What Transmisogyny Looks Like

This analysis is very excellent. It gets right to the point and says exactly what needs to be said, and says it well.

some of my favorite paragraphs:

QuoteWhen trans women who present femininely or assert a binary identity are blamed for perpetuating binary gender roles, while it's forgotten that many or even more cis women do the same, that's transmisogyny. (When cis women who present femininely are also blamed for perpetuating binary gender roles, that's femmephobia)

Quote
When trans women have every aspect of their presentation examined and labeled either hyperfeminine and therefore fake or not feminine enough and therefore male, while the same traits would be seen as normal in cis women, that's transmisogyny.

QuoteWhen trans women are told that they need to stop being assertive and strong because it is a sign of male privilege - invariably by "feminists" who, of course, encourage cis women to be assertive and strong - that's transmisogyny.

Thank you, Hypatia, that's a brilliant piece.

QuoteWhen trans women are afraid to analyze or discuss the role of male privilege in their life because of the way accusations of male privilege have been used as weapons to silence, shame, and misgender trans women, that's transmisogyny.

Privilege is always a touchy subject. This ^^^^ is totally unacceptable. The amazing thing to me about discussions of privilege is how blind people tend to appear to be to their own privilege when talking about it. It goes way deeper than the usual culprits (gender, race, nationality). Everybody on this forum has an enourmous amount of privilege -- if only by being conversant in English and having Internet access. That's not a bad thing: privilege comes down to being assumed worthy as a human at first glance without earning it. The problem is that it's not universal. Privilege is not simple. Let's not pretend it is.

(That's me taking a stab at analyzing the role of privilege in my life and coming to conclusions.)

QuoteWhen those same "women and trans" spaces, or even the ones that don't police entrance, are attended by a dozen or so trans men yet zero or only one or two trans women, that's transmisogyny. (It obviously indicates that they don't feel welcome, don't trust the organizers, or weren't outreached to.)

This is the only point she makes I disagree with. What she's advocating seems to be tokenism. It might be true in certain cases, but I don't think you can make a blanket statement like that. Sometimes it's just random variation.

~Alyssa

was also posted here https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,57901.msg364719.html#msg364719

When someone else has it its 'privilege' or 'entitlement' but when we have it its a 'right we fought hard for'.  Eye of the beholder.

Yeah, that double-bind of Assertive='Male Privilege'

The word 'privilege' is related to the word 'privy', as in toilet, BTW.

=K

This piece builds upon the work of Julia Serano and develops Serano's important analyses further. Serano matters a lot. I'm glad to see others contributing to what she started.

Privilege is from the Latin literally meaning 'private law'. One law for you and a different law for everybody else. In practice, given the system of justice that is biased toward the privileged, that etymology is quite literally true today. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.

Z -- Are all citations of blog posts to go in the "News > Opinions & Editorials" forum? If it isn't from an actual news source, I thought it fit better into the forum whose subject it was about.

Actually, in this case, you had linked to the Bilerico post of this, while I linked to the writer's blog itself, so it wasn't a total duplication of your efforts. Since Bilerico was down yesterday, at least my link allowed people to access the piece.

Quote from: Hypatia on March 28, 2009, 12:27:56 PM
Z -- Are all citations of blog posts to go in the "News > Opinions & Editorials" forum? If it isn't from an actual news source, I thought it fit better into the forum whose subject it was about.

Actually, in this case, you had linked to the Bilerico post of this, while I linked to the writer's blog itself, so it wasn't a total duplication of your efforts. Since Bilerico was down yesterday, at least my link allowed people to access the piece.

Hypatia,

In general I post blogs that have trans related content in the opinions section. It isn't a hard fast rule though, if something fits better somewhere else it's ok to post elsewhere. In this case, rather than merging topics I referenced my original post so people can see comments there too.

I also thought it was a very good article. I've liked many of Tobi's blog posts at Bilerico.

Z