On the topic of conditional male privilege that trans men experience when passing and stealth, this thanksgiving I visited the family of my SO who don't know I am trans. I pass more so nowadays, but there's still this constant undercurrent of anxiety whenever I do. Particularly because their father isn't the most progressive dude.
Not long after arriving he was cracking jokes with the other men in the room and he had said something misogynistic and the others laughed.
In this moment, in their eyes, I wasn't the explicit target of that kind of joke. But I struggle to define this as any more privileged than in the moments I am perceived as a woman and the joke is.
I don't feel unaffected by these ideas, I am bothered by their misogyny alone but I also know that to them, myself in my fullness as a trans man, I absolutely do fall into that target of their beliefs. These ideas in society do affect me, and even in this interpersonal situation, they would be applied to me to if I was openly trans.
Then in an environment with cis men like this, there's a standard of masculinity that has to be met even casually, and when you don't meet that it gets pointed out. It doesn't go unnoticed. Especially meeting their family I am being analyzed as the new boyfriend, a new man, being brought in. Even my SO's last boyfriend who was a cishet man was determined unmasculine enough he would get called 'a queer' by their father. Everything soft about me, every androgynous or feminine quality I cannot control, threatens to out me.
I wore a baggy and masculine outfit to hide my bound chest, I put my wallet in my pockets and left my bag at home in case it was too feminine. My presentation had to be limited as to not make me stand out, open me up to scrutiny, to passively emasculate me and then potentially out me. Even in a context where men's presentation is policed, I have to adhere to a stricter level of it in order to avoid larger consequences.
In this situation, when they joked about women I didn't feel a sense of privilege in that this joke wasn't about me, in that room, in that moment. I didn't feel validated in my gender or like I was off the hook.
Passing in a room of men making misogynistic jokes I don't feel safe from misogyny, I feel held hostage by it. Because I know I am not safe here.
I feel about as privileged as I would standing in a room of people expressing homophobia and expecting me to laugh along because they don't know I am gay. I have to hyper analyze my presentation, my voice, my words, my behavior. I have to consider whether to call it out and attract scrutiny, potentially danger. I have to move carefully and quietly and not be too much, too obviously, who I am.
This is why I don't find the way those who dismiss trans men's discussions on our unique discrimination out of an insistence of our access to capital M Male Privilege is a sound argument.
That 'privilege' is shattered the moment we are outed as trans in a transphobic, patriarchal society. This passing may allow us to fly under the radar from interpersonal misogyny but systemic misogyny still affects us on all institutional levels, and that interpersonal conditional avoidance of misogyny doesn't go without effect on our psyches.
Encountering misogyny on an interpersonal level doesn't signal safety, but a lack of safety. And a society that will only treat transgender men equally if they are keeping their transgender identity hidden is not a society that privileges transgender men. And frankly, there is no way to remain stealth in all ways forever.
Encountering misogyny while stealth is threatening, not affirming. And when manhood is treated as a masculine competition, we are vulnerable to the enforcement of toxic masculinity and its scrutiny on our presentations and personhood, to devastating effects when we are outed.
I know what it's like to stand in a room full of misogynistic men as a 'woman' and feel that sense of threatening and dread. I also know what it is like to stand in a room full of misogynistic men as a stealth transgender man.
Both situations you feel "I gotta get the fuck out of this room," but in one I know I'm obviously a target, and in the other I know that they haven't realized I am one yet.
These things have similarities and they have differences, certainly. I personally have faced less sexual harassment when I pass, cishet men don't really pursue me, I have a blanket of anonymity I didn't have before. If I come off as a butch lesbian or a clockable trans guy I am not so anonymous, they'll harass me to humiliate me, but still, they don't feel entitled to me the way they do my feminine female friends. The intentions and actions can be different.
But there's also a specific danger I never experienced before I came out- the specific reaction of a misogynistic/transphobic cis man who has realized you are trans.
I know well the prickling fear of feeling a cis man's lingering gaze on you when before you were talking like normal, like something has changed, and the friendliness has dropped. At best, a swift and cold othering has fallen over the interaction. At worst, comes the retaliation of someone who seeks to punish and humiliate you for 'tricking' them into treating you with respect.
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