MTF's and male privilege

[aubrey]

Part of it comes from being perceived as male whether you are or not. Not taking advantage of it (in the case of many of us MTFs) certainly reduces it but it is still there. Nowadays I can't help but notice I don't get as much automatic respect from males when I say something, when I have a clear opinion or idea of what I want it is passed off pretty easily, they have no problem talking over me and If I am more confident and unflinching after their dismissal I am a bitch. I supposedly am helpless and ignorant now. I'm gonna guess that's the opposite of male privilege, which I had before.

[Dianna]

I certainly know about some males dismissing what one has to say, 'Oh another female with attitude' type thing.

Funny you know, I've had some   men (hetero males) dismiss what I have to say, it only makes me more adamant. 

[Lachlann]

Part of it comes from being perceived as male whether you are or not. Not taking advantage of it (in the case of many of us MTFs) certainly reduces it but it is still there. Nowadays I can't help but notice I don't get as much automatic respect from males when I say something, when I have a clear opinion or idea of what I want it is passed off pretty easily, they have no problem talking over me and If I am more confident and unflinching after their dismissal I am a bitch. I supposedly am helpless and ignorant now. I'm gonna guess that's the opposite of male privilege, which I had before.

That sounds about right, at least for me. People talk over you all the time, don't trust you, wont listen, etc...

[Dianna]

It's the 'privilege' bit that confuses me?  What is a male privledge?

[Dianna]

Kavall, I must retract what I said originally, you'd never believe I completed a year of sociology in my SW degree. ;-)

Mainly I tend to think, in most instances to be privledged in any sense it rather different to being born male for example.  I discussed this with my brother for his opinion, he is married, male, heterosexual with 3 kids. He doesn't consider being 'male' as any different to some females who are so called 'privledged'. You cited wealth, a good example.

So even sociologically speaking, I personally just don't see being 'male' in the text we were referring to - as being a privledged birth position.

I have posted in a number of threads on this forum, but still tend to hold my own viewpoint.

MTF or FTM (can only speak post-op)  is a major occurence or fact in ones life. (Surgically I am referring)  I still do NOT see male classified at birth, to be a privledge any more than to be determined female at birth. (Mistakes as we all know do occur.)   As I have stated elsewhere, I was raised as a 'boy' / 'male' child, I never ever think of myself  as male or with male experience. I transitioned not that long after high school.

My experience as a child or a young teenager was never male, in fact, the true sense of the meaning.

Cheers 

[tekla]

Privilege is in Latin, literally, "Private Law" or something that only pertains to a few.  Weather that private law is in place because of your wealth, your service, your honor, your experience, or you birth (and all of those are things that get you privilege) there are certain advantages open to you that are not open to other people.

So what?

Get over it.

Lots of people I know (myself included) have privilege as a result of doing really good stuff over a prolong period (decades) and we can just do our thing and not have to bother with the rules so much.  Not because we're better than the rules, we've just transcended them.

Lots of people have privilege as a result of money.  Does it make a difference if they inherited that money, or earned it all themselves?  I met a girl, and yes, a girl, who is going to turn all of 21 in another week.  She is already a millionaire.  Is that going to change her life?  Yup.  Does she get accorded treatment that other people don't get as a regular part of their life?  You bet your Taylor Swift they do.  But should we stop that?  Should we prohibit Taylor Swift from living like that just because everyone can't live like that?

Plus I don't see where all males are accorded male privilege, and I do see women who get the benefit of the doubt, so it's by no means universal - at least in the West.

[LordKAT]

Dianna,

I don't believe tekla was directing any kind of insult at you. She just stated her view on the topic.

[Dianna]

I might getrid of it now, it wasn't meant for Kavall.   It was meant for tekla.

(I have deleted it now LordKAT.)

[tekla]

I wasn't directing anything at anyone, I was just noting that privilege is not universal, that it happens for different reasons, and that its not necessarily bad.

[MaggieB]

The issues that I am faced with in dealing with natal women stem from these questions:

Am I supposed to feel guilty because I was offered and afforded male privilege? Do I have any culpability in perpetuating such an unfair system even if I didn't participate? Can I ever forgive myself for being male? EVEN if I hated it?

For me these issues are really important because I identify as a lesbian. I find that I am about as much as a man hater as my wife is but I can't have female peers in that because of my birth gender. She isn't a lesbian and doesn't relate to women either but males are next to slime mold in her opinion. She always had that view but has voiced it especially since I transitioned. I wonder why she married me.

Maggie

[Constance]

Am I supposed to feel guilty because I was offered and afforded male privilege? Do I have any culpability in perpetuating such an unfair system even if I didn't participate? Can I ever forgive myself for being male? EVEN if I hated it?

How can you, or any of us who were born male, be held accountable for the actions of others? If others choose to treat me differently because of my skin color or gender presentation, they are responsible for that treatment, not me. And, since I'm not a mind-reader, how am I to know when I am being treated differently? It seems that these things aren't always visible.

[pretty pauline]

Well I lost the Male priviage card years ago.  Plus yes I was picked on all the time growing up,  Never did figure out why ;-).  But even in the past life I had discussed with other women and seen how woman were treated in the workplace.  Now I'm treated the same way.  Not complaining, just how it is. 


Beni

That one of the best replys, this whole discussion has a certain irony for me I remember when I was growing up, my Mother use to think men had it all, hated the way the world treated women, use to say ''its a man's world'' then living in a house with me 3brothers and Dad, none of us understood her, use to think she was just 1crazy woman.
Unlike my brothers I now understand how she felt because Im now a woman myself, my relationship improved with my Mother since I transition.
My brothers probably now think Im a crazy woman or just crazy to be a woman, yes there is Male Privilege but Im not complaining, thats the way things are, maybe I made a sacrifice by becoming a woman, Iv no regrets, I love just being a woman.
p

[Kendall]

Wow, what an interesting discussion/problem. I have studied gender for a long time, and participated in many meetings about gender related issues. I am impressed with the varieties of experiences there are - and how important respecting that is. I am impressed with how respectful the discussion has been.

I would like to add my two quarters (inflation).

First, I believe that most women do not understand men any better than men understand women. Women are probably better at predicting male behavior than men are at predicting women's behavior - because oppressed people get good at predicting the oppressors' behavior. But understanding is a different thing and would lead to women treating men differently sometimes. In general, with notable exceptions, I believe men do not understand women because they learn early that being a man means not being anything like a woman. To understand someone you have to have empathy.

Second, male privilege is a sword that cuts the holder also. I am not saying we should excuse men's bad behavior because they are wounded - the wounds are self-inflicted. Part of learning to be male is giving up half of what it means to be human. Giving up, or being impaired in, one's ability to feel empathy, to be emotional, to be good at self-care, to be good at relationship. Being male pushes men to learn to be adversarial and controlling. Being able to be a CEO and fire hundreds of people to make a small profit requires a hardness and lack of human feeling. Choosing war (as opposed to defending yourself) requires learning messed up values. I learned to want to not be a man as commonly pictured. My awareness of my female nature was delayed or hidden for many years because I thought I just did not want to be (that kind of) male.

I still do not want to be male even though I know as a white educated middle class male I have advantages. Privilege also has costs. I do not mean to say that being oppressed is better - the costs of oppression are high and hard to escape. A person of privilege pays a self-imposed cost. I am trying to let go of that privilege as I learn to not impose the cost on myself.

For me, learning to be male, and the oldest "adapted" child of a disfunctional family, meant stuffing anything resembling self-awareness. Unlearning that has been difficult, especially as I kept running into this part of myself that insisted I did not just want to not be male. I wanted at least in part to be female. (Tilt! error message! WTF!) And part of what I am afraid of, in addition to the unknown, is my awareness that the advantages I enjoy pretending successfully to be male may be reduced or taken away altogether if I stop playing the role. I have seen how viscious people can be to feminine men and trans-people. I have also come to believe the cost for me to remain male and safely male-privileged would have been soul-death. So I am creeping out from behind.

May I add a note of gratitude for all the sharing people do here? I just did?  OK Thank you.

[Alyssa M.]

I think the concept of passing privilege is important here, and that that is what some MTFs have. When I say "passing privilege" I'm referring to receiving privileges due to passing as the privileged group even though you are not actually a member of that group. Trans women cannot have actual male privilege because they are not male. But they may receive some privileges when read incorrectly as male--even on a daily basis for many years.

Not to compare oppressions, but saying that MTFs have male privilege is somewhat akin to saying that light-skinned black people have white privilege.

So my answer to whether MTFs have male privilege is no, because they are not male.

Funny, i was thinking of saying something about that. The term "passing" as used by trans people was borrowed from black Americans who were light-skinned enough to "pass" as white. Some of them took advantage of that fact and lived as white people despite being legally black (speaking of social contructions), and even for those who didn't, there have long been gradations of privilege and oppression regarding black people depending upon their skin tone.

So that's exactly my point: passable black people were specifically those ones afforded white privilege, for better or for worse.

But your point is well-taken: Being afforded privilege as a member of a group you don't actually belong to, whether it's based on race, gender, or whatever else, is a tough position of it's own, and tends to be oppressive in its own way. I certainly know how that feels.

So there's a semantic argument to be had over whether being afforded privilege by being wrongly perceived as a member of some class is tuly privilege; I think that the opposite situation -- say, being beaten to death because someone thought you were gay because you were a man and you were holding your brother's hand -- certainly counts as oppression.

Tekla's sort of right: privilege isn't necessarily a bad thing. The problem with is is precisely the "private" part of it, which implies that it's denied to others, often for competely illegitimate reasons, like race, sex, nationality, etc. And the overwhelming majority of human beings are members of some oppressed class. That doesn't mean that the overwhelming majority are suffering under terrible oppression. It's just a way to describe some problems in society.

So let's not freak out when someone says we have privilege. It's not an insult, but only a request for some empathy for those who lack it.

[Silver]

In conversation, people have listened to me even when my ideas weren't as worthwhile, or when I was saying the same thing as a woman who was being ignored.

That really bothers me. But you have a great grasp of this issue, proof that transwomen definitely belong in the women's issues discussion. I really think nobody should be excluded though, because keeping secrets won't get anything done.

[Dianna]

Some very interesting viewpoints here in this topic. Having said that, I still don't think either male or female as a birth right is accurate, a privledge. Someone above mentioned 'social constructs', now that sounds the best viewpoint I have heard. 

When I studied "Human Differences", a subject I took in second year Uni (we don't call them colleges in Aust), I recall some very biased viewpoints being raised be the class (group of students) taking that subject, that is certain male students. 

NB. Some students were only 2 years past high school, where I was a mature aged student, another term used in our Universities here in Australia. 

[cocoon]

Maggie-
I love the topic.  And I can see a woman's point of view that we can never have lived through all of the experiences that a GG has.  None of us can pop into a time machine and re-live our entire lives as female.  But yet all of us who are MTF know we are female and have been forced to live as something we are not for some portion of our lives.  Doesn't being MTF give us the unique perspective of understanding both genders.  Haven't you ever had the experience of having to explain to a male friend what his girlfriend was really thinking?  I suppose we are not the same as a GG, but are all GG's the same?

[Valentina]

If a transsexual woman transitioned young, say at 18, can we say that she benefited from 'male privilege'?

[Northern Jane]

If a transsexual woman transitioned young, say at 18, can we say that she benefited from 'male privilege'?

Or someone who never effectively passed as male? No, more like a Gay male - some of the options available to men but not all!

[Alyssa M.]

Matilda, you don't have to be a beneficiary to know what it is; usually it's more obvious when you lack it. Nevertheless, I have met many women who claimed not to have experienced any denial of male privilege; the experience you describe isn't all that unusual. It depends a lot upon your circumstances. And overall I think it's a great thing -- the more women that don't feel beaten down by low expectations, snubs, fears for their safety, etc., the better. But I also worry that it can be a sign of complacency or obliviousness.

Of course, to whatever extent you lose male privilege, the earlier you transition, the earlier you lose it. But there are certainly effects of male privilege that affect children under 18. A lot of those affect young pre-transition trans women too, but usually in a different way: my grandmother didn't tell me I was fat when I was thirteen. I struggled with body image for reasons that were my own, not hers.