Paula Williams transitioned from male to female six years ago. She talks about learning about her white male privilege the hard way

By Anil Ananthaswamy

Do you think we are fully aware of the privileged position of males?

There is no way a well-educated white male can understand how much the culture is tilted in his favour, because it’s all he’s ever known and all he will know. And there’s no way a woman can understand the full import of that because being a female is all she’s ever known. I have seen both sides.

When did you become aware of it?

I was a tall, well-educated, affluent white male. From an American perspective, my privilege was complete. I had a cognisance of that, but no visceral sense of it. All that went away when I transitioned. The loss of this privilege was immediate and disturbing.

How did you experience it?

Initially, in not getting contracts that I previously would have gotten. In some of those cases, it was because I was transgender. In other cases, people had no idea. I was just a female. There was a very strong financial reality too, in that I was just not earning any money.

Also, when I now talk about my knowledge in areas that are typically seen as male, it’s not well received. We are more inclined to listen to information presented to us by males than by females. I’m generally taken less seriously than a male speaking on the same subject.

I hear from a lot of transgender people around the world whose experience is similar to mine. The males find that suddenly they are seen as people with knowledge, and the females no longer receive the respect that they received previously as males.

How should things change?

The answer is not in females behaving like alpha males. If you take a fortune 500 company, remove an alpha male and replace him with an alpha female, have you really made a change?

We are making progress on equality, but not on equity. I may have as fair a shot at a position as someone else, but if it’s a ministry position, I’ll make 76 per cent of what a man would in that same position.

We have to make sure that women are elevated to positions of equality, so that they can begin working for equity from a higher place. Often we don’t begin at the same starting line as males, so we have a lot more catching up to do.

Topics

Special report: The origins of sexism

origins

Human societies weren’t always male-dominated. The switch came when we became farmers – and that suggests ways to roll back towards a more equal system.