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| image above is from here |
NOTE: Some of this post was revised on 15 April 2013.
What
is "privilege" and what different types of privilege are there,
particularly in the U.S.? Here's a good resource to answer that
question. Note that it is a PDF file and so needs to be downloaded or
opened in something like Google Documents. It is concise and clearly
presented. It does note that for privileges to be challenged, the
social/structural systems of power that maintain them must be
challenged.
tjlp.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/privilege101.pdf
Practically
by definition, if one is socially marginalised from dominant cultures
and groups, one will experience a loss of some privileges afforded to
those who are viewed as normal, acceptable, respectable, "like us", "one of us", etc.
What
follows later is one of the most prevalent lists of cisgender
privileges, sometimes also termed "non-trans privilege" that I could
find. There are others. *Here's one* that is far more extensive.
If
you click on and read that list, ask yourself this question: who is the
"I" that is the speaker? (It is written in first person, from the point
of view of someone who is not transsexual or transgender?) As I read over the list, more and more people came to mind who do not have the privileges listed.
The list does not apply to most girls and women I know.
It does not apply to most people of color I know.
It doesn't apply to most poor people I know.
It doesn't apply to most queer and gender non-conforming people I know.
There's
no way in hell, for example, that the "I" in the list linked to above,
is an Indigenous North American woman who is not transsexual or
transgender. There's no way the "I" is a fat woman. There's no way the
"I" is anyone who doesn't have education privilege. Or who is poor. Or
who doesn't speak English as a first language. This is to say, most
people who are NOT transgender and transsexual also don't have
most of those privileges, and the assumptions about what it means to be
transgender or transsexual are tremendously bound up with having
enormous privileges to begin with. I'll expand on that point throughout
the rest of this post.
From the above list, the "I"
appears to me to be only this narrow demographic of person; the "I" is
almost no one else, beyond the narrow demographic. The "I" is someone
who is a sexuality-privileged, class-privileged, size-privileged,
gender-privileged, age-privileged, able-body-privileged, government
status/immigration status-privileged, ethnicity-privileged,
religion-privileged, education-privileged, person who is not an incest,
rape, battery, pornography industry, prostitution, trafficking, or
slavery survivor. Über alles (above all else), the "I" is someone who must possess and be structurally located to receive and benefit from white and male privilege.
The "I" who has most or all of those privileges is only a white het man with every other form of privilege imaginable. Put most simply, most of the privileges on that list are privileges that most non-trans women do not have.
From that list, I'll note this last item:
My
right to inhabit my currently chosen gender is universally considered
valid, regardless of my gendered behavior as a child, or how I felt
about being forced into the gender I inhabited then. If I require
medical treatment to keep up an appearance that matches my gender, it
will be granted immediately and without question.
There is a presumption there--quite a massively privileged one--that "gender" is chosen at all.
This goes against what I know, see, hear, experience, and realise from
almost everyone I know who is gendered, including transsexual,
transgender, intergender, and what is termed 'cis' gender people. Gender
is the following, for most human beings I am aware of in the West and
many beyond the West: medically and governmentally mandated; culturally
imposed and enforced from birth and at least until death--and usually
after death; religiously and secularly bolstered; customarily
assigned-at-birth; politically enforced; structured into interpersonal
and institutional practices; enforced and regulated by CRAPs officials,
including by the population "men" and also through these ideological and
social forces: male supremacy, heterosexism, white supremacy, and
capitalism.
What gender is not, usually and
fundamentally in CRAP, is this: held primarily as a subjective
experience. For most women I know, "gender" is a way of being treated,
responded to, ignored, mistreated, abused. It is a way of being
ostracised, degraded, humiliated, discriminated against,
disenfranchised, marginalised, violated, subordinated, terrorised, and
targeted for all manner of interpersonal and institutional violence and
contempt. The way of understanding "gender" or "the gender I inhabit"
(in italics above) is, to my way of thinking and in my experience, profoundly privileged.
Building
from this, and every other observation made thus far, it is appearing
to me that the group which identifies itself as "transgender" or
"transsexual" and who writes about their experiences, who claim to be
the spokespeople for "the group", may well be a very, very privileged group of people: people with these privileges, at least: race, education, class, and gender. How
can a group marginalised and misunderstood or utterly ignored by mass
media and beyond also be privileged? I'd argue many groups with enormous
power are not identified, described, or presented accurately or
responsibly in the media and beyond. Among those groups are: the rich,
the most privileged men, the most privileged whites, and the most
activist among male supremacist and white supremacists. How often do such groups get identified as terrorists, genocidalists, rapists, and callous, inhumane criminals? How
often do such groups get portrayed, because they are of that group, as
dangerous, untrustworthy, threatening, tyrannically domineering,
oppressively controlling, and largely responsible for the maintenance of
enormous atrocity?
What follows next is
the list I see most often online used to educate non-trans people about
transgender experience, specifically by alerting the reader to non-trans
privileges. It is from this URL, and others:
This is the contents of that posting. I will place in brackets, bold, and italics my own critiques of these passages.
Please
read and re-post this list to make people aware of the hardships often
faced by transgender individuals that cisgender people take for
granted on a daily basis.
- Strangers don't assume they can ask me what my genitals look like and how I have sex. [I
am reminded of how many women are visually and physically accosted on
the street, or street raped, or sexually harassed by people they don't
know. This is a lack of privilege far beyond "being asked about what
one's genitals look like." As for that, specifically, as a gay male, I
can tell you that strangers, depending on situation, do feel entitled to
ask me about the shape and size of my genitals and how I have sex. I've
grown to avoid many places where strangers go, just to avoid having
this experience. And this has nothing at all to do with me being
intergender. Non-trans intersex people, if out as intersex, are vulnerable to being asked what their genitals look like and how they have sex. In my pornographised, phallocentric society, lesbian women are oppressively asked, "How DO you have sex?!" as if sex without a man-with-penis being present, or watching voyeuristically, isn't even "sex". To this day, it is still considered a heteropatriarchally valid if obnoxious question to ask a lesbian woman who has never had sexual intercourse with a non-trans man, "Are you still 'a virgin'?"
- My validity as a man/woman/human is not based upon how much surgery I've had or how well I "pass" as a non-Trans person. [In
my experience of my working class and poor family members, who comprise
"most people", economically, surgeries are not an option. No one in my
family has had, for example, a face lift. One family member had the
weight of her breasts lessened surgically, because she was experiencing
back pain chronically. That was decades ago, when the relative cost of
such procedures was less, and working and middle class people earned
more, relative to the rich. This matter of "passing" as "non-trans"
assumes a culture that is even cognizant of what being transgender is.
And in my experience, the only cultures that are "studied" in such
matters are education-privileged ones. Most of my family never went to
college and would have no freakin' idea what "non-trans" or "cis gender"
means. They've likely never utterly the terms and likely never will.
This speaks to a thesis of this post: that the very phenomenon of "being
transgender and transsexual" in the white West, in CRAP, is largely a
product of being very, very privileged. That the identities and
understandings and analysis depend on having those privileges. I am
someone who is intergender-identified, and, I'd say, "who is
intergendered". I'm a classic example of someone with the multiple
privileges required to even make such a statement.]
- When initiating sex with someone, I do not have to worry that they won't be able to deal with my parts [I
find this extremely disturbing, as the way it is phrased implies a
profoundly disembodied, fetishised, or consumerist way of thinking about
the human experience/body. "Won't be able to deal with 'my parts'?" That's such a male supremacist way to even identify oneself, imo.] or that having sex with me will cause my partner to question his or her own sexual orientation. [As
a someone who has never been heterosexual, it is my experience that
many of us who are not heterosexual have plenty of people question their
sexual orientation when dealing with the prospect of being sexual with
us. It's a commonplace occurrence. And the language "when initiating sex with someone" is also steeped in male supremacist experience, imo. The phrasing carries the entitlement to initiate and engage in sex with others.]
- I am not excluded from events which are either explicitly or de facto[2] men-born-men or women-born-women only. [In
the U.S., which is not as much like many other places around the world,
few places are organised to have places where women "meet" only with
women, unless one is part of an orthodox religious community, or unless
one is sex-segregated based on economic factors, such as working in
textile sweat shops, or cleaning hotel rooms. Those are not places where
women "meet" in the way that I hear the term being used. There's no
willful, uncoerced, free experience of "being women together" in which
women gather because it is what they prefer to do. The word "meet" here
implies a kind of leisure activity, or non-work experience. In most
cases, "women-only" spaces, if and where they exist, are a mandatory
product of CRAP. Those spaces are, often, an enforced and reinforcing
condition of heteropatriarchy. Such spaces aren't organised to provide
participants with "gender privilege". They are, instead, the spaces in
which one may be reminded one's gender is not privileged.]
- My politics are not questioned based on the choices I make with regard to my body. [This
also falls into the category of having many privileges as a
prerequisite for even approaching the topic. My family's "politics" are
not questioned based on much having to do with anything other than "who
did you vote for?" or statements like "I wish there could be peace and justice in the Middle East". The spaces where one's politics are understood to refer to daily interpersonal experience across many social hierarchies are limited to some academic and activist communities where my own family won't be likely to be found. Beyond that, most feminist women I know have their politics questioned depending on what they do with their bodies, in terms of attire, how they wear their hair, what size they are, what they eat, what they do sexually, what they do with regard to pregnancy or child-rearing, what they do that involves the medical establishment, and what they do professionally, as paid work, with their bodies. But the extent to which those actions are 'choices' or are, instead, following oppressive social directives, or are done under conditions of coercion, threat, and terrorism, is largely due to places of privilege. The choices my non-trans white female relatives make about their bodies are varied, but none violate the terms of white heteropatriarchy. If they did violate those terms, their 'political allegiances' to heteropatriarchy would be questioned, not necessarily in those terms. This would also be the case if boys in my family expressed an interest in doing anything with regard to their own bodies that is seen as girl-like.]
- I don't have to hear "so have you had THE surgery?" or "oh, so
you're REALLY a [incorrect sex or gender]?" each time I come out to
someone. [This is in the same category of requiring pre-existing
privileges to even be an issue one is dealing with. With regard to
surgery, most especially, class-privilege. With regard to obnoxious interrogation about what gender one really is, this might apply to anyone who is intersex, or
to anyone who is not gender conforming. I'm thinking now of particular
butch white women who have endured that level of interrogation and insult.]
- I am not expected to constantly defend my medical decisions. [Same critique as above: multiple positions of privilege are usually required
to this to even become an issue. It also demonstrates a woeful
ignorance or lack of sensitivity to the fact that many, many women have
surgeries performed on them, as do many intersex people, against their will. Does the person who wrote that realise whole populations of women
have had sterilisation forced on them? The fact that for so many women
"surgery" is forced or socially coerced ought to sound alarms for anyone
who speaks of "surgery" in such a way as to assume it is only ever
elective and wanted. I am reminded of how rich white folks speak of
contacting the police, as if doing so will generally be a good
experience where you will be respected, regarded, and not grossly
interrogated, seen and treated only as a criminal, or tossed into prison
for no reason at all.]
- Strangers do not ask me what my "real name" [birth name] is and then assume that they have a right to call me by that name. [I
wish the person who wrote this would speak with Indigenous people, with
immigrant people, with elderly people, with anyone for whom English is
not a first, preferred, or unenforced language, who do not have the
privilege of being called what they would prefer to be called. I wish
the person who wrote that would recognise that most women do not get
called what they prefer to be called. Most non-trans women get called
all kinds of things, including, especially, b*tch, because and only because they are women.]
- People do not disrespect me by using incorrect pronouns even after they've been corrected. [This
is also in the "lots of privileges already required" category. My
family of origin frequently has called me "she" and "aunt" because they
know I am gay, for example. Lots of men routintely get called "ladies"
in the military, or "girl", or derogatory terms used against women, in
order to communicate a general disdain and contempt for women, and a
threat of rape or other punishments if they don't "man up"
appropriately, according to utterly grotesque and horrifying military
standards of what it means to even be appropriately human.]
- I do not have to worry that someone wants to be my friend or have
sex with me in order to prove his or her "hipness" or good politics.
[Same "lots of privileges already required" category. In what
communities does this happen, exactly? In rural U.S. communities? In
communities where there are no academic institutions of "higher"
learning? Where does this person live? What's "hip" in most places is
being classist, racist, misogynistic, and homophobic. That's what's
perennially "in" in most places in the West, in CRAP. And any place
where that's not the case is a very elite and privileged space, and not one I have had much experience finding--liberal protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.]
- I do not have to worry about whether I will be able to find a
bathroom to use or whether I will be safe changing in a locker room. [This
is the case for most many gender non-conforming folks, many butch
women, many feminine men, many androgynous-looking people, many
genderqueer people, and it is not the case for most transgender people,
because most transgender people "pass". So this "privilege" isn't
accurately located with the right population, imo. I'm
intergender/transgender and possibly transsexual--depending on how we
define these things--and I am only at risk in men's rooms because men
are in men's rooms and any place where there are men is potentially
dangerous, such as in one's home of origin, if one or more men lived
there. We need to distinguish between "feeling safe" and "being safe".
And only the most privileged people combine the two into only one
experience where what they mean is "feeling safe". Most women are not
safe, regardless of whether they feel safe or not. Most women are not
safe in their homes, on the street, in the workplaces outside of homes,
etc. Most visibly transsexual people, who are a minority of
people in the "trans community", do not get beaten up, threatened, or
otherwise assaulted in women's rest rooms. And if I'm wrong about that,
I'll own it and stand corrected. But, from what I hear from women, many
gender non-conforming women who are not transsexual do feel unsafe in
many places, including any place where there is lesbophobia, misogyny,
and heterosexism, and they feel that way because they are systematically
and systemically unsafe.]
- When engaging in political action, I do not have to worry about the gendered
repercussions of being arrested. (i.e. what will happen to me if the
cops find out that my genitals do not match my gendered appearance?
Will I end up in a cell with people of my own gender?) [The race
and class privilege built into this statement ought to be fairly
obvious, if not distractingly glaring. In what universe do poor women
and women of color not have to worry about the "gendered" repercussions
of being arrested? What part of being arrested, if you're a woman, is
"ungendered" exactly? This statement shows a profound lack of awareness
of what it means to be a woman.]
- I do not have to defend my right to be a part of "Queer" and gays
and lesbians will not try to exclude me from OUR movement in order to
gain political legitimacy for themselves. [In my current
experience, this is far more the case for radical lesbian feminists, for
radical activists, for radical gay males, for anti-CRAP queers, than it
is for anyone who identifies only as trans within queer spaces. For the
last many years--meaning ten, at least--there have been events and
opportunities created to educate folks about what it means to be "trans"
when there are no comparable events or opportunities to understand what
being a lesbian is from any radical feminist point of view. There is
little to no space made for intergender people, for bisexual people, and
for asexual people in our movement. There is little space made for
anyone at all who critiques liberal politics in our movement. And so, to
summarise, all the radical lesbian feminists I know do not even feel
like they have a seat at the table of our community. Speaking
personally, I haven't felt welcomed in white queer spaces, in white queer movements,
for at least twenty years, because I do not enjoy or welcome being in
spaces that promote male and white supremacist practices and blatant misogyny. Radicals are purged from liberal movements in order to gain political legitimacy for themselves: that's a well-chronicled part of the history of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and the Western Women's Movement.]
- My experience of gender (or gendered spaces) is not viewed as "baggage" by others of the gender in which I live. [Most
women I know, who only exist in "gendered spaces", who never, ever
exist outside of them, who systematically are made experience gender as
something imposed and enforced, terroristically and tyrannically, and
commonly and normally, are viewed as having gender-specific "baggage".
That's partly why almost every woman I know is called "the b word" on a
semi-regular basis. Isn't the definition of "being a woman" in CRAP, "someone who has waaaaay too much emotional baggage"?]
- I do not have to choose between either invisibility ("passing") or
being consistently "othered" and/or tokenised based on my gender. [This
applies to every woman of color I know who may be able to "pass" as
white. This applies to every woman I know who may be able to pass as
heterosexual, but who is not heterosexual.]
- I am not told that my sexual orientation and gender identity are mutually exclusive.
[This is in the "you've already got to be very privileged" category.
Who in society is told "the truth" about their sexuality and gender? Who
in society is told that sexual orientation is what it is? That gender
is what it is? Who in society is told the degrees to which both are
constructed forcefully for us? The assumption here is that being told
your sexual orientation and gender identity are not mutually exclusive
is "a privilege". For whom is that a privilege? For girls and women who
are raised to be het women who will likely experience rape and battery
at some point in their lives from "the man or men who love them"? And in
what sense are these things completely independent of one another,
anyway? In what sense is being a heterosexual man independent from "being a real man", as CRAP-enforcers define such things? In what sense is being a heterosexual
woman independent from "being a real woman", in CRAP? I've never, ever experienced "being told what it means to be a man" as something that is distinct or mutually exclusive from what it means to be
gay.]
- When I go to the gym or a public pool, I can use the showers. [Again,
this is true for most trans people. And the repeated assumption that
"trans" means "visibly transsexual" is grossly stereotyping our
community. Trans people are not gender non-conforming, necessarily.
Trans people are not transsexual, necessarily. And trans people are not visibly transsexual even if they are transsexual, necessarily. A
transsexual person who "passes" as the gender they identify as has far
more public restroom and public shower and locker room privileges than
women who are gender non-conforming by "virtue" of not looking the way
"women are presumed to look in CRAP. This also shows a gross
insensitivity to those of us who are child sexual abuse survivors, and
those of us who are or were targeted as queer by hets. My experience of
males who are survivors of child sexual assault or who are queer, or
both, is that we do not use public rest rooms and showers and locker
rooms with anything akin to "ease" or "with privilege". Can we? Yes, we
can. So the fact that "we can" is a privilege, I suppose. But that's
kind of like saying "Can a dark-skinned person walk through a
predominantly white upper middle class neighborhood (including the one
that person may live in) without ever facing discrimination and harassment from neighbors and police?" Yes, they can. Are they likely to be harassed
by the police, or have white neighbors be alarmed if they do? Yup. Can
women walk alone at night on city streets, or down country roads? Yes,
they can, if physically able to. Can we assume women will be free from male supremacist threat and assault when doing so? No.]
- If I end up in the emergency room, I do not have to worry that my
gender will keep me from receiving appropriate treatment nor will all
of my medical issues be seen as a product of my gender. ("Your nose is
running and your throat hurts? Must be due to the hormones!") [This
applies to all women, as far as I can tell. If you're experiencing
heart attack symptoms you won't be as readily identified as having that
problem unless you're a man. If you're experiencing "mood" or mental
health issues, you will not likely be diagnosed free of gross forms of
sexism. And this is exponentially worse of you are a woman without
class, education, language, size, age, ability, and race privileges.
What I find racist and sexist in much of this list is an assumption about non-trans females of color. If one is Black, Brown, Asian, or Indigenous, the racial
categorisation and stereotyping by social dominants impacts how one is treated as a woman
in the medical world and beyond. This is also true for non-trans females who are white. How many non-trans women, with access to the medical world, are told their medical symptoms are "in their head" or that their complains are a product of their hormones?]
- My health insurance provider (or public health system) does not
specifically exclude me from receiving benefits or treatments available
to others because of my gender. [This is also
privilege-dependent, as many women do not have access to health care,
period. Many women don't have health insurance (or are not part of a
public health system that regards them as human).]
- When I express my internal identities in my daily life, I am not considered "mentally ill" by the medical establishment. [Mentally
ill, mentally disabled, psychiatrically ill, and intellectually,
cognitively, emotionally, mentally, and psychiatrically marginalised
people cannot speak about our experiences with internal identities
without being labeled as "mentally ill" either; so the statement is grossly able-ist
to me, as someone who is disabled, in assuming that there are spaces in
the psychiatric and mental health care worlds where people are judged
in an unbiased, non-stereotypical, non-judgmental, non-oppressive way,
if we speak about our inner lives and mental health struggles in any way (not just
with regard to issues of gender dysphoria or transgender experience).
For what women is it safe to speak about such things? For poor women?
For women of color? For many white women? Who gets treated fairly and
humanely by mental health systems? So, in conclusion, this is not "a
privilege" that non-trans women have, in my view. Not most non-trans
women, anyway.]
- I am not required to undergo extensive psychological evaluation in order to receive basic medical care. [This
is also very problematic. Most people who are not class-privileged
undergo lots of extensive self-critical scrutiny, and may allow medical
conditions to get to very dangerous points in their progression, before
even approaching "basic medical care". Most poor people don't even have
adequate access to "basic medical care". And when they get "care" it
isn't usually life-enhancing. When many women of many classes,
ethnicities, races, and backgrounds, seek medical care, the experience
can be triggering and trauamatic for all kinds of reasons. The writer of
this list seems unaware of the realities of being poor in the U.S. And
there is a particular vulnerability that comes with being a woman who
have been female-bodied their whole lives, because of the risks--the
lack of privileges--of living as a female-bodied person one's whole
life. Trauma accrues and intensifies. Abuses collect and the impact
multiples as one gets older. Living in what is termed "a female body"
for one's whole life cannot reasonably be understood to be "a privilege"
in CRAP. Not with any appreciation or regard for what women and girls
experience and too often endure, anyway.]
- The medical establishment does not serve as a "gatekeeper" which disallows self-determination of what happens to my body. [Bullshit. The medical establishment has a gross and atrocious history
of violating girls and women, of forcing some groups of girls and
women--most notably Indigenous, Black, and Brown women, and mentally and
physically disabled girls and women--to be sterilised, experimented on, and so forth. The medical
establishment has a far more atrocious history of sexually abusing
intersex children than non-intersex males. The medical establishment
impacts the lives of poor girls and women in incalculable ways, in part
by not providing health care, through medical neglect when seen by medical professionals, by doing procedures and assessments that
are inhumane or otherwise oppressive, or by ignoring this population when it calculates risk and
remedies for various conditions that never included poor women, but
instead focused all of its research one middle class white folks,
assuming that was a "universal" sample.]
- People do not use me as a scapegoat for their own unresolved gender issues. [This may be the most outrageously gender-ignorant statement of the bunch. In what social world do boys and men not use girls and women, individually or collectively, as "a scapegoat for their
own unresolved gender issues." What do you call "rape" and "battery" and
"sexual harassment"? If that's not evidence of men's perpetual state of
needing to shore up their political/structural male
supremacist/misogynist identities and "communise" male supremacist power
through practice, practice, and more practice, pray tell, what it is
it? This, along with many other statements, demonstrates gross ignorance and denial about what women experience in CRAP.]
My analysis brings me to conclude that the many, but not all, of
the political origins and effects of the term "cis gender privilege"
function to reinforce male supremacy, misogyny, and CRAP in ways its
most privileged proponents won't or don't yet own. My conclusions thus
far are that the social construction in language of a way of "being
privileged" or "not being privileged" is mostly being used against non-trans women, and is strategically designed--consciously or not, to further oppress non-trans women as a class of human beings, and to subordinate that class to people who have had or currently have male privileges, among others.
I
welcome readers to draw their own conclusions about this list of "cis
gender privileges" as it applies to most non-trans women on Earth.
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