#trans studies

Now, all of this is using primarily US studies cause that's the perspective these debates come from, right? Occasionally the UK, or Canada and sometimes sparingly somewhere else in Europe but with no mention of even how non-English language affects transness let alone cultural and ethnic factors, and never with non-western, non-northern hemisphere perspectives included. Countries where people viewed as women are not viewed as people at all have some wildly different experiences when it comes to both gendered violence and transition opportunity. If your goal is to be a troll only, you can say "well women in x country are property so trans men cannot ever transition and trans women can retain male privilege" and that would be just as unhelpful and lacking in understanding anything about the situational nature of transness.

This cyclical argument is never about making things better, it is about being justified in one's isolationism and misery.

A widely held up study about the specific plight of trans women claimed that the average life expectancy of trans women was 35. This has filled people with fear for YEARS. I can't tell you how many birthdays I've seen where you celebrate having beaten the statistic. But it's not true. 30-35 was the high end age of Brazilian trans women who were murdered at the time. This is not a universal statistic. It is very specific and situational, and not just "trans women" but Brazilian trans women of color, most of whom were in sex work. Their race is a factor, their class is a factor, the lack of protections for sex workers is a factor. Brazilian politics is a factor. Many were elated to find out that they actually weren't doomed to die by 35. Others were upset to lose this stat as a talking point.

At the end of the day, information revealed that things were not as bleak as we thought, and this makes material difference in people's lives, especially the relief at no longer needing to count down to your assumed death. But if your motivation is internet fights splitting hairs, this was a blow to your arsenal. Different priorities I suppose.

Pay

This study says that for every dollar earned by "the typical worker", trans women make .60 while trans men "and nonbinary people" make .70. It raises a lot of questions about how many of each group were polled and also the association of trans men with nonbinary folks with no further explanation is not great, but sure, here is one that says that trans men make slightly more. The same study says that lesbians make .87 while bisexual women make .75. The gap between lesbians and bi women is larger than the gap between trans women and trans men (and nonbinary people I guess?), all trans people make less than cis people, and everyone is making less than cis men and even the "typical worker"

This Canadian study cited by American institutions actually separates nonbinary people by AGAB (and is seemingly the only to do so), and so while trans men in this situation actually were the highest group relatively across the board, they were still 20% below cis men at a maximum. And then it gets interesting when you look at NB folks, because nonbinary people assigned female at birth PLUMMET below all other trans people. I'm actually attaching the graph cause it's wild to look at.

According to this, trans men *do* slightly benefit but transmascs are extremely extremely behind everyone else. Do we take the average then or....?

Most other studies do not actually do their own polling and continually quote the study that said .70 trans men and .60 trans women, and then omit nb folks from the conversation.

Job Security

This study suggests similar unemployment rates among trans men and women (some others say a percent or two higher for trans women) but both have rates 2-3x higher than cis peers--9-16% vs 5.3% for cis folks.

The same study also says "those assigned female at birth tend to have lower incomes and are more likely to work part time than their similarly situated counterparts assigned male at birth."

BUT it also says that nonpassing out trans women receive harsher penalties than nonpassing trans men

AND suggests that gender pay discrepancy and job security comes more from the gap between trans men who pass and trans women who don't. Duh! Of course someone you think is a cis man is going to be out-rewarding people that someone thinks is a woman or specifically a trans woman.

Some studies from 2016 found that outing significantly increased the chances of a trans man being fired while not really increasing the chances for trans women, while more recent find similar rates.

Housing Security

An interesting 2019 study found that gender nonconforming people in general were at even higher rates of homelessness than trans people (and both were much higher than cis people). I can imagine there is a correlation between having the language to describe yourself and access to transition materials that correlates with having basic needs met, essentially "how many of these people are also trans but have no way to know or pursue transition and so are just gnc?" on top of just the chances that general nonconformity will get you kicked from your homes.

The Trevor Project found in 2022 that trans boys were slightly more likely to be homeless than trans girls, but race is much more of a factor than gender in disparity

This study suggests that trans men report extremely high rates of homelessness as well as an extreme lack of resources. The study wonders if the disparity is so high because of trans women being underrepresented in the study, which I agree with, but this is also a rare housing study where trans men DO heavily outnumber trans women reporting, and the same discrepancies can be observed. Essentially: the studies where there is actually a huge gap between trans women and trans men are the ones where there is disparity in polling. Go figure. Many studies for adults cannot meaningfully separate the two, and even the ones with bigger gaps pales in comparison to the rates for cis people, even cis women.

Hate Crimes

While trans men have higher rates of sexual violence (in several studies higher than cis women), the one category where trans women really take the cake is in murder. It is true that trans women are more likely to be victims of violent hate crimes, but the truth is that trans women of color are most likely. In 2024, 87% of trans murder victims were women of color. When comparing white trans people, there is significantly less difference, though still a higher rate for trans women. Race is again much more of a factor than gender alone in these scenarios, a staggering majority are women of color.

Survival Sex Work

Unfortunately we do not have good studies on trans people sex workers--partly due to the criminalization and partly due to gaps in who is talked about/permitted to speak. Essentially, there are comparable rates of unemployment, poverty, and homelessness between trans men and women and the pivot to sex work is comparable.

As lamented in this article by Professor Angela Jones, studies ONLY talk about trans women and never trans men (and assume any male sex workers are cis and that nonpassing trans men are women) but this is not simply just a case of erasing trans men, but also of demonizing trans women. These studies do not care about the safety, health, and livelihoods of trans women sex workers, but dare to mention them at all as public health crisis due to fears about HIV exposure. So everyone is really fucked in this, being erased and being accounted for are both bad.

Trans men are also typically at risk of pregnancy. In sex work, as victims of sexual violence, and in their daily lives. Also true of HIV, with a lot of cis studies on the matter forgetting about trans men entirely. And with pregnancy comes all the misogyny of reproductive care battles AND the transphobia of being a pregnant trans man--which, by the way, is the story of the first trans man I ever heard about. Deeply dehumanizing and condescending article, so warning for that.

Imprisonment

It's difficult to categorize rates when trans people are misgendered and sent to prisons that do not align with their gender, and often the only way that news reaches the outside is through LGBT orgs dedicated to this. There are lots of things that affect the results

Number fucking one always and forever is race

Trans men and women both are arrested at higher rates than cis peers

Background environment: foster care, homelessness, records from their youth, or 1. race 2. race, and 3. race

Trans men's hormones are controlled substances, where trans women's are not, though it's not clear how often that becomes an actual factor in criminalization vs a massive deterrent to DIY

Trans women are more likely to be violently attacked and if they fight back they are fucked. Trans men are more likely to be raped and if they fight back they are fucked

Old crossdressing laws seemed to hit trans men and trans women pretty evenly, with both at risk of sexual violence in jail.

AKA these days, jailtime is influenced by factors beyond trans identity or even gender, and all of those are influenced most by racism

Trans women are abused in prisons and handed over to violent inmates in what is called V-coding

Trans men are abused in prisons by staff and inmates, and it gets very little attention and are rarely included in prison studies at all

Healthcare

I noticed this was mysteriously absent from the list, and I'm sure I know why--it makes everyone very uncomfortable (cis and sometimes trans alike, it seems) to acknowledge the deep disadvantages trans men face in healthcare--particularly reproductive care. It's hard to dismiss trans men without dismissing cis women, and it's difficult to downplay the role of repro care for trans men without connecting what it means for trans women too. I think for some there is both resentment and disgust that trans men might choose to carry their own children, but whether its personal or the fear that highlighting an area where trans men may actually have it considerably worse, the thing I want to say is, this gap doesn't really matter either. At least not as a "gotcha."

Trans women also have a dogshit time in healthcare. Both are misgendered, have care redirected to their genitals, are assaulted by hospital staff, are held hostage to invasive questioning. And trans women are not not involved when it comes to repro care. So many trans women don't understand what's happening to them when they experience periods. They aren't thought of when it comes to new developed tissue (similarly, trans men aren't considered despite new studies showing growth of prostate tissue). They aren't thought of for post-bottom-surgery vaginal care. Reproductive care is about more than being pregnant. STI information, safe sex practices, and issues of sterilization impact trans women as much (if not in some cases more) than others, especially cis peers.

Trans women shouldn't be pushed out of the conversation, trans men are simply asking that we do not erase them.

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So to sum up...no. lol There are some areas where trans men are marginally better off, but there are areas where trans women are marginally better off, and I don't think those areas deserve exceptionalism either. Every study polls very small populations within a small population, and a lot of the heavier statistics are hard to track due to criminalization or are stats that only exist once we are dead.

In no category is the difference between trans women and trans men a big one, incorporating nonbinary people and gnc into the mix makes it even less clear, the largest divide comes between passing trans men and nonpassing trans women, and studies assume closeted trans people are cis men and women respectively--where the gap between men and women is larger. And still, money made by a closeted trans woman paid cause they think she's a cis man is not really a privilege compared to the cost of inauthentic living. Beyond that, no gap between trans women and trans men is bigger than the gap between trans people and cis people. And beyond even that, all divide between trans women and trans men is also wildly eclipsed by the divide between white trans people of any gender and trans people of color, particularly (in the US) Black trans people.

White trans women have closer stats to trans men than either do with Black trans women. And STILL separatism isn't the answer. True intersectionality recognizes how struggle overlaps and how it might not.

What we need to do is make space for people to talk about their experiences. We need to recognize where we relate and where we don't. There is no one label that holds a person in the most marginalized position above all others, and it certainly isn't "woman"--this is TERF rhetoric.

The statistics are lacking, our representation and recognition is lacking. We are misgendered. We ALL have experiences outside of our gender identity--pre-transition, passing and not-passing. These "who has it worse" fights are both needlessly divisive but also misunderstands our experiences.

I had experiences as my AGAB before I knew I was trans. I had experiences when I knew but couldn't do anything about it. I faced barriers accessing transition care. For the entirety of my care. I had experiences when people assumed I was my AGAB, when people assumed I was the "opposite" cis gender, and when people were threatened because they weren't sure. I HAD binary trans experiences and cis experiences. And THEN I realized I was genderfluid. I've passed as "both" cis genders, I have passed as my desired gender, I have been read as neither or something else--with admiration and danger stemming from it. My fluidity has caused me to be mistaken for a range of things, and with it, treated as if I was that thing. It made me even more sympathetic to people whose gender identity I do not share.

I've seen white trans men who pass and are rewarded for seeming to be cis get sexually assaulted at the OBGYN. I've seen trans women wrestle with guilt because she knew she climbed ranks higher than her cis women peers before she came out, and now transition could cost her the position she has climbed to.

It's not cut and dry.

While we are shit-sling, trans folks are in material danger.

A 19 year old trans girl was stabbed to death at her uni. Now you could say "well, many trans people cant even go to college", or "the suspect is Black, would they be looking for the killer if he wasn't?" or "her identity is being concealed, out of privacy? Out of respect? For her family safety? How do we know she was a trans woman? Is this police speculation or did someone who knew her verify?" or "an american college student is not misgendered, but sex workers are deadnamed in their murder reporting"

All of these things are on some level worth considering, but in the long run, none of that weighs against how the college has been stoking anti-trans resentment and platforming nazis like TPUSA. None of it fucking matters next to murder. She is being treated differently to plenty of other trans coverage, and it's fair to wonder why--the intense effort of local community to honor her?--but she's still dead! And the context of her murder is not infighting, it's anti-trans posturing on campuses by cis people.

39 year old Lucas Redbeard Knapp was murdered defending someone from harassment, and the killers had been hostile towards him in the past for his trans identity, and nearly all reports of the incident leave out his murder, degender him, or vaguely reference that someone has been killed in favor of focusing entirely on the suspects, going even so far as to humanize them. Is erasure privilege? Is being omitted in the report of your own murder a sign of your overwhelming oppressor status?

Why are we doing this? What does this do? Who does any of this help?

We are getting nowhere with this while actual danger spreads. And at the end of the day, the people holding funerals, speaking out, fighting for our rights are fighting under united fronts. Trans men and trans women have been each others biggest champions in court, in legislation, in orgs--there IS a sense of unity among the ones doing the work out there.

I'm sorry to folks who have bitter resentment to the people in as much danger as them. I'm sorry to folks who think that oppressor is an inherent state and not something people opt into and out of all the time.

There IS no great divide between trans men and women. And frankly no great divide between the both of you and the rest of us nonbinary people these discourse stirrers love to forget about or sort into a binary to suit their arguments. And even beyond that, there is no great divide between trans and cis people--because cis people can realize they are trans, because all of us have been assumed cis at one point or another in our lives, and even cis people as a class are not our enemies, because they have a deep overlap in our struggles and have ALSO been some of our biggest champions.