On Transmisogyny Exempt Privilege Dynamics
CW: Mention of abuse, oppression, sexual violence (no descriptions), discussion of transantagonism, transmisogyny, misogyny
** Notes on the latest revision and thoughts on the feedback are in a reply to this article. **
This piece is not meant to be exhaustive, but to offer an attempt at a better framing for the conflict between TMA and TME trans people than commonly applied, and to give some perspectives that might help us overcome our issues and avoid dishonest discussions.
There will be no appeasement (aka tma safety) disclaimer here.
But we will get back to that.
The Transmisogyny Rift
There runs a deep divide through the trans community. It originates in the hegemonic culture that created transantagonism and misogyny in the first place. Trans people cannot be blamed for creating it, but a certain demographic of trans people can and must be criticized not just for failing to help close it, but for quite often widening it for their own benefit.
For brevity’s sake I will not repeat an explanation of what transmisogyny is, you can read that separately. What I want to talk about is rather what it means to not be affected and confined by transmisogyny.
Transmisogyny exempt (TME) trans people share the oppression and effects of general transantagonism, but are exempt from the specific oppression of transmisogyny. This exemption allows them to wield transmisogyny against trans people who are transmisogyny affected (TMA) and affords them certain liberties and advantages over TMA people not just because TME trans people are not affected by transmisogyny, but because they represent the social and positional opposite of those affected on the structural level. TME trans people represent to the system the affirmation of the very rules that TMA people break and are severely punished for.
That this difference is necessarily binary is often used as a supposed proof that the TMA/TME distinction was itself divisive— or worse. But the binary nature is a direct result of how transmisogyny works in society. It is to a large degree based on the binary of the “assigned sex at birth” (ASAB, either male (AMAB) or female (AFAB)), so naming and describing it cannot avoid binaries, lest we cease to talk about it altogether. That, of course, makes it supremely vulnerable to strawman and other bad faith arguments claiming that there was no rift at all and that talking about it was the actual problem.
The familiar assertion that “talking about X makes you the real Xist!”.
The bulk of criticism leveled against transmisogyny theory (TMT) is not driven by good faith or actual flaws in the theory, but by a specific interest to discredit it and suppress its discussion, because it directly threatens certain privileges afforded to TME trans people.
TME Positionality
All trans people are affected by transantagonism, which is society claiming authority over our genders and categorization of our individual alignment, presentation and appearance. They do not recognize us as our self-determined genders or the intention behind and the meaning we give to our presentation and appearance. This shared transantagonism manifests in both interpersonal and systemic violence, from personal derision to murder and capital punishment.
For TME trans people that means being pushed back, with varying degrees of violence, into the social position of a woman. How well a TME trans person’s appearance matches what society expects either a cis woman or a cis man to look like is a primary factor in the degree and specific dynamic of said pushback. The frequency, intensity and specific misogynistic dynamics TME trans people face changes accordingly. They also face certain stereotypes, almost all of them patronizing and belittling in nature. Often seeing them as having “ruined” their “femininity”, as women are still understood to be generally more desirable — albeit often in an objectifying sense — than men.
Yet there is little policing of their presentation, evident in clothing choices. There is no scandalous “woman in pants” analog to “man in a dress”. Topless pictures of TME trans people proudly posing after top surgery do not have any analog among TMA people, etc.
Since they are, before and often even beyond transition, categorized as women by the system they are afforded access to women-only support, resources and spaces which would be denied to most — if not all — trans women independent of their transitions. The very material resources that trans exclusionary radical feminists (TERF) fight trans women for exclusive access over. Don’t even ask what this means for non-binary TMA people.
TME trans people are generally seen as benign and vulnerable, all but incapable of ulterior motives or hostile intent. Stereotypes and tropes about TME trans people being dangerous, scheming, untrustworthy, sexually perverted/predatory or vilifying them in other ways are all but unheard of.
Moreover, contrasting themselves with TMA people, especially when they find an opportunity to frame themselves as victims of some sort of transgression by TMA people, this effect can be massively multiplied.
Differential Benefits
In fact transitions of TME trans people towards stereotypical appearances of cis men come with many benefits echoing male privilege, as their claim to and achievement of masculinity has the side-effect of acting as an affirmation of male supremacy in a patriarchal society — though they do not commonly endorse it.
Seen from the patriarchal and bio-essentialist perspective of wider society, the fact that women would rather be men is proof of male supremacy and is — often unconsciously — rewarded by society. They do also — consciously and unconsciously — stand out positively from their systemic inversion, TMA people, who betray male supremacy, whose femininity is considered a transgression, and whose rejection of manhood proves their derangement, dangerousness and untrustworthiness, as they fail to uphold the fundamental truth of patriarchy.
While trans people are generally sexually fetishized, there is a distinct difference in this experience between TME trans and TMA people in regards to who is fetishizing them in respect to their transition. Non-transitioned TME trans people receive a treatment and fetishization like cis women, with their fetishizers being overwhelmingly cis hetero men. TMA people receive less overall fetishization without transitioning, but during and after they are subjected to dehumanizing fetishization primarily by cis hetero men that may exceed even that of cis women. While TME trans people do also experience fetishization when they transition, it comes almost exclusively from cis gay men, who are a significantly smaller, less powerful and less violent demographic than hetero cis men in this regard. TME trans people’s fetishization is much less prone to become violent and degrading, as there is no comparable social stigma associated with a cis gay man desiring a trans man than there is for a cis hetero man desiring a trans woman.
While often enviously and jealously lamented, TME trans people’s transition make them ultimately less visible and hence less of a target. There is no parallel to the entire subgenre of transmisogynistic tropes against TMA people for TME trans people, for example. This is only in part due to erasure and part due to the invisibility of the privileged, as the cultural attention reserved for TMA people is overwhelmingly negative.
There is also the phenomenon of a more positive reaction to women engaging in traditionally male activities than there is for men to engage in traditionally female activities, which further benefits TME trans people in their transition.
There is also a distinct lack of transantagonistic tendencies and movements putting any noticable focus on TME trans people. The maybe most famous transantagonistic movement, trans-exclusionary radical feminism (TERF), is almost exclusively concerned with antagonism against TMA people. TERFs do not treat TME trans people with hostility, but pity. Their most common transgression against them is the most basic transantagonism of not recognizing their self-determined gender and instead classifying them as women. Calls for physical violence against TME trans people are next to non-existent. This echoes the fundamental difference in murder rates, which lists trans women, especially trans BBIWOC, as the by far most numerous victims of transantagonism related murders. Trans men specifically often report of an increased feeling of safety the further they transition, which is not mirrored in trans women.
In light of this, while there is a not insignificant danger to being outed as a TME trans person in a men’s space, being considered a woman in men’s spaces does come with significantly fewer dangers than being outed as a TMA person in the same spaces.
Feminist Inversion
Within liberatory (e.g. feminist, queer, trans, etc) spaces there usually is an inversion of the male/female hierarchy, privileging women and femininity over men and masculinity. Not as an alternative model to wider society, but as a corrective. These spaces too often trip over the complexities that transness introduces to the simplified models we all have internalized. Few of these spaces can avoid an implicit elevation of TME trans people based on their feminine association and policing TMA people because of their masculine association. In a conflict between a TMA and a TME trans person, the latter has the better chance of being seen as the victim of aggression and mistreatment and will have an easier time finding widespread approval and support, even if the aggression demonstrably originated with the TME trans person. The image that’s being painted is a big violent man screaming at a small soft woman, even more so in online spaces, which are vital to many trans people and where a lot more is up to the imagination and therefore our unconscious biases.
There happens a weird and twisted fusion of the worst associations of men and women in TMA people and the best associations of both men and women in TME trans people.
As a result even in spaces where trans people are supposedly able to feel safe, this is not equally true for TMA people. Beyond transmisogyny being reproduced, there is also quite often the reproduction of simpler misogynistic patterns, as such as policing the expression of women and painting them as “too loud” if their expression displeases a man and elevating men above women in general. Of course that happens unconsciously and so you will be hard pressed to find anyone admitting to it. Rather the cases are individualized and rationalized as totally just being about the specific actions of an individual.
TMT poses a direct threat to the preferential treatment that TME trans people are afforded both in wider society, but specifically within liberatory spaces.
Creepy Parallels
There are distinct patterns that emerge from the arguments of TME trans people who are — under varying degrees of awareness — fighting against TMT, and more specifically against the distinction between TME and TMA, and they have a striking similarity to the often violent arguments you get from privileged people that are confronted with their own privilege. And these similarities are not just superficial. Even though TMT does not include any defamation of TME trans people there is a noticeable reluctance by TME trans people to engage with it beyond attempts to either discredit it entirely, remove the distinction between TME and TMA or find ways of including themselves in the TMA category.
It’s the familiar notion of “That oppression is not a thing, but if it is a thing, I want to be oppressed by it, too!”.
There is a noticeable lack of disavowment even of very open and blatant transmisogyny from TME trans people, and if there is, naming transmisogyny explicitly is almost always avoided. When it is mentioned, often only after criticism from TMA people, it is at best a side note hidden away as much as possible. As little as TME trans people generally engage with TMT, the more energy they spend to formally include themselves, either by flimsy arguments that would expand the TMA category to apply to all trans people, or by appropriating TMA labels like “transfeminine”, invariably making any discussion of the causes, effects and remedies of transmisogyny ever more difficult.
Theoretical constructs like “transmisandry”, “transandrophobia” or “virilmisia” are reactionary in nature, much like their cis counterpart of “misandry” and similar to the creation of “men’s rights groups” as a reaction to feminism. Though not necessarily driven by bad faith, they invariably start out from the desire to also have what “the other” is having. As such they start out as odd mirror images, searching for the inverse counterparts but coming up short. They have to fail, because in each case they try to find the counterpart to something that is by its very nature one-sided. And they are always a vessel and justification for not engaging with the reality that spawned the initial movements in the first place.
“Men’s rights activism” (MRA) with all its varieties (intentionally) fails to recognize the role men play in society and that it is this role they play that harms them and everyone else in favor of protecting their privilege. So instead of acknowledging their privilege, revising their role and dismantling their privilege, which is the driving factor in this dynamic, and making amends, a victim mythology is created and all responsibility is laid at the feet of a vague “society” scapegoat that does, of course, not include men, lest responsibility find its way back to them. That basically only leaves women to blame. So even if MRA doesn’t start out misogynistic, they will reason themselves into misogyny by sheer necessity to avoid having to reflect on themselves and face some uncomfortable truths.
This is of course a grossly cissexist dynamic and not immediately transferrable to the situation of “transmisandry”, as trans men and other TME trans people lack cis privilege. But trans men do not lack male privilege.
The Male Privilege Of Trans Men
There is renewed denial of trans men’s male privilege in the discourse, quite often in the context of TMT discussions to emphasize the oppression of trans men. The most commonly accepted explanation you get is that it basically all depends on whether or not they are read as cis men.
That is a rather disingenuous and somewhat of a bait-and-switch argument. Because the conditional part of trans men’s privilege is not their male privilege, but it’s the lack of cis privilege.
The comparison is always made with (white) cis men to show that trans men have nowhere near as much privilege as them, at least as long as they do not “pass”. That is not an honest measure of male privilege though.
For a lot of men their male privilege is curtailed by other axis of oppression. Disabled men, fat men, Black men, poor men, to name a few, especially when combined, experience a lot fewer benefits than the normative white men most people think about when they imagine an average holder of male privilege. Trans is just another modifier in the mix.
An honest measure of male privilege has to happen in comparison to every other gender. For the sake of simplicity, lets compare it just between men and women. And this is where we come back to TMT.
If you consider male privilege as the privilege a man has over a women in any given situation, all other factors being equal, the picture becomes quite a different one. Because now you have to compare trans men not to cis men, but to trans women. And this is where TMT makes clear, that there is no equality here and that about every aspect of transmisogyny marginalizes trans women, but benefits trans men, combining into a quite undeniable privilege over trans women.
Even when it comes to identity itself, trans men, actual men, have an easier time laying claim to womanhood than trans women, actual women. And while this seems to make a weirdly intuitive sense at first, if you dig into it, horror awaits.
Analysis Gap
The people most suited to recognizing an unjust social system or dynamic are those negatively affected by it. Rudimentary analysis of their own situation by marginalized people is already better theory than the most well meaning attempt by the people holding privilege over them. It’s everything but surprising that the best feminist theory does not come from cis men, the best queer theory doesn’t come from straight cis people, and that white people are wholly unqualified to lead the discussion or define racism.
And just like that, the most if not all useful theory on transness is written and has been developed by trans people themselves. In that effort trans women and other (especially BBIPOC) TMA people have done the brunt of the work. With general transantagonism covered and TMA people developing TMT, there exists little to no trans theory specifically for TME trans people, as far as it is not covered by TMT. Frankly there is even the issue of grouping itself. Outside of TMT’s concept of TME, there are few reasonable categorizations for certain shared experiences and oppression that don’t constitute in themselves an unjust exclusion or false inclusion.
Going by biology would be just TERF.
Going by ASAB would just do what TMT is accused of doing with the TME/TMA distinction.
Going by “socialization” would be fraud and invalidating.
Going for transmasculine folk would ignore TME trans people that are, e.g. non-binary and do not identify with masculinity at all.
Going only by trans men would ignore non-binary TME trans people altogether.
Going by how society reads them would be an absurde nightmare.
So even inappropriate attempts at theory like “transmisandry” are not necessarily only driven by reaction or transmisogyny, but honest to the gods cluelessness. A good portion of what has not been covered yet has to do more with the privileges and uncomfortable truths about TME positionality, rather than recognitions of further aspects of their oppression. A lot like cis men’s theoretical contribution to feminism, or against cisheterosexismus in general, would not be about how the system also victimizes and oppresses men, but rather about how men become cogs in the machine that represses them and makes them oppress others. And in that specifically not justifications for why that is inevitable, but what can be done to alleviate and change it as soon and radically as possible.
Of course, there are also still details of oppression to be further explored, e.g. how similar misogynistic treatment is experienced differently by cis women and trans men. The current attempts at treating it as a shared experience between the two tends to also only consider their shared oppression as what is real misogyny. The misogyny faced by trans women and other TMA people, including the experiences before their coming out and/or transition is ignored for this analysis, as is transmisogyny and how it shapes the TME trans experience. It’s akin to cis men trying to speak about their identity as if sexism didn’t exist or wasn’t relevant to who they are.
Arguably there is no part in the oppression of TME trans people that is directly aimed at or grounded in them being masculine or outright men. There is no particular oppression or punishment of aspiring to masculinity or manhood. The transantagonistic oppression does not come with the message that they are bad for aspiring to and inhabiting masculinity and manhood, but that their masculinity and manhood are insufficient.
It is that aspect that TMA people take offense with, as any theory that posits a specific oppression for the masculinity and manhood of TME trans people, specifically one that could be enacted by TMA people, cannot recognize and must directly contradict TMT.
It can be hard to have a nuanced discussion about it, since criticism by TMA people towards TME trans people is most often answered with varying degrees of transmisogyny. By painting TMA people as aggressive, transgressive and unreasonable, the transmisogynistic stereotype of the hostile, manipulative and deceptive trans woman is invoked. Strawman claims of “not letting transmascs speak of their own experiences” echo reactionary “free speech” arguments. Claims that saying TME trans people do not experience the oppression of transmisogyny, or are even able to wield it against us for benefits and privilege are framed as denying that TME trans people are oppressed at all. Obviously we cannot have good faith intentions and be critical of TME trans people at the same time.
The Disclaimer That Wasn’t
Do you still remember that part from the beginning where I said there wouldn’t be a disclaimer?
There is this thing that almost all TMA people do when they want to talk about transmisogyny or TMA/TME relations, and that is add a disclaimer, most often right at the start of their text or video, where they wholly commit to the support of TME trans people and pledge their unconditional allegiance to them, affirming several times that nothing they’re about to say could change anything about that, and how much we love our TME trans siblings.
You will not find anything like that in a critique of TMA people by TME trans people. Ever.
We do not post these disclaimers or heavily censor ourselves in what we say about TME trans people for fun. Each of us has learned that an absence of such a disclaimer will make TME trans people take it as proven that we hate them, and that we basically admitted guilt by not having a disclaimer. Any critique, no matter how valid and true, must be blunted and turned almost inert proactively.
Having the disclaimer does not prevent that entirely, but not having one makes it worse. Because not even even explicitly framing an issue will keep people from finding it more plausible that we have sinister motives than that we are speaking truth to (relative) power, asking to have our humanity recognized, rather than being talked over and discredited.
The idea that we’re just asking to be treated fairly and have good reason to do so seems foreign to most of society, including many TME trans people.
So who is privileged over whom, who holds power over whom, who has reason to be afraid to speak, who is not allowed to speak on their experiences, when TMA people are the ones that need the disclaimers to ward off some of the inevitable abuse, but TME trans people don’t?
False Friends
Due to in part the aforementioned analysis gap, there is a lot of overlap between theory and associations regarding the oppression of cis women and the oppression of trans men. Especially without or before a social transition, the treatment of society towards trans men and cis women is largely identical. Not totally, because even without any coming out society seems to perceive of the difference, which is e.g. evident in a higher Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) incidence for trans children in general. So far there are no findings that CSA incidence was higher in trans children AFAB than trans children AMAB.
There is also a clear overlap in how TME trans people and cis women conceptualize their own positionality in society. Again, definitely in part due to the analysis gap, but other reasons might be of more opportunistic nature.
Mainstream feminism has been dominated by white cis feminist perspectives and theories for all of its history so far. One result of this is the self-image of and claim to the ultimate victimhood of unjust systems of mostly white cis women. This self-image clashes often and violently with theory and criticism that points out cis, white and binary privilege, leading to an entrenched misunderstanding of what privilege means and the attempt to brush off privilege analysis of cis women with by pointing to the oppression they experience. This is echoed and sometimes directly mirrored in the argumentation patterns of TME trans people when confronted with their transmisogyny and the TME privilege they benefit from.
This is quite often accompanied by direct references to the oppression of cis women, which we’re then expected to assume applies to TME trans people in their entirety, with transantagonism layered fully on top of it. Under these circumstances, the arguments go, TME trans people are so thoroughly oppressed and marginalized that they have no capacity, much less a systemic and structural one, to reproduce oppression against or marginalize TMA people at all.
A lovely and observant tma twitter user called it the “you wouldn’t hit a little birthday boy” complex.
Any pushback to this by TMA people, no matter how measured or nuanced, is then framed as a transgression against TME trans people, immediately invoking transmisogyny against the TMA people by never even considering good faith, but treating bad faith assumptions as proven fact.
So in the discourse surrounding this conflict TME trans people often assume a position most befitting their current situation, switching theoretical frameworks as best serves their argument or defense. A convenience that is not available for TMA people.
Moreover, especially in such discussions misogyny is claimed by TME trans people and denied to TMA people in the same breath.
There need to be more conversations had about what positionality means in regards to how certain forms of oppression and violence are experienced, what role sender, message and receiver play in the resulting experience.
Racial Intersection
Obviously this was written from a white perspective and there are many aspects that I am simply not equipped to adequately cover and hence can only mention here. Like the obvious complication that racism represents in these dynamics. While nothing prevents people from being transmisogynistic towards people that hold racial privilege over them it does not relativize or even cancel out their racial privilege. Especially with regards to transmisogynoir it is my understanding that criticism of TME people both trans and cis whom one holds racial privilege over is best left to TMA people of equal or more compounded marginalization.
Conclusion
Much like cis men still have to make their contribution to feminism and end to sexism and cis people as a whole have to make their contribution to end transantagonism, transmisogny, cissexism, and so on, TME trans people still have to find their refletion in an honest and just trans theory and bridge the divide by recognizing not just their oppression, but also their privilege.
None of the problems I spoke about here in any way come from the nature of TME trans people themselves or insinuate any inherent inferiority or superiority in any gendered group of people.
I ask TME trans people to bear the discomfort this read might very well present to them and I will not ask for forgiveness, but that you reflect on the transmisogyny you benefit from and quite likely unintentionally effect in the world. You’re asked to recognize the unassailable humanity of people you hold privilege over and that speak out to you about the suffering you may contribute to.
