Before I begin, I want to make it clear that I dream of a world in which anyone can express gender in whatever way they desire without fear of consequence. This is meant to question how people take principles and arguments against sexism in cisgender people and apply it as a blanket rule over transgender people.
Often, mainstream feminists will conflate sex with gender. Many times it will be good friends of mine, co-workers, colleagues, professors, or even my own parents. Some times the conflation is purposeful because it can benefit a cis-focused idea of feminism. It can serve a valid purpose. For example, many times reproductive health care advocates will chant "cute and short" sayings about how legislators should stay out of the vaginas of women. These cisgender women know that some people do not identify as female but may need access to reproductive health care, but yet they are subdued by the temptation of throwing their peers under the bus.
Their goals are valid and understandable. If a legislator can't understand why women would want to control their own reproductive care, how could the same legislator understand that a man who has the same anatomy would want access to reproductive health care as well?
Certainly one can say "well it can't be too common that transmen want to access to reproductive health care?". Sure. But what kind of world are we working towards if we re-create gender binaries in our work?
If you are someone who has read about transgender people you might have already read about transmen saying the "top 10 privileges we earn once we transitioned"--as if becoming a man is just a magical switch you turn on one day.
This mythical trope is often used to over-simplify the ways in which the patriarchy impacts transgender communities. It is hardly ever backed with data, and when it is backed with gender theory the theories are written by cisgender female theorists (who although they have experience with lacking gender privileges, they don't have experience in being trans).
I naively thought that my male privilege would be a magical switch. I prepared myself. I thought heavily about to which degree would I accept my membership into the boy's club, and to which degree I wouldn't. I know the boy's club exists. I know some transmen get invited. I see them, hear them, and often interview them for my academic work.
I don't think I was ever invited to the boy's club. Maybe I didn't pass well enough. My facial hair didn't come in until I was three years on testosterone. During that time, I remained an out and proud advocate for my rights and the rights of others. I never got to experience what it would be like if no one knew I was trans.
When I came out, a very influential person in my life told me "So that's it? You used to be a feminist. I thought you'd be the first female president. I guess you are taking the if you can't beat them, join them approach".
Unfortunately, some feminists re-create shame in female assigned at birth persons for being masculine people. They shame them for growing up to be a boy, and by doing so they re-create the toxic belief that female assigned at birth people should follow strict identities and gender roles.
On the other hand, you will have people who re-create toxic masculinity. They will tell you to toughen up, don't cry (like you were once allowed to do), and if you question it they will say (as one older gay man once told me) "this is what you wanted, you wanted to be treated like a man, this is how men are treated".
This is not meant to belittle the very real violence transgender women face. But to be fair, there is little research out there about how toxic masculinity impacts transmasculine people, just memoirs. When national LGBT non-profits have done research, they often only poll transgender women.
Now some of you may say, but what about the conferences I go to--they give preference to transmasculine people. That is true as well, but it doesn't mean the gender and sexism talk is more nuanced than "masculine people have it better and feminine people don't". When it comes to transgender identity--it's much more complicated than that.
I don't have all of the answers. I'm a 22 year old grad student still grappling with these things, but I do know that although I "pass" as male on the weekends--I can still get paid 70 cents to the dollar that my cismale white friends make on Monday because my identity documents still state I am a "female".
I may get good teaching evaluations when my students don't know I'm a transguy, and think I'm "just a regular cool guy", but I get looked at funny when my resume shows any softball team or women's association I was a part of.
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