I want to write a story about growing up and how fucked up it is to assume that trans girls receive male privilege just like all the cis boys do.
Like, I came across the assumption from a blog post a year ago that trans women have male privilege in not having to deal with society's expectations of what a woman should look like - and I came across this shortly after auntysarah described encountering exactly the same attitude and responding with something like "imagine dealing with that while you look like a boy."
So, I mean, there's a lot of male privilege that is based on being cissexual.
(the "but, why?" was a reference to the ever-so-classic bingo card. if you somehow missed it when it took the genderqueeriverse by storm, here it is. blame/thank/hug/dis arion hunter (arionhunter.insanejournal.com) for it:
trans women have male privilege in not having to deal with society's expectations of what a woman should look like
...you know so what was it every time i had to clean up a crying mess of little sister who had entirely lost it over something pretty minor that nevertheless made her feel like shit? i mean, was she asserting her alleged "male privilege" then simply by dint of being a transgirl? was i asserting my alleged passive male privilege for forgetting to have two X chromosomes? i'm curious if they have figured out how this works because as usual when reading such allegedly feminist screeds i'm not really sure how it works because GIRLS DON'T HAVE MALE PRIVILEGE.
The theory assumes that trans girls are just like cis boys (or trans women are just like cis men) until transition, like the outward state of being male reflects an inner state of being a boy or man, and so a trans woman's experience of male privilege is necessarily identical to a cis man's experience of male privilege and please don't talk about passing privilege at all.
And, ah hell, another story about a trans woman that refers to her by her birth name. wtf. (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/30/BA37138V7V.DTL) Yes, in this instance, she's the criminal, but that's no excuse.
As usual, most of the comments in that article are horrific. Makes me wonder how many people I see on the streets here in SF think so poorly of people like me.
You know, people tell me "I don't know how you can wade through the stuff you do to write what you write" and I really really really can't stomach those comment threads. :(
And yeah. I guess her crying is just male privilege, because she got you to take care of her - seriously, radfems insist that trans women wanting to be a part of women-only spaces is demanding that women take care of us, just as men have always done....
Gah, maybe I should just bleach all of this out of my brain and live stealth. :(
Yeah- there was a lot of privilege in having the crap beaten out of me every day from 11-15 in an all male school for being different/poofy/weird/small/bright (strike those which don't apply- I make no apologies for the second usage-it was the favoured insult at the time among those 'rugger buggers' whose testosterone slopped out of their ears).
It's not even specifically that stuff, although that's a part of it. I mean, a lot of male privilege is stuff like how there's a lot of positive male role models in the media who get to be more than "love interest" and that men aren't subjected to the same pressures to conform to beauty standards as women - as if trans women were somehow really cis boys who absorbed that just like the actual cis boys.
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Like, I came across the assumption from a blog post a year ago that trans women have male privilege in not having to deal with society's expectations of what a woman should look like - and I came across this shortly after
So, I mean, there's a lot of male privilege that is based on being cissexual.
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trans women have male privilege in not having to deal with society's expectations of what a woman should look like
...you know so what was it every time i had to clean up a crying mess of little sister who had entirely lost it over something pretty minor that nevertheless made her feel like shit? i mean, was she asserting her alleged "male privilege" then simply by dint of being a transgirl? was i asserting my alleged passive male privilege for forgetting to have two X chromosomes? i'm curious if they have figured out how this works because as usual when reading such allegedly feminist screeds i'm not really sure how it works because GIRLS DON'T HAVE MALE PRIVILEGE.
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The theory assumes that trans girls are just like cis boys (or trans women are just like cis men) until transition, like the outward state of being male reflects an inner state of being a boy or man, and so a trans woman's experience of male privilege is necessarily identical to a cis man's experience of male privilege and please don't talk about passing privilege at all.
And, ah hell, another story about a trans woman that refers to her by her birth name. wtf. (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/30/BA37138V7V.DTL) Yes, in this instance, she's the criminal, but that's no excuse.
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I don't even read comments in articles about trans people. The people who post them are evil.
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And click thumbs-down on every single evil one.
Maybe I should follow your advice.
I assume any cis person I don't know is a transphobic asshole.
I usually assign them into provisional "likely asshole" and "likely well-meaning but ignorant" groups.
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OTOH, it's pretty easy to get out of the "transphobic asshole" category!
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Strange how I once though SF was more liberal than that. o.O
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Sympathies.
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Gah, maybe I should just bleach all of this out of my brain and live stealth. :(
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It stopped when I cut and ran at 15.
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And yeah, pretty much all of those applied to me.