Discrimination Is When Sex Toys Apparently

Looking at tumblr makes me anxious lately so sorry for not really replying to anything for a while. Just popping on cause I was thinking about early 00's culture, specifically how gender was marketed to children back then. If you were a girl, you were better than boys. If you were a boy, girls were worse than you. I don't think that was a healthy mindset to teach to children. I wonder how much it's affected the modern culture now that those children are adults?

saw someone in the tags talking about being a "transmasc isolationist" in response to transandrophobia-

no! not that! the response to exclusionary ideologies shouldn't be more exclusion! that's how we got here in the first place!

It may seem strange how many "progressives" are angered by the pretty obvious and milquetoast assertion that "Bigotry is a problem of broader society that manifests on many websites in many ways". But if you concede that 4chan isn't this unique font of absolute evil, a certain sort of tumblr user would lose one of their favourite pejoratives for trans women. Like the whole "4chan basement loser" thing already fits into their idea of trans women (at least the ones they don't wanna fuck) as "pathetic fail men". And by acting like mere association with 4chan (real or imagined) politically taints you in a way that say facebook or tumblr doesn't, you don't even have to feel guilty because those weird trannies are obviously bad people who love bigotry no further explanation needed. Sure there's no shortage of ways you can justify harassing trans women but a lot that requires more work; you need to spend like 5 seconds looking up what she actually said or did. Throwing out "they're a channer" (while yourself being a tumblr user) is just too convenient to give up

Ok, I want to preface this by asking you to please not immediately react with denial, anger, or accuse me of neglecting other groups, or just being uneducated.

Look up

'trans people india'

'trans people pakistan'

'trans people bangladesh'

'trans people malaysia'

'trans people turkey'

'trans people afghanistan'

'trans people tajkistan'

Look at interviewers, new reporters, trans life accounts, descriptions of trans communities, trans activists, autobiographies, protests, everything.

And ask yourself.

Where are the trans men?

And do not balk, or accuse me of saying trans men are the most oppressed group in the world,

When I tell you they are enslaved. Or married. Or dead.

2004

I used to push against the idea and I still do to an extent but the anti-transmasculine crowd has gotten to the point where I really do feel like it's beginning to get on par with how prevelant and awful the aphobic crowd was back in the mid-late 2010s

So I kind of want to unpack this because it's phrased like the literary equivilant of barbed wire and people keep getting caught on snags. And what is being said here is heinous enough that I think it should be presented plainly

(A solid post on the topic here by @velvetvexations, who got into the psychology of it. I wanted to expand from a logic/phrasing perspective)

Lets tackle that second paragraph piece by piece

First, this sentence which is objectively true. Cisgender perisex* women have systematic cisgender privilege, so, for example they aren't affected by things like restrictions on access to HRT/Transition Surgery or being forcibly outed to transphobic individuals or institutions. While they can still experience individual transphobia(see gnc presenting individuals), they still have access to that systemic cisgender privilege. I just want to put a pin in the fact that this is true of all cis people over all trans people. Trans people of any kind do not have cis privilege, because they are not cis. Including closeted and stealth trans individuals. To use my own example, both of them would be affected by restrictions to HRT access, even if they are "percieved" as cis.

So when I say cis privilege later on keep all that in mind

Statement A: Cis women have privilege over trans women

*I am not intersex, it is just my understanding from reading intersex individuals experiences that while intersex people can be cis, they do not have access to the cisgender privilege outlined here. Please correct me if I am wrong

She says this to deflect from the fact that that is the conclusion she is directly going to build to. It's about the same as saying "I'm not saying men of color are uniquely violent, I'm just pointing out that statistically they commit most crime"

Now lets unpack the less straightforward part

A reminder: this isn't about closeted trans men. It would still be reductive if it were, but look back at the original ask. This is about all non-passing trans men

(Though both the asker and answerer seem to use "passing" as a synonym for "stealth". you can pass but not be stealth, plenty of trans people are out publically)

(An aside: The language the asker uses here seems pretty suspect, treating "non-passing" as identical to being percieved as cis. While we could argue that they meant closeted, the answerer does not contest this point and instead uses it as the base to opine on trans men as a whole, so I am going to make the assumption that she is in agreement with the base premise)

Statement B: All non-passing trans men are percieved and treated identically to cis women.

As noted re:the askers uncontested language, this group seems to include trans men at any stage of transition. Either they pass as men or they are considered cis women, with no inbetween.

Statement C: This is a privilege

Statement C is one of the snags here, because the answerer uses "male privilege" here, which when combined with Statement B can be read as "cis women have male privilege", which is absurd. But thats a snag, the meat of the statement is different. She's calling it male privilege but goes on to define it as a privilege specifically and exclusively trans women don't have, which isn't what male privilege is(see: cis women). Why she is using the phrase wrong I don't know, but lets just simplify it down to what Statement C says: it is a privilege of some form. We will get into the form

Statement D: Trans women do not have this privilege because they are seen as trans

So the privilege is conferred based on being cis(or the appearance of), and non-passing trans men have it because they are "only" seen as functionally identical to cis women.

So, trans women lack this privilege because they are discriminated against on the basis of being seen as trans specifically, while trans men have it because they are seen as cis. Discrimination based on being trans is transphobia.

Statement E: Trans men do not experience transphobia because they are seen as cis

Consider in the context of the first statement. Cis women have privilege over trans women. Trans men have privilege over trans women because cis women have privilege over trans women. Cis women have this privilege because they are cis, so calling it male privilege was an obfuscation

And this part puts to bed the whole "maybe they meant closeted" arguement. The answerer identifies that the privilege specifically stems from transmasculinity.

Thus,

Statement F: All trans men, regardless of the stage of transition, are seen as cis because they are transmasculine.

Conclusion: Trans men have cis privilege

Do we see how this arguement has become completely disconnected from reality yet?

And this isn't part of the original exchange, but I wanted to quickly discuss this bit

"May have been traumatic and horrible for you"

"You still get to be one"

Look at the phrasing here. You still "get" to be one. Womenhood is the ideal state which confers privilege and is inherently desirable. If you don't want it, there is something wrong with you specifically. Womanhood cannot be traumatizing on its own merits, it can only be traumatizing because you are broken in some way and can't appreciate how good it is.

In a quick two sentences, it makes clear the incredibly cruel statement "misgendering is a privilege. you should be grateful they are doing this to you"

Official Japan Exclusive, GBA (Game Boy Advance) Celebi Console released in 2001