Talk to most men about male entitlement and they'll look at you like you're crazy.

I thought of a female friend of mine who once complained that sharing a room with a man took effort. "It's as though," she said, "his being there, his existence, demanded some of my attention." Talk to most men about male entitlement and they'll look at you like you're crazy. But it's real and it's more than just being able to walk around the city after dark without the fear of being raped. It's the way strangers look at you on the street, or the way they relate to you on the phone, or the way their bodies in space interact with your personal space. Think of the inconsiderate seven-foot-tall oaf who sometimes winds up in front of you at a concert and then imagine that man appearing everywhere in your life, stepping on your toes and stumbling back into you and all the while not so much as acknowledging your existence. Many MTFs experience these losses of privilege—the abstract privilege that's concomitant with masculinity—as a series of surprising, disheartening blows. Their gender transformation is going to take a bit longer than they thought, it turns out.

This week's The Stranger.