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Interesting that you mention this.
There's a pattern in certain "women-only" public online spaces (like lolcow.farm for example) where people get quite paranoid about trying to identify which posters are actually male and which aren't. "That's a male way of writing", "that's a male opinion to hold", etc.
On the one hand, it's not surprising that a dynamic like this would develop in an anonymous or pseudonymous online space. If you want to have a community for only X, but the only way to identify if someone is an X or not is by their writing, then that's fertile ground for people to start making accusations. The interesting thing rather is that it would be harder for this dynamic to take root in a hypothetical "male-only" forum. It seems to me that there is no particular male way of thinking or male way of writing - a man can be anything (except, perhaps, a woman).
Similarly with your example of trying to identify the one trans person in a room. I'm not at all confident that I would by able to identify the one FTM in a room of men (even trying my best to ignore the fact that T can make FTMs look very convincing on a purely physical level). I don't know of any special pattern of "male behavior" that I could look for. There are loquacious men and terse men, autistic men and flamboyantly gay men, frat boys and feminine types and everything in between. Maybe if I asked pointed questions about gender relations and politics then I could be pretty accurate. But if all I had to go on was "tiny tells and minutiae of body language"? No way. And I don't think that's just me being on the spectrum - I think men are just too varied in their presentation and comportment.
I think there's this idea, consciously or unconsciously, that women have a certain special "it" factor (an "it" that could, among other things, identify them as women to other women, as you suggest), and this idea helps explain both why some MTFs want to transition in the first place (they want to have "it") and also why people react so negatively to MTFs: they're transgressing on restricted territory in the social-symbolic space that doesn't belong to them.
FTMs don't draw the same ire because maleness is the position of universality rather than particularity. A man can be anything and anyone can be a man (sort of). It's a public park rather than a gated community.
The "it" is basically automatic Wonderfulness, an automatic halo effect. Hence why MTF trans garner much more controversy than FTM.
MTFs are often viewed as attempting to steal the valor of women, attempting to co-opt the Wonderfulness, privileges, and protections usually afforded to women. In contrast, FTMs are attempting life on a more difficult setting, which may just garner an understanding pat-on-the-back from the bros.
Sometimes TERFs and the like have momentary blue screens of deaths where they wonder "Are we the baddies? Is my opposition to MTF transsexuals rooted in... misandry?"
Maleness is open league. Sports provide literal examples of open leagues, where “men’s” professional sports teams are actually sex-agnostic. It's not the case for women's sports, e.g., the WNBA, WTA, etc., spaces carved out for women to play.
Bathrooms are another example. Men using women's bathrooms is far less accepted than women using men's bathrooms. It's pretty much a regular occurrence in nightlife, that women will use men's bathrooms. It's also another opportunity for chicks to double dip in attention whoring and advertising their wares for male attention: Ugh, why are these thirsty scrotes staring at us while we elephant-walk past them to use their bathroom.
Doesn't sound reasonable, TERFS are usually down with the misandry.
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Will your opinion change when technology advances enough that biological cis women are no longer necessary for reproduction?
Already you sure maleness has no privilege in and out of itself? By default, men are taken far more seriously in professional situations, have medical professionals disbelieve their medical conditions less often, get sexually harassed a lot less, and the ability to cooperate easily with other men is a certainly advantage. It depends on what you’re after, but if you’re trying to say, be a successful businessperson, being a woman can be a double edged sword - the extra attention you get from men comes with strings attached. As a male if you have an investor or customer interested in you, you can be pretty sure it’s because they’re interested in the business and not because they want to sleep with you.
Also, why does it make you angry? What impact is there on your life that some trans women out there pass and get treated socially as women?
Men are also more likely to be abandoned to their fate if they are marginal (see the homelessness rates) and I don't see why I'd give men "privilege" for the ability to cooperate with each other unless I also gave them a malus for being more likely to violently assault one another and attribute the absence of that amongst women to "female privilege".
IME few feminist or purveyor of privilege theory do this. In fact, they seem to do the opposite: men's heightened risk of assault and violence and longer prison sentences are the result of "toxic masculinity" (with the not-subtle implication that it is men's fault and issue, unlike problems that impact women) and women are EDIT: not privileged for avoiding it.
What if I, as a man, want to be a successful kindergarten teacher?
A stay-at-home dad?
And what about all of the benefits that can come from leveraging sexuality? Or just the general "women are wonderful" effect?
“Privilege” is a loaded word and I personally don’t like it.
My point is that maleness has intrinsic advantages. So does femaleness. Those advantages may be more or less relevant to you, and it doesn’t mean there aren’t any drawbacks; an advantage in one area does not necessarily nullify a disadvantage in another.
Historically, men’s ability to co-operate in large hierarchical social structures was hugely beneficial, and the aggression was harnessed towards the “enemy”. That competitive streak can still be an advantage today.
Men are generally more aggressive due to testosterone and a culture that perpetuates and encourages male aggression. Women tend to be hyper vigilant about the risks of being assaulted while men are the opposite - I had a lot of guys surprised at how I’m always paranoid walking alone at night or being suspicious of male strangers.
Women would be more likely to be successful at those, yes. Pros and cons.
As I said, double edged sword. Not everyone is comfortable with leveraging their sexuality and there are risks; some men will blacklist you because you didn’t sleep with them, and sleeping your way to the top is a reputation hazard. Wouldn’t you rather be valued for your skills and abilities rather than your success be based on how much men want to have sex with you? The latter is quite dehumanising.
Here's a claim I'll put out there: men are already largely valued by how much women want to have sex with them. Or speaking more precisely, there are certain markers of social fluency / status / desirability that matter more, when it comes to making snap social judgments regarding a man's value, than his skills and abilities. This is where you get anecdotes like this one related in Chapter 3 of Volume I of Feynman's Lectures on Physics, in which the nuclear scientist's girlfriend laughs at his attempt to demonstrate value through his (scientific) skills and abilities. Or alternatively, all the scoffing and schadenfreude-ing at Minecraft creator Notch for leading a life of loneliness despite creating the best-selling video game in history (although that can be argued to be driven by sour grapes ("I might not be friggin' rich like him, but at least I get poon!") and general antipathy towards his politics). Actually, it might be more apt to say in men's case that they are devalued by how much women don't want to have sex with them.
[ Note, by the way, that I'm talking about "value" here rather than "success" (the latter of which I'm taking to mean "success in a corporate / academic / career context", given that words like "skills and abilities" and "success" tend to be used more in that domain these days rather than, for instance "skills and abilities as a parent" or "skills and abilities as a Little League coach"), because I don't believe that career success and the like for women is all too tied to sex appeal. Here's an anecdote, but most high-achieving Women In STEM that I see are not lookers, to say the least. I've heard similar from people in other "intelligence-heavy" (so to speak) fields such as law. Now, maybe the situation is different in more public-facing or "soft-skills"-heavy roles like marketing or management - but frankly, we know that men in those areas are also selected for attractiveness. So if the claim is that women are only able to advance in their careers to the extent that they're attractive, then that's a claim that I personally don't buy. (I'm open to being persuaded otherwise.) ]
But returning to the original idea: if women value me because they all wanted to have sex with me - well, that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world by me. Of course, one could note that sex is for men what commitment is for women, and say that a fairer analogy would be to say "how would you feel if women valued you to the extent that they found you emotionally useful?" In that case, I wouldn't be quite as happy; but to say that this analogy would be fairer would be to ignore a key component of what it means for a man to be sexually attracted to a woman. It's the same component that's ignored when women get mad at guys for asking them on dates after a long period of friendship: "Uggh, he only wanted to use me for sex?" No: for a man (going by my own experiences and those of other men I know), when you're attracted to a woman sexually, then everything about her becomes more attractive. Her jokes become funnier; her insights more profound. It leads to a self-reinforcing feedback loop of attraction (because when these other qualities become more attractive, then this raises the level of physical attraction as well). Take that into consideration and being valued as a woman because a guy wants to have sex with you seems pretty nice, given that it comes as a package deal with him valuing you as an intellect and a wit.
Then again, this entire post is largely a "grass is greener"-type situation, now, isn't it. I do stand by the claims that "men are devalued by how much women don't want to have sex with them" and "being valued as a woman for your sexual attractiveness is pretty nice", but I understand that it's not necessarily all peaches and cream.
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I'm not sure if I'm just reading more into the word choice than is warranted, but I'm not sure how it could be dehumanizing. Men mostly aren't interested in having sex with non-humans, and furthermore, that's a pretty critical part of how we make more humans, which is a pretty significant aspect of being a human. Perhaps it'd be insulting in certain contexts, in that it feels better if one's own success in a field is from one's competence in the field rather than one's sexual attractiveness (holding incompetence constant, it's also an open question if it's preferable to have success in the field due to one's sexual attractiveness compared to having non-success in the field due to one's incompetence being accurately assessed). But I don't see how it's dehumanizing. I'd see it as the exact opposite, if anything.
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I completely agree with you on FTM transitioners. They don't really interest me, they're not what the debate is about and nobody except butch lesbians upset that most of their peers are becoming transmen cares all that much about them as an issue.
I mean, I care because I want them kicked out of gay spaces.
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