i dream of being possible

on the conundrum of little trans girls by @mxbees

2017-03-14

#transmisogyny is fun for the whole family #tweetthread
  1. oh. right. i saw that some trans women were tweeting on a hastag about male privilege. 2017-03-11 17:27:44
  2. little trans girls are always such a conundrum for those who hate us. 2017-03-11 17:28:23
  3. and for those who maybe just don’t get it and are trying, but really don’t get it. 2017-03-11 17:28:44
  4. bc pushing aside the ppl who somehow think that women can grow from little boys 2017-03-11 17:29:36
  5. as in, i’m speaking to the ppl who are nominally on ‘our’ side but still insist 2017-03-11 17:30:05
  6. that trans women experienced until we transition some kind of ~male privilege~ 2017-03-11 17:30:28
  7. the exact reasoning for why this is varies and is largely irrelevant. the point is that it is a Thing. 2017-03-11 17:30:56
  8. these ppl are usually ppl willing to admit that there isn’t any singular, shared exp of girlhood. 2017-03-11 17:32:15
  9. as in: one’s experience of girlhood is shaped by many contextual factors, race, class, geography, etc. 2017-03-11 17:32:49
  10. it always confuses me why this long list of things that shape your girlhood stops at: 2017-03-11 17:33:30
  11. everyone in your life mistakenly thinking you’re a boy. 2017-03-11 17:34:23
  12. no, but really, in the multitude of factors that shape your experience of girlhood, why is that where ppl stop? 2017-03-11 17:35:08
  13. anyway. i’m off topic, which was: the privileges accorded to girls mistaken for boys. 2017-03-11 17:37:55
  14. (note: yes. there are some trans women who’s narratives is that they were boys until transition) 2017-03-11 17:39:19
  15. (that’s cool. that’s their story and they have every right to it. they aren’t wrong about their story.) 2017-03-11 17:39:47
  16. (do not, i repeat, do NOT, go around telling ppl that their personal narratives are bad for the ~movement~.) 2017-03-11 17:40:24
  17. (fuck ur movement and fuck ideological purity. ppl’s stories are their own.) 2017-03-11 17:40:48
  18. the point i want to make about what i saw was that responding to the male privilege charge is a trap. 2017-03-11 17:42:43
  19. its a rhetorical trap designed to make us (as in trans women) look bad. 2017-03-11 17:43:26
  20. in the hashtag, i mainly saw ppl giving examples negative experiences trying to demonstrate 2017-03-11 17:44:07
  21. how very much this was not male privilege. except. a lot of the examples could’ve been given by a boy. 2017-03-11 17:44:41
  22. a boy who’d been bullied for a variety of reasons. what it sounds like is privilege denying. 2017-03-11 17:45:14
  23. you know, like what some men do as a way to demonstrate that bc they weren’t jocks or whatever 2017-03-11 17:45:37
  24. and were bullied they didn’t have male privilege and thus aren’t responsible for the patriarchy. 2017-03-11 17:46:15
  25. i’ve seen this said. i’m sure you have too. do you see the trap here? 2017-03-11 17:46:40
  26. by denying. by providing examples, we tacitly accept the premise that male privilege applies to us. 2017-03-11 17:47:38
  27. i don’t see any other woman needing to deny that she has (or had) male privilege. 2017-03-11 17:49:37
  28. and note. whether or not other ppl perceived me as a boy when i was a kid is still irrelevant to this 2017-03-11 17:51:08
  29. while i happened to be a total fucking sissy, i could’ve been butch mcbutcherson. same dif. 2017-03-11 17:51:55
  30. anyway. its also weird to me the way ppl treat experiencing male privilege like a single drop poisons the well 2017-03-11 17:54:43
  31. i’m grow to draw a parallel from my own experiences not generalize across domains of discourse 2017-03-11 17:55:32
  32. i am mestisa. very light skin filipina. i have, on occassion passed for white. 2017-03-11 17:56:10
  33. this means, on occassion, i have been accorded conditional white privilege. i can think of one clear example. 2017-03-11 17:56:42
  34. now. based on the logic of some feminists. this one clear example of being according white privilege 2017-03-11 17:57:44
  35. means that i’m forever white. like. that’s it. i’m done. one drop has poisoned the well. 2017-03-11 17:58:46
  36. because ppl around me saw me as white and treated me as such, i can no longer speak as a person of colour. 2017-03-11 17:59:21
  37. never ever again. that’s it. now, these are the same feminists who think that race and gender are the same 2017-03-11 18:00:38
  38. so… people treated me as a boy when i grew up so i’m not a woman and ppl treated me as white once so i’m not poc. 2017-03-11 18:01:55
  39. this is radfem reasoning, btw. this is why i never get the whole ‘u were a boy, male privilege’ thing. 2017-03-11 18:02:49
  40. like. so? who cares? part of my experiences as a woman is being mistaken for a boy as a kid. 2017-03-11 18:03:17
  41. it happens. shrug 2017-03-11 18:03:33

nina de jesus © 2017