can you explain cafab privilege

queeranarchism:

mountlandme:

queeranarchism:

amab-non-binary:

Phew, this is a big one, but I’ll have a go at it (please let me know if I say anything bad here, or if I’ve missed anything out).

Essentially, cafab people benefit from transmisogyny, and this manifests itself in various ways:

• Since camab people are percieved as “male”, and cafab people are percieved as “female”, society generally is more accepting of cafab trans people in part because they are seen as “moving away” from womanhood, which is seen as a negative thing. However, amab trans people are seen as “moving away” from manhood, which is viewed as a positive thing (being a man, that is)
• In the same way, gender non-conformity is more accepted for cafab people than more camab people
• A lot of the trans community on social media (i.e. resource blogs, clothing giveaways, youtube channels, etc.) is heaving geared towards cafab people, who consequently benefit from the sidelining of camab people (regardless of whether or not they support this)
• Because of this marginalisation, it can often be harder for camab non-binary people to realise their gender identity, in part because being non-binary is almost exclusively portrayed as a cafab thing
• Whilst non-binary cafab people are encouraged (rightly, of course) to present however they want, because doing so does not invalidate their gender, the only form of camab non-binary presentation that is usually represented is strong “femininity” – makeup, skirts, dresses, etc., which is not good for camab people who do not present in this way
• Meanwhile, it cannot be ignored that camab people who publicly present in a “feminine” way are at a far higher risk of violence than camab people who publicly present in a “masculine” way

Important disclaimer, since this is a common misconception: cafab privilege is a trans concept only, and does not apply to cis people: the idea that cis women could be privileged over cis men because of their asab is, of course, ridiculous.

– Beth

(Incidentally, since I [obviously] have no experience of being cafab, it would be good for a cafab person to just add something about how they have experienced privilege)

i prefer the language of transmisogyny-affected and transmisogyny-exempt  because it doesn’t rely on constantly referencing assigned gender  and directly brings transmisogyny into the conversation

YES YES YES, transmisogyny-affected and transmisogyny-exempt are much better terms. Also because they don’t use some remote point at birth as the life-long determining point of what a non-binary person might experience. 

(Newsflash: non-binary people who heard ‘it’s a girl!’ at birth who now have a deep voice and ‘male-pattern’ baldness experience transmisogyny when they present in a feminine.)

Also, I hate that this post seems to constantly assume that someone’s birth assignment is the same as the body they have now and the opposite of the gender they present? 

Like, there are a lot of resources and give aways for trans folk who want to look more masculine,sure. But that’s not gonna be of much use to that deep-voiced balding trans person described above who just wants to wear feminine clothes without suffering from transmisogynist violence. And it might help a person who heard ‘it’s a boy’ at birth, had surgery at some point in life and now likes to pack. 

Newsflash again: non-binary trans lives are not all linear, one point to the other, lives. People who heard ‘it’s a girl!’ at birth are not all masculine, people who heard ‘it’s a boy!’ at birth are not all feminine. Not how this works folks. 

(And I hate how people look incredulous when I name examples like this, as if I’m inventing hypothetical lives to prove a point when this is in fact the reality of so many non-binary lives. So so highly invalidating)

Finally, most of what this post describes comes down to facing less intense discrimination and violence than you would if you also faced trans-misogyny. Which is well described by transmisogyny-exempt. It’s less of a really shitty thing. 

It is NOT well-described by ‘benefits from transmisogyny’. Like, wow, not getting murdered! such benefits! 

(So, yeah, basically I find a lot of fail in this post because it’s stuck in a binary) 

^everything 

queeranarchism said is perfection. 

Also I’m not 100% sure on the ‘moving away from being seen as female’ creates privileged or discourages violence, if so butch lesbians would have an easier time than femme lesbians, yet the majority of the violence I have seen towards lesbians is aimed at butches (not saying femmes don’t experience violence, they do) – and many people interpret trans masc people as butch lesbians. People in general don’t like others who break the gender binary, however yes trans women of colour get a lot more violence, and often fatal violence, than trans men worldwide and that is important to remember when speaking about trans violence it is predominantly towards those who are victims of transmisogyny but not always (there have been two trans masc murders Ive heard about this year so far?) – its also really important to consider how race is just as important as gender presentation in that equation.  I don’t know what the difference in violence is between transmisogyny-affected and transmisogyny-exempt people in countries like the UK where there are very rarely any murders of trans people – I feel that all trans people are a lot safer in the UK than Brazil, so to say a white trans woman in the uk is as much a victim of transmysoginy as a trans woman of colour in brazil is obviously a falsehood. 

And the majority of resources are aimed at transmen/trans masc people? Maybe on tumblr but the majority of adult groups are predominantly trans feminine – at least the two in the south of england I visited are (though I have also noticed that youth services are predominantly trans masc, and trans masc people now 

TRUE. 

‘Moving away from being seen as female’ really doesn’t create privilege or discourages violence, I couldn’t have said that better myself. Also, yeah,

I’ve noticed how  the majority of adult groups are predominantly trans feminine and the majority of youth groups are predominantly trans masculine. The difference in locations is pretty significant too. 

Don’t get me wrong, transmisogyny is totally very much a thing in the UK and Europe and it really is very nasty in many ways. But when you look at the statistics for those countries, trans men don’t actually statistically come out ‘on top’ in any way. They’re not less likely to be victims of rape than trans women, they’re not less likely to kill themselves

than trans women, they don’t have higher salaries

than trans women. Dutch studies on this actually suggest that within the Netherlands trans men and trans women have it harder in different periods of their transition and in different ways. 

For example, in a Dutch study of sexual violence it turned out that trans men on average were likely to experience sexual

violence in the first years of their transition and the years just before starting transition (when they presumably might have started presenting in a gender-nonconforming way), while trans women

on average were likely to experience sexual violence later in their transition and after transition. Transmasculine non-binary folk had many of the same experiences as trans men but didn’t reach a period where the sexual violence stopped. Transfeminine folk had many of the same experiences as trans women. In total, trans men in this study were slightly more likely to have experienced sexual violence than trans women, transfeminine people experienced more sexual violence than trans men and trans women and transmasculine people experienced more sexual violence than any of the other groups. 

So as important as an understanding of the difference between transmisogyny and transphobia is (and really, I’m a massive Julia Serano fan) there’s clearly still a huge part of the narrative missing (and I’m pretty sure it’s missing from the US narrative too).