Men with boobs.

[Medusa]

Originally Posted by Heart

What I'm talking about has nothing to do with Cynthia's partner's id. It doesn't matter if she's butch, trans, andro, sporty or none of those. It's the way Cynthia chose to describe her masculine female partner as a MAN because that is the only way she can be understood since masculinity CANNOT, apparently belong to a women. That's my point.

Now. If her partner was, in fact, a man and/or if she came out as a transman tomorrow, the interesting thing is that I think we'd hear a whole lot of hulabaloo about how transphobic Nixon's comment was. Would any of us refer to Chaz Bono or any of our FtM brethern as "men with boobs?" It would be considered highly disrespectful.

And that's my other point: the privileging of men/male identity over women/female identity.

Heart

Ah, see, now we're talking!
See, when I read that she is describing her masculine female partner as a man, I first wondered if she was just trying to get people who dont have the language that we have to understand. Thinking futher though, I wondered if she was describing her masculine female partner that way because she knows something that we dont know (the whole hypothesis about how her partner may or may not self-identify her gender).

I do definitely agree that there is privileging in the identity of men/male over the woman/female...until there isnt. For the most part, this exists on a grand scale throughout just about every corner of society, but then I think of Femme privilege in context with my Butch partner experiencing homophobia and Im able to see cracks in my (once-solid) little gender vase.