collect from clark kent

gaymagick:

besttumblr:

there’s a difference between relating one’s experience of having privilege and relating it in a way that reads as privilege-bragging. i think this article, as only ONE reader comment so far has pointed out [check out autostraddle user “laura,” she’s a good writer as well] does not consistently make that difference clear. i typically like sebastian/xxboy and have looked up to him, and i know that it is difficult (linguistically, emotionally— although not, in the grand scheme of things, that difficult) to make the rhetorical move of acknowledging one’s own male privilege without seeming to condone it, but this article makes me more sad than inspired. 

not to say his experience is invalid, but like, i can never send this article to my parents, not after how much effort i’ve put into articulating that my transition is not about wanting to be elevated socially or treated “like a man” (in a stereotypical fashion). i can’t send it to my friends, to my professors. i want to be treated kindly, but i also want to stay angry about manhood and whiteness and what those things mean. 

in more general terms (because this isn’t like, a sebastian-attack situation, i’m just thinking through this stuff) it’s tough to disconnect “being treated respectfully in one’s gender” and “being treated with male privilege” (especially when white) when talking about the trans male experience. it’s nice to get treated appropriately. but those two things— respect and advantage— must be disconnected, urgently, swiftly, definitively. i want more stories that do that; i want to find the language to be able to do it myself.

yeah, that article makes me feel weird in a bad way for all the reasons besttumblr just articulated.

Oh god the bolded part. Keepin’ me up at night and shit. This analysis is REALLY real, and something I wish more transguywriterpeople would write about, but honestly this here critique is a great start.