The idea of "Butch Flight" never really leaves the consciousness of lesbian and butch/femme communities, but it seems to be bubbling back up to the front of community consciousness with the recent panel on "The Gendercator" in San Francisco, which Mattilda Bernstein talks about here and here. And I think Catherine Crouch's film, while, from all the descriptions I've heard (I have not seen it, so I will not focus my discussion on it), seems to be laden with transphobia, it sounds to at least be concerned with the actual identities of butches, albeit in what may be a misguided way, which most discussion of "Butch Flight" ignores. However, for discussion specific to the film, I'd direct you to people who've seen it.
Discussions of the film certainly point to ideas of what transitioning means, what butch identity means, and how those two intersect, so I think it may prove to be a good starting point to confront the problematic nature of what discussions of "Butch Flight" revolve around, which is generally objectification and/or transphobia. First, it relies on defining butch as "masculine, woman-identified people who are sexually attracted to women"; while my personal definition of butch is "the subversion of masculinity toward queer ends", I'm certainly open to other definitions of butch, as long as they recognize the wide variety of people who identify with the label. So, really, what people are talking about when they talk about "Butch Flight" is the idea of butch lesbians transitioning to male.
What gets lost here is that many FTMs were not outwardly masculine prior to transitioning, may not have dated women, and may not end up masculine or attracted to women. However, many FTMs do first come out in queer communities as butches, as it can be a way to manage gender issues and to try to find a place that may be comfortable for a time, and, well, the discussion does focus specifically around FTMs who did have the experience of first living as a butch dyke.
The three biggest issues that people who raise the issue of "Butch Flight" seem to be the idea that people transition out of social pressure, that all the butches are becoming men, so that there are no butches left to date, and that all the butches are becoming men, reinforcing the gender binary. All of these stem out of some combination of objectification and transphobia.
The first issue is pretty obviously transphobic - the idea that people would radically alter their bodies and risk their status in their families and communities just to move about the world easier totally erases the idea that trans* identities exist due to internal reasons, and recasts them as purely a response to social pressure. It is this idea that justifies lesbians characterizing FTMs as traitors to the community. Yes, FTMs who end up gender normative and who can pass as cissexual men do gain male privilege, but, there is a world of difference between "my gender expression is at odds with what the world says it should be" and "my body is at odds with what I feel it should be". The two are issues that while they occasionally influence each other - the body certainly affects how we perform gender - are not in any way strongly connected. This issue disrespects the maleness of FTMs, and reduces both the agency of FTMs and non-FTM butches - they are either giving in to social pressure, or standing against it - what they actually want for themselves and their bodies becomes irrelevant.
The second issue, which at first glance, sounds silly, is actually raised. In a way, it reduces the FTMs who come out of butch circles down to nothing but an object choice. Often, these are the same people who are ok with partnering with FTMs until the point they (may) decide to start T, or (may) decide to get top surgery. And while everyone is attracted to what they are attracted to - and no one should be held up as a sexual object due to their particular bodily history (the idea that all FTMs are automatically different than other men), you don't get to dictate other people's choices or identities based on your own attractions.
The third issue places the weight of deconstructing sexism on groups oppressed in ways that those raising the issue are not subject to - in an intensely transphobic society, the burden to dismantle patriarchy does not rest solely or mainly on transpeople, and it is not a feminist goal to force people to live their lives in a way that most challenges the dominant order of things, suppressing their own needs and wants. Let people who are happy living their lives as butch dykes be the visible butch dykes.
A disturbing effect of this on dyke communities, in addition to not viewing FTMs as entirely men, is the view of anyone who is visibly rather butch, and proclaims a butch identity, as already being a "traitor" in certain communities and spaces. In many minds, vocally and visibly IDing as butch, visibly transgressing androdyke norms, is viewed as "transitioning". In some ways, the community reinforces its fears of the disappearance of butches by seeing all butches as FTMs or FTMs-to-be. This glosses over the differences between being uncomfortable with the gendered standards placed on bodies and the being uncomfortable with the body itself, and also reinforces the idea that any FTM that did not first live as a butch dyke is not "real". So in the process of marginalizing FTMs, the community also marginalizes butches, through social censure and wariness over including them in the community, especially butches that do not remain ever vigilant to appear still "woman-identified" enough.
As someone who is comfortable with my body, but uncomfortable with the gendered standards placed on that body, while I can embrace my experience as a genderqueer experience (one existing outside the gender binary) and a transgender experience (one that visibly transgress society's standards), I do not have an FTM experience - we face many of the same issues, and should stand in solidarity, but, lumping us together erases our individual experiences, and nonconsensually places a single narrative onto a diversity of experiences. What the dyke community, in its intersection with the queer/trans community, needs to work on is listening to the experiences of all involved, stop expecting gender variant people to live up to higher political standards than everyone else, accept the identities of FTMs without question, regardless of how they arrived at their current understanding of themselves, and cease policing the gender expression of butches, as if they are going to somehow stumble into an FTM identity.
Also, the understanding of "butch" as an identity needs better understanding. For some, it is an adjective that describes how they express their gender - a butch woman. For others, in a variety of bodies, it is a gender in of itself - there are butches who have no intention of physically transitioning, but see themselves as butches, and not women; there are also butches who physically transition, but still see their gender as butch - just in a body that better matches how they personally feel. And there are also FTMs who identify as male and men, but who still view themselves as butches. While this is not an argument that all or none butches should be allowed in women's space (that comes down to how we define women's space - and I go with self-identification, even though that leaves me...confused as to where I fit) - but an argument that butches continue to exist, and that it is not the responsibility of people at one point seen as butches to maintain that visibility at the sacrifice of their own happiness.
24 November 2007
20 November 2007
Transgender Day of Remembrance
Here, at Questioning Transphobia, Lisa has an excellent collection of links for the Day of Remembrance.
Every year, I just feel so much anger and sadness..and so helpless. I would just hope that everyone goes through, reads all the links, and realizes just how real transphobia is - and how it alone KILLS, and how many more it KILLS when it intersects with misogyny, racism, and classism. And I don't want anyone who claims to not be transphobic, but who does not respect the identities of trans* people to the same extent they respect the identities of cis* people, to pretend this has nothing to do with them. Every time you say that you have nothing against trans women, you just don't want them in women's space, you do have something against trans women, and are participating in the dehumanizing of trans* people that enables and encourages the murder of so many. The blood is on your hands, too.
Every year, I just feel so much anger and sadness..and so helpless. I would just hope that everyone goes through, reads all the links, and realizes just how real transphobia is - and how it alone KILLS, and how many more it KILLS when it intersects with misogyny, racism, and classism. And I don't want anyone who claims to not be transphobic, but who does not respect the identities of trans* people to the same extent they respect the identities of cis* people, to pretend this has nothing to do with them. Every time you say that you have nothing against trans women, you just don't want them in women's space, you do have something against trans women, and are participating in the dehumanizing of trans* people that enables and encourages the murder of so many. The blood is on your hands, too.
18 November 2007
Cisgenderism and Classism in LGBT Community Papers
I pretty frequently end up picking up and reading the regional LGBT papers and news magazines. There are several, as we tend to get ones that focus not only on New England, but also the NYC metro area. And I'm pretty sure at this point, as they only serve to make me feel alienated from the LGBT community, that I read them to get pissed off and frustrated.
Generally, that's just because they're very much focused on white, upper middle class, gendernormative, assimilationist LGB folk, with a token and stereotyped trans* representation thrown in every once in a while in an attempt to be inclusive. And, of course, when dealing with trans* issues, there's never any recognition of how much LGB and T folk overlap, or the fact that many are both lesbian, gay, or bisexual and trans, or that many lesbian, gay, and bisexual people have gender expressions that are sufficiently non-normative that their struggles are intimately connected to people that the community more traditionally labels as trans*. And, of course, that focus means that gay men get the most space, then lesbians, and bisexuality is rendered invisible. And never mind the vast number of queers whom none of those labels accurately reflect their experiences.
The class issues are pretty much par for the course at this point - all readers are just assumed to be upper middle class and intensely consumption focused, so we all have our highest priorities as remote vacation destinations, luxury goods, and the political focus being nearly entirely on marriage - because that is the form of oppression that privileged, white, upper-middle class gender normative LGB folk feel. I was pleasantly surprised, however, that ENDA was so strongly covered, and that all the regional publications were strongly for only gender-inclusive ENDA. Which I want to believe is more than lip service. Race issues are always covered in a very separate way, as if it is not the responsibility of white queers to work on their racism and white privilege. Generally, as a white queer, when I am around groups exclusively made up of other white queers, I am struck by how blind white queers are to our community's racism, how eager they are to view the African-American religious community as a monolithic entity that advocates homophobia (totally ignoring the variety of views, and the fact that it's the homophobia advocated by the white religious community that has the power to oppress white queers), and how much they think that by not doing things they perceive as overtly racist, they perceive themselves as being good on race issues.
Occasionally, however, there is something that is just so blatantly from a place of privilege that I am taken aback and left feeling smacked in the face. I was reading the early November issue of Metroline - which purports itself to be "New England's Oldest Gay and Lesbian Publication" and is published out of Hartford, CT, and focuses primarily on Connecticut, with some focus also on New York City and the rest of New England. And I get to a column, The Sweet Life, by Lauren Incognito, the editor of Metroline, entitled "Women, Wine and Chocolate...Now That's Amore". Now, I'm figuring from the title that this probably about some very upper middle class targeted social gathering - you get good at reading these things - but having nothing better to do at the moment, I go ahead and read the article, even though it's probably going to make me feel shitty about class and income divisions in the queer community.
And then, right in the first paragraph, I get smacked right in the face.
Ms. Incognito writes:
I love when the gay community debunks negative stereotypes. As unconscionable as it may seem, there are plenty of people who still think lesbians are flannel-wearing butches who drive pick-up trucks with their mullets blowing in the wind. A lesbian in heels carrying a handbag? Don't be ridiculous. But again, I love when the gay community debunks negative stereotypes.
And I love when the gay community reinforces the systematic oppression of gender variant people while turning on and eating their own. As the editor of a publication distributed regionally, I would hope Ms. Incognito is well aware of how using the word "negative" frames the stereotype, in that she is flat out saying it is bad to be a butch, bad for a lesbian to be masculine. This is a flat out blatant example of cisgenderism being exhibited by a gender normative lesbian. A removal of just the two instances of the word "negative" would eliminate the blatant, overt cisgenderism, which would just leave us with how she codes butches. This, just on gender issues, could just be commentary on a stereotype (mullets and flannel are generally seen as unfashionable, as well as masculine), and not necessarily an implication that masculine lesbians are unfashionable. And yes, it's important to point out that not all lesbians are masculine, and feminine lesbians and femmes often struggle for visibility (though I think this is more becoming an issue of them being visible as queer, rather than people believing that feminine women can be queer - given that the vast majority of media representations of lesbians range from a very soft andro through various feminine presentations, and generally focus on lesbians that can easily pass as straight) However, her cisgenderism neatly intersects with her classism, as her next paragraph makes clear:
The invitation said to park anywhere around the cul-de-sac, which, by the time I had arrived, was filled to capacity. Sheer happenstance granted me the last visible spot. As I tucked my car keys into my coat pocket I couldn't help but survey the outline of the cars, which had spilled onto the interior lawn. One Mercedes, Two Mercedes. Here a Lexus, there a Lexus, everywhere a SAAB, SAAB.
and later in the column:
It was a continuous deluge of women - professional, powerful women who, every day of their life, shatter stereotypes.
Comparing this to the stereotype she calls on in her first paragraph, we can see how she encodes her classism in that stereotype. Flannel, mullets, and pick up trucks are all coded as belonging to working class, blue collar folk. Folk whose appearance choices are seen as unfashionable and ugly, and whose clothing, by virtue of being to stand up to physical work, is considered ugly. Pickup trucks, by virtue of being a multipurpose vehicle that can haul lots of stuff and easily carry a variety of tools, are particularly suited to many blue collar jobs, most of which don't pay nearly well enough for the worker to have a vehicle for their job, and one for their personal use - and implying that they should have a second vehicle is glorifying consumption (of course, she doesn't even consider the possibility that any of them women there are blue collar/working class and passing as middle class). By seeing a sea of luxury cars parked around her, cars that require vast amounts of economic privilege to attain and maintain, she is assured that she will be surrounded by women who share her class background and class values.
The whole world is a man's world, and yes, women who work jobs that are upper middle class and white collar shatter stereotypes, just as do women who do blue collar, physical work, whether it be construction, working in a factory, or any other physical job. Valuing upper middle class women over working class women, and holding up women whose appearance is coded as working class as an object of ridicule is blatant classism. And it's a double insult when it is tied in with a demeaning portrayal of butches. The gendering in white collar jobs and the gender expectations on middle class people viewed as women makes it even harder for those people who grew up poor and working class who are masculine and perceived as women to break into jobs that give access to middle class economic status, and the gender variance of masculine people perceived as women who grew up in the middle class often serves as another impediment to their access to white collar work, above and beyond the impediments they suffer for being women or being perceived as women, and being queer. This often precipitates a drastic fall in economic access and class status. In addition, the butches she maligns don't have the option of whether to remain closeted at work, and only come out when they think it is safe enough to do so - their queerness is readily visible.
It's bad enough dealing with the sexism, cisgenderism, and heterosexism of the straight world, and as Ms. Incognito's ridicule shows, the latter two are intimately linked - people singled out for oppression for being queer are often singled out and visible because they don't perform gender correctly. It's worse to be subject to the cisgenderism and classism of the queer community, which should be a safe and comfortable environment for all queers. It seems that as queers have gained more and more social acceptance, we have remained divided by racism, and have grown increasingly divided by classism and cisgenderism. Lesbian feminism certainly pushed butches and femmes out of the community in the 70s and 80s, but, now, as lesbians that can meet the expectations of upper middle class society increasingly gain economic privilege and acceptance, they turn on those who can't - creating a community that divides its gender expectations on class lines. Those with economic access gained by their ability to be just like the straights with the exception of their object choice now ridicule those who deviate from the norms of straight society and view them as lessers based on both their gender deviance and lack of economic privilege.
Generally, that's just because they're very much focused on white, upper middle class, gendernormative, assimilationist LGB folk, with a token and stereotyped trans* representation thrown in every once in a while in an attempt to be inclusive. And, of course, when dealing with trans* issues, there's never any recognition of how much LGB and T folk overlap, or the fact that many are both lesbian, gay, or bisexual and trans, or that many lesbian, gay, and bisexual people have gender expressions that are sufficiently non-normative that their struggles are intimately connected to people that the community more traditionally labels as trans*. And, of course, that focus means that gay men get the most space, then lesbians, and bisexuality is rendered invisible. And never mind the vast number of queers whom none of those labels accurately reflect their experiences.
The class issues are pretty much par for the course at this point - all readers are just assumed to be upper middle class and intensely consumption focused, so we all have our highest priorities as remote vacation destinations, luxury goods, and the political focus being nearly entirely on marriage - because that is the form of oppression that privileged, white, upper-middle class gender normative LGB folk feel. I was pleasantly surprised, however, that ENDA was so strongly covered, and that all the regional publications were strongly for only gender-inclusive ENDA. Which I want to believe is more than lip service. Race issues are always covered in a very separate way, as if it is not the responsibility of white queers to work on their racism and white privilege. Generally, as a white queer, when I am around groups exclusively made up of other white queers, I am struck by how blind white queers are to our community's racism, how eager they are to view the African-American religious community as a monolithic entity that advocates homophobia (totally ignoring the variety of views, and the fact that it's the homophobia advocated by the white religious community that has the power to oppress white queers), and how much they think that by not doing things they perceive as overtly racist, they perceive themselves as being good on race issues.
Occasionally, however, there is something that is just so blatantly from a place of privilege that I am taken aback and left feeling smacked in the face. I was reading the early November issue of Metroline - which purports itself to be "New England's Oldest Gay and Lesbian Publication" and is published out of Hartford, CT, and focuses primarily on Connecticut, with some focus also on New York City and the rest of New England. And I get to a column, The Sweet Life, by Lauren Incognito, the editor of Metroline, entitled "Women, Wine and Chocolate...Now That's Amore". Now, I'm figuring from the title that this probably about some very upper middle class targeted social gathering - you get good at reading these things - but having nothing better to do at the moment, I go ahead and read the article, even though it's probably going to make me feel shitty about class and income divisions in the queer community.
And then, right in the first paragraph, I get smacked right in the face.
Ms. Incognito writes:
I love when the gay community debunks negative stereotypes. As unconscionable as it may seem, there are plenty of people who still think lesbians are flannel-wearing butches who drive pick-up trucks with their mullets blowing in the wind. A lesbian in heels carrying a handbag? Don't be ridiculous. But again, I love when the gay community debunks negative stereotypes.
And I love when the gay community reinforces the systematic oppression of gender variant people while turning on and eating their own. As the editor of a publication distributed regionally, I would hope Ms. Incognito is well aware of how using the word "negative" frames the stereotype, in that she is flat out saying it is bad to be a butch, bad for a lesbian to be masculine. This is a flat out blatant example of cisgenderism being exhibited by a gender normative lesbian. A removal of just the two instances of the word "negative" would eliminate the blatant, overt cisgenderism, which would just leave us with how she codes butches. This, just on gender issues, could just be commentary on a stereotype (mullets and flannel are generally seen as unfashionable, as well as masculine), and not necessarily an implication that masculine lesbians are unfashionable. And yes, it's important to point out that not all lesbians are masculine, and feminine lesbians and femmes often struggle for visibility (though I think this is more becoming an issue of them being visible as queer, rather than people believing that feminine women can be queer - given that the vast majority of media representations of lesbians range from a very soft andro through various feminine presentations, and generally focus on lesbians that can easily pass as straight) However, her cisgenderism neatly intersects with her classism, as her next paragraph makes clear:
The invitation said to park anywhere around the cul-de-sac, which, by the time I had arrived, was filled to capacity. Sheer happenstance granted me the last visible spot. As I tucked my car keys into my coat pocket I couldn't help but survey the outline of the cars, which had spilled onto the interior lawn. One Mercedes, Two Mercedes. Here a Lexus, there a Lexus, everywhere a SAAB, SAAB.
and later in the column:
It was a continuous deluge of women - professional, powerful women who, every day of their life, shatter stereotypes.
Comparing this to the stereotype she calls on in her first paragraph, we can see how she encodes her classism in that stereotype. Flannel, mullets, and pick up trucks are all coded as belonging to working class, blue collar folk. Folk whose appearance choices are seen as unfashionable and ugly, and whose clothing, by virtue of being to stand up to physical work, is considered ugly. Pickup trucks, by virtue of being a multipurpose vehicle that can haul lots of stuff and easily carry a variety of tools, are particularly suited to many blue collar jobs, most of which don't pay nearly well enough for the worker to have a vehicle for their job, and one for their personal use - and implying that they should have a second vehicle is glorifying consumption (of course, she doesn't even consider the possibility that any of them women there are blue collar/working class and passing as middle class). By seeing a sea of luxury cars parked around her, cars that require vast amounts of economic privilege to attain and maintain, she is assured that she will be surrounded by women who share her class background and class values.
The whole world is a man's world, and yes, women who work jobs that are upper middle class and white collar shatter stereotypes, just as do women who do blue collar, physical work, whether it be construction, working in a factory, or any other physical job. Valuing upper middle class women over working class women, and holding up women whose appearance is coded as working class as an object of ridicule is blatant classism. And it's a double insult when it is tied in with a demeaning portrayal of butches. The gendering in white collar jobs and the gender expectations on middle class people viewed as women makes it even harder for those people who grew up poor and working class who are masculine and perceived as women to break into jobs that give access to middle class economic status, and the gender variance of masculine people perceived as women who grew up in the middle class often serves as another impediment to their access to white collar work, above and beyond the impediments they suffer for being women or being perceived as women, and being queer. This often precipitates a drastic fall in economic access and class status. In addition, the butches she maligns don't have the option of whether to remain closeted at work, and only come out when they think it is safe enough to do so - their queerness is readily visible.
It's bad enough dealing with the sexism, cisgenderism, and heterosexism of the straight world, and as Ms. Incognito's ridicule shows, the latter two are intimately linked - people singled out for oppression for being queer are often singled out and visible because they don't perform gender correctly. It's worse to be subject to the cisgenderism and classism of the queer community, which should be a safe and comfortable environment for all queers. It seems that as queers have gained more and more social acceptance, we have remained divided by racism, and have grown increasingly divided by classism and cisgenderism. Lesbian feminism certainly pushed butches and femmes out of the community in the 70s and 80s, but, now, as lesbians that can meet the expectations of upper middle class society increasingly gain economic privilege and acceptance, they turn on those who can't - creating a community that divides its gender expectations on class lines. Those with economic access gained by their ability to be just like the straights with the exception of their object choice now ridicule those who deviate from the norms of straight society and view them as lessers based on both their gender deviance and lack of economic privilege.
06 November 2007
Masculine Privilege Without Male Privilege?
Lately, I have been thinking about how masculine privilege exists in and impacts the lives of people who do not identify as male and/or do not pass as society's expectation of men. As defined previously, masculine privilege would be separate from male privilege, and would be the privilege accessed by people simply due to the fact that they are behaving and presenting in a masculine manner, regardless of what their perceived or internal sex or gender may be.
Basically, society privileges men above women, while assuming that men are masculine and assigned male at birth, and women are feminine and assigned female at birth, and any other combination is viewed as an aberration (when society is forced to acknowledge it) or simply not considered (when it is not). Society also views masculine behavior and presentation as more valuable than feminine presentation and behavior. Society also punishes gender variance, which is behavior and presentation that does not match up to the perceived sex and/or gender.
Thus, clearly masculine people who do not get perceived as male by society will be to some extent rewarded and punished for their behavior. In the straight world, masculinity in non-male perceived people (who will all be lumped into the category of "women", as the larger world has the categories of "man" and "woman", with "woman" being the other, with no other allowed possibilities) that goes beyond what is acceptable for a woman is generally very harshly punished; while a very strongly masculine "not-man" might get a little less trouble in a hardware store, ze will often be denied employment, accosted on the street, held up as an object of ridicule, etc. It is pretty clear that in this circumstance, there really isn't a gender based privilege - male and masculine privilege are not separate in the world as a whole, so, in addition to being put in the oppressed class of woman, as a gender variant person, ze is placed in the oppressed class of "transperson" by cisgenderism.
This is not an argument that an oppression cancels out a privilege; since the privilege is based on what one is perceived to "really" be, and how well one adheres to the role assigned to that label, the gender variance that masculinity is in someone who is a "not-man" is just another source of oppression.
The situation is a bit more complicated in the queer subculture. More gender variance is allowed, masculinity is still privileged, however there are expectations of gendered behavior. However, this will vary from community to community. There is still a definite view that at a certain level of masculinity, one is supposed to want to be a man in certain circles (and FTMs who pass as cismen, even if their past is known, definitely get far greater access to male privilege in queer circles than those who don't), and the converse is true. However, this varies from subgroup to subgroup. Quite obviously, in circles that owe a lot to the traditional butch/femme community structure, masculinity is highly valued, and very masculine non-male IDed people are not questioned to nearly the same extent as they would be in other communities. However, in circles that are more heavily populated with people who identify or present in ways that are often called "andro" in lesbian circles, certain forms of heavily masculine behaviors and presentations become suspect, in a form of overt (fears of "butch flight") or more covert (viewing all butches as male-identified, or as patriarchal sell outs) transphobia.
In the latter communities, masculine privilege of course exists, and ties into femmephobia; just as butches are viewed as "too masculine" and suspect, femmes are also suspect of not being authentically queer. In a sense, the gender standard for people put into the category of women has just shifted a bit, and those within that category but toward the masculine edge are viewed as most legitimately queer, and are accorded privilege. While those that are too masculine for community standards are certainly also viewed as legitimately queer, they are also subject to transphobia (in the application of "those who transgress gender norms"). In these instances, both have masculine privilege, as those who aren't viewed as excessively masculine are privileged due to the masculinity of their behavior and/or presentation. However, transphobia is operative and only somewhat separated out from expression of masculinity. It should also be noted that the people who are accorded masculine privilege in these communities but do not suffer from transphobia also suffer oppression in the larger world for gender variance, but generally not to quite the extent that people such as hard butches and FTMs who do not pass as cismen suffer, though obviously oppression is not something that can be quantified on a case-by-case basis, and should never be compared across oppressions. However, the ability to hide gender variance, or having it not be as visibly extreme, can prevent or mitigate instances of oppression.
The remaining question, when discussing the possibility of masculine privilege without male privilege, is whether it is proper to consider systematic preferential treatment that only exists in subcultural groups, and not in the larger society as privilege, or just a subcultural preference. If it is proper, we are justified in talking about masculine privilege as a separate thing from male privilege. If it not proper, we should probably talk about a preference for masculinity, that exists across cultural lines, along with differing gender standards based on location and subculture, and different levels of oppression suffered by gender variant people based on location and subculture.
Basically, society privileges men above women, while assuming that men are masculine and assigned male at birth, and women are feminine and assigned female at birth, and any other combination is viewed as an aberration (when society is forced to acknowledge it) or simply not considered (when it is not). Society also views masculine behavior and presentation as more valuable than feminine presentation and behavior. Society also punishes gender variance, which is behavior and presentation that does not match up to the perceived sex and/or gender.
Thus, clearly masculine people who do not get perceived as male by society will be to some extent rewarded and punished for their behavior. In the straight world, masculinity in non-male perceived people (who will all be lumped into the category of "women", as the larger world has the categories of "man" and "woman", with "woman" being the other, with no other allowed possibilities) that goes beyond what is acceptable for a woman is generally very harshly punished; while a very strongly masculine "not-man" might get a little less trouble in a hardware store, ze will often be denied employment, accosted on the street, held up as an object of ridicule, etc. It is pretty clear that in this circumstance, there really isn't a gender based privilege - male and masculine privilege are not separate in the world as a whole, so, in addition to being put in the oppressed class of woman, as a gender variant person, ze is placed in the oppressed class of "transperson" by cisgenderism.
This is not an argument that an oppression cancels out a privilege; since the privilege is based on what one is perceived to "really" be, and how well one adheres to the role assigned to that label, the gender variance that masculinity is in someone who is a "not-man" is just another source of oppression.
The situation is a bit more complicated in the queer subculture. More gender variance is allowed, masculinity is still privileged, however there are expectations of gendered behavior. However, this will vary from community to community. There is still a definite view that at a certain level of masculinity, one is supposed to want to be a man in certain circles (and FTMs who pass as cismen, even if their past is known, definitely get far greater access to male privilege in queer circles than those who don't), and the converse is true. However, this varies from subgroup to subgroup. Quite obviously, in circles that owe a lot to the traditional butch/femme community structure, masculinity is highly valued, and very masculine non-male IDed people are not questioned to nearly the same extent as they would be in other communities. However, in circles that are more heavily populated with people who identify or present in ways that are often called "andro" in lesbian circles, certain forms of heavily masculine behaviors and presentations become suspect, in a form of overt (fears of "butch flight") or more covert (viewing all butches as male-identified, or as patriarchal sell outs) transphobia.
In the latter communities, masculine privilege of course exists, and ties into femmephobia; just as butches are viewed as "too masculine" and suspect, femmes are also suspect of not being authentically queer. In a sense, the gender standard for people put into the category of women has just shifted a bit, and those within that category but toward the masculine edge are viewed as most legitimately queer, and are accorded privilege. While those that are too masculine for community standards are certainly also viewed as legitimately queer, they are also subject to transphobia (in the application of "those who transgress gender norms"). In these instances, both have masculine privilege, as those who aren't viewed as excessively masculine are privileged due to the masculinity of their behavior and/or presentation. However, transphobia is operative and only somewhat separated out from expression of masculinity. It should also be noted that the people who are accorded masculine privilege in these communities but do not suffer from transphobia also suffer oppression in the larger world for gender variance, but generally not to quite the extent that people such as hard butches and FTMs who do not pass as cismen suffer, though obviously oppression is not something that can be quantified on a case-by-case basis, and should never be compared across oppressions. However, the ability to hide gender variance, or having it not be as visibly extreme, can prevent or mitigate instances of oppression.
The remaining question, when discussing the possibility of masculine privilege without male privilege, is whether it is proper to consider systematic preferential treatment that only exists in subcultural groups, and not in the larger society as privilege, or just a subcultural preference. If it is proper, we are justified in talking about masculine privilege as a separate thing from male privilege. If it not proper, we should probably talk about a preference for masculinity, that exists across cultural lines, along with differing gender standards based on location and subculture, and different levels of oppression suffered by gender variant people based on location and subculture.
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