Chronically Apologetic

I hate posts like these that attempt to split hairs over individual oppression points to argue that one group of trans people has privilege over another (especially since, if we must, trans men notably have higher rates of sexual assault and less representation in government than trans women, facts that get conveniently ignored or even actively erased in these convos) because well. It’s unproductive, but even moreso it becomes a breeding ground for rank TERFish transphobic bile to be spread around uncritically:

The fact is that the true trans pay gap isn't between trans men and trans women, it's between white trans people and racialized trans people. This whole thing where we're bickering about which trans gender is doing better is fucking ridiculous when racialized trans people are on average, experiencing worse outcomes than white trans people on every metric.

Do trans men have systemic power over trans women? There really isn't a good evidence to back that up, nor is there any reason to believe the reverse. There is no steady metric for measuring the systemic power of one portion of a tiny minority against another, and it's stupid to bicker about it when we already know that different groups of trans people need support with different issues. Non-exhaustively, trans women tend to need support against stranger violence, and exclusion from education, and trans men tend to struggle with domestic violence, and discrimination in hospitals- and all trans people have higher rates of discrimination in all these fields than cis people. Most the issues trans people face are intimately connected to exploitation and violence at the hands of cis people- I mean not least because they are 98-99.6% of the population

The U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics found that in the first half of 2026, Black women's weekly median earnings were $956, or 85% of white women's, while Hispanic women earned $901 (80% of white women's).

Does this mean that Hispanic women are more racially oppressed than Black women, because they earned 5% less than Black women, who earn 25% less than white women, who earn 30% less than white men? Does the fact that Asian men and women earn more than their white counterparts mean that Asian people are the least affected by racism, and that Asian women maybe even have privilege over white women?

No. That would be piss poor social analysis, and the kind of analysis that is more concerned with fighting over whose got it The Worst instead of developing a sociopolitical consciousness that facilitates liberation. This one statistic can tell us some things about gender and racial oppression, but shit is always More Complicated Than That, and oppression is always far too complex and holistic to ever be reduced down to any one statistic.

It is bad that trans women are so economically fucked over. It puts them in danger in multiple ways and should be discussed. That people act like this discussion needs to happen in a hierarchical way is not a neutral thing. Especially when different studies find different trans groups are more/less affected by an issue, but pretty much universally find trans people are more affected than cis people.

Also, since it wasn't mentioned above: the HRC could only look at "full-time (35 or more hours/week), non-farm worker employees employed in the public or private sector" in this study. They themselves pointed out that "were we to include the wages of part-time/temporary workers, as well as non-wage earners, it is likely the gaps between LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ adults would widen beyond what is reported here" so this study also does not represent the full extent of trans labor.

Finally I think everyone should read this study, because it presents a much more detailed and nuanced approach to this topic than just looking at things based on gender identity alone:

When estimating outcomes gaps across the two transgender groups by assigned birth-sex, AMAB GQNBs and AFAB GQNBs have significantly lower incomes and are more likely to be in part-time employment when compared with their MTF and FTM counterparts, respectively. However, when estimating outcome gaps within the ‘Trans’ group, FTMs have significantly lower incomes, are more likely to be in part-time work, but are less likely to be unemployed compared with MTFs. Within the ‘GQNB’ group, AFAB GQNBs have significantly lower incomes and are more likely to be in part-time employment, compared with their AMAB GQNB counterparts. [...] The degree to which respondents have legally, socially, medically and/or surgically transitioned varies substantially within each transgender group. To test the sensitivity of my results to this variation, I compare the incomes of MTFs and FTMs who began living full-time as their gender identity earlier in life, to those who waited until later. I find that the significantly lower incomes associated with FTMs compared with MTFs disappears when restricting the sample to those who began living full-time at a younger age. The incomes of MTFs who begin living full-time as female at a younger age are lower than those who wait, while the incomes of FTMs who begin living full-time as male at a younger age are higher.