alarajrogers:

freedom-of-fanfic:

Me: 

Misogyny certainly has a hideous and profound effect on the world, but it’s not the sole root of all gendered evils

Also me: 

penis privilege isn’t the root of everything wrong with the world

You: [this ask]

Anyway, I think we can all agree that a lot of hideous shit is perpetuated on people born with vaginas of all genders and that people born with penises are, in general, less prone to experiencing violence based on their genitals … until people born with penises start presenting as anything other than male. In other words: the only people experiencing penis privilege is cis males and being born with a penis is dangerous as fuck for anyone else. 

In other, other words: it’s not just having a penis that creates privilege. (Not to mention all the other reasons humanity finds to dehumanize or declare one another of lesser value, like race or what region they come from or religion or on and on ad infinitum)

Even cis males who are not gender-conforming to whatever their current social standards for gender conformity are end up in a lot of danger. They may still have privilege, but it comes at a terrible price. There was a cis, het man, married to a woman, who was shot and murdered by a homophobe because he was holding his wife’s purse for her while she went to the restroom. (I can’t find the link; this was years ago and far too many men have been shot by cops for holding wallets since.) And gay men have historically faced enormous violence, moreso than lesbians, for being gay.

The other thing I’d like to point out is that men are the violence class, and I’m not actually sure we can argue that people born with penises are less prone to experiencing violence based on their genitals. Like, very, very few people set out to murder a man because he’s a man as opposed to an Adjective man, where Adjective is seen as the reason for the murder. But… 80% of all murder victims are men. 90% of all murderers are also men, but this isn’t much consolation for the dead guys. I feel like we’re missing something when we analyze sex-based violence. Violence done to women is usually done because they are women, and yet, far more fatal violence is done to men. Could the very fact that we don’t notice that they are men specifically, that women are the gender-marked class and men are thought of as default humans, be hiding the fact that being male marks you as an “appropriate” recipient for violence? Or the fact that all of our paradigms for understanding oppression center around inter-group oppression (X group oppresses Y group and there is very little overlap between X and Y) and not intra-group oppression, where the same group is oppressing other members of the group? Is it even oppression then or is it something else?

Mind you, I’m not saying men have it worse. When we’re not looking at violence, things like the fact that men think women talk too much when women are talking more than 30% of the time, that all the burden of elder care usually falls on women when there’s no biological reason why that should happen, that women are more likely to live in poverty, that women’s ability to control our own reproduction and our own sexuality is always under attack in a way that no het man has ever suffered… overall I’m pretty damn sure women have it worse. But when we are looking at violence toward people based on their gender… women are singled out for violence because of their gender, and yet the male gender experiences a lot more violence-related fatality. There’s something wrong with our models here that we’re missing that.