Do Trans Women Have Male Privilege?

Welcome to The Maybe List: the series where I, Maybe Burke, unpack some controversial topics and tell you where I stand. To get us started, I thought I would revisit a conversation that resurfaces every now and then:

Do trans women have male privilege?

No.

Trans women are women. Women don't have male privilege.

I used to talk about “the Caitlin Jenner experience” to help us navigate this question. A lot of people's entry point to talking about trans women used to be Caitlyn Jenner. This led to the idea that all trans women were like Caitlyn Jenner. People assumed all of our stories were similar. Trans women all transitioned late into our adulthood, that we’re all wealthy and were able to flip a switch and carry out our transition goals. But a huge component of “the Caitlyn Jenner experience,” a side effect of people thinking about her when they think about trans people, is the assumption that all trans women are white. There is an ongoing assumption that being trans is an inherently white thing, or western concept, and that's just not the case. But white privilege and male privilege look a lot of the same ways. So if every time you're thinking about a trans woman, she's white, the privilege you're referencing might just be white privilege. But to say that any trans woman has male privilege is to misgender that woman.

Now, privilege can be defined as the opportunities or advantages that a certain group of people has access to that other groups of people might not have the same access to. But privilege is not a thing that you can opt into or opt out of. Your privilege is actually decided by the world around you, and privilege is afforded to you based on the ways that other people might be perceiving you. And there's multiple different kinds of privilege. There's not just male privilege and white privilege. There's also privilege if you're able-bodied or neurotypical. There's privilege if you're cisgender, regardless of what gender you are. There's privilege if you're conventionally attractive, or if you're thin. And all those privileges can intersect and influence each other. Privilege is not just a one-size-fits-all finite set of things that you're afforded. Male privilege looks different on different people. White men have a different experience of privilege than men of color do. Disabled men have a different experience than non-disabled men. Gay men, trans men, there's so many different kinds of men and different experiences within male privilege.

As a trans person who spent a lot of my early life and transition assumed to be a cis man, I wouldn’t necessarily say I benefit from male privilege. What I can acknowledge is the privilege I got from being cis-assumed, where you're getting privileges for being assumed to be cisgender. This assumption can go along with the gender you identify with, but also often doesn't, especially for non-binary people. This was true of me for probably the first decade of my transition. Yes, there is privilege in seeming like the majority. What a lot of people might refer to as “passing,” even though that term has a very complicated history. And when it comes down to it, though privilege actually casts a pretty wide net, the experiences can end up being pretty unique. If you are a man, are you white? Do you have money? Are you disabled? There's a lot of different components and factors that go into the type and the amount of privilege that you experience. And again, privilege is given to you by the world around you. So different circumstances, different contexts, are going to give you different experiences.

So, do trans women have male privilege? No. And not just because semantically I don't want to be misgendering trans women. A lot of trans women don't experience what people think of as male privilege. Plenty of trans women that I know, myself included, talk about not being raised like the boys were. I was never treated like one of the boys. From an early age, I was pretty much socialized as a little femme.

Sidenote: When we talk about raising people “as a boy” or “as a girl,” or “socialized male/female,“ what are we doing? Are all girls raised the same way? No. These are sweeping generalizations that I don't actually think help anybody. And to pretend that there's only two ways that humans are socialized at a young age is ridiculous.

However, my parents and most of the people around me thought that I was a boy for 18 years. And yet, I don't feel like they were treating me like other people that they thought were boys. I know I benefited from a lot of privilege at that time, but I also know that my experience was quite different than the boys growing up around me. Queer boys included. I was often ridiculed and punished for the ways that I didn’t conform. And as a person who has now experienced quite a range of how society reads me, I'm aware of my level of privilege changing. But I don't think of what I had back then as male privilege. I was often held from opportunities because of my femininity, and I often got opportunities largely because of my whiteness. I mean, I can't necessarily say anything was definitively because of one identity or a combination of them. But at the end of the day, for multiple reasons, I don't see myself as having male privilege. And I never did.

So why does this topic of trans women and male privilege keep coming up? Because a lot of people don't actually understand what privilege is. People aren't talking about privilege in the accurate and nuanced ways that they should be. I’m very lucky in my work to be able to have honest conversations about what privilege is and where it comes from. And in my experience, nothing good ever comes from simplifying the conversation, or grouping trans women in with men. The nuance absent in most of these conversations is called intersectionality. To talk about privilege without acknowledging intersectionality is not only irresponsible, it's inaccurate. A lot of people are raised with privilege. Is it male privilege? Or is it class privilege? Is it white privilege? Who’s to say?

But I can tell you this - trans women don’t have male privilege.