A series of posts may have been meant as an attack on trans women, but instead, they drew attention to an important trans rights issue: the transgender wage gap.
The discourse began when two X users (both with white green, white, and purple hearts in their display names, a dog whistle for TERF ideology) took to social media to commiserate.
“If ‘transwomen’ were treated like actual women, none of them would want to transition,” wrote the first user. If by “actual women” she meant cisgender women, there are a number of problems with her theory — namely, that trans women already face many of the same problems as cis women, only compounded with transphobia.
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But another user decided to narrow her point down to a single issue: “start paying them women’s wages!” they wrote, apparently implying that trans women are paid more than the average woman.
💯 start paying them women’s wages!
— patronsaintofcats 🏴 💚🤍💜 (@patronsaintofca) December 10, 2024
That’s when a third user named Rose swooped in to set the record straight. “terfs are so smart. that would be a raise!” she wrote in a now viral post.
Indeed, according to the Pew Research Center, women in the U.S. on average earned 82% of what men earned in 2022. Compare that to transgender women specifically, who made only 60% of what the average American worker made as of 2021, according to research by HRC Foundation.
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One trans person’s go-to response to being called brave? “It’d be awesome if I did not need to be.”
That’s not even considering how many trans folks aren’t employed in the first place: The 2022 U.S. Trans Survey found that 18% of respondents were unemployed, nearly five times the national unemployment rate of 3.65% that year, and 11% of respondents who had ever been employed said they had lost a job because of their gender identity or expression.
Of course, all demographics deserve to be paid fairly. Oppression shouldn’t be a competition — but if TERFs want to make it one, the numbers speak for themselves.
So yes, paying trans women “women’s wages” — ie, paying them the same as any other American woman — would be a significant raise. Technically, that makes the TERF posters accidental allies. Thanks for the support, friends!
Trans empowering radical feminists ❤️
— Augustus 🇵🇸 (@Augczhz) December 13, 2024
Trans women famously face no complications in their careers.
— Trillen 🌹 (@OW_Trillen) December 13, 2024
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