The “Privilege” of Invisibility

Trans men have benefit of male privilege, particularly if they are white. But with this privilege comes a certain amount of invisibility.

We lose our former lesbian identities, we lose the ability to give that “I see you” head nod to the lesbian couple at the coffee shop, we lose the ability to smile at pretty much any woman without it being seen as skeezy. We are men, and as such, are generally seen as threatening among the female general population. If we smile at another dude, then we’re probably gay, and want to get in your pants. But we learn to adjust to all these new things.

Like the K in Knife

There was a status shared by a friend on Facebook yesterday, regarding Carmen Carrera and the whole RuPaul/”tranny”/”shemale” thing. Now, I’ll be honest. I don’t follow Carmen Carrera on any social media. I don’t watch Drag Race (for a number of reasons), and am not all crazy fanboy over the queens on the show. I do know, however, that Carmen has been one of the biggest voices against RuPaul using terms like “tranny” on the show. She finds it offensive. Frankly, so do I. But who the hell cares what I think. I’m no one. I’m certainly not a famous RuPaul queen. But the status that was shared (I went to look for it so I could copy and paste it here and the person who shared it had removed it) ripped into Carmen Carrera. Told her to “get over it” and to “stop telling people she’s trans” if she doesn’t want to face the repercussions.

Call me crazy, but this sounds an awful lot like the “don’t go out dressed like that if you don’t want to get raped” mentality that we teach our girls and our women. That WE need to change, rather than teaching others to NOT rape, to NOT bully.