Privilege

I was going to comment on the post this comment was made on but I think it deserves a complete post because as is the norm for Black Swan she completely gets it wrong. The following is Ms. Swan's comment and after that is my commentary.

Black Swan said...

You see Elizabeth I feel I’m very privileged and it has nothing to do with the hard work I put in my career or life. At the age I transitioned at I’m also extremely lucky and privileged to pass as well as I do sans my height. My education and work experience, I cannot deny, also helped me in several different careers. One of those careers placed me in a unique position to help other transsexual/transgender people with civil rights and access to medical care specific to transition related services. I know you cringe at the thought of those two terms (“TS/TG”) in close proximity. 

I’ve said this before, there are successful individuals who have forgotten the societal roots of their success or vigorously deny the role of social forces in their good fortune. They use inherited privilege or societal investment to get ahead yet work to eliminate opportunities for others. Mark Twain did a fantastic job of revealing the lie of the Alger story, “The Story of the Bad Little Boy Who Did Not Come to Grief” in 1865, “The Story of the Good Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper” in 1870 and “Poor Little Stephen Girard” in 1879. 

I find it comical when an individual feels compelled to re-frame luck and privilege into primarily the sweat of her own brow. Why you lived, and lived successfully, many of us have died. You are also quite dismissive and flippant about that. I’ve read somewhere of a low estimate that 50,000 have perished from prejudice, murder and suicide, yet you constantly belittle and berate those that do not fit your mold of perfection and are conveniently silent when that individual kills themselves or is murdered. You relish to employ a double speak—condemn others yet when that other dies proffer a perfunctory salutation to spin your deleterious comment. 

There is a reticent individual that posts on your site from time to time that IMHO is your peer; age & academically, which I only see one difference—the age in which you both transitioned and how that fact effects your privilege or lack thereof. Lets face it we are judged on how we look; body, face, voice and deportment. I’m sure you were quite the dish when you transitioned, which in many ways afforded you many of life’s benefits, namely the ability to receive the love you wanted. The other must roam the earth like some post apocalyptic scavenger for life’s little moments of happiness, scraping by, having to assuage their tears from the queer looks of the society, living with blinders betwixt their bitter gall of envy. I see a beautiful little girl hiding behind inside a broken body playing the sweet tones of a banjo to sooth her soul. 

One grows up in a liberal home that is progressive enough to see the problem and correct it while the other must grow up around a conservative religious environment that is not, at all, permissive of difference. There is an old phrase tossed around the old guard: Passing is life. So binary--Not passing is…. You get the idea.

May 9, 2013 at 2:02 PM  

As is usual you dismiss me as some uncaring individual who somehow has forgotten her place by succeeding and not paying back her so-called luck and privilege. What you really mean is I have not helped all the late transitioning men who have passed laws to protect the life and "privileges" they gained as a men. Let them accept the station in life they would have had if they had been women and maybe we will sympathize  They get to keep their jobs gained on the backs of women not because they deserved to but because they were transgender and fucking men. Now I am supposed to feel sorry for them and consider myself "privileged" because I somehow managed to be a "dish". How very manly of you Black Swan!!

Passing or even being beautiful is privilege? Well I guess that means all the ugly and plain women in the world are under-privileged, but oops in your world they are privileged because they are natal women. You completely miss what every MTF transsexual I have known desires more than anything. All we wanted form life was the honor of being female and a woman and it is an honor because it carries no advantages other than being whom we should have been at birth. Let me get that and I will take what comes after and work hard and be the single best woman I can be.

I am willing to bet in 15 years you will be telling Jazz and the other young transsexuals that melt into society that they are also "privileged". Of course if you have your way she will be an "out" and "proud" transgender woman and label herself, like you have yourself, as something other than a woman for the rest of her life. Hell, if you had your way every natal woman would have to call herself cis-female or cis-woman just so she can be categorized as friend or foe. In all honesty it is a "privilege" to be a female and a woman but it is not a life of privilege you gain just the ability to be how you should have been born, but then you would not know what it means to work as a woman your entire life and be paid less by the very assholes you claim I should identify with somehow.

Just to set some facts straight, I grew up in a right wing religious family that saw the problem and tried to fix it but not in the way you think. Later in life my mom was very guilty over the results of the many Psychiatrists she sent me too or more aptly took me to be "cured" because they triggered every single suicide attempt. She did what she thought was right but she was wrong because they tried to enforce the stereotypical view of the time that I was just gay despite the simple fact they had a hard time remembering to use male pronouns when addressing me.

I bet you consider the fact I was a "pretty" boy or more accurately a very feminine boy a "privilege". You and your fellow ass-clowns have no clue because you did not live it. Many of you incorporated the narratives, nightmares is more apt, we lived through because it made you feel special. My privilege was police officers telling me, or more often my mother, in the hospital that boys will be boys and besides your son shouldn't look like he does. Like I had any options in changing my looks when I was young or the ability to fend away the threats.

The sad part is it was the same for many of my friends. we survived or they did because they did not give up. I tried to give up 6 times and was "lucky" to survive two of them including the last rites twice for someone that was not even Catholic but then I was privileged to "experience" that. When I knew I could fulfill what my life revolved around, becoming a complete girl, I never wavered once in the 11 years it took from 14 to 25 to reach my goal of SRS. I have never had a single thought of suicide since then.  Funny how that works.

I was lucky in many ways. I was lucky that a boy refused to let me push him out of m life because I feared he would hurt me like all his friends had in High School. I think it was more love than luck but that boy saved my life. He prevented my last suicide which would have been successful if the attempt was made and helped lead me to Dr. Benjamin's doorstep with my mom and his parents. want to know why he began to like me?  I was the first "geek" that did not talk down to him when tutoring him and I helped him get good grades.

The irony of this is he witnessed many of the beatings I took and he watched as I was tripped deliberately and fell down the granite steps of my High School and ended up with a broken arm and collarbone. I learned later he beat his friend senseless for doing it but in those days nobody supported the feminine boy publicly but then that is privilege somehow I gather. Do you want to know why all us old timers know all the frauds. They glorify it like it was some rite of passage they bravely endured yet somehow managed to successfully pass through and manage to marry a woman and then be outraged when the wife does not "support" her "husband" as he becomes a woman or half-woman a lot of the times.

We pushed the issue because we had no choice. We all knew we would rather be dead than ever give into society's requirement that we be boys. We knew we could not be boys because we were girls even if it meant taking a lower station in life and believe me they reminded all of us about that all the time.

I had the crap kicked out of me, as did my friends, on a nearly daily basis but I know I pushed every limit and every button I could to make them see me as the girl I knew I was. I took risks that put my life in danger and decided to be as feminine as possible for the 1950's which meant just enough not to get arrested. My neighbor tried to rape me once when I was 12 and finally succeeded in February of 1960 when I was 14 and had been on hormones for several months but then I was privileged to pass and had the "honor"of being "raped" by a man that wanted to teach me what it meant to be a woman, just like the men in dresses try and tell me what it means to be a woman. Chuck had about as much knowledge of what it means to be a woman as you and your pals do, which is not a damn clue. For this "privilege" had had my skull fractured, was anally raped and had the same privilege as other women of the day when they blamed me for the rape because of "how I was". Thankfully I have no memory of the physical rape but I sure was sore when I woke up in Intensive Care in Massachusetts General. I still have a reminder with the indentations where they relieved the pressure on my brain but then that is "privilege".

Your concept of privilege is just jealousy and the real sickness in your jealousy is you expect people like me to feel for some man in a dress that still maintains his pleasure organ the same way I feel for those I know were born transsexual and managed to contain it until it became to much. Your problem is you consider us elite when we look at some asshole man in a dress and say he is a man in a dress because we feel SRS is a requirement or at least a long life as a woman hiding the fact you never had SRS. Your exhibitionist transvestite friends love the publicity and I am supposed to support them. I wish them no harm but they can go fuck themselves before I would consider them women because the simple truth is if we met when we were younger they would have been trying to figure out how to get into my panties. It is just what men do and they are heterosexual men.

You demean me as "lucky' and "privileged" and of course add the caveat you feel privileged as a carrot but the simple truth is nobody born transsexual is either fucking "lucky" or "privileged", but then that has always completely escaped you because, as we both know, you are deeply pissed off by your station in life and extremely jealous of anyone that has had an actual normal life. That is why you throw the cis bullshit around I am quite proud of being considered a cis female because that means I succeeded and that upsets you.

You are incapable of accepting the simple fact that once a transsexual has SRS they are no longer transsexual because they have "crossed" over to the correct sex as closely as possible. Those of you that are afraid to or unwilling to realize this simple fact are losers because you will never understand the joys of simply being a woman. No excuses. No privileges.  Being a woman has no privileges unless of course you consider the simple fact we have accepted ourselves as women a privilege which I kind of feel is the crux of the your problem in life.

How dare you claim I am conveniently silent when my sisters have died. You pathetic wanker. I have had the misfortune of losing 2 extremely close friends to suicide and another to the butchery of a man.  The one butchered by as man, pre-op in NYC, gave me and my friend Lana the "privilege" of identifying her in the morgue while the police laughed at her because they considered this beautiful person a man. We both told them to shut the fuck up. We then had the "privilege of watching her parents dress her as a man and bury her as such in Ohio.

You talk of leaders but your concept of leadership is one that supports the transgender men playing at being a girl and when it comes to that I have no concept of what leading means and refuse to. You expect us to willingly allow ourselves to be labeled transsexual or transgender for life and quite bluntly I left that behind 42+ years ago.

It is true we are judged by how we look but it only becomes a cross when you let it. It is part of life and a superficial part at that but it is what it us like being a woman and you make it sound like it is something only you and your male pals in skirt and heels have felt.That is actually not a problem with passing it is a problem with being identified as a man in a dress. What it comes down to is men are lazy and they have their stereotypical idea of what a woman is. Big boobs, short skirts, long hair, tons of makeup, super high heels so they are stunned when they get read as 62 year old men when they exit male mode and foray into woman mode dressed like a 23 year old trashy hooker. Look at T-central for a myriad of wonderful examples.

The real problem is our male pals do not want to accept subservient roles in the world of women because after all, as men, they know everything about what it means to be a woman. Just ask them or have the misfortune to read the dribble you post and it is clear none of you have a clue.

I and many of my friends have spend a lot of money helping other transsexuals but we draw the line at the transgendered transvestite. I have been involved closely in helping 9 young transsexuals between the ages of 13-15 travel this road and I have spent a lot of my hard earned money doing it. Counting the two currently in the queue it is 9 and one teenager whose SRS and travel I paid for to Thailand. All out of pocket without the need for publicity unless I have to mention it to some coconut like you.

Nothing is impossible if you work hard enough at it and that goes for many who cannot pass. They do not work at it and many do not care.  It is a little game of power politics to them. I comment of the stupidity of the transgender community and do not have to belittle them because they do it to themselves.

You are so typical of this modern society and so are your transvestite pals. If it isn't given to you on a silver platter you demand laws and regulations be passed to make you safer and women less safe. Men shitting on women again is all it is. I often wonder how many of these late transitioners would go through with it if they had to start from scratch? Funny how they manage to keep everything gained as a man and that includes the attempt to keep the wife as a trophy because of course she loves her man even when he isn't. Give them all your money and tell they are free and see how long they stay around in their new lesbian relationship or is that non-sexual relationship which is a fucking total joke.

I do not nor does any woman that was born transsexual owe anyone a goddamn thing after they have SRS. The only thing they owe is to themselves and that is to lead a good productive life as a woman. we do not owe a damn thing to any man wearing a dress, claiming to be a woman when he keeps his penis because it is his pleasure organ. If we decide to give back we do it in a way that is best for us and not for some nimrod like you.

Life is a privilege and it is what we all receive when we are born. You may be born into money which may or may not be a privilege. Being born transsexual is neither lucky nor a privilege and being a feminine boy is not a privilege and you would know that if you lived it but then you think you know it all, you do not.

You get out of life what you put into it. I have worked hard to be a success. I have given back a lot. I have lived a good life and have been a good person. I do not suffer fools nor perverts well so beware.