Trans Men & Male Privilege

[potato_head]

Hey look, it's that post on trans men and male privilege I keep promising!

A few notes first -

I am not nearly as educated on feminism as I would like to be. Because of this, my guess is that most of the things I'm about to talk about have been thoroughly discussed by a woman more educated on the issues than I am. What I'm contributing here are just my own experiences, especially as they pertain to trans men. Because as a trans man trying to find my own place in the feminist movement, examining my own privilege in depth is very important to me.

Alright, let's go!

I've come to understand privilege not as a monolith that applies to every privileged person, but rather as a collection of privileges that can be grouped into categories, most of which apply to most privileged people. Since I'm looking specifically at male privilege here, let me give some examples to illustrate my point:

"Internal"/Social Pressure Privileges

• A man would not expect to be judged PRIMARILY by his physical features, i.e. attractiveness. (Maybe to some extent, but not PRIMARILY; and most certainly not by, say, a company he is applying to)
  
• The range of weights/body sizes a man would feel pressure to stay within is rather wide.
  
• A man would not automatically feel pressured to remain quiet about new ideas or criticisms in a group of peers.

"External"/Personal Judement Privileges

• A man would not be immediately judged as incompetent at most professions based on his gender.
  
• A man does not generally have to struggle with the no-win situation of being judged as either sexually immoral, or 'frigid', depending on how much sex he has.
  

Future Expectations Privileges

• A man has good reason to expect to move up in a company based on his own merits, rather than being held in one position due to wrongful assumptions of his incompetence, inability to lead, or probability of him abandoning the company if/when he decides to start a family
  
• A man has good reason to expect that he will not necessarily become less desirable as he grows older, and thus he can with confidence put off starting a family without feeling internal or outward pressure to marry while he's "still young and attractive".
  

Visibility Privileges

• A man can find many, many people like him, as far as gender goes, in the media and in history; furthermore, these characters, celebrities and historical figures are usually portrayed as good or of importance/use/relevance to other people.
  
• A man can expect that most entertainment, especially on TV, will have bee made with him and his preferences and worldviews in mind.

Again, those are only a few examples. From here, we should probably start straight off with discussing intersectionality, since I'm sure some of you started thinking about men who would be exceptions to some of these privileges as soon as the first item on the list - regarding physical features.

Well, there are some obvious exceptions to that one, right? Men of color would probably expect to be judged by that physical feature. Men with visible disabilities would also expect to be judged based on that. There are others, too, that I probably haven't thought of. That's intersectionality; their privileges in one area are mitigated or erased by their disadvantages due to being a minority in another area. I know some of you are probably already familiar with the term, of course.

So the first place to start with male privilege and trans men is looking at intersectionality. There are many things just on that list that may not necessarily apply to trans men due to intersectionality. For example, although we see many men in the media, they probably experience their gender a different way than many of us do, and it would be difficult for us to emulate the life they live. A trans man who doesn't pass very well might fear being judged by his looks for this reason. And so on, and so forth.

But that's not what I really wanted to discuss. The part where it gets strange, I think, when looking at trans men and male privilege, is the fact that trans men were socialized as women, and in many cases are still judged and viewed by others as women for a long time despite them knowing, and in some cases even being open about the fact that they are NOT women.

So, I think it should be clear that a trans man 'gains' male privileges as he progresses in his transition, in most cases. And I'm not about to say it's any sort of linear path that can be mapped and standardized. All trans men have unique transitions (including, of course, those who chose not to undergo any physical transition), and I'm sure all trans men experience male privilege differently.

For myself, as a trans man who only passes maybe 5% of the time, I know there is one area of male privilege I have always possessed; the internal/social pressure privileges. I have always been generally oblivious to the pressures to lose weight, act in a 'ladylike' way, and so on. That is, I have been aware of other people judging me for them, but I have never judged myself for those things, having had the privilege to dismiss them as not applying to me. I can also expect, in the future, to be afforded male privilege by my job etc.

So, my conclusion on this topic is that I, personally, will find my privilege - and thus my responsibility to examine and check that privilege - growing as I transition, and therefor pass more often and learn to interact with society as a man, albeit a rather femme man :P

Comments

[poto-heart.livejournal.com]

I've observed some similar trends, so far as trans men becoming increasingly mysogynistic, or at the very least not wanting to have anything to do with feminism as they transition. I suspect it's a combination of unfortunate experiences; dealing with our own demons, so to speak, can sometimes make it difficult to view women in a positive way, as all people's judgments of others tend to be rooted somewhere in a view of themselves. There's also the fact that there's more pressure on trans guys to be 'manly', which to other men often means having at least a touch of mysogyny. And finally there's the fact that many (certainly not all) of us start out our search for identity trying to fit into the 'butch lesbian' role, and it's very easy there to fall into certain areas of feminism that are strongly transphobic; and then you find yourself promptly rejected by people you once considered your friends, safety network, etc. (the last one is the trap I fell into, that drove me away from feminism for a few years until I realized I was being pretty silly in assuming all feminists were like that).

Those are my thoughts on it, anyway, and what I've observed. It's an unfortunate and, I agree, very real trend, that's been exacerbated even lately by other problems within the trans community.

It's not really off-topic at all, since it's just this that actually led to me making this post. More immediately because of some recent examples I've seen, but more generally because I've never seen this issue talked about in-depth, and I think it's probably because there seems to be so little overlap between trans and feminist communities. Which is nobody's fault, but I think needs to change.

Sorry, you were probably not hoping for that much tl;dr, lol.

[poto-heart.livejournal.com]

There is a definite divide between trans and queer communities as well. I confess I personally stay mostly out of the queer community, despite being very queer myself; I've seen a lot of casual transphobia from gay men in particular, and political issues confuse things further, although I don't really hold the queer community at large for the actions of the LGBT political groups, who often 'compromise' with conservative voters by taking away trans rights =/ but like I said I don't blame queer people not actively involved in these groups for it; it does seem, though, like none of them very much care, and makes me reluctant to get involved. I'm going to be looking to do that more in the future though, because I do think the trans community is too cut off from everybody else. Queer and feminist issues are definitely our issues as well - like you said, trans men wouldn't be anywhere if it weren't for feminism. We should be natural allies, but we're standing apart from them. And, although it would be nice if GLBT groups supported us by default, the best way to get better support is to be more visible in GLBT spaces, I think.

And I definitely agree that once the fight for marriage is won, things will be a lot calmer. TBH I'm scared sometimes, because with the climate in America now I see the possibility of it turning around and queer rights taking several steps backwards; and trans people would just completely go under if that happened. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who's nervous, considering how we've seen social conservatives pushing back with Prop 8 etc.; and fear tends to put people in an 'us vs. them' situation, which can drive people apart as much as it brings them together. So I definitely think when that's all settled, the social atmosphere within LGBT groups, and between queer and trans communities will be a lot better.

As for the trans men and mysogyny issue - yeah, there's definitely no real logic behind it. It's also occurred to me that I've heard similar vitriolic, anti-woman statements from my younger brother when he was going through puberty, and IME you rarely meet a pubescent boy who's a feminist or even curious about feminism. Maybe this indicates that it's primarily the issue that trans men and cis pubescent boys share - trying to prove their manhood - that's the issue? IDK. Regardless, although there are certainly reasons, like there are for any trend, I don't think that makes the mysogynist behavior excusable, by any means.