any statistic that shows that trans men are more oppressed than trans women or vice versa feels irrelevant because the difference is always negligible and changes between studies. i’ve seen studies that say trans women are sexually assaulted more often, that trans men are sexually assaulted more often, that trans women are more likely to live in poverty, that trans men are more likely to live in poverty - you get the gist - both while doing my own research and from sources i’ve been given by other people
the majority of the time the full picture is trans people do not have wildly different experiences from each other. the majority of the time race is more of an influence in the violence trans people face than their gender. unfortunately, people use statistics to fuel their confirmation bias over petty “trans men are more oppressed” and “trans women are more oppressed” discourse that does nothing but make talking about transphobia an active minefield.
i see this especially when people argue against statistics that don’t fit their own narrative of one kind of transphobia being worse than the other argue that it’s because hyperinvisibility makes it go underreported, while simultaneously ignoring or downplaying the invisibility that the other side faces. it’s all blatantly biased
this isn’t to say transmisogyny and antitransmasculinity have no meaningful differences, they do, but the idea that one is provably “worse” is almost never backed up by in-depth research and usually stems from the biased perspective of one person who only experiences one kind of oppression and not the other, and automatically assumes that the other one isn’t as bad because they haven’t seen the full extent of it
it’s inherently a losing battle and ultimately just takes away from discussions of transmisogyny and antitransmasculinity by turning what could’ve been valuable essays and theory into pissing contests that barely even talk about transmisogyny or antitransmasculinity
the moral of the story is you people need to listen to each other more
Transmasc and transfem people experience different forms of oppression (and we should listen to each other to learn more about that)
But arguing about who is oppressed more and who is less privileged isn’t productive. It’s not a contest and we should not be enemies.
Even if one group is more oppressed than the other, it wouldn’t make a difference to the fact that we need to listen to each other about the unique forms of oppression each of us face.
Thank you, @w1cked-w1tch , for invoking the phrase Oppression Olympics.
