I believe this is because gender presentation and sexual orientation complicate and occasionally mitigate gender-related privilege (or why, for example, feminine boys (and for that matter trans girls) are so heavily and frequently bullied in school, with passive and occasionally active consent from the staff and faculty).
So, your non-transitioning, identifies as a man feminine gay man is still cissexual and cisgender, he still has access to that privilege to a certain extent, even if homophobia gets in the way. And similar applies to butch lesbians. On some level, I kind of expect them to have a better understanding of what trans people experience, but I've lost count of how many gay men (no matter how feminine) basically complain that trans women exist because they don't want to be confused with anyone who wants trans-related surgeries, or how many butch lesbians who have said to me, "You think you have it bad? I get kicked out of bathrooms all the time!" and it's like, er, yeah... And this kind of stuff gets said because it's assumed that identifying as the gender associated with your sex assigned at birth is more valid than identifying with a different gender and wanting your body to be a different sex.
I do think one of the problems with the conversation is that it tends to focus on cisgender and transgender when the conversations themselves are about transsexual people who are on hormones and seek surgery. Another problem with the conversations is that they focus on cisgender and transgender and completely ignore genderqueer and other gender identifications which may overlap with either or both, or with neither. I know some GP people identify as trans and some do not. Some say they have access to cisgender privilege and some do not, and I think the variety of experiences tends to get ignored.
And, like you said, the ways that perceptions of feminine gay men (for example) affects their access to not just cisgender privilege but male privilege. And I think that complication and mitigation needs to be discussed as well as how cisgender, cissexual, heterosexual, and male privilege interact (and thus how transphobia, transsexualphobia, homophobia, and misogyny interact).
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Date: 2009-07-08 12:15 am (UTC)I believe this is because gender presentation and sexual orientation complicate and occasionally mitigate gender-related privilege (or why, for example, feminine boys (and for that matter trans girls) are so heavily and frequently bullied in school, with passive and occasionally active consent from the staff and faculty).
So, your non-transitioning, identifies as a man feminine gay man is still cissexual and cisgender, he still has access to that privilege to a certain extent, even if homophobia gets in the way. And similar applies to butch lesbians. On some level, I kind of expect them to have a better understanding of what trans people experience, but I've lost count of how many gay men (no matter how feminine) basically complain that trans women exist because they don't want to be confused with anyone who wants trans-related surgeries, or how many butch lesbians who have said to me, "You think you have it bad? I get kicked out of bathrooms all the time!" and it's like, er, yeah... And this kind of stuff gets said because it's assumed that identifying as the gender associated with your sex assigned at birth is more valid than identifying with a different gender and wanting your body to be a different sex.
I do think one of the problems with the conversation is that it tends to focus on cisgender and transgender when the conversations themselves are about transsexual people who are on hormones and seek surgery. Another problem with the conversations is that they focus on cisgender and transgender and completely ignore genderqueer and other gender identifications which may overlap with either or both, or with neither. I know some GP people identify as trans and some do not. Some say they have access to cisgender privilege and some do not, and I think the variety of experiences tends to get ignored.
And, like you said, the ways that perceptions of feminine gay men (for example) affects their access to not just cisgender privilege but male privilege. And I think that complication and mitigation needs to be discussed as well as how cisgender, cissexual, heterosexual, and male privilege interact (and thus how transphobia, transsexualphobia, homophobia, and misogyny interact).