The holes that TERFs exploit

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[–]endless_assfluff 39 insightful - 5 fun39 insightful - 4 fun40 insightful - 5 fun -  (7 children)

TERFs look at this and say "trans women actually have male privilege" and trans people's only response seems to be "no, it's not happening". There's no actual counter argument to it, and huge numbers of cis women get won over by TERFs because their argument is more convincing than no argument.

Funny, when I don't have a counterargument to something, even after making a Reddit post about it, I generally assume it's because I'm wrong.

So, yes, there ARE benefit to spending some number of years passing as a cis man, but the disadvantages of being trans clearly outweigh it. This should be the easiest argument in the world to make.

Then make it. Asserting "well OBVIOUSLY the disadvantages of being trans outweigh the benefits of male privilege" or "we all know trans women have it harder than cis women" isn't an argument. Who's measuring? How are they measuring? Is there a standard Human Suffering Metric that's used to judge the Oppression Olympics? I'll give some of the commenters credit for pointing out it's not a competition.

Isn't the statement "trans women have it harder than cis women," all on its own, demonstrating that this poster wants to draw attention away from female struggles and have everyone focus on their experiences instead? And doesn't it imply 'trans women' and 'cis women' should receive different treatment because they are not the same?

That does illustrate the problem quite neatly. Reddit OP, if you are reading this: there are two overlapping groups of people, those who identify with 'femininity' as a concept and those who were born female. The word 'women' used to refer to the second group. The word 'feminism' used to address the issues people face for being born female. I don't know about everyone else, but I have no problem with people in each group gathering to talk about the crap they have to deal with. But under TRA ideology, the second group is not allowed to have their own spaces. They're not allowed to have a movement that just focuses on their issues. They're not even allowed to have a word for themselves anymore. That's what the problem is. Using "but trans women have it worse!!!" as an argument to justify hijacking someone else's movement and even the language they're allowed to use to describe themselves is straight-up emotional manipulation.

The reality is that there are still proportionally less MTF politicians than cis male politicians and cis female ones. Trans women have on average lower incomes than cis men and cis women.

It's possible for this to be true and for TIMs to experience male privilege. These two points do not contradict each other. And the statements 'trans women are appropriating the female struggle' and 'trans women have not had to struggle at all' are not the same, even though Reddit OP seems to think they are.

But I do agree that the mainstream trans narrative has holes. Very, very many holes.

[–]MezozoicGay 37 insightful - 1 fun37 insightful - 0 fun38 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

TERFs look at this and say "trans women actually have male privilege" and trans people's only response seems to be "no, it's not happening".

The sole fact, that transwomen are hired as high managers, directors in many female organizations, or getting places in office where no female had place before - is speaking that yes, they do have male privilege. Maybe not all of them, but most do.

The fact that their problems are so highly discussed, that they control media, big tech companies listening to them (and banning those evil terves), they are on mainstream, while women still struggling to put their problems in any meaningful way - like there is stil tampon tax in USA, menstruation is still a taboo, yet transes already made it possible to transition young kids and medicalize them. In just a year they get more support, gained more money and got laws - more than LGB or women got in centuries.

Trans women have on average lower incomes than cis men and cis women.

There not than many transwomen in world, so I am pretty sure that income of "top 3 richest women CEO are transwomen" combined with the rest transwomen in general will make "on average" to be really high number.

The reality is that there are still proportionally less MTF politicians than cis male politicians and cis female ones.

And the reality is that there is much less MTF people than males of females. And yet they are disproportionally represented. So if you take "on average", there will be much more MFT politicians per 10000 trans than female politicians per 10000 females. And the sole fact that MTF's are taking positions in office that were supposed to be female positions from Equality Act speaks volumes.

[–]yousaythosethings 18 insightful - 1 fun18 insightful - 0 fun19 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

And anything they have approaching an argument gets blown to smithereens when they compare the demographics and outcomes of MtFs to FtMs, which is why they only mention FtMs offhandedly and essentially dismiss them as not important to think about.

[–]MezozoicGay 21 insightful - 1 fun21 insightful - 0 fun22 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

True, and even when FtM are making some impressive achievements, they are still ignored (when in reality FtM competing with males and being only slightly weaker is super impressive, while MtF competing with females and beating all female records after first month of training is not impressive at all and even ugly).

Recent post: https://twitter.com/AlessandraAster/status/1324338336471916547

20 MtF taking female places and 1 FtM...taking female place as well. And all MtF are 40+ age (even closer to 50+), except one person at 30.

[–]knmonp 14 insightful - 2 fun14 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

So they lived all their lives as previliged men and now they're "female". That's so sad.

[–]Nosce_te_ipsum 16 insightful - 1 fun16 insightful - 0 fun17 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The reality is that there are still proportionally less MTF politicians than cis male politicians and cis female ones.

And the reality is that there is much less MTF people than males of females. And yet they are disproportionally represented. So if you take "on average", there will be much more MFT politicians per 10000 trans than female politicians per 10000 females. And the sole fact that MTF's are taking positions in office that were supposed to be female positions from Equality Act speaks volumes.

I was also about to address this point, but you did it better. Sometimes, I feel like these people are very, very young (at most in their teenage years). Either that, or they are not particularly bright. Because they seem to lack a basic understanding of how things work, and are also not big fans of critical thinking.

[–]jelliknight 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

"well OBVIOUSLY the disadvantages of being trans outweigh the benefits of male privilege"

Even if that were true (it isn't, you could argue that TIMs have additional privileges on top of male privilege) it's irrelevant. You can have male privilege and have a disability, and in the combined total of those be treated more poorly overall than an able bodied woman, e.g. in terms of employment. That doesn't mean you aren't male or don't have male privilege.

[–]endless_assfluff 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yes, that's exactly the point I was making!