The Privilege of Absence
Privilege operates most powerfully through what never happens. The transman's sudden isolation reveals how the deepest social advantages aren't possessions but exemptions—freedom from being seen as a threat, from carrying the weight of others' fear.
What he mourned wasn't what masculinity had given him, but what femininity had spared him from: the ambient suspicion that transforms every stranger into a guardian of their own safety. The cruelest advantages are those we discover only in their absence, when the invisible shield of assumed harmlessness dissolves and we find ourselves navigating a world where connection requires proving our intentions rather than simply offering them.