[theoddz]

Interesting that this topic should come up, because I was just discussing this with my coworker yesterday. I had been kind of "thinking aloud" in the office between rounds while we were sitting on our collective arses (ya, we do that..sometimes a LOT).

I'm still not totally used to, nor comfortable with receiving the benefits of male privilege in my world. I guess I spent too many years in a female skin, looking from the outside in, into an body and a world that I felt I should had and should have been part of, from the time I drew my first breaths. I've never forgotten, nor do I ever want to, the feeling that I had to justify my opinions, my actions, my professionalism, whathaveyou...because of the body I was born in to. Looking at it now, I can see the behaviors that cause feelings of being "second class" and it causes a sinking, sickening feeling in my gut. If I don't like that feeling, and I certainly don't....why would anyone else??

In my life, I have known and had, as role models, so many fierce, strong, loving members of the female gender. These women certainly had no reason whatsoever to play second fiddle to anyone. My mother who, born in 1922, was so much NOT a woman of her time, has always seemed to harbor such resentment that she was denied so much for no other reason other than her femaleness. When she was a young woman, working at Shaffer Pen Co., women kept their employment until 6 months after they were married...then Shaffer let them go. Like Mother's mother before, Mother has always had a very thinly veiled deep resentment of men while, at the same time, they both dutifully followed their own generational teachings of "how to be a woman and graciously and willingly let men come first". I hate that, yet I love my mother and the way she raised me to never take second best, not even to men, even though that was the way she was raised. It's this very teaching, and yes, she taught my sister and I what she was taught, but yet she also taught us how to be strong and how to survive life's struggles and still come out on top, or at least "okay". She taught us, the best she could, how to come into our own, no matter what.....and not be ashamed or apologetic for it. Mother was ahead of her time and had 2 unsuccessful marriages to prove it.

I have both sides of this. Transition has caused me to take a good look at all of this. I can't change what I've lived, nor can I change the lessons of growing up as I did. I can grieve the (lost/denied) boyhood and yet journey into manhood the best way I can, trying to reconcile the resentment with the newfound "privilege", but I never, ever want to forget just who I am. This has been not what I'd call "hard" to do, but it has presented with its own strange and sometimes very uncomfortable conundrums along the way. I want to keep that part of me that will always and forever be "my mother's daughter", in all that strength and perseverance, but I also need to be the man I am, too. I need to keep that in-between, yet righteous perspective and try to stay aware of my own perspective and not just blindly follow and fall in line with the bad side of societal pressures. I think that if I can graciously carry and balance what I have learned with what I have been taught, then I can be a good ally....and a better man. I need to combine listening to my sisters' voices with the charge of my own manhood. Share limelight, instead of just taking it. Does that make sense??

I think there is a gracious way of handling privilege. You share it by shifting it over to others, and that's what I do in my job and whenever/wherever I can. I have found that, especially when I'm around other (cis) men, this is something that's not easy to do, because most guys seem to always be clamoring for their own masculinity amongst other males, and this is even more true for us men who have had to transition and find our own place amongst our (cis) brothers. But, when a question is aimed at me, whether or not I recognize it or not as being due to my maleness, I defer to my female colleagues (in the work environment, for example) and get them to offer their input. I try to make it a point to actively insert them and take the focus of "unique male credibility" off of myself. When there have been other (cis) males around, I seem to always get those looks that seem to convey both disbelief and a bit of anger/betrayal that a fellow male would defer to the females. So there's peer pressure to exclude, too. I think that tearing down privilege is a lot about sharing empowerment. It's about public rejection, in a lot of ways, I think. If you refuse to take it for your own....if you have the guts to turn it down...then you can dismantle it, chunk by chunk. I just think that that is sometimes hard for the average person to do because, by nature, many of us are so self-focused. As transmen/FtMs, we're just not used to having it, and when it is finally granted to us and we're accepted into "The Boys' Club", it's like having walked through a desert and finally being offered a drink of water. We're there. We've arrived. We're finally accepted.....and we'll do anything it takes to keep it that way, even if it's wrong and keeping it means that we have to keep up status quo at the expense of those who are still being denied.

Thanks for this thread. I think this needs to be discussed.

Respectfully,
~Theo~