages.
male privilege does not save transmasculine people from violent misogyny, it is not a get out of jail card, and so the rights of transmasculine bodies are tied to women's rights. and if to gain access to male privilege you first have to be allowed bodily autonomy and then be legally and socially recognized as a man is it really a privilege at all?
Everyone could laugh at the haha funny meme, but willfully forgot was this was actually about:
"Why are you gay?"
This was a trans man, Pepe Julian Onziema, in Uganda fighting for his rights to be legally recognized as a man. Do you think he, being asked if he's gay, has privilege under the patriarchy he's living in?
#oh wow. i never had this context.#i hate the way the internet has made the experience of trans men jokes for decades#it reminds me of the snl screenshot about the brandon teena story...
