#transmisoginy cw
I really hate having to ask, but I’m desperate. My first post lost traction so I’m starting anew. I have a job but it pays minimum wage and my stepdad has been stealing 50% of each of my paycheck since I was 16, for “rent.” He is physically and verbally abusive and makes my mental illnesses a million times worse. I cannot transition at all while in this house. If I put on makeup or fem clothes he screams how I’m a p*ssy or a f*ggot and threatens to kick me out on the streets. He slaps me around when he gets drunk, which is happening more and more often. I know it’s the holidays, but if someone could help me fund a safe living situation, it would be the best present I ever received. If you cannot donate, please share this post so it can reach people who can.
I’m so sorry, I would donate if I could, but I don’t have anything to give. I really hope things get better.
truscum be like “terf rhetoric? what terf rhetoric? anyway back to my theory about why our community is mostly trans men, I think it’s because our community is very nice and nonviolent uwu, and trans women are :/ y'know they’re just more violent entitled and dangerous. bc of biology. maybe the male socialization also. yeah, they’re too violent and entitled in my experience, just like cis men. why are all these people calling me a terf? I’m trans, (which is a medical condition not an identity but somehow shields me from this critique anyway.)”
when t-rfs talk about “peaking” people what they’re talking about is grooming btw
they will for real dedicate/circulate entire threads detailing extremely specifically how to recruit people into their ideology, often through explicitly manipulative and sometimes even outright abusive means. they gloat and joke openly about doing it to friends and partners and coworkers and younger siblings and anonymously to young trans people on the internet. you see this happening pretty much everywhere regardless of whatever blog you’ve clicked on and are hate-reading, it’s integral to their entire ideology of which would probably honestly collapse without it yet they accuse trans people of being in a cult
look at any blog in the “des-sted dysphoric” community to see innumerable further examples of this. they wear that title like a badge, very conversion therapy-esque. i’ve seen these people openly discuss how to convince their trans male and transmasculine friends into detransitioning. threads upon threads of advice on how to do this. a lot of times they even journal about it on their blogs, like “omg my TIF friend wants top surgery how do i peak them asap”. this is innately unnatural and predatory behavior
i see a lot of trans men and female nonbinaries often say things like “i face misogyny because people still see me as a woman! i don’t deny that!” but male nonbinaries and trans women would rather be caught dead than accept that they have male privilege … why is that
^ Adding the above answer to my request for clarification on what “male privilege” for trans women means here, as it would be too cumbersome to respond via replies.
So the simple answer to this is we don’t experience male privilege because we’re not men. We may have physiological similarities to cis men, and we may be socialized (often against our will) in similar ways, but as trans women we experience all of these things through a transfeminine lens. Nearly every single aspect of what is thought of as being a boy/man is intrinsically inseparable from this lived experience, and most advantages in this regard come with associated costs that outweigh them on the whole.
Biological advantages like not having to worry about getting pregnant, come not only with dysphoria and its associated mental health issues, but are also used as a bludgeon by society to “prove” we’re not “real” women. We are inundated with messaging, both through personal attacks and through society at large, that the ability to produce eggs and carry children is an intrinsic feature of womanhood (which is a damaging narrative to all women, obviously, but is harmful to trans women in much the same way as it is to cis women who do not have the ability to get pregnant.) Trans girls forced to go through “male” puberty experience increasingly severe dysphoria, suicidal ideation, and find it ever more difficult to pass which furthers ostracism.
Social advantages for being raised as male are more ephemeral, and are better described as “passing privilege” than male privilege. We are treated as boys/men not because we *are* boys/men, but because we *pass* as boys/men, and that preferential treatment largely vanishes the moment we come out as trans women. In fact, out trans women by and large face gendered oppression in similar ways to cis women, with things like violent victimization, sexual abuse, poverty, employment discrimination, wage gaps, etc. experienced at rates commensurate to or in some cases even higher than cis women. Further, passing for cis men is deeply traumatizing for most trans women, and is often done to avoid abuse, ostracism from family, or worse.
In the same way that I’m sure you wouldn’t consider a cis girl who passes for a boy to have male privilege, or a gay person who passes as straight while closeted to have heterosexual privilege, closeted trans women do not have male privilege. Privilege granted at the point of a gun and at the cost of denying who we are is no privilege at all. While I do not deny that trans women have some advantages, with all factors considered it clearly does not meet the bar to qualify for privilege in human society any more than the advantages associated with being a woman equate to female privilege.
Lastly I’ll say to your original point, I don’t really see trans women not having male privilege and trans men suffering from being perceived as women as being in fundamental opposition, it’s all a function of cisnormative patriarchal forces that value manhood and devalue anyone perceived as not being a part of that. However, as I am not a trans man (similar with non-binary people) I can’t fully speak to their experience, so I will leave it there for others to weigh in.
