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.