weaponized-androgyny:

ofools:

weaponized-androgyny:

weaponized-androgyny:

Controversial opinion but I’m actually starting to think there is such a thing as binary privilege within the trans community, I just don’t think it exists in the ways that most people have ignorantly speculated about it.

I definitely don’t think that you can lump in binary cis women cis men trans women and trans men as a cohesive group and any presumption to do so is totally off base. I also don’t think that transgender women experience materially impactful “binary privilege” over CAFAB nonbinary people.

But I do think that, nonbinary identity being a form of gender-nonconformity (most nonbinary people presenting or wishing to present in a way that is visibly gender-variant, and vocalizing a nonbinary identity in itself being an act of gender-nonconformity with material consequences) that within certain groups (for the sake of simplicity I’ll just discuss this in terms of CAFAB and CAMAB) binary identities are prioritized over non-binary identities.

As a CAFAB nonbinary person who is vocal about their identity I definitely do not have access to the same privilege a trans man does. Not only do both cis people and many binary trans people view my identity as being more insolent than that of a trans man and inherently less worthy of accomodation (see: The entire situation surrounding Jordan Peterson at the University of Toronto and people now boycotting the entire federal trans rights bill in Canada on the basis of not wanting to use “they” pronouns) but I have experienced barriers to health care that doctors have expressly told me I would not have experienced if I was a trans man. I have also been subjected to trans men explicitly using my identity as something to attack and dismiss in order to establish more social capital for themselves, and while briefly working for an LGBT organization, had my supervisors take my opinions on trans issues less seriously than those of binary trans people, even if those opinions were on nonbinary issues specifically, as well as being subjected to invalidating micro-aggressions from both my cis coworkers and other trans people and saw similar things happen to my CAMAB nonbinary coworkers.

And while I do not feel that trans women hold some sort of gender-related privilege over me as a CAFAB person by virtue of a binary identity since transmisogyny is a significantly more materially impactful issue, I definitely have heard and seen, and had CAMAB people express to me similar experiences to what I’ve described be experienced by CAMAB nonbinary/GNC transfeminine people from binary trans women (see: Blair White and Theryn Meyer attacking nonbinary transfeminine people to increase their social capital and being given authority to speak over CAMAB nonbinary people on nonbinary-specific issues).

There’s also the issue of binary favoritism from cis people. Nonbinary people experience unique forms of conversion therapy even from therapists and doctors who claim not to practice conversion therapy, where doctors attempt to convince nonbinary people they need to “really figure out” their gender, gaslighting their patients about the validity of nonbinary identity and subjecting them to additional barriers to care should they refuse to adopt a binary identity. There is extensive medical documentation in both literature on the medicalization of trans people and on the medicalization of intersex people that the medical industrial complex has a vested interest in persuading GNC people towards binary identities, even if those identities are transgender, rather than allowing a person to embody an explicitly nonbinary gender identity and presentation, and that it is willing to carry out this agenda through means of institutional violence and bodily harm via either pressuring nonbinary people into forms of transition they do not want, or restricting access to forms of transition they do want.

Through the research I’ve done this year into the medicalization of intersex people I’ve discovered a frightening overlap in ideological motivation between the medicalization and abuse of intersex people and the medicalization and abuse of nonbinary people. And while I do not think that it’s the place of dyadic nonbinary people to speak on this, at this point I (edit: as an intersex person) do not think that is it possible to neatly separate nonbinary issues from intersex issues from an institutional perspective in a way that isn’t completely ahistorical.

So yeah TL;DR to a certain extent I do think that nonbinary people experience forms of oppression that are unique to people of nonbinary identities, I just think the way it’s been previously discussed has been extremely fallacious, that it cannot be discussed in a way that equates cis and trans women and men as a cohesive group, and that it cannot be discussed in a way that draws false equivalency between CAMAB and CAFAB experiences or doesn’t account for transmisogyny.

I know this is a really controversial topic and if you think I’m off-base I’d really appreciate feedback or criticism esp from CAMAB ppl bc I’m still developing my thoughts on this!

Edit: I hope I clarified this enough within the original post but I just wanted to state more clearly that if this topic is going to be discussed it needs to be done so with the understanding that the people who stand to benefit to most from nonbinaryphobia (for lack of a better term) within the trans community are trans men. Trans women have significantly less benefit from this and while they can still stand to harm CAMAB nonbinary people in this way, it is difficult for trans women to enact anti-nonbinary violence on CAFAB people given that CAFAB people are always capable of wielding transmisogyny in response (and do, frequently). In order to discuss this topic fairly, male privilege and female oppression need to be understood as an inexorable part of that discussion.

reblogging for the day crowd and also to tell ppl commenting on this likening what I’m talking about to “allosexual and monosexual privilege” to please fuck off.

i.. i really don’t think you should be calling this a case of “privilege”, and i think its really dangerous to go down that road. Privilege requires complete societal backing, it requires positions of power and influence, significant influence and it needs the historical power to back it up.

This post sits incredibly wrong with me, I understand what you are trying to say, but the examples you are giving are rooted in other plain old -isms imo (and yeah, nonbinary people have their own unique experiences with it, depending on their own personal identity, and it can be mixed with transmisogyny as well) when it comes to the medical world, and when it comes to other binary trans people, its more of a case of lateral discrimination (coupled with -isms) rather than an expression of privilege?

Trans men or women discriminating against us and flat out denying our existence is lateral aggression, its lateral hate, its still uncalled for, bigoted and ignorant, but they aren’t privileged over me just because they’re binary, we both face transphobia. Society still does not entirely if at all, accept them, they can be agents of discrimination against us, sure, but they can’t ever be the ringleaders of it, or the sole possessors of privilege over us within our own community, just because they are binary.

There are so many other factors to this, including sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia, etc. that is can’t just be narrowed down to something like “They’re binary, that’s why they got access to more things than me”. Like the example you brought up with the medical community saying if you were a trans man, you’d get treatment. That really sounds more to me like… just the fact you aren’t a “man” in their eyes. It sounds far more like misdirected sexism and transphobia on their part, rather than an inherent binary privilege. Its a male privilege.

like yes i understand that there are shitty trans men and shitty trans women who use us as scapegoats and examples of the Bad Trans to bolster themselves and make their own identity more secure in the eye of society but. I don’t think. calling it a privilege, is really something you should do at all, especially where there are often times, far more factors to it, seen and unseen.

Nonbinary people do experience unique problems and issues as trans people, and a unique set of hurdles within the broader trans community, but i think there is far far far far more to it than simple “binary privilege”

I’m sorry but I think you’re really off-base in your interpretation of this.

Privilege does not require “complete societal backing” – intracommunity privilege within oppressed groups is understood within literally every marginalized group. Certain marginalized people definitely are seen as closer or more adjacent or slightly more palpable to their oppressors than other members of their group for a variety of reasons, and because of that oppressors (in this case cis people) totally can use the members of a msrginalized group who they find slightly more tolerable to enact violence on less palpable or more “fringe” members of their own community. This kind of thing does have major historical precident especially within the LGBT community.

Obviously these things can’t be taken independently of other factors, but oppression dynamics are intersectional and that goes without saying, and I did talk about that somewhat within this post. I also talked about the *historical precident* of this discrimination especially as it overlaps with intersex stuff and not to play the idpol game but I really don’t feel like unless you’re intersex or have actually researched that topic you’re in a position to dismiss me on that? Like youre saying there’s no history if it *while* I was talking about the history of it. A lot of the reason why intersex people are medically abused is specifically to prevent them from embodying a nonbinary gender and pressure them to either stick to their assigned gender or undergo coercive medical procedures to embody the other binary gender. Nonbinaryphobia is a huge factor in intersex discrimination and that is a medically documented fact like I could actually link you to the medical articles I read discussing anti-nonbinary intersexist practices going back to the 1800s if you were interested in reading them.

Also like in present day binary trans ppl definitely are given positions of authority over trans issues such as within NGOs and LGBT organizations and I was specifically citing cases of workplace discrimination perpetuated by binary trans people against nonbinary trans people on the basis of the NB peoples identities and binary people having authority over NB issues, which is an institutional thing. Not to mention the fact that my first gender therapist who significantly delayed my transition and basically told me she had no plans to ever prescribe me hormones because I was NB was a binary trans woman soooo… yeah like I’m not trying to make this out into a huge overarching issue to supplant other more materially impactful issues (which i think I did a good deal of clarifying, at no point did I try to make anti-nonbinary discrimination out to be a more materially impactful issue than racism, ableism, classism, transmisogyny, or even general transphobia and cissexism) but yeah at times binary trans people do have positions of institutional authority over NB people which they can use to harm NB people because of their internal bias against them based on their gender identity which is harder to reconcile with cissexism than a binary identity.

A method of privilege that has documented institutional and material impact does not have to reach a certain level of badness in your personal opinion before it can be called a privilege. You can choose to call it “lateral aggression” if you want but I think if it’s at the point where workplace discrimination, denying access to health care and having binary trans people literally campaigning against the human rights of nonbinary people which is what is currently happening in Canada right now (which you should also google if youre looking for real life examples of this because it seems like you just ignored that whole section when I talked about it in the original post) that is a form of intracommunity oppression and not just lateral aggression, since one section of the trans community is clearly being prioritized and being awarded privileges over another and using those privileges to enact harm, even if those privileges are being awarded by cis people and cissexism.

The other reason why I don’t think this is just lateral aggression is that nonbinary-specific discrimination (not being able to access institutional benefits on the basis of not being able to identify ones self as being male or female in identity) is not something nonbinary people can inact on binary people. I cannot enact erasure on a trans man in the way he can basically say my identity doesn’t or can’t exist – that is a vulnerability to erasure I have that binary trans people do not have to the same extent, and that erasure does leads to materially impactful oppression which I’ve outlined in this post and response. and although I do have the ability to enact oppression on trans women, that is because as a CAFAB person am able to benefit from transmisogyny. However, even though I can enact transmisogyny on trans women, the modes and systems that allow a trans woman to deny me health care on the basis of my nonbinary identity (lack of medical research into nonbinary-specific transition, the fact that there were only FTM or MTF boxes for her to check on my medical chart, etc.) is coming from a different axis than the power I have over her.

You’re right that these things are intersectional but saying “oppression is intersectional therefore this oppression doesn’t exist” just isn’t a valid response and I think you actually wind up flattening the discussion about this by saying it’s all the same thing, rather than acknowledging that transphobia is made up of a lot of different systems of oppression that effect different trans identities in different ways and therefore do wind up privileging certain members of the trans community along different axis.

I understand your skepticism of this concept given the ways in which it’s been discussed previously have had a serious lack of intersectional thinking applied to them, but I also think that dismissing me out of hand on the basis of a lot of half-understood rhetorical devices while ignoring all the evidence and arguments I provided isn’t great.