[CW: Discussions of Transphobia/Unsolicited Sexual Behavior]
A “leftist feminist” who disagreed with something I said accused me of having “male privilege” even though she knows I’m transfeminine. She said that “all male people have male privilege,” with the term “male” there including transfeminine people. To do some harm reduction, she said "I didn’t say anything about your gender, just your maleness."
What’s really the kicker is that, even if you like to use this awful “sex and gender are different things” as a means of trying to have one foot on the transphobe side and another foot on the trans ally side, the idea of transfeminine people having male privilege from a systemic point of view is just deeply unserious.
I lost my family, got called queerphobic slurs by them in the process, dealt with extended periods of joblessness while also fearing the potentiality of being homeless with basically no support but Hexbear, and have gone through various other abuses because of my transfeminine identity, including uncomfortable sexual scenarios with men, and I have male privilege?
Well, let’s not forget that she was also
“AMAB” and “AFAB” are absolutely not inherently bad, but they’ve been tainted by certain kinds of people, being used as some sort of “woke” loophole for misgendering. For instance, since trans women and transfeminine people are undeniably AMAB by definition, people find that using “AMAB” instead of “man” isn’t misgendering even though it can still be incredibly toxic. This could manifest as people disgustingly saying things like “AMABs tend to be more violent than AFABs.”
Yeah, it can be a useful descriptor sometimes, but way too often it’s just used by people who believe in the sex/gender dichotomy as a substitute for male/female
Yeah, it can be a useful descriptor sometimes, but way too often it’s just used by people who believe in the sex/gender dichotomy as a substitute for male/female