A Radical Transfeminist: "misogyny recipient privilege" →

furiosity:

radtransfem:

duckstapler:

It’s not a privilege. That was dark humour, which I guess doesn’t play well out of context. It was a riff off the more commonly used “passing privilege”, with the intention of indicating that being treated as a woman isn’t really a privilege. Misogyny is vile and being on the end of it is horrific. So it’s clearly not a privilege. I was using it in the same way someone might say sarcastically, “Yey. Getting punched in the head privilege.” I thought that was obvious in the phrase, but these conversations are so broken that it looks like something didn’t communicate very well.

I’m really happy to see the originator (?) of “misogyny recipient privilege” acknowledge that they were not seriously suggesting that it is a real thing. Unfortunately and somewhat tragically I think they inadvertently articulated an unspoken belief that does in fact exist in certain branches of trans* activism.

As far as I know, I was the originator. There was nothing inadvertent about it, though! I was deliberately satirising a real thing, but not just as it appears among trans* folks. The idea that it’s exclusively a privilege to be treated like a woman (though I’d say that’s something of a strawman of the ways that trans* people have talked about this in my experience) is widespread among society at large, including but definitely not limited to trans* circles. Many men think it (see: “I’d love it if someone catcalled me”), many cissexual women think it (see: Right Wing Women). When it comes up in trans* circles the awareness of how this is problematic is, in my experience, higher than average, but of course not total across the board: no spaces have a 100% feminist consciousness, and trans* spaces have in some ways been denied access to some of the very important analysis of this coming from radical feminism. One of the things I try to do in my blog is bridge that gap.

10 months ago  /  28 notes  /   /  Source: duckstapler