"V-coded at age 5 privilege" is a phrase which is stuck in my head.
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There is often the attitude that we don't "become" our gender until we've been through medical transition.
Some trans people exaggerate and exacerbate this by saying they "literally" changed sex in the process.
But what we are as children is nebulous unless we jump and down begging to be taken seriously. And sometimes not even then unless we're lucky enough to transition that young.
Otherwise we were neither girls nor boys but some secret third thing which people don't want to think about.
Is it guilt or complicity they're uncomfortable with? The idea that girls and boys are harmed every day by having their selves invalidated?
Or are they still ultimately just squeamish about "the trans question" and whether we're valid at all?
Watching the hysteria surrounding trans kids and trans girls specifically playing sports, it feels like most people, even ostensible allies, still fall on the side of "you're not REALLY a girl, though."
And I would go through all the ways trans girls are abused, bullied, and sexually assaulted growing up, whether they Always Knew (TM) or not, whether they're legibly female or not, in part because male social groups organize a hierarchy in which the least powerful, least masculine are rendered into effective "girl" status, even irrespective of being cis or trans or gender nonconforming, and how that automatically makes them a target for such violence.
But it doesn't seem to make a difference.
On the contrary, there is the persistent idea that trans girls experienced some form of safety or even privilege from being read as male, even as we were often not treated like boys or given any advantages at all.
Likewise, many people seem to believe that no amount of predatory sexual and physical violence directed at us is relevant compared to the experience of cis girls growing up in this society.
And hey, maybe they have a point.
Hence, "v-coded at age 5 privilege."
It's probably true that trans girls experience a lower incidence of sexual violence growing up than cis girls do, and for obvious reasons, but also a much higher rate than cis boys, not that we should disregard male victims of rape and molestation either.
Society often acts as if it doesn't happen at all, however, or that it doesn't matter because the victims are AMAB, and in many ways, there is de facto approval and a blanket pardon for violence done to gender nonconforming people.
V-coding as a concept wouldn't exist if sexual violence against trans women (and against cis women and gender minorities more generally) weren't already socially acceptable.
Trans women, if we were really seen as women, wouldn't be put in male prisons or other situations where we are likely to be assaulted and raped.
There would be a furor.
Instead, it's not even talked about or seen as an unfortunate consequence of trans women existing in the first place.
Indeed, society often treats trans acceptance as an indulgence to be withdrawn as punishment.
I don't see much cis outrage whenever a trans woman inmate is stripped of her belongings, denied hormones and medication, and forced to shave her hair.
Trans women transferred to men's prisons have learned solitary confinement is preferable to the constant threat of being raped, and even then, they are likely to be assaulted by staff instead.
We routinely put girls and women in unbearable situations.
Young trans girls get thrown to the wolves.
But this idea persists that being AMAB confers an invisible shield, some princely status which society and boys and men are bound to respect, and that trans girls and women enjoy a level of respect on par with our cis male peers.
Many people seem to believe that our chromosomes alone confer immunity to sexual violence, that we are in every way identical to cis boys and men until some magical point during transition and sometimes not even then.
People are often iffy about trans identities. Even allies often adopt the posture of supporting our access to healthcare and our right to live our lives in a way that makes us happy, while remaining largely silent on the issue of whether we are our genders.