[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 anti-cracker-aktion

    • Angel [any]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      17·
      3 months ago

      The main issue I have with this is that, especially considering the nature of language when it comes to personal identity, you’re going to run into a lot of weird semantic confusion if we try to be hyper-specific on defining these words, especially nowadays. I don’t think the term “transsexual” is inherently bad to use, but I’m also scared of having a distinction between “transsexual” and “transgender” because that distinction is sometimes used as a form of truscummy behavior. I find that they promote a false dichotomy with these terms. For example, they’ll say speak of non-binary people as if being non-binary and a “transsexual” are mutually exclusive, but they’ll define a “transsexual” as someone who seeks medical transition, especially surgery, which is something that I and many other non-binary people do. Ultimately, I don’t think there should be extremely precise definitions of these words any more than I think that people should just learn how to respect how others identify themselves. I always go back to the “labels are descriptive and not prescriptive” outlook.