Cisgender Privilege and White Male Privilege

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Cisgender Privilege, and I think that people who consider themselves to be working towards a better world need more dialogue about it. Frankly, when I first heard the term, I had been out as transgender for over a year, but I still found it hard to accept, somewhere deep down in me. I still hold it as important to me that people should have a choice of their gender and sexual expression, so the narrative that transgender people don’t have a choice in being who they are still concerns me. And while I remember very early memories of doing things as a child that showed that I wasn’t so happy with my gender, perhaps it is too easy to construct a coherent narrative after the fact. That’s a whole nother complicated discussion to have.

Cisgender privilege is the privilege of being born with, or assigned, the gender you are comfortable with, as opposed to many transgender people, who feel that the gender they were raised with doesn’t suit them. I feel that in radical communities, we talk a lot about white male privilege, and not very much about cisgender privilege. I’ve had a few people tell me that because I grew up with white, male privilege, what I say is not valid. Yes, I grew up with white male privilege, and I have a ton of unlearning to do. It’s something I’ve been thinking about and working on, really hard, for a number of years now. It’s what I’ve dedicated my life to, focusing on queer theory and feminist studies and their application to contemporary art and political practice.

So why have I been thinking about cisgender privilege so much lately? Well, I read about how coming out as transgender would mean losing some friends, and I thought that it wouldn’t be much of a problem for me, living mostly in what I consider to be radical communities. Surprisingly, since I’ve come out, I’ve lost a lot of friends. Yet, none of them have said “because you’re transgender, you’re not worth talking to anymore”. No, it hasn’t been like that. What it’s been like, in every case, is some conflict about something else, which has resulted in us not being friends any longer. My experience has been that in the years of living in San Diego, whenever I had conflicts with these same people, we could work it out. But since I’ve been trans, it’s been so much easier for people to completely write me off, to decide that I’m not worth talking to. I’ve become disposable.

I don’t lament over it any more. I have spent many, many hours processing these conflicts with people, trying to understand them, talking about them, reading about conflict resolution strategies, crying, being angry, being sad. But now, I’ve just decided that some people are not going to like me, and that’s fine. I’m not perfect. I’m not necessarily even good. I’m just trying to do my best. And if people want to join the hater’s club, then that’s fine with me. All I can do is try to talk to people and resolve these conflicts, to the best of my ability.

But where does cisgender privilege come in? I’m not sure exactly, but I do know that I see people around me who never have to think about their gender. I see people around me who are perfectly happy with their bodies and would never think about changing them. I see people who have never had the experience of people looking at you and being confused, wondering just what you are. Cisgender privilege means never having people call you by the wrong pronoun, which basically means that they’re looking right at you and not seeing you, disregarding your choices and attempts at gender expression, and just plain not understanding you. Cisgender privilege means not having to be in a relationship with someone who loves you for something you are not and could never love you for what you are. Cisgender privilege means that you can always walk out the door and know that you can be generally accepted in most places you’re going to go throughout your day. Cisgender privilege means never having to worry whether or no there will be a safe bathroom for you to use when you go out. Cisgender privilege means mever having to tell your parents, “that person you thought I was my whole life, I’m not them.” Cisgender privilege also means that you can write off transgender people and know that there’s a whole wide world out there to be in without having to think about them.

I think that cisgender privilege is something that transgender people don’t have, but also genderqueer people. I had a professor, Denise Da Silva, tell me this year that she thinks that the intersectionality argument for oppression is not useful. Since she’s a black, brazilian woman, and I hold the intersectionality of race/class/gender to be an important concept, so I found this really challenging. Still, she is such an amazing thinker, I kept thinking about it. Recently, I’ve begun to realize some more of what she means. Every oppression is different, operates differently, in different times, places and ways. So, when someone tells me, you don’t get it because you grew up with white, male privilege, I should try to remember to inform them that while I might not understand exactly where they’re coming from, they don’t understand what its like to get beat up for being a “fag”, which I have since the fifth grade, or that they don’t know what it’s like to know if you’ll ever be happy with your body, or if the person looking at you has any bit of understanding of who you are.

Another thing that disturbs me, is that saying “you’ll never understand because you grew up with white, male privilege” is a lot like saying “you’ll never be a real woman,” or at least that’s what it sounds like to me. I’m not trying to be a real woman, I don’t think there’s such a thing, but I am trying to be something other than male, and that is very real to me. It reminds me of events I’ve seen advertised for “women and ftm’s”, which also seems to disgregard people’s choice of gender, saying that they’re basically women after all. A transguy told me recently that he wasn’t excited about going to lesbian events anymore because in his experience, he’s met numerous lesbians that have a lot of animosity towards trans people. Clearly, there are a lot of complicated issues here, including competing victimization, but its my hope that we could have a strong, radical queer community, and see past our individual differences with each other, towards our common oppression, marginalization and exploitation.

I’m not saying that I have any answers here, because I don’t. I’m also not trying to counter-attack and blame in response to being critiqued. I definitely need and want critique of my own privilege and way of being in the world. What I’m saying is that I think that we need to talk more in radical communities about cisgender privilege if we’re going to talk about white, male privilege and need to understand better how different oppressions operate differently and see who is being ostracized from our communities.

I’ve begun to feel lately like I’m losing some of my faith in radical politics, from seeing people be so mean to each other in the name of feminism, or liberation, or anarchism. I wonder what kind of world we’re building if someone who wants so badly to understand what they’ve done wrong and do better, isn’t even worth talking to. I imagine this post might piss some people off, but I hope it can open up dialog instead. Being on hormones has been an emotional rollercoaster and I am feeling like I need people to talk to and my friendships are extremely valuable to me. Right now, I’m just trying to take it easy and treat myself with care and give myself time to rest and recuperate and grow. I’m just trying to share my feelings on this topic and think through it by writing and asking for feedback. So, what do you think?