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Most people realise that the transgender community has a lot less privilege than everyone who is cisgender. However, people sometimes seem to forget that being transgender doesn’t get rid of other privileges. This is because a lack of cisgender privilege doesn’t automatically lead to a lack of white, straight, male and even passing privilege too.
The transgender community (as well as the rest of the LGBTQ+ community) is almost always only ever portrayed as white people. Although these people within the community are clearly valid, so are the transgender people of colour the media often chooses to ignore. So contrary to popular belief, trans people of colour DO EXIST. The exact same goes towards the fact that the transgender community is mostly seen as just men. Trans women are rarely seen and nonbinary people are seen even less. I’ve heard far too many binary transgender people forget that being part of the gender binary means more privilege and often being validated more than those who aren’t and as a transgender boy myself I can’t say I’m not guilty of it too. For those who don’t agree that transgender women of colour are more oppressed than transgender men, then maybe you should just know that 26 people from the transgender community were murdered during 2016 and a total of two were FTM (female to male).
Whether you’re homophobic or not, you can’t deny the fact that straight people have more rights. So of course just because someone is part of the “T” in “LGBTQ+”, doesn’t mean they can’t have the same rights as those who aren’t part of any of the identities within the community.
In addition to this, something that gives us transgender folks more rights is when we “pass”. If you don’t know what “passing” is, it’s when a transgender person is seen as the gender they identify as. Passing privilege definitely isn’t something that goes just for those who are men but for transgender women too. It just means that if a trans person is out in public, and they are passing, they won’t receive the same comments that those who aren’t passing may get on a daily base.
Despite all of this, this is just most of the time. People like Laverne Cox, a black trans woman, is a good example of a celebrity in the LGBTQ+ community who receives a lot of (although not enough) recognition. Another transgender POC who has recently been gaining popularity is Ian Alexander, an actor on Netflix’s original “The OA”. However other than them, how many other transgender POC do you see in the media? Not many.
It’s about time that us as the transgender community, whether you are white, male, cis-passing, or straight, realise that our transgender identity doesn’t erase all our other privileges.
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