Some people think that transgender women have male privilege, because we did not begin experiencing societal misogyny until after transition. I want to ask these people: does Ellen DeGeneres have straight privilege?

Ellen DeGeneres has spent most of her life masquerading as a straight woman. It was not until she was 39 years old that she came out of the closet! By that time, she had already had two decades of experience in stand up comedy, three movie roles, and her self-titled sitcom Ellen was in it's fourth season. When she came out of the closet, it was a media spectacular just like Caitlyn Jenner's was. She got to appear on Oprah as the first mainstream lesbian, and her sitcom had its highest ratings ever.

If Ellen had come out in her teens, maybe shouldn't have had these privileges. Maybe she would have gotten fewer comedy gigs, which would lead to fewer movie roles. ABC probably wouldn't have felt comfortable given Ellen her own show if they knew from the start she was a lesbian. And if she hadn't had her own show, Oprah probably wouldn't have bothered to interview her. So Ellen's success was founded on the "straight privilege" she recieved when was in the closet.

Even today, Ellen has spent barely 1/3 of her life as an open lesbian. So is it really fair for her to be an icon of the gay community?

Of course, it's ridiculous to assert that Ellen has straight privilege. The 39 years she spent in the closet were not years she spent as a straight person. They were years in which she was constantly policing herself and pretending to be something she wasn't. They were painful years, not years of privilege.

The situation is analogous to trans women. We may have had some privileges afforded to us by people who thought we were male, but overall our life has been pretty shitty.