Welcome to Manhood

Suddenly everybody’s listening and taking you seriously? I have a guess why…

A young white man in a baseball cap blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. Photo by Krišjānis Kazaks on Unsplash.

I got a question in my Tumblr ask box this morning from a trans guy who has found that since coming out, people shower him with respectful attention, trust, and warmth. Rather than behaving with entitlement toward his body or life story, cis people seem to intuitively love him now, want him to be included in their spaces, and treat his emotions with deference, never wanting to offend him. He’s wondering if there is some kind of “opposite of transphobia” that explains why he’s been treated as so special.

(And not to spoil my whole response, but yeah, there is! There is in fact an experience in the world that’s diametrically opposed to gender marginalization, a form of gendered power status that does get a person assigned immense social value seemingly no matter what they do. It’s called sexism, or patriarchy, or more controversially male privilege).

Here’s the ask:

My brother dear, what you are experiencing is a very common combination of the growing visibility & tokenization of being a newly-out marginalized person, and the massive increased…