[This was a “Reflection Paper” that I wrote for an assignment in a first semester class – Diversity, Racism, Oppression and Privilege – as an MSW student at NYU. It focuses on some issues impacting the transgender community. I wrote this in 2016, some of my views have shifted from what I wrote here. It was also written from my own experience as a woman who is transgender, so it doesn’t refer to men who are transgender. The beginning of the last paragraph – discussing issues of oppression – unfortunately may be more true now than it was in 2016]
Kai Cheng Thom touched upon several elements of my own identity as a transwoman which fall all along the spectrum from oppressed to privileged in her article.[i] In this context it seems correct to label it from “oppressed to privileged” rather than the other way around as those aspects of my identity that are privileged, as they intersect my transgender identity, really just create privilege within a generally oppressed identity.
Thom describes clinical assessment of transgender client identities, assessing the “validity” of that identity, resulting in “transgender identity [becoming] defined in terms of disgust, hatred, dysphoria, disease” with our bodies “[becoming] a condition to be cured, a mistake to be corrected, freakish, abominations.” She acknowledges that the standards are becoming “more flexible” over time, but clinical standards, often driven by WPATH, are still quite restrictive and excessively rigorous, increasing the barriers that many transwomen face in transitioning (those of us who are interested in transitioning).
One result, as Thom describes, is a narrative adopted by transgender women, that comes out as “[s]ince childhoold, I’ve felt like I was born in the wrong body.” She describes this as “a phrase that I knew would unlock the door to medical care [she] needed, as it has for so many transpeople before.” I share Thom’s experience in that I didn’t feel since childhood that I was born in the wrong body (at least I don’t remember feeling that way as a child), and I felt the oppression of that standard narrative, if I didn’t feel X, then am I really transgender? My own “liberation” from that belief came when I read Janet Mock’s “Redefining Realness” in which she shared her own memories which resonated strongly with me and did not include the standard “born in the wrong body” narrative.
The other side of the spectrum from the “body failure” perspective is the concept of “passing.” Thom describes passing, as it applies to transpeople, as “the experience of being able to go undetected as trans” and something that means “access to employment, relative safety, friendship, dating, social services.” While acknowledging the existing of a “passing privilege” within the trans community, she also recognizes its fragility in that “sooner or later, the moment comes when even the ‘best-looking’ trans person who has completed all of the steps of medical transition does not pass.”
I think “passing privilege” is perhaps a bit more broad than “being able to go undetected as trans,” and perhaps includes the notion – that I think applies in my own case – that even if I am perceived as trans, it is clear to most people that I identity as a woman based on numerous gender markers (hair, clothing, make-up, etc.). Conversely, I also recognize that this perception might be a projection of my own fear that I don’t “pass” as a woman. As Thom notes, one moment when the idea of passing might fail is when we look in the mirror. It can be very hard in that situation to be truly objective about whether you pass or not. While “passing” may be a privileged aspect of my identity within the trans community, being transgender itself remains an oppressed identity, as a quick search of the news on almost any day will reveal. Although I’ve faced relatively limited direct oppression myself, I am still impacted by the societal structures and norms that try to stigmatize and delegitimize transgender identity. Most notably the recent passage of “bathroom bills” around the country and news reports of murders and assaults of transgender women. There is fortunately a growing movement towards greater acceptance, most notably in a number of actions taken by the Obama Administration (allowing trans people to openly serve in the military, making it easier to correct your gender through Social Security, etc.).
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