Self-Organizing Man

What It Means to be White and FtM

March 23, 2006 – 7:27 am

Below is a draft of what’s been on my mind of late about white FtMs. Feedback greatly appreciated.

One of the common phrases I hear from white feminist women is that my now privileged status as a man stems from my gender. I hate this argument . Not because it isn’t true, but because it is narrow. So narrow, in fact, that it overlooks/denies/obsfucates race.

If my privilege were only about my gender, then FtMs of all colors would exist as equals with me in the gender hierarchy. I believe they don’t.

This is a dicey topic for white feminists and white FtMs. piny, a blogger never afraid to take on hard conversations, writes:

That’s a big one. I’ve been leery of posting about it because it seems to give white ftms an opportunity to use intersectionality to deny the existence of the privilege that _they_ enjoy as people who move through the world as white men: because “male privilege” is complicated for ftms of color, it does not exist for any ftms. They point to racism both to deny their race-dependent privilege and to obfuscate the way in which racism functions to regulate privilege.

What piny describes, I think, is part of understanding how race functions within the lives of white FtMs. I would also add that white FtMs point to racism to underscore the transphobia they experience.

White Ftms get to do this because we are taught through a variety of spoken and unspoken messages that we do not have a race. (Remember, it is by my choice that I claim my race. Society does not require it of me in the way it requires it of Imani Henry.) Since we white FtMs do not have a race, we are just like everyone else. Since we are just like everyone else, the racism FtMs of color experience is just like the transphobia I might experience as a man.

As white FtMs and our white allies find out all too quickly, that system of thinking holds no merit with people of color. As Puckfinn writes on Dirty Girl From ill :

When the transmen that I know walk down the street they are not easily identifiable as anything other than male and indeed, most of them are easily identifiable as white males. When I walk down the street I am always identified/judged/marginalized because of the longstanding stereotypes that are (present in the minds of Americans) perpetuated in the media. The FIRST thing that people see about me is my race not my gender presentation.I am only one, so I am speaking only for myself, but please… keep me out of your examples. I already keep you out of mine.

I want to end by stating that piny’s observation that white FtMs use racism and my observation that white FtMs use what I call the “we’re all the same everywhere” argument (perhaps others have a different phrase?) are just two of the many ways race privilege functions within white FtM communities. The tools of race privilege seem innumerable to me now, nearly twenty years into doing this Work.

In using either of these two methods/mechanisms (tools?) white FtMs, indeed, in piny’s words, “obfuscate the way in which racism functions to regulate privilege.”

More soon.