Fifteen Minutes To Fame

Why the “Born this Way” Argument Sucks

angrybisexual:

• It is cisheteronormative as fuck and pathologizes LGBT people. It makes our acceptance conditional on being unable to avoid being queer. “I tried to be a good boy, I tried soooo hard to be straight, but I just couldn’t help myself and turned out queer. I know I failed at being straight, but please don’t be mean about it”. 
• It puts the burden of proof on us. “Prove you were born that way or no rights for you!” This is not asked of other minorities. No one doubts it’s wrong to persecute a religious minorities, even if they haven’t proven that they were born with a gene that makes them believe that way.
• It gives all the power to the oppressor. Straight (cishet) people get to decide who was born that way and who wasn’t, in a way that reflects preexisting prejudice. “It’s natural for gays to be that way, but bisexuals are just promiscuous”. “Gays and lesbians just are that way, but trans people are just really, really gay and trying to avoid it”. “Trans women have female brains in male bodies, but non-binary people are just making stuff up”. The general formulation would be: “[Group I approve of] were born that way and it’s okay, but [group I dislike or don’t understand] are just [prejudice]”. This benefits the more mainstream elements of the LGBT community (read LGs) and leaves more marginalized elements behind and does not constitute true liberation.
• The accusation of having a choice (i.e choosing the homosexual lifestyle) is just a rationalization for many people. Bigots already made up their minds. And then they just look for any argument that supports their stance. If they actually believed in respecting people that were born that way then there would be no mistreatment of intersex people, who were obviously born intersex. (I’m bringing up intersex people, because discrimination towards them and LGBT people shares many root causes and therefore looking at how they are treated reveals something about the mindset of our common oppressors. I hope this does not come across as me trying to appropriate their struggles or being disrespectful).
• The origin of sexual orientation and gender identity is not yet fully understood by science, research is still active. It could still turn out that we weren’t “born that way” after all.

So what’s the alternative, you ask? Well, we could just insist that a person’s sexuality and gender is personal and, therefore, you should just accept people even if you don’t understand their motivations. Also, on a personal level, we should be able to freely express ourselves as queer if that feels right. The question of our essential self is irrelevant (if such a self exists at all).

Final note. There is consensus among psychologists that forcefully trying to change someone’s sexual orientation doesn’t work. It just doesn’t. We don’t have to be born this way for “conversion therapy” to be abusive.

(via southcarolinaboy)

calecake:

I’m becoming really disillusioned with models, theories, and other bineristic and fundamentalist ways we conceptualize privilege and oppression in on tumblr and in other social justice communities, often to the point of completely disregarding peoples lived experiences, community history, and present day trends. It’s like our theories matter more than the people they are about. Experiences and identities are complex, and they stem from unique personal and community histories, and are molded by other contributing identities and experiences, and this whole thing is much more than our current models represent.

Read More

This sums up my thinking (and that of an academic theorist friend of mine, although she puts it in different terms):

In conclusion, I think we need to restructure the way we talk about privilege in two ways. We need to see intersection less as overlapping filters, but more like paints, that blend and twirl and change and shift. Our experience on one axis of oppression doesn’t just go on top of another, it blends with it, changes it, moves it.

It’s disturbing how people want to pretend this is not true, how we can pretend people are only one thing at a time, that only one thing matters, and that other experiences and history are not valent.  I’ve done it, and looking back, I’m disturbed that I did it.  It’s not surprising, thanks to the hierarchical and binarist thinking one gets in so-called Western culture, but it’s disturbing.

I might have more thoughts later when I’m not tired, but for now this is a start.

thambos:

lucypaw:

aquavitaecollective:

hey you know why afab trans people are said to benefit from misogyny

it’s not some covert way of saying that the gender binary should be upheld forever!!!!

it’s saying that society sees “not a lady” as “a dude” and you benefit from that

this is an issue and you should all try and stop it too because it misgenders a large portion of you??

Except not all cafab trans people are seen as either “not a lady” or “a dude”.  For that matter, the same applies when talking about camab trans people.  Which is why there’s so much pushback against this binarist idea that all cafab trans people benefit from misogyny.

Yeah pretty sure society often sees “not a lady” as “not good enough at being a lady” and other such things where people then get punished for not fitting into gender conforming boxes. Among many, many, MANY other things that factor into privilege and oppression of internal, external, and perceived experiences and identities of gender.

Things are way more complicated than Tumblr makes them out to be.

Yes, in fact, it is because of misogyny that “not a lady” tends to be treated as “not good enough at being a lady”.  This treatment is a large part of why apparent trans women tend to get shit on so much with misogyny.  Because they’re being simultaneously punished for (supposedly) ‘failing’ at being men while ‘not being good enough’ at being a lady.

freedominwickedness:

telegantmess:

Fifteen Minutes To Fame: Trans Fundamentalism

lucypaw:

widdershinsgirl:

freedominwickedness:

lucypumpkin:

…needs to die a swift death. Because the binarist, cissexist, “copy our oppressors” approach to supposedly liberating trans* people from oppression is not going to work. Given that this is exactly what transphobic radical feminists did, and we see how well it’s worked out for them, why are people…

The idea that an intersex, nonbinary trans woman of color can be accused of being “binarist” — by a white trans person like you no less — is beyond ridiculous. Especially when it’s blatantly obvious that you’re only using this to further your absurd and offensive argument that CAFAB trans people are not massively privileged over CAMAB trans people, and your further argument that CASAB should be kept secret in a debate about CASAB related privilege.

Declaring CASAB irrelevant when it in fact has significant relevance to the way one is treated by patriarchy (i.e. “shitty” or “shitty with a side of diarrhea sauce and a tall glass of salty lemonade”) is disingenuous.

No, it isn’t.  Assumed CASAB has tremendous relevance but actual CASAB?  No.  Regardless of my CASAB, I am assumed to be CAFAB most of the time and so generally only get sexism and misogyny except when I’m assumed to be CAMAB when I get transmisogyny.  Both happen to me.  That is my experience of just being me.

So don’t tell me that my CASAB has significant relevance when people can’t even agree what my CASAB is.  freedominwickedness and some other trans women have decided that I’m CAFAB while bugbrennan and others have decided that I’m CAMAB.  I can’t help but notice that both groups have decided to assign me to the group of people they consider unnecessary to listen to.  It’s self-serving while also making it clear that my CASAB is not some universally obvious fact to everyone.

That you can claim that CASAB has relevance to how society treats us means you believe that you and society can tell what everyone’s CASABs are with perfect accuracy.  They can’t, as my and other peoples’ experiences demonstrate.  I’m sorry that you have bought into the cissexist and transphobic belief that people’s CASABs are obvious to everyone, but they’re not.  People assume a hell of a lot and treat people based on those assumptions.  This fact is being lost in a binarist, absolutist argument of privilege and oppression, which erases me and everyone who has similar experiences to me (as everyone who has ever been passed as another sex/gender/CASAB does).  While I understand (and agree with!) the complaints about people’s behaviour against trans women and those assumed to be trans women and otherwise CAMAB, this does not justify erasing people like me.

Yes, declaring CASAB irrelevant is disingenuous. Fortunately, THAT IS NOT THE ARGUMENT BEING MADE.

The argument being made is that assuming you know someones CASAB by their words alone is wrong. And I mean that as in factually wrong and ethically wrong.

The argument being made is that assuming you know someone’s gender based on what you assume is their CASAB is also wrong. Doing so is doing both you and the person you are making assumptions about a great disservice, as doing this is part of how trans people are mis- and degendered in a cissexist, white supremacist society.

The argument is that this way of talking about trans and nonbinary people is just another way of saying that our gender is determined by our genitalia at birth.

This is us saying that we can talk about the privilege you want to talk about, that we must talk about it, and that we must talk about it without mis or degendering the people involved because when we do so, we are using the very ideas that we claim to want to stop, and we are using them against each other.

I don’t understand why there is such a desperation to turn this into a question of denying privilege. We aren’t denying those privileges, we are connecting them to a different source. THAT IS ALL. Changing the source does not change your argument that these privileges exist in any substantive way.

When you are part of the group which benefits from a given form of privilege, you do not get to say that the victims of that privilege are mistaken and that it’s really some other form of privilege in play. Being part of the privileged group makes it impossible for you to make an unbiased analysis of that particular privilege; only people who are denied a privilege are capable of assessing it accurately.

Make no mistake: “connecting privileges to a different source” is denying those privileges. As a girl of color, I find that it is in fact white people’s all-time favorite way of denying privilege — they acknowledge that systemic oppression exists, but insist that poor ignorant people of color just don’t understand what the real cause is.

Is there a legitimate discussion to be had about where the boundary between “general” transphobia and specific transmisogyny? Yes, there is — and that discussion belongs solely and exclusively in the hands of CAMAB trans people. As people who are privileged rather than oppressed by transmisogyny, CAFAB trans people have no place in this discussion just as cis people have no place in this discussion; their perspectives are neither relevant nor helpful.

As for assuming that trans people are CAFAB when they refuse to disclose their status, this is a necessary defense against the depressingly common practice of privileged people angry at being “unfairly” excluded from discussions of privilege taking advantage of online anonymity to masquerade as members of an oppressed group. This form of oppressive behavior has long been a huge problem for people of color, and is becoming increasingly problematic within the LGBT community as well. Or has everyone so quickly forgotten last year’s double debacle of “Lez Get Real” and “Gay Girl in Damascus”?

Congratulations, you are officially Doing It Rong.  In two ways.

Firstly, in your last paragraph, you talk about assuming a trans person’s CASAB completely non-ironically when the very problem that has been pointed out with your claim about CAFAB trans people having privilege over CAMAB trans people has been that you can’t tell someone’s CASAB just by looking and therefore you have to assume what it is.  You ignored that point, but now you’re admitting that you do have to assume people’s CASABs (even as my pic shows what I look like so you should be able to know my CASAB just by looking, right?).  Since your privilege claim relies upon being always being able to tell who’s CAFAB and who’s CAMAB, it fails because even you can’t tell.  You just assume because it matches what you believe to be true.  You assume people’s CASAB based on what they say, only accepting that someone might be CAMAB if they agree with your ideas of what CAMAB people believe.  Which is incredibly shitty and oppressive.  It’s trans fundamentalism.

TL;DR - You just falsified your own claim because you admit you can’t tell people’s CASABs which is the basis for your claim of CAFAB trans privilege over CAMAB trans people.

Secondly, your last paragraph shows that this is yet again the politics of purity.  That you reason that we should just assume that trans women are men because men try to infiltrate women’s spaces…  No, wait, I’m sorry, I’ve confused you with the radical feminists whose politics of purity you have lifted wholesale.  No, seriously, I speak from experience here.  I was doxed by Cathy Brennan who, in her effort to “protect” (cis) lesbians from infiltration by trans women, decided that I was CAMAB because I was trans and refused to disclose my CASAB and better to err on the side of protecting the CAFAB from me even if I might be one.  Now you come along and decide that in order to protect CAMAB trans people from infiltration by CAFAB trans people, you will deliberately missex and misgender some CAMAB trans people because they refuse to tell you their CASAB.  That’s the same thing that Cathy Brennan did, only who it applies to is inverse.  Explain to me how you are not being as hateful and wrong as she is.  Explain to me why you get to decide which CAMAB trans people deserve to be saved and which deserve to be considered traitors, infiltrators, and not worth saving.  Explain to me why you decide, just like Cathy Brennan did, that those who oppose you are infiltrators, liars, and dangerous.  Explain to me who died and left you in charge of checking all trans people’s underwear.  Explain to me why anyone should accept your authority in any of this, why anyone should accept your privilege claims, when you have shown no reasoning for why your privilege theory is true and instead abuse and gaslight people, including CAMAB trans people, when they disagree with you.

Finally, it really pisses me off that you have hijacked my post with your abusive attempts to silence people who disagree with you.  Piss off.

(I admit that I don’t expect anything but more abuse from freedominwickedness, so this is written to other trans people to get them to see what is going on here.)

Assuming casab [coercively assigned sex at birth]

mnome:

genderpunk:

lucypumpkin:

As I have repeatedly said, this really pisses me off.  But people, especially trans fundamentalists, seem unable to do otherwise.  Why is this?  What is so bloody vital about a cissexist, binarist system that is enforced to the detriment of all trans* and non-binary people that we absolutely need to obey it even as we seek to overthrow it?  The fact that trans* people are assuming my casab based on what I say means that they’ve become kapos for enforcing the systemic oppression of trans* people, that they assume trans* people are a monolith (or should be), and that casab determines everything about us, including our thoughts.  It’s bullshit.  CASAB IS BULLSHIT.  It was forced upon us, but as trans* and non-binary people, we determined that it wasn’t going to define us, that we know ourselves better than that.  And yet…

And yet here we are with trans* and non-binary people deciding our casab defines us.  What the hell.  I am trans* and non-binary and I call bullshit.

It’s like they don’t even realize that by validating the coercive birth assignment system, they are inadvertently saying “actually trans & non-binary people don’t exist” because if birth assignment was valid, it would actually work for everyone. 

Which is not to say our experiences can’t be heavily influenced by people’s treatment of us based on our birth sex assignment, but a lot of other things play into it too, and not everyone of the same birth sex assignment is going to experience the same things the same way. 

I think the biggest reason people like to cling to [C]ASAB/DSAB language is because it gives us a shorthand for discussing otherwise tricky things like childhood, gendered socialization, medical/anatomy-related bullshit, and how people treat us based on our perceived birth sex assignment. Which… I get the temptation, but we really need to develop better ways of discussing these things without painting people with such a broad brush that we erase people’s experiences that don’t fit.

And personally, I think our ways of discussing this may need to differ based on being trans & binary-ID vs. non-binary (regardless of whether these folks are also trans-identified or not.) I just think it works really different for binary trans folks than non-binary (trans) folks because if you actually identify with a gender that is seen as legitimate (regardless of whether you are actually treated as or accepted as that gender) you are going to actually have a compass. Non-binary folks in general aren’t going to see representations of their genders (or similar genders) that are universally validated, so we have a lot more to figure out when we’re piecing together who and what we are. It’s just a different process. 

Edit: I meant to mention something in here about how a lot of this stuff can affect intersex folks differently than trans and non-binary folks, so that might need to be an additional conversation. I don’t want to speak for intersex folks as a dyadic person, but I did want to mention that universally lumping their experiences in with dyadic folks of their same birth sex assignment is also fucked up. 

TW: discussion of rape and rape apologism

There are 2 main things I hate about focusing entirely on casab:

1. It ignores intersectionality COMPLETELY. If you think asab is the most important attribute about a person, or you talk about that almost exclusively, you’re missing the damn point. You’re missing race, ability, gender ID, gender expression, neuro(a)typicality, (dis)ability, all of it. I WILL NOT PLAY INTO SHARED CHILDHOOD THEORIES WITH CIS FEMINISTS, AND I WILL NOT WITH TRANS FEMINISTS EITHER.

2. It’s really funny to me how asab can only work in way for camab trans folks and one way for cafab trans folks. Like, have you noticed that if a cafab trans person talks about being raped, it doesn’t count? Because I have! And that is so fucking anti-survivor. It doesn’t count as anti-trans violence because only camab trans folks experience that and it doesn’t count as misogyny because it’s impossible to experience misogyny if you’re not a woman. This is pretty literally what they’re saying and it makes me vom. CAFAB trans folks must live in this magical kingdom where they pretty literally cannot be attacked in any way. Their trans status actually PROTECTS THEM FROM HARM. It’s amazing. I wish I could live in such a fantastical realm.

(Source: lucypaw, via manic-depressed-pixi-dream-bitch)

Assuming casab [coercively assigned sex at birth]

genderpunk:

lucypumpkin:

As I have repeatedly said, this really pisses me off.  But people, especially trans fundamentalists, seem unable to do otherwise.  Why is this?  What is so bloody vital about a cissexist, binarist system that is enforced to the detriment of all trans* and non-binary people that we absolutely need to obey it even as we seek to overthrow it?  The fact that trans* people are assuming my casab based on what I say means that they’ve become kapos for enforcing the systemic oppression of trans* people, that they assume trans* people are a monolith (or should be), and that casab determines everything about us, including our thoughts.  It’s bullshit.  CASAB IS BULLSHIT.  It was forced upon us, but as trans* and non-binary people, we determined that it wasn’t going to define us, that we know ourselves better than that.  And yet…

And yet here we are with trans* and non-binary people deciding our casab defines us.  What the hell.  I am trans* and non-binary and I call bullshit.

It’s like they don’t even realize that by validating the coercive birth assignment system, they are inadvertently saying “actually trans & non-binary people don’t exist” because if birth assignment was valid, it would actually work for everyone. 

Which is not to say our experiences can’t be heavily influenced by people’s treatment of us based on our birth sex assignment, but a lot of other things play into it too, and not everyone of the same birth sex assignment is going to experience the same things the same way. 

I think the biggest reason people like to cling to [C]ASAB/DSAB language is because it gives us a shorthand for discussing otherwise tricky things like childhood, gendered socialization, medical/anatomy-related bullshit, and how people treat us based on our perceived birth sex assignment. Which… I get the temptation, but we really need to develop better ways of discussing these things without painting people with such a broad brush that we erase people’s experiences that don’t fit.

And personally, I think our ways of discussing this may need to differ based on being trans & binary-ID vs. non-binary (regardless of whether these folks are also trans-identified or not.) I just think it works really different for binary trans folks than non-binary (trans) folks because if you actually identify with a gender that is seen as legitimate (regardless of whether you are actually treated as or accepted as that gender) you are going to actually have a compass. Non-binary folks in general aren’t going to see representations of their genders (or similar genders) that are universally validated, so we have a lot more to figure out when we’re piecing together who and what we are. It’s just a different process. 

Edit: I meant to mention something in here about how a lot of this stuff can affect intersex folks differently than trans and non-binary folks, so that might need to be an additional conversation. I don’t want to speak for intersex folks as a dyadic person, but I did want to mention that universally lumping their experiences in with dyadic folks of their same birth sex assignment is also fucked up. 

(Source: lucypaw, via glitterunicorntitties-deactivat)

musing on the Huffington Post’s transnormative coverage of Lana Wachowski

invisiblyqueer:

In October of this year, the Human Rights Campaign awarded Lana Wachowski with their “Visibility Award.” And as problematic as that organization, or even the name of that award is, i want to interrogate the media coverage of the event. On October 24^th, the Huffington Post posted an article covering the event along with a video of Lana’s acceptance speech. Adorably, this was apparently her first public speech. Unfortunately, however, the article was titled “Lana Wachowski, Transgender ‘Cloud Atlas’ Director, Reveals Painful Adolescence, Suicide Attempt.” 

Suicide doesn’t even get mentioned by Lana until the end of minute 22 in the video. Not only is it not the thrust of her narrative, this minor point also overshadows some really brilliant bits of perspective. She quips about the gender binary is “not comfortable,” and her “responsibility” to her community. She talks about “loving anonymity” as an artist, which is fairly profound and unique. She has interesting thoughts on the performativity of gender and visibility that are informed by her stellar work on identity. She talks about the materiality of language. And one of my favorite quotes, “The nature of our immortal lives is in the consequence of our words and deeds. The fundaments upon all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.” Goddamnit, why is the focus suicide here?

She’s no longer allowed to be the pseudo-mysterious, intelligent paint brush behind acclaimed films, no, now she’s relegated to the one parcel of her story that is already embedded into public consciousness. We, as society, do not have a template for fierce, brilliant, beautiful, successful, poignant trans* women, but we do know how to map depression and needing to be fixed onto the image of trans* people. The Huffington Post not only did a disservice to Lana’s story, they did a disservice to all trans* folks be reifying the link to this narrative. By singling out the one aspect of her story that has been heard before and ignoring all the beautiful variance within, they take part in minimizing trans* experience down to a narrow and pathetic stereotype. We’re cast as needing to be fixed and lifted up. i think we can do better.

(via spaceykate)

On Representation

genderpunk:

freedominwickedness:

genderpunk:

lucypaw:

freedominwickedness:

lucypaw:

widdershinsgirl:

freedominwickedness:

mnome:

freedominwickedness:

The way that trans men and other CAFAB trans people constantly claim that they are “underrepresented” within the LGBT community and deserve more resources is literally a textbook example of CAFAB trans people exhibiting male privilege over not only CAMAB trans people but also cis women.

Because the reality is that the overwhelming majority of Western transphobia specifically targets CAMAB trans people (including a staggering 98% of all anti-trans violence), and yet substantially more resources already cater primarily or exclusively to CAFAB trans people. And yet trans males constantly demand more, even to the point of demanding that women’s spaces exclude trans women and decenter cis women.

Moreover, the behavior of CAFAB trans people in this regard precisely mirrors the behavior of cis males, whom studies have shown consistently perceive women as “dominating the conversation” anytime we speak more than 30% of the time. So when CAFAB trans people claim that they are “underrepresented” in trans spaces, what they are really expressing is anger that they are not being permitted to monopolize and dominate trans spaces the way cis men monopolize and dominate mainstream spaces.

Question: since when did our CASABs dictate our gender? Cuz, last I checked, I am not male based solely on my assigned sex. Lulz, do you know who do believe casab = gender? radscum. Jussayin. There is a way to talk about fucked up shit without being erasive and misgendering. For instance:

- Trans spaces are dominated by trans men.

- Trans men access male privilege and get away w/ it by saying that being trans negates male priv.

- Too many spaces and materials rely on asab, and focus attentions on cafab trans folks (which is binarist and cissexist, as well as being transmisogynistic)

These sentences convey the same sentiment without being fucked.

But when you use “cafab” and “trans males/men” interchangeably, you ignore the fact that non-binary people ARE NOT MEN. They are no more men when they are CAFAB than when they are CAMAB. And if you want to talk about casab within non-binary communities, I will gladly talk to other non-binary folks, fuck off you binary trans folks sticking your noses where they don’t belong.

TLDR: Yes, trans guys, fuck off. Actually think about what male privilege means. Trans spaces need to stop focusing on CASAB, and especially privileging CAFAB over CAMAB, and at the complete erasure of intersex trans folks as well. And we need to stop saying cafab = male, camab = female.

First and foremost, you are grossly and offensively incorrect in assuming that I am a binary gendered trans person.

Second, you are also grossly and offensively incorrect in assuming that I believe that all CAFAB trans people are trans men. I am fully aware that CAFAB trans people do not necessarily identify as male. What you are ignoring — perhaps ignorantly, perhaps willfully — is that CAFAB trans people have male privilege even when they do not identify as male.

And third, because of the second point, a CAFAB trans person silencing a CAMAB trans person about CAFAB privilege is still fucking oppressive, regardless of whether either of the two is binary. Childhood invisibility is still a fuckton better than the sexualizing, pathologizing bullshit that CAMAB trans people go through.

“CAFAB privilege” (especially “CAFAB trans people have male privilege”) is bullshit.  It relies upon the idea that all trans people who were cafab are masculine/male/men and/or seen as such by society.  It relies upon a very simplistic, binarist view of childhood, where one either has this experience or that experience depending upon assigned sex.  It relies upon a hell of a lot of false assumptions that binary trans people seem to not understand they’re even making while ignoring the voices of non-binary people talking about our experiences.  It’s about theory over reality and is the same shit TERFs/radscum/shitheads do to trans women.  It’s also transphobic as hell.  Stop it.

Oh really now? I’m not a binary trans person, and I am speaking from direct personal experience when I say that CAFAB trans people clearly demonstrate male privilege — both in terms of having systemic privilege from patriarchy and in terms of consistently exhibiting male entitlement behavior — even when they do not identify as male. If you’re being utterly pedantic, you can call it “non-male derivative of male privilege”; I see no difference, as it originates from patriarchy and is entirely based on male supremacy.

So you can shut the fuck up with making false assumptions about my identity and proceeding from there with aggression and silencing.

I apologise for implying you’re binary when you’re not.  OTOH, you are definitely using binary thinking.

On to the main point, which is I want to know how the hell that people who are not male, not men, not even masculine, and who are not treated as any of those things by other people have male entitlement.  How the hell does that work?  Please tell me.  Because last I checked, to have male entitlement, you have to be male.  Your explanation is nonsense because it relies upon a binarist definition of CAFAB as male.  You have literally just inverted what radscum say (where CAMAB is male).  Congratulations.

Also, your personal experience is not enough to base a theory upon.  It is not universalisable.  The fact that you think you can a) confidently know who the hell is cafab and camab, and b) know that they all act basically the same even though your sample size is necessarily small and likely biased by a) is mind-boggling.  And, if we’re going to go by one individual’s experience as the basis now, then I can point you to people who have differing experiences.

And, just to make the point more clearly, you can’t always tell who’s camab and who’s cafab.  You just can’t.  All they have in common is what they were assigned.  Nothing else.  What you were assigned at birth is not determinant of your ideas, your views, your actions.  It’s influential, maybe.  But not determinant.

Wait, so OP… by your logic, if I was assigned to be female at birth, I’m really a man, so it logically follows that if I was assigned to be male at birth, I’m really a woman. 

So in other words, my gender as a non-binary femme does not matter; what matters is the shape my genitals were at birth, because those determine my experiences and gendered understanding of the world.

You are also implying that not only do non-binary genders not matter, they don’t even exist, because you couldn’t have two non-binary femmes (for example) of differing birth assignments with the same gender. 

Tell me more about how that isn’t TERF logic inverted…? 

And no, before anyone even thinks it, I’m not saying there aren’t a lot of entitled transbros. There are. But this post, regardless of your gender, is binarist. 

One does not have to identify as male to have and benefit from male privilege, just as one does not have to identify as white to have and benefit from white privilege. Access to male privilege is based on a binary model of sex and gender because Western society is binaristic, and it is utterly oppressive towards CAMAB trans people to declare that we’re not allowed to point out the privileges held over us by CAFAB trans people because they’re “not supposed to” have that privilege. It doesn’t fucking matter what privileges you’re “supposed to” have or not have; what matters is the privileges you actually do have.

CAFAB trans people who do not identify as male are non-males who nonetheless have at least partial access to male privilege. It is not in any way misgendering or “reverse oppression” to hold them accountable for that privilege.

The simple existence of CAMAB trans people — both those of us who are non-binary identified and those of us who are binary identified — is perceived by patriarchal societies as an assault upon male superiority. It is inconceivable to patriarchy that anyone can be assigned male and yet identify as anything else. That is why an overwhelming 98% of all anti-trans violence is against CAMAB trans people, while CAFAB trans people get a free pass.

So what about assigned male at birth trans folks who are being read as male? Do they have partial access to male privilege too, even though they don’t identify as male? Because that is what this “your gender doesn’t matter, it only matters how you’re treated” argument is implying, which I find to be highly problematic. 

Still would love to see an answer to genderpunk’s questions there.

(via glitterunicorntitties-deactivat)