Male guilt and the self-censorship of trans narratives.

queeranarchism:

Reposting a slightly extended version of my comment from this post because I felt it needed a post of it’s own.

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I feel like there is – within a mostly Tumblr based trans social justice subculture – a strong tendency to focus on the basic truths about transmisogyny that the outside world keeps forgetting, and that’s GOOD.

But at the same time, the dogmatic way that is approached is putting a lid on some of the conversations we could be having about the complexities of gender and of gender or transrelated oppression.

Sometimes trans men and ‘afab’ (I hate that term) non-binary folk within this subculture are so busy being accountable to trans women and acknowledging their male privelege that they don’t take the time to talk about the complexities of gender or the harshness of their own oppression. They’re like the ‘white guilt’ people who never do anything useful because they’re too obsessed with apologizing for their privilege.

Just saying ‘what I experienced just now when that transphobe perved over me felt like sexism’ is treated like something controversial because trans men have bought into this strange black-and-white dogma where ‘if I say I experienced any sexism at all, that means I’m saying trans women don’t experience sexism’. Which is bullshit. Gender narratives about trans men and trans women are not mirrors. It just doesn’t work like that.

A lot of stuff goes unmentioned. So many people who fit under trans masculine labels are poor, homeless, have eating disorders, survived abuse. In the Netherlands, 45% of trans men and trans masculine folk are sexual violence survivors. Yet the macho guys don’t talk about that because it’s not masculine and the ‘social justice’ guys don’t talk about it because they’re so busy pointing out that trans women have it worse that they end up not saying anything about the lives of trans masculine folk at all.

And the non-binary folk end up just not talking about their experiences at all if they don’t fit the clear ‘all afabs always have male privilege, all amabs always face transmisogyny’ narrative. 

It’s a fucked up situation that is getting in the way of a more complex layered understanding of trans lives, in which we find ourselves in situations that are more complex than the binary ‘who has male privilege’ situation. I’m frustrated. I see all these conversations that we could be having but don’t because they don’t fit clear power binaries. 

Having an understanding of the difference between concepts like sexism, transphobia, transmisogyny and male privilege is so so important, but we need more space to talk about our experiences as we experience them without immediately having to defend where they fit within the binaries of power and privilege.