Trans Men do NOT transition into privilege. Trans people are seen as less than cis people, regardless of our genders.
There’s an idea, popular in too many places, that trans men don’t suffer — that yes, we’re infantilised and (blissfully) invisible, but we also get to transition into male privilege. Upwards. Lifting us ‘above’ the fates of other people who were assigned female at birth, gifting us hitherto unimagined successes.
It isn’t true. It’s toxic, and it prevents us properly grappling with transphobia.
Cisgenderism runs on misogyny — and it weaponises misogyny equally against trans women and trans men, via predator/whore and victim/virgin tropes, respectively.
This may seem odd until you consider, as noted academic author and trans woman Julia Serano says, that: cis privilege trumps gender privilege.
“If male privilege truly did play a central role in shaping my life, or is supposedly an inextricable facet of my being, then why on earth was I (and the countless other trans female/feminine people who ultimately come out) so willing to part with it? Indeed, doesn’t my transition to female and the fact that I am far happier now suggest that, while male privilege is certainly real, it pales in comparison to cisgender privilege?”
Here’s how things are usually framed:
Trans women transition downwards into the oppressed class (women), giving up the ‘male privilege’ many of them arguably never had, to suffer intersectional oppression because of being trans and feminine in a world that denigrates both. That’s transmisogyny, and it’s real and harmful.
At the same time, that framing says, trans men transition upwards — improving their lot by casting off oppressed female roots to take advantage of male privilege and the greater opportunities that being male affords in patriarchal cultures. Even in academic articles, I’ve heard it termed “social promotion”.
But is this true?
Honestly, my first reaction as a trans man is to laugh. Bitterly. First, this presupposes trans men are actually viewed as men — which we may be, at first, until our transness is ‘discovered’. Then, mostly, forget it.
No cis man alive has such precariousness around his ‘male privilege’ as every single trans man does. The result?
Trans men have the second highest rates of sexual violence “intended to convert or punish LGBTQ identity” of any LGBTQ group, cis or trans (see Galop study here). 35%. The only group with a higher rate is intersex people (a shocking 50%). Trans women are sitting on 30% and non-binary people on 31%.
The lowest rates? Cis men, on 8%.
35% to 8% feels like quite a gulf in ‘male privilege’…
Second is the problematic assumption that being a cis woman in cishet-dominant cultures is more punishable than being trans, generally. This simply isn’t true. I know because I spent 47 and a half years living in an oestrogen-dominant body; and whilst it’s true that women experience disproportionate socio-economic disempowerment, burdens of childcare and lower remuneration, these are all in comparison to cis men, not trans men.
According to a 2022 UK study:
Transgender men reported lower incomes and less education than cisgender men and women. Similar experiences of discrimination and social exclusion could be contributing to these…socio-economic and educational statuses among transgender men. Despite a younger average age [and higher engagement with vaccinations and routine check-ups], transgender men also demonstrated increased risk of having more chronic conditions compared to cisgender men and women… The high rates at which they experience overt health care discrimination and interface with doctors with low trans-competence (i.e., higher likelihood than transgender women and nonbinary individuals) may put them at risk for chronic health conditions. Indeed, these discriminatory health care encounters may expose them to extraneous stress [and] preclude their full engagement in care.
So, not exactly an ‘upward’ exchange.
Let’s look instead at what it was I supposedly ‘cast off’ as I careened into all this ‘privilege’.
When I was growing up with five brothers, I loved the fact that I, alone, could wear skirts or jeans, that I could have my hair long or short, and play with my (generally ‘feminine’) toys or my brothers’ (generally ‘masculine’) toys. I could climb trees or write poetry, experiment with makeup or go without, crush on boys without raising any eyebrows, and I got my own room.
I wasn’t that masculine (and I’d implore commenters to stop promoting the idea that all trans men were “masculine girls” — masculinity and femininity are as varied for trans people as for cis people). But if I strayed from feminine stereotypes, I was labelled feisty and plucky. An achiever. If my brothers strayed from masculine ideals, that was less pretty.
But if they had their masculinity gatekept, I can promise you no men have their masculinity gatekept as much as trans men. If we show the slightest hint of supposedly ‘feminine’ behaviour (a giggle, a hip-swing, a hand-flourish) that’s viewed as us showing our “real” (read: female) gender. But if we do not, we’re viewed as overcompensating because we ‘know’, below the ‘deception’, that we’re not “really” men.
That means trans men don’t just have our masculinity gatekept, we have our very manhood gatekept (just as trans women do their femininity and womanhood).
So, why did I transition?
Contrary to TERF narratives, I wasn’t a failure “as a woman”. I succeeded as an academic, lecturing at university and publishing in academic journals. I wrote six novels. I was considered attractive. I birthed a child.
At times, I also experienced a lot of poverty. I was on the Threatened With Homelessness Register. I raised my child alone.
Trans men are often accused of ‘siding with the oppressor’, and in the case of trans gay men like me, of misogynistically rejecting everything about women: from our assigned genders to the possibility of romantic relationships, because we just hate women that much.
I don’t. In my experience, women form communities and organise solidarity in ways men usually don’t. I might have felt like a spy, but I benefited from that. I had support.
I often ‘joke’ to people that community-wise, trans men “transition off a cliff and into a void.”
Yet still we transition.
Not for more privilege, or more freedom or more money, but because I needed to see myself when I look down. I might have grown up aware that society was pretty well set up for cis men, but I already knew it wasn’t set up for trans men, or I’d have been able to see them. I would have heard of them growing up.
We were nowhere.
In other words, I knew cis women had more rights, more movement, more social acceptance, representation, respect, community, and visibility than trans men.
But nothing could have prepared me for the extent to which that is true.
In comparison to cis women, trans men have:
- Higher rates of adult suicidal ideation. 17% compared to 6% — study here (For reference: trans women and non-binary people had the highest rates, 26%-21%)
- Higher rates of teen suicide attempts. According to a US study by the Search Institute, reported imperfectly here: Trans boys 50.8%, Cis girls 17.6% (for reference: Non-binary 41.8%; Trans girls 29.9%; Gender questioning 27.9%; Cis boys 9.8%)
- Higher rates of violent victimisation. According to a Williams Institute study: Per 1,000 people Trans men have 107.5 violent victimisations compared to Cis women 23.7 (for reference, Trans women 86.1, and Cis Men 19.8).
- Higher rates of sexual assault to convert/punish gender identity (see Galop study above)
- No political representation
- Higher rates of homelessness
- People who want to know more about rates of violence against trans men would do well to start with this Op-Ed: Trans Men Experience Far More Violence Than Most People Assume.
I could go on. On pretty much every metric I can find, trans men fare worse than cis women.
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At which the “social promotion” idea starts to look positively poisonous.
The truth, which we could all do with realising, is that trans men do NOT transition ‘upwards’. Because gender does not trump cis-ness. We live in a world of absolute cis-supremacism.
All trans people are viewed as less than all cis people.
In my experience, trans women, who suffer intense demonisation and an unenviable hypervisibility, can often assume the level of misogyny they experience is a fair reflection of the level of misogyny cis women face.
It is not.
As I said, I spent 47 and a half years in an oestrogen-dominated body. I was assigned female, viewed as feminine, grew up with female enculturation, was treated as a woman for employment, housing, relationships, education, etc etc etc. I navigated the UK health system in that capacity, including with mental health problems and also with being pregnant and giving birth.
As a single parent, I fought a system that dismisses ‘mothers’ as ‘anxious’ and over-involved in order to secure basic help for my strongly neurodivergent child, who simultaneously fought their own struggle through childhood as a very soft, trans-feminine individual.
I have a very good grip on what cis-perceived women undergo, and I can tell you flat out — trans women go through far worse than I did.
I’d also add: so do trans men.
I experience far more misogyny now, after people find out I’m a trans man, than I ever experienced in ‘female’ form. I have more misogynistic narratives directed at me, more dismissiveness, greater housing insecurity, less employment opportunities, more healthcare difficulties, and far less social acceptance than before. I feel unwelcome in the majority of spaces I enter.
Let me paint a picture. I’m talking to someone, perhaps at a pub. They’re treating me as me (an ordinary gay man). I’m responding as myself. Everyone’s being basically normal. It doesn’t feel like anyone’s altering their behaviour. It’s nice, I feel comfortable.
I’m asked a question.
In gay male space, it might be to do with how my kid came to be my kid (a common query) or it might be a sexual come-on. In mixed spaces, it might be a comment by a woman that I wouldn’t understand the difficulties of some aspect of life as a woman (such as gynaecological care).
I judge the situation to be safe, so I disclose I’m trans. Sex-wise I’d have to, or unbelievably I could face prison for ‘rape by deception’. For saying I’m a man, when I’m a man.
All around me, behaviours change. People stare more closely, eyes flicking over my chest, my throat, even my groin. Voices soften and rise, men and women touch my arm more and start adding ‘love’ at the end of sentences. I’m asked what my kid calls me. It doesn’t matter how masculine I am, or how masculine I appeared two minutes ago: my being trans trumps me being a man or me being masculine.
Me being a trans man means I am no longer viewed as any type of man.
That’s without all the trans talking points with which I get flooded, or the influx of references to “biological” men and women. It’s without cis men hushing bawdy conversations because I’m supposedly “innocent” (suddenly) or cis women asking personal questions about my body or making minute comparisons of various aspects of their anatomy to mine — without a thought to the fact they’d never do so to a cis man, or that what they’re doing is holding me in femaleness.
I soon get the message: ‘We the Cis’ view you as a woman, either deluded or brave (depending on whether we ‘support’ you), who wants to be a man. Maybe because I’ve convinced myself that it’s the only route out of the victim role of ‘relentlessly downtrodden woman’.
Hence the misogynistic victim/virgin narratives against trans men, which can be summarised basically as: “confused little girls, easily led by friends and TikTok trends.”
This ‘victim’ portrayal is so egregious that the entire UK trans community is now in a situation where one de-transitioner’s tits (removed in an operation she asked for age 20) take precedence over the continued existence of countless trans people. Our literal lives.
Don’t get me wrong, I have sympathy for Bell’s predicament, but it’s severely limited. I think surgeons should respect the stated choice of a 20-year-old. I also think treating one woman’s boobs as more important than thousands of trans lives is hideous.
And ludicrous, until you really grasp that cisness trumps gender.
In that light, of course her breasts are more important. How could they not be?
Let’s return to the statistic showing how high the rates of suicides are for trans men and transmasculine teens. 51% of transmasculine youth attempt suicide.
FIFTY-ONE PERCENT.
If nothing else, that should tell you that what I’m saying is true. Trans men transition from a world in which our tits are viewed (unforgivably!) as more important than all those precious lives, to a world in which we are the ones whose lives matter less than one woman’s boobs.
I’ll repeat: Trans men do NOT transition ‘upwards’. All trans people are below all cis people.
One final point: erasure is not the boon that people struggling under the weight of negative visibility often think it is. If it was, suicide statistics for trans men wouldn’t be as bad as they are.
As a trans man, I see we suffer without any voice or acknowledgement. We’re constantly gaslit, even from our own ‘side’, into the idea that what we go through doesn’t matter. That we’re just complaining. That we have too much ‘male privilege’. I’ve even been told, “Typical man, centring yourself.”
My present pain, as a trans man, is erased, And my past, living in female form for 47 and a half years is erased to boot.
And aside from the fact there’s nothing intersectional, feminist, or even compassionate about doing that, the further fact is that, by consenting to trans men’s erasure, ‘our side’ do the far-right’s work for them.
The anti-trans lobby have spent a LOT of money keeping people’s attention on trans women, establishing it in people’s minds that ‘trans women are men’ while stripping trans men from almost every article, even when stories (such as trans men potentially being banned from men’s and women’s toilets) would have made great tabloid fodder.
So it wasn’t an accident.
In a social hate-narrative that frames trans women as ‘men’, visibilising trans men (who by that narrative are ‘women’) carries a clear risk that cis women will (a) sympathise with us and (b) realise trans rights are not in opposition to women’s rights after all — even if, ironically, they realise that through misgendering trans men.
They might start noticing the ‘trans men as victims’ trope and realise it has repercussions for cis women. They might notice the blatant misogyny of the language and Cass’ odd focus on young (18–25 year old) trans men in particular.
If trans men are ‘women’, and should be seen as unfit for their own bodily autonomy because they’re too easily led by friends and TikTok trends…
Then shouldn’t all cis women be seen that way?
This is where trans rights and abortion rights form a very direct line. But it isn’t through trans women. It’s through trans men.
It requires trans women to be hypervisible and hyper-demonised. Predator/whore figures.
And it requires trans men to be invisible, except as confused victim/virgin figures.
Both ‘less than’ anyone cis.
Everyone who calls themself a feminist, whether cis or trans, needs to stop perpetuating this. We have to wake up to the fact trans people of all genders are ‘less’ in a cis-supremacist world, and we have to start visibilising all the groups the anti-trans lobby want to erase.
They know what they’re doing.
We just have to stop consenting.
