Cissexual/Cisgender Privilege

Maia, a radical feminist blogger posted Transphobia and Radical Feminism - a challenge a couple of days ago, calling out radical feminists for transphobic policies and prejudices. Her post (and her preceding posts linked in that post) are worth reading.

 Predictably - as the comments demonstrate - several radical feminists came in to deny that they’re transphobic, to defend the site “Questioning Transgender,” to explain that cisgender privilege doesn’t exist.

 In true transphobic radical feminist form, Stormcloud defends a male commenter who implied that many trans women were rapists prior to transition and compared reading a response to his comment to being raped. Because, of course, a man who casually reduces rape to something that reading a negative post feels like is surely a good feminist ally, am I right? Well, he is so long as he denounces trans women - as Heart demonstrates, she’ll agree with anyone who says that, even if he’s a eugenicist who’s all for preventing homosexual births.

I mainly want to address the argument that cisgender privilege doesn’t exist. Specifically, Polly Styrene claims:

On the subject of “cisgender privilege” Cis gender is defined in Wikipedia as:

a type of gender identity formed by a match between an individual’s biological sex and the behaviour or role considered appropriate for one’s sex.

I don’t know any woman born woman who identifies 100% with and is happy with her gender role (ok I know a lot of feminists). But I personally certainly get loads of shit for not acting out the expected gender role of ‘woman’. So I don’t see what this cisgender privilege I’m meant to have is. If it’s not physically wanting to change the external appearance of my genitals, then I’m afraid that will have to be taken up with goddess, or whoever you believe gets to decide these things because it sure as hell wasn’t me.

‘Privilege’ is only relevant when it is one person who is part of a privileged group in society using that privilege to disadvantage another person. Which brings us to:

“Gatekeeper of the class of women”. The problem here is that if we say some transwomen are women because they’re living full time as women, or legally defined as women, or any other definition you care to mention, we are STILL DEFINING WHO IS AND IS NOT A WOMAN. You can’t get away from that. The only logical alternative position is to say anyone who self defines a woman is a woman. Otherwise we are still acting as ‘gatekeepers of the class of woman’. Which I don’t believe we do anyway, but anyone who wants to read my full opinion can go to

http://www.sizeofacow.wordpress.com

That’s it - I’m outta here.

The bolded part is the important part. Now, I’m fascinated that she, as a cissexual woman, is defining whether or not she experiences a privilege in the first place. After all, we know that we can trust men to acknowledge - or in many cases, even see - the privilege they experience for being male. And the same is true of white people and white privilege - no one ever denies their white privilege, right?

More to the point, just as women cannot trust men acknowledge their male privilege and how they experience it and use it, I as a trans woman cannot trust a cis woman to acknowledge her cis privilege and how she experiences and uses it. She also doesn’t acknowledge intersections of multiple forms of privilege or lack thereof - She lacks male privilege, and she uses this as an argument that she has no other privilege. Her demand to take it up with the goddess could just as easily be used against her by men in response to commentary about male privilege, because it’s much easier to lay the blame on someone for not having privilege than accept responsibility for having privilege.

Here’s a starting point for understanding cis privilege. Of course, to understand cis privilege, one must accept that it’s privilege that’s handed to you by society as well as presumed authority to treat the oppressed class in a demeaning way. It is true that men have privilege over women and it’s true that it’s largely privilege handed to men by society, as well as presumed authority to treat the oppressed class in a demeaning way. Polly Styrene tries to mislocate the privilege as being the fact that one is born in a body one is comfortable with vs. not being born in a body that one is comfortable with, rather than how society treats people who are comfortable with their sex vs. how it treats people who need to change their sex. She also tries to conflate it with sexism, in that she points out her experiences of sexism as a counterpoint to the idea that she has cis privilege. That has nothing to do with cis privilege - I don’t have cis privilege and I also experience sexism. Many trans women experience sexism due to being women.

She also tries to disclaim any responsibility for cis privilege (while denying it exists) by saying that it’s a matter of birth and beyond her control - but her being born female is also a matter of birth and beyond any man’s control.

The truth is, she experiences cis privilege. She lives it, breathes it, and assumes it. The fact that she’s willing to discuss at length whether trans women have a place around cis women without any input from trans women is a pretty privileged viewpoint. Is her cis privilege uncomplicated? No, she’s a butch lesbian - and having presented as even moderately butch (or maybe femme butch) I’ve caught criticism for wearing clothes that were seen as too masculine (jeans and a t-shirt).

This is the primary frustration when dealing with men who refuse to believe that male privilege exists (especially MRAs), white people who refuse to believe that white privilege exists, and able-bodied people who refuse to believe that able-bodied privilege exists. They refuse to meet you anywhere, they just define you as less than and subhuman in relation to them, and your truths as lies you use to get sympathy. Race cards, gender cards, and so on. It’s not ever surprising when I get this stuff from white men, who are just about as clueless as it gets when it comes to privilege, but it’s doubly frustrating when it comes from women, people of color, gay men and lesbians, all of whom have experienced prejudice and hypothetically know what it looks like to be on the receiving end, and yet are completely blind to it when they dish it out.

And Polly Styrene is completely blind to it when she dishes it out, at least the cis privilege kind. As a woman, as a lesbian, as a butch woman, she really should know that the arguments she’s using to deny her own privilege exactly mirror those used by straight people and men to deny that they’re being homophobic and sexist.