Trans Women Don’t Have ‘Male Privilege’ — We Have Something Way More Complicated
We must be accurate in our understanding of how privilege is given and received.
B y now you’ve probably read all about the comments Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie made in her Channel 4 interview — the ones where she said trans women have experienced “the privileges that the world accords to men” and was unable to call us women without qualification. Or you’ve read the more recent posts in which she doubled and tripled down on those statements. If you haven’t, take a minute to scan through, because they’re the basis of a journey we’re going to embark on together.
Back? I know, right? Wild.
In the days that followed the initial interview, it seemed like nearly the entire trans community pushed back as one against Adichie’s assertions; Laverne Cox told Twitter that she had been “bullied and shamed” for her feminine behavior as a child, Aaryn Lang started the sarcastic hashtag (sarcashtag?) #MalePrivilegeDiaries to document the violence transfeminine people experienced pre-transition, and countless think pieces remarked on how Adichie had seemingly abandoned her well-known maxim against only listening to a single story.
