In no particular order, I’ve written down my thoughts and feelings about masculinity after attending the Forge Forward 2007 conference:

1. White privilege remains entrenched within white trans male space.
2. In the privilege workshop I attended, several white trans men expressed ambivalence about owning their privilege.
3. When they did own it, they apologized for it.
4. Male privilege doesn’t feel like much when you are a very slight, femme-y, trans guy who gets gay-based…alot.
5. Male privilege seems harder to understand in the absence of understanding race privilege.
6. Even if genders disappeared tomorrow, we would still have to address race hatred and ableism.
7. Several trans men have become even stronger feminists and anti-racists activists since transition and want to use their newly found privilege to work within their various communities to dismantle sexism, racism, homophobia.
8. The ways in which white trans folks characterize solutions to our problems can sometimes exclude people-of-color on principle.
9. Unless we begin to understand and acknowledge how our lives are diminished by white supremacy, ableism, and classism, our lives - but more importantly the lives of our future children - will irrevocably diminish.