There is a phenomenon in the world of social justice advocacy that seems to be, if not completely unique, disproportionately common in trans spaces.
And that phenomenon is the conflation of (perceived) lesser difficulties with outright privilege.
Let's use homelessness and poverty as an example. One person is unhoused and is living in their vehicle. Another person is unhoused and living in an emergency shelter for domestic violence victims.
Now, at first glance, one will definitely see the latter as better off (though they aren't, necessarily- we'll return to that). However, would the latter be privileged over the former? Perhaps someone might, but the majority of people focused on socioeconomic inequality would roll their eyes and call this, at best, unhelpful nitpicking.
And then you add in that in order to be at a shelter for domestic violence victims, the latter person would have to be in a life-threatening situation; the time when most victims of domestic violence are at highest risk of murder is after leaving their abuser. This means that the "privilege" of having a roof over their head compared to the person living out of their vehicle comes at the cost of this person being hundreds of times likelier to be a murder victim within a few days than the average person.
So then the accusation of privilege becomes not just merely unhelpful, but actually harmful, because it results in the DV victim being seen as safe when they are actually at risk of death if they aren't helped. The accusation of privilege in and of itself erases and silences the DV victim.
A similar issue can be seen in the "is transandrophobia real" and "do trans men have privilege over trans women?" debates. Repeatedly, trans men get told they are not only better off, but that they have privilege over trans women.
For example, there is a popular post on this site from a trans woman saying that trans men are privileged because, owing to their assigned sex at birth, they are "likelier" to be believed than people assigned male at birth. This claim of "rape privilege" enjoyed by assigned female at birth people ignores that only 1% of rapists are convicted at all. Further, even in these mythical 1% of cases, the accuser is not likely to have been taken seriously, by police or anyone else in the justice system. An assigned female at birth person is likelier to be ostracized by their entire social circle than they are to be taken seriously about their rape and have their rapist receive a conviction for it. Yet the unicorn in which an assigned female at birth person is walked through the justice system by Mariska Hargitay is considered a privilege all assigned female at birth people, including trans men, hold over all assigned male at birth people.
This theory is ridiculous, and yet it is becoming increasingly accepted on this site. The theory of "rape privilege" is working its way into trans discourse on this site.
The worst part is that even if it WAS true, this still wouldn't be privilege, because being subjected to rape, a prerequisite of one's rape being taken seriously, negates any claim that one is then privileged over another group due to responses for it. Being raped is not a privilege, and so "having one's rape taken seriously" (something that only happens in the copaganda known as Law and Order: Special Victims Unit) wouldn't be a privilege even if it was real.
Another example can be seen in the claim that transmascs are privileged due to the supposed preferential treatment by TERFs. TERFs, conventional wisdom on this site says, want trans women dead, but they like trans men! They like trans men so much that they treat them like confused, misguided, mentally ill girls.
One, that isn't how it works, but... we'll come back to that.
Two? In what universe do mentally ill girls get treated well, instead of being subject to ableism, loss of bodily autonomy, sexual abuse under the guise of treatment, and increased risks of being the victim of a violent crime? In what universe is being perceived as mentally ill a privilege? Even if one claims that it is a privilege to be seen as mentally ill instead of a violent predator, that would still rely on being completely blind, intentionally so, to the belief that a mentally ill person is inherently violent, which is held by a majority of people in our ableist society. In fact, being seen as mentally ill makes one likelier to be the victim of a crime than the average person, let alone likelier than being the perpetrator!
Once again, this claim of privilege (on the basis that being seen as mentally ill is, somehow, protective) would, even in the best case scenario, simply be a case of equating less at risk of harm as a privilege. But as I outlined above, mentally ill people are at a greater risk of harm, and are seen as predators anyway; there is no protection here.
And of course, that's still ignoring the whole part where TERFs absolutely do not like trans men. Oh sure, they're sort of okay with the ones they can groom into detransitioning and joining their cult. But I thought we were all in agreement that being forced, threatened, manipulated, or otherwise coerced back into the closet does not mean a trans person has suddenly become cis and accessed cis privilege. And as for the trans men who don't become part of the TERF cult, TERFs hate them just as much; they see them as perverted seducers of innocent girls. They see them as corrupting the beauty of womanhood. They view every trans man, detransitioned or not, as tainted the instant a drop of testosterone touches them, let alone if they had any "healthy bodily tissue removed." There's also the part where TERFs and MAGAts alike want trans men to go back to living as women so they can be impregnated (with or without consent) and give birth with all the mortality risks that carries.
That's not a privilege, either.
Why, then, are these and more being floated as indeniable examples of how much better off- and therefore more privileged- trans men are compared to trans women?
Is it ignorance and/or wishful thinking? (The justice system shown by SVU has to be real: why would it be on TV if it wasn't?) Is it such warped thinking informed by doomerism that any lived experience counter to doomerism must be privilege in their eyes? Is it bad faith muddying of the waters- a lie- as a result of some people coveting victimhood and not being willing to share? Is it a lack of empathy that causes someone who believes they are the most victimized of all to refuse to see evidence this might not always be the case?
I don't know why this happens, but the frightening thing is that this line of thought is rapidly infecting mainstream queer theory. It's just accepted that trans men don't, can't suffer as much as real trans people trans women and that this less-suffering is the exact same thing as privilege.
There isn't much we can do but be aware of it and counter it when we see it, which is frustrating, but it's the only answer for now.
