Now we don’t even get to be the default woman
Another blasphemer: Penny White at Feminist Current on why she no longer hates “TERFs”:
Women are socialized to be caretakers. We learn to put everyone else’s needs before our own and, likewise, we are socialized to believe that everyone else’s oppression is more important than ours — especially the oppression of biological males. The oppression of men of colour by whites, for example, has always been taken more seriously than the oppression of women of colour. Police violence against women of colour receives far less coverage than police violence against men of colour.
…
Recently Caitlin Jenner was honoured at Glamour’s “Woman of the Year” awards, but Chaz Bono has yet to be nominated as “Man of the Year” by his brothers. The closest he got was a “Person of the Year” award at LA’s gay pride festival. I can only imagine how enthusiastically men would embrace an Esquire or GQ cover proclaiming Chaz Bono “Man of the Year…”
Yet Caitlin Jenner, a conservative Republican and deadbeat dad, who used to hang out at the Playboy Mansion and who can’t even be bothered to support gay marriage (because it’s not “traditional”), is championed by women. We celebrate her even though she supports a political party that seeks to systematically eliminate the reproductive rights of women. Because Jenner is transgender, she’s understood to be a member of an oppressed group (despite her wealth and whiteness). We must consider her feelings and needs above our own because that’s what women are socialized to do. Is it impossible to understand why some women might be angry about this?
She’s a member of an oppressed group who has a show about her on cable tv. Some oppression.
Females have never been the “default” human — that honor has always gone to males. And now we don’t even get to be the default woman.
That is a great line.
We are now labeled non-trans or “cis” women. Some trans activists are even claiming it is “cissexist” or “transmisogynist” just to refer to pregnant women aswomen. The Midwives Association of North America (MANA) will no longer use the term “pregnant woman” because they have been informed this is transphobic. Instead, they will use the term “pregnant person,” because it is now considered bigoted to imply a direct connection between women and pregnancy. So “womanhood” has been erased from the language of midwives in order to protect the feelings of a tiny percentage of the trans community.
But, we’re told, that’s not erasing women, it’s just including others (and doing so by not mentioning women).
Is it really so unreasonable that many women are offended by their own erasure? What equivalent erasure are men asked to accept in deference to the trans or queer community’s feelings? I can’t think of a single one.
…
When women of all ethnicities, abilities, and classes are referred to as “privileged” in relation to transwomen — even transwomen who are white and middle or upper class — it feels to many of us as though we are being erased, that the systemic oppression of women, based on sex, is being erased, and that still the default human is someone else. Is that concern really so hateful? So evil? So beyond understanding or empathy?
Many liberal feminists and trans activists say yes. Even in the women’s rights movement, women’s oppression must never be centered.
And if feminists don’t, nobody else is going to.
Great question, I can’t think of any either. I do have a suggestion though. How about doctors stop talking about prostate health in terms of it being a “men’s health issue” and go with “people with prostates” instead? Wouldn’t that be more inclusive of trans women?
Yes, Sharanka, I think that’s great. Also, shouldn’t “man cave” be “person cave?”
White’s article is a an example of intersectionalism done well, not the village intersectionalism (aka oppression olympics ) we see being invoked to shut down some genuine feminist critiques and concerns.
Holy fuck is that a great article.
Meanwhile, Penny’s words will fly completely over the heads of the shouty and indignant males over on FTB and provoke an equal an opposite reaction with lots of words demonstrating just how much they missed the entire point, I’m sure. They really are that slow.
Well “man cave” is already understood to have sexist/mildly misogynist undertones…
Theodoric – mildly misogynist? I’m not sure how mild most of what I’ve seen is.
Among the many things I’ve learned during this kerfuffle is that apparently “shut the fuck up”, far from being a lazy non-argument, is actually the cleverest and most powerful and most socially-justical thing you can possibly say – all you have to do is add “…and listen” to the end of it. Just look at some of the quoted tweets on the link. Who would have thought that telling women to shut up would be the bestest form of feminism after all? Most educational.
“Is it really so unreasonable that many women are offended by their own erasure? What equivalent erasure are men asked to accept in deference to the trans or queer community’s feelings? I can’t think of a single one.”
The current social justice norm is that a heterosexual man who feels that dating or having sex with a trans woman is incompatible with his sexual orientation is both 1) a bigot, and 2) making an epistemic error about how heterosexuality works.
I’ve literally heard a straight guy who was deep in the social justice oeuvre mournfully confess that they just can’t make themselves feel, deep down, that a penis surgically crafted to resemble a vagina is the same as a vagina. His goal was to convince himself, somehow, that these are exactly the same not just politically but privately with respect to his own sexual orientation. He was telling me this to explain how far he felt he had to go to work through his latent transmysoginy.
I let the issue go because from my perspective that guy has serious issues that will in no way be helped by my clumsy intervention, but… yeah.
My $0.02 (and my thoughts are evolving here): I think the issue is semantic; but it is a semantic issue with life-or-death stakes. As a plain cold fact, for my son (and many other transgender individuals), the merest suggestion that someone in his community feels he is not a boy is a direct psychological stressor. There is overwhelming medical consensus that persistent, intense, or broad exposure to any such message can, alone, put him at an astronomically high risk of chronic, debilitating, and even lethal levels of anxiety and depression.
Here, I think the core issue is how “boy” is defined in the context of “cultural classification”. In other words, a safe and healthy social environment for him is one of universal acceptance that both he and my older [AMAB] child are boys in the exact same sense; that neither brother is “more a boy” or “less a boy” than the other.
Though it’s subtle, I think the word “woman” in the context of statements like “women get pregnant” or “women need access to feminine hygiene products” *can* be taken as talking about a different idea than the word “woman” in “Caitlyn Jenner is a woman”. (yes – English permits this; consider how you’d reply to a Creationist claiming, “It’s only a theory!”).
The difference with “woman” and with “theory” is that the contexts of the latter are easily and clearly delineated from one another. The former, however, can have blended contexts in a single conversation, or even a single sentence, “Chaz Bono is not a woman, but because he is transgender, his insurance needs to cover women’s health services”. Even if it’s accepted that the first and second usage of the word “woman” in that statement aren’t identical (if they were, the sentence would be self-contradictory); I think it’s the near-equivalence that’s so concerning to those in the transgender community. There’s no doubt that the words we use color the way we think of the world, and I think there’s at least some legitimacy to transgender people being concerned that casual usage of phrases like “women get pregnant” can serve to reinforce the idea “therefore transgender men are actually women”.
We’d bloody well BETTER be ‘evolving!’ Transgender is an unprecedented issue. And please hold off with the ‘Shamanic-cross-dressing-Native-American’ chaff.
Some degree of kick-back and questioning should be expected from feminist quarters. And some of that criticism is going to be embarrassing and shocking a few years from now. Grow up and get used to the idea.
Jenner’s instance isn’t really a reasonable example. The whole Vanity Fair, talk-show, Fox News juggernaut has crushed the actual issue.
In an ideal world, there shouldn’t be a default anything. Whatever assumptions we make about people because of the groups they belong to should be very ‘soft’ assumptions, acknowledged as place-holders until we know anything for sure. The problem isn’t that we don’t get to be the default woman, the problem is that the default human is still too often a man. Insisting that a cis woman be the default woman is just trying to make a right with yet another wrong.
F**king intersectionality, how does it work?
When white people of all nationalities, religions or lack thereof, abilities, and classes are referred to as “privileged” in relation to black people — even black people like Eddie Murphy and Oprah Winfrey — it feels to us as if we are being erased, and the difficulties in our lives are being dismissed. How much nerve does it take to claim that a white, hispanic, Muslim, woman, living below the poverty line, is privileged relative to Eddie Murphy?
As a former right-winger and recovering fundie, I’ve had to explain the concept of privilege to Christian gun nuts, who consistently point to their working-class status, say, as proof that they are sure as hell not “privileged.” I’ve even gotten to see firsthand when someone else comforts them by saying in all seriousness, “At least you’re not a woman or a n**ger,” without any lightbulbs going off. And even when I explain that “privilege” pretty much boils down to being able to say, “at least I’m not a ________,” they still don’t get it.
We cis-gendered people can certainly say, “at least I’m not a he/she!” One of the attendant privileges for the average cis woman is that the risk of being raped is about 18% (according to the CDC), instead of 50% if she were a trans woman. (Also, the risk would be 27% if she were native American, and 80% if she were disabled.)
Thank you, A Masked Avenger, for re-asserting the assertion and chastising everyone for not assenting to it. I understand Privilege (TM) much better now.
Josh,
I was not in fact repeating an assertion, but a definition: “privilege” is a term with a particular meaning, and I merely pointed out the meaning of the term (to people I’d have expected to know it already, but seem not to). You can try and argue that X doesn’t fit the definition, or that the term is not useful for discussing Y. But the term, by definition, refers to the advantage one gains by not belonging to group A, which is not enjoyed by members of A.
One of them I mentioned, and it was not a bare assertion, but rather a citation of empirical fact based on the available studies. Namely, that while being a woman carries an appalling 18% risk of experiencing rape or attempted rape, NOT BEING TRANS confers the privilege of not having a 50% risk. “Less than half as likely to be raped” is an example of privilege by the definition of the term. Just as being not-a-woman confers the privilege of being 1/6th as likely to be raped.
But what are you actually disputing here? Are you disputing the definition of the term? If so, good luck with that. Or are you disputing that trans women are more than twice as likely to be raped? If so, feel free to post evidence debunking the available studies. Or are you suddenly objecting to the entire concept of privilege? Do you deny that being male confers privilege, or being white, or being straight, or being rich? Or is it only the privilege of not being trans that you dispute? And if so, how do you reconcile that with the differential in, say, risk of being raped? Do you deny that halving the risk of rape is a tangible benefit?
Do you deny that a dirt poor atheist lesbian white woman has an advantage relative to Eddie Murphy? Namely that if both of them wander around in hoodies, one of them has a zero percent risk of being followed around and shot?
Masked Avenger, nobody is disputing any of the facts or numbers. What’s under dispute is that the disprivilege of trans people somehow justifies measures like e.g. literally erasing the words “woman” and “mother” from midwifery materials; or prefacing an article on the issue of taxation of menstrual products, discussed by a woman as an issue that affects a lot of women, with some kind of obligatory genuflection to the existence of trans people even though trans issues were simply not the point of the article; or policing all thoughts about gender so that only definitions that work for trans people are allowed, when those definitions just don’t work for most non-trans people. The message this sends is that it’s somehow bad for feminism to pay any attention to the needs of cis women – female-bodied women, more than 99% of women. The main cause of disprivilege for trans women is exactly the same as the main cause of disprivilege for cis women – viz. male violence, both physical and political. Why so much vitriol directed at women and feminism?
@9: I see an issue of fact here, which is that you want both your children to be accepted as boys “in the exact same sense” – but by your own account they are boys in different senses. One is a boy in the commonplace sense of a male-bodied child who isn’t asserting that they are a girl. The other is a boy in the much less common sense of a female-bodied child who is asserting that they are a boy. I can see the argument that both senses should be equally accepted, but I don’t at all see how they can be considered identical. I’m afraid that exerting guilt pressure – saying that we have to believe certain assertions about your child because he will feel bad if we don’t – is not actually a valid argument if we’re discussing ontology rather then social behaviour.
So not erasing trans men is equivalent to erasing cis women. I see.
I recall from my right-winger and fundie days the way we would argue a thing into its opposite. Failing to privilege Christianity–by expecting Jewish store clerks to wish “Merry Christmas” to their Jewish customers, for example–was equal to feeding us to the lions. Acknowledging our non-Christian (including atheist) neighbors was erasure of Christianity. Affirmative action was [reverse] discrimination. Allowing gay marriage was demeaning heterosexual marriage. And so on.
This is not only quite a bit like that, but I notice you are appealing to the minority status of trans men to justify ignoring them. In precisely the way that I used to argue for ignoring gay men, because they’re a minority anyway. “And they’re not 10%, you know–they’re more like 4%. Kinsey was lying to advance the gay agenda.” How is it not erasure to say that you’re justified in ignoring trans men because they’re such a tiny minority anyway?
The shoe is basically on the other foot. You’re using all the same arguments for excluding trans people, as right-wingers use to exclude gay people or religious minorities (including the non-religious). What makes it special pleading is that you don’t accept those arguments when right wingers use them to exclude gay people or atheists, but you do accept them when you’re using them to argue for exclusion of trans men. Where in this case “exclusion” means saying, “Yes, yes, everyone knows that trans men can also get pregnant, so it if makes you happy go ahead and apply a mental asterisk every time I use the word ‘woman,’ as I intend to do pretty much all the time.”
Nobody is arguing for “excluding trans people.” You need to stop that shit. It’s not “excluding” people to say that their issues don’t have to be stipulated on all occasions. We don’t stipulate everyone’s issues on every occasion, so we get to discuss particulars of what issues need to be stipulated when. That’s not “exclusion.”
Exactly. There is so much more to the term “woman” than what the often extremely narrow views of many trans activists and “liberal/intersectional” feminists seem to allow for. It’s also a political, social, biological and cultural term, it affects people in political, social, biological and cultural ways, and we need words to describe those effects too.
Occasionally, trans people are going to have experiences that differ from other members of the gender they identify with, because for a lot of political, social, biological and cultural purposes, they count as members of the opposite sex and gender (this isn’t unique to trans people btw). Hence why Caitlyn Jenner was allowed to be in several lesbian marriages (i.e. being a woman (according to herself) married to women) before gay and lesbian marriages became legal in the US (and also be against gay marriage because she apparently doesn’t feel it applies to her), because for political/legal purposes, she was male. She got to compete in the men’s Olympics, because for biologically, she was/is male. She was a member of a men’s only golf-club, because socially, she was male. Her looks weren’t routinely scrutinized like they are now, because culturally, she was male.
Jenner identifies as female, and for most purposes, she is (currently) a woman. But you can’t call what she did “female” experiences and use them as examples of how “women” are treated. She got to do what she did thanks to her male anatomy and society’s recognition of her as a man. Bruce Jenner was politically, socially, biologically and culturally male, and there’s nothing wrong with, for political, social, biological and cultural purposes, using a definition or making a generalization about women that doesn’t include Bruce Jenner.
I don’t think anyone here disputes that trans people experience transphobia and lack cis privilege. What they dispute seems to be the extent that marginalization justifies putting all the burdens of accommodation on an already marginalized group, and which accommodations are reasonable.
I would also like to dispute the assertion that trans people always experience the exact same kind of marginalization as their non-trans counterparts, in addition to the marginalization they experience for being trans. A lot of oppression of women happens along genital lines, not gendered lines. Sometimes trans women experience something similar because they present as women, but sometimes they don’t.
I’m not going to answer questions, A Masked Avenger, that you load up the way you do. You know—and don’t tell me that you don’t or that you’re reasonably uncertain—that I don’t deny the violence and harm done to trans people. Nor do you get to define “excluded” in such a way that you’re allowed to paint any objections to this type of epistemology as “bigoted exclusion at the expense of trans people.”
I won’t answer those questions either.
Sort yourself out and don’t insult my ethics or my intelligence. I wouldn’t do that to you no matter how stridently I disagreed with you.
I didn’t realise we were playing NoTrump Oppression. I would have brought my deck. Not familiar with the game? You rank all forms of oppression from bad to worst. When a player layers a ‘worse’ card than you they win. It’s so simple and fun.
/s
I understood that privilege was intersectional. By definition that means there is an element of circumstance. So yes, there will be times where we can point to a black person or trans person (or whatever) and describe them as having more nett privilege than a non-trans or non-black person. Sure, the classes may be differently privileged, but there can be massive variation within the class.
Yes or no, Josh? YES OR NO?
YES AND NO!
BANISH HIM!
( Psst, Oph: you accidentally introduced a gendered pronoun )
;-)
Well I’ve met him and his pronoun.
;-)
I’m pretty sure “net privilege” isn’t a thing, because privilege isn’t actually quantifiable, is a white privilege plus a wealthy privilege equal to a male privilege? To ask the question is to realize how idiotic it is.
That’s a cheap response, or rather non-response.
A very cheap non response indeed. Particularly as your own statements clearly show that you rank some forms of dis-privilege above others. I agree that these things may be unquantifiable, or at least difficult to quantify. It’s meaningless to say that privilege is not additive and subtractive. It’s also meaningless to say that privilege is free from context.
Say something useful. That you’ve thought about.
I have noticed that it’s easy to tell the difference, when driving out here in the desert, between a NPR person talking and a Fundie radio station person talking. It’s not about the content: it’s tone of voice. Is the person speaking to you as though you’re six years old or developmentally delayed? That’s a fundy, 10 times out of 10. Dripping contempt and condescension in the guise of Deep Concern.
A Masked Avenger reminds us that ex-fundies don’t always lose that trait.
Masked Avenger, to ask your question in a different way. Does the combination of white, wealthy male privilege equal white wealthy female privilege? Does a change in circumstances alter that? What if the White male is poor instead? Do the circumstances alter that? What if the women is black? Do the cicumstances alter that?
You actually have to think about these things, not just spout off a mantra and insist that it is so, end of.
Rob, there is no unit of suffering with which to compare relative degrees of privilege. A poor black woman would be better if if she were rich, or white, or male–but itheres no objective way to measure which of the three she should pick, if she could only pick one. Is it a greater improvement to be a rich black woman, or a poor black man, or a poor white woman? Folks probably have opinions in the matter, but there opinions will vary, because it’s a purely subjective question.
All that can be said objectively is that ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL, there is an advantage in being male rather than female. And ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL, there’s an advantage in being white rather than black. And ALL ELSE EQUAL, in being rich rather than poor.
So your question was, “does white wealthy male privilege equal white wealthy female privilege?” But that’s a stupid question. Both people enjoy white privilege, and both enjoy wealth privilege, but one enjoys make privilege and the other does not. If the male is poor, you are now asking whether wealth privilege is better than male privilege, which is an unanswerable question. Would you rather have your house foreclosed or would you rather be raped? As I said: to ask the question is to realize that only an idiot of Dawkinsian proportions would try to answer it.
Chris, by your argument Dawkins is a fundie. I’d say rather that he’s a condescending asshole. But his condescension to Rebecca Watson was pure asshole, while his condescension to Wendy Wright was a reasonable response to stupidity..
In the OP, Ophelia’s argument is that Caitlyn suffers no dis-privilege from being trans, because her wealth more than makes up for it. One could argue identically that Eddie Murphy suffers no dis-privilege from being black, because his wealth and fame more than compensates. Murphy himself, on the other hand, has recounted stories of walking in Beverly Hills and having young men scream “Nigger!” at him. He did remark that they probably would have asked his autograph if they’d recognized him. But that wouldn’t help him if a neighborhood watchman with a gun saw him loitering in a hoodie.
Substitute Obama. He has a secret service detail. But when I was working in law enforcement, I heard more cops than you’d believe comment that they wish someone would kill that nigger, and that they’d be happy to do it personally given half a chance. Wouldn’t you expect being the President of the United States to negate his lack of white privilege? Strangely, it doesn’t.
In case it wasn’t obvious, now substitute “Eddie Murphy in a hoodie” with “Caitlyn Jenner in a bar in Mississippi without an entourage.”
Masked avenger. Apparently you live in a simple world where everything is equal baring the one thing you are considering at that moment. I do not.
Your simplified model study completely ignores the entire concept of intersectionality and you, despite your implied position in the last comment, do in fact rank some forms of disprivelige above others in some kind of worthiness stakes. My questions are not unanswerable. They are hard and may result in different answers under different circumstances. That’s the kicker in intersectionality. I have seen males of different ethnic backgrounds who despise each other bond of hated of women, gays and trans people (also conservationists, liberals and academics). I’ve then seen some of those same males bond with women in hating on men of different ethnic background. Privelige and intersectionality cannot be indivisible from the culture and society in which they exist. They demonstrably result in values of social ranking, which vary to some extent based on context and circumstance.
I’ll do you a credit you seem unwilling to extend to me. I do not think you are an idiot. I do think you are ignorantly applying a grossly simplified set of rules in an unthinking and dogmatic manner. It does not improve my view of you.
PS. As a general note, yesterday in a discussion on Pharyngula I saw someone claim education was Privilege. Holy fuck. Now people are claiming that any form of advantage is privilege.
You’ll have to point out how you conclude that I rank some forms of privilege above others. I’m at a loss for where you’re getting that. Did you get the impression I was saying that blackness is such a massive disadvantage that no amount of wealth can compensate for it? Because that wasn’t what I was saying at all. I was pointing out that they are ORTHOGONAL.
No amount of wealth makes a black man stop being a n**ger–but no amount of whiteness makes a poor man stop being riffraff. Neither whiteness nor wealth makes a woman stop being inferior; neither maleness nor wealth makes a black person stop being inferior; neither whiteness nor maleness make a poor person stop being inferior. No amount of one desirable attribute negates another undesirable attribute. Different dimensions of privilege are not commensurable. Privilege itself is not measurable.
Imagine Ophelia’s scorn if I denied that Oprah suffered sexism or racism. But that’s precisely what she’s saying about Caitlyn Jenner.
Like I said.
What the fuck? You have so far made assertions about what I’ve said. They’ve been incorrect assertions, but you haven’t even tried to substantiate them by quoting where j supposedly said what you claim. Instead, you just repeat your assertions. Do you intend just to keep on doing that? If so, we’re both wasting our time.
I have never said that some privileges outweigh others. I’ve said the opposite. You keep asserting that I have, without offering evidence. Point out where you’re getting that from, and I’ll try to help you understand where your reading comprehension failed.
OPHELIA is the one saying that Caitlyn’s wealth and TV show negate the disadvantages of being trans. Her remark presupposes that enough privilege along one axis can negate the dis-privilege along another axis.
I’m the one saying Caitlyn’s wealth doesn’t negate her lack of cis-privilege, any more than my manly masculine cis-manliness negates my relative poverty. Neither axis of privilege negates some other axis of dis-privilege.
Actually no one, Ophelia included, has denied that Jenner does not currently sit on the disprivilege end of one axis of privilege. What has been said is that she is insulated from the consequences of that by other axes in which she is firmly at the privilege end. If she were to somehow loose all of the privilege she currently has, and was left with the dis privilege of being a trans women of limited means and no social connection, then yes, she would quite probably suffer appallingly as many trans women do.
Intersectionality and context matter.
At 12 and elsewhere you have implicitly stated that it is better to be a women than a trans women. Putting aside the fact that many people are uneasy about the exact meaning and application of cis and trans, it ignores the fact that the appropriate axis of privilege on which women lies is woman/man, not women/trans women. You are confusing intersectionality with privilege, you are ignoring context and you are ranking forms of dis privilege on a worthiness scale at least qualitatively.
Also, I hate damned autocorrect
Chris Clarke #32
“A Masked Avenger reminds us that ex-fundies don’t always lose that trait.’
Thankful for the ‘always’ there! I’m an ex-Fundie too – or rather was raised as one, and became an atheist at 17 – and I sincerely hope that is not how I sound when I speak with others.
Rob, it clarifies something when you say that the axis is man/woman, and that there is no cis-woman/trans-woman axis! I agree that there’s no such axis! I’m saying that a trans woman is a woman, and also trans. Cis and trans women are in the same place on the man/woman axis: they’re both women. The both experience the dis-privilege of being women. They differ only on the normal/freak axis, AKA the cis/trans axis. A trans woman is a woman, as is Ophelia. But Ophelia is a normal woman, while the trans woman is a freak woman. Both experience the lack of male privilege, but only one experiences the lack of non-freak privilege.
When you suggest that I’m comparing femal dis-privilege with trans female dis-privilege, you’re essentially saying that trans women aren’t women. I’m saying they are, and that their transness is a separate axis of privilege. Race, sex, cis/transness, orientation, social class, are separate dimensions. They can only be separate dimensions, though, if trans women are women who. If they’re men who, or if they’re a separate gender all their own, then it’s not possible to decompose trans-womanhood into transness and womanhood, as I have done.
If Ophelia’s twin sister were a trans woman, they would be placed identically on every axis of privilege except one: one would be trans, and one would not.
And I understand that intersectionality discusses the fact that being a black woman is qualitatively different from being a white woman, because the black woman’s experience is more than the sum of black experience and woman’s experience. Decomposing privilege into components is only part of the analysis. No part of the analysis, however, involves comparing two kinds of dis-privilege to decide which is worse. Privilege is by definition better to have than to not have, but no two kinds of privilege are commensurable.
I am not a “normal woman”! How many times have I said that over the past few months? I’ve never been “normal.” It’s not true that I am in no way a “freak” woman. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, yet you keep talking about it.
I’m not trans; I don’t have that level of not-normal, I don’t have that level of freak disprivilege, especially now. But that does not mean that there’s a neat split that goes “normal women / trans women” – it’s not that simple. I do not partake of the level of privilege that fully “normal” gender-conforming women do.
That’s why this subject is fraught and complicated. I’m very tired of having men coming here to explain to me that I have “normal” privilege.
No, it isn’t. In fact I didn’t make an argument, just a short sarcastic remark.
But if I were going to make an argument, it wouldn’t be that Jenner’s money “more than makes up for” her trans dis-privilege – it would be that her money and fame and media access insulate her from most of it. Well they do, don’t they. She’s getting a massive amount of admiring attention, including awards and opportunities to say things on camera at glamorous events. She’s not likely to get beaten up in a public toilet or raped in an alley or murdered in a park. She’s insulated. That means that most of the disprivilege that non-rich non-famous trans people especially trans women face can’t get near her, let alone touch her.
Not normal? At least you’re not a he/she freak. Your brand of not-normal is, fortunately, not something we kill people for in big swaths of the country.
Agreed that Caitlyn Jenner won’t be raped and killed Ina public toilet–because she hardly ever uses public toilets, and can afford bodyguards. She can’t decide to dispense with the body guards and make a pit stop some random place, though, without a substantial risk to her person.
Would you say that Oprah’s $2.7 billion insulates her from racism and sexism? Or at least most of it?
Determined to miss the point, aren’t you. She doesn’t want to make a pit stop in “some random place” – rich people don’t do that. One of the things money does is insulate people.
@ 49 –
Again, you don’t know that. You don’t know that and it isn’t true. I have experienced potentially violent bullying for being insufficiently recognizable as one sex or the other.
By your reasoning Oprah is also not a target of racism or sexism. So how rich does a woman have to be before feminism stops giving a shit about her? Or does this threshold only apply to trans women?
I didn’t say Jenner is not a target of transphobia. Stop rewriting what I say and attacking that.
You seem to be determined to insist that we can only talk in broad formulas, and that there can’t be any specifics or details. I’m not interested in doing that. I hate it like poison when people try to force me to do that. You’re doing another “YES OR NO?!” routine. Stop it.
I’m simply saying that it means fuck-all how rich Jenner is. Just as it matters fuck-all how rich Oprah is, or Eddie Murphy, or Angelina Jolie, or Barack Obama. Yes, Obama is a member of an oppressed group who has a secret service detail and the authority to order drone strikes–some oppression! If Jenner is insulated, then Obama is hermetically sealed in bubble wrap. True, but it takes a certain kind of shiftiness to point that out as if it has anything to do with the issue at hand.
That’s not generalities. I’m saying your crack about Jenner was specifically shitty, and I pointed out five other people you wouldn’t say the same thing about because you KNOW it’d be shitty. Think about why, and that’s also the reason in this case.
No, Masked Avenger. You haven’t demonstrated what you think you’ve demonstrated. You’re just re-asserting with ever more affected shock. You don’t have to argue this way.
And again you’re claiming to know what I think and what I would say, and you’re wrong. I would say it about other people, with whatever stipulations applied. Oprah Winfrey for instance grew up dirt poor in Mississippi, so she has deep experience of being profoundly unprivileged on nearly all the relevant axes. Barack Obama grew up with more privilege than that, but far from a complete hand. Michelle Obama grew up respectable working class on the south side of Chicago, so that’s another position on the privilege map.
Money does make a difference. Of course it matters how rich people are. Class is one axis of privilege, remember?
And don’t call me shifty.
Funny how putative skeptics will advance serious arguments, like A Masked Avenger’s, that rely on the arguer’s ability to read minds.
Teslalivia @44: My sweetheart is a recovering Fundie as well. I learn from her every day about how to listen to other people without condescending at them
It’s intriguing that one moment, trans disprivilege is about specific things like rape and assault risk; but when it’s pointed out that Jenner is insulated from those risks by her other privileges, it instead becomes some kind of glowing rune which forever haunts you on the ethereal plane. Not convincing.
some kind of glowing rune which forever haunts you on the ethereal plane.
Beautiful.
Apologies for misinterpreting/misrepresenting your view.
Trans people of color are at a much greater risk of violence than white trans people, and numerous axes of privilege/disprivilege are in play there–class, color, gender as well as their status as trans people. Discussions of the violence suffered by trans people sometimes obscure relevant factors other than transphobia.
Me either. Disfigured cis women are also freak women. Actually any woman deemed unattractive enough can be a freak and a punchline, long after high school. Dehumanizing harassment is a fact of life for many cis women (and I’m not including the usual street harassment which is a fact of life for virtually all women.)
The point here isn’t to deny the shit trans people face. It’s to point out that simplifying the narrative serves to erase some people (ironically in the name of inclusiin and helps no one.
Rob @ 63 – eh? Whose view? Anyway no apologies required that I know of.
Masked Avenger @45
Ah, but I’m not. I’m happy to stipulate that they are both women, but that there experience of womanhood is different and consequently priorities and needs may differ in some aspects (healthcare being an obvious one). What do you mean by orientation? Do you mean sexual preference? Would you place agender people on the cis/trans axis or a gay/straight axis? It’s important, because otherwise these arguments are at risk of creating even more marginalised and forgotten people. I can’t parse the meaning from the last part of your quote. Autocorrect may have struck again.
And @46
I’m not sure I agree with everything you have said there, but need to think about that.
Ophelia, my comment @63 directed to you.
Oh. Well I’m not seeing the misinterpretation, unless it’s that I’m being more of a hardass about Jenner than you thought. Being trans is for probably everyone else on the planet a form of disprivilege, but for her…I have a hard time seeing it that way. But that just means she’s an anomaly, not that being trans is not disprivilege.