this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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A great piece by Julia Serano on 'male socialization', and misunderstandings about transmisogyny.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (2 children)

A quick and simple check for a lot of these things is "does this happen to trans people of the other gender anywhere near the same quantity or problem?"

The answer is often no or in an obviously lesser way.

Because more often than not the problem isn't whatever issue is being raised, but actually the issue of "men" giving up their male privilege in society, and that being perceived as a threat to patriarchy. It's the same reason gay men received more pushback than gay women (not saying there's none at all for gay women but it's quite different). It's simply viewed as less problematic for a woman to seek more power (being a man) vs for someone to go the other direction. It receives quite different behaviour.

Trans women get targeted disproportionately with disingenuous arguments like "male socialisation", among other things, for this reason.

Probably preaching to the choir saying this in this sub but potential lurkers etc.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You're preaching to the right choir for sure, cuz you make me want to sing lol

In my area the idea of "male socialization" is the norm, and accepted as fact. We get treated like freaks and the transmascs get treated like widdle soft babies that are just ohhh so confused 🤢🤮

I don't like the fucker for what he did to me but my ex husband is fucking growing a beard and people act like gendering him properly or giving him the respect you'd give an adult is a Herculean task. No, bro, I don't care if their chest sticks out a little or their voice is a tenor.

I'm fucking tired of people being blind to their gender biases. If they ignored my voice and didn't stare at my crotch maybe their tiny peanut brains could process that the person in front of them seems feminine, and dresses as such, and has a proportionate rack that is very visible.

Now that's preaching to the choir. Fucking shitgoblins with carnival culture.

Sorry if this rant is too much

I have a therapist but we don't have enough time to discuss everything that affects me on the daily

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (1 children)

We get treated like freaks and the transmascs get treated like widdle soft babies that are just ohhh so confused

Two different expressions of continuing to enforce patriarchy. Men being monsters and women being infantalised.

This shit is partially why a lot of new trans women also end up actively being happy when they receive gender affirming patriarchal behaviour like cat calls or abuse. It messes up a lot of people.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

It's fucked up, yeah. I tend to interpret men's advances as friendliness I end up with men chasing after me just for my body

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

does this happen to trans people of the other gender

What "other gender"? You're aware that us nonbinary people exist and that we make up roughly half of the populations you're talking about here, right?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Of course I do but explicitly talking about them doesn't change much materially here. They're treated as not existing under patriarchy so if you exchange femme-presenting or masc-presenting for gender vs birth assignment it all fits fine.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I get that you can't talk about a binary normative system without recognizing that there's a reification of a binary happening that materially affects people, but idk, i just really fucking hate the term "opposite sex" or "opposite gender". I'm sorry to get argumentative about that, i know that people here are more or less on the same page, but i really think it's good if we just phase that term out of use and be mindful of not re-introducing binary reasonings when we discuss trans issues. Like you said, it's probably worth typing some things out just for the people who are only reading along.

So let's say that yes, ofc patriarchy doesn't give a fuck if people are nonbinary. Because clearly, it doesn't. Even then, trans and nonbinary gender presentation still subverts and breaks these distinctions down in practice because it means we so often do not neatly fit into these two boxes anymore, whether that's intentional or not. What about people who are genderfluid or about pluralities who include personalities of different genders in the same body and reflect that in their presentation? What about people who do not want to be either femme or masc presenting at all because they are agender or greygender or xenogender? Even for nonbinary people like me who are clearly and consistently aligned towards one of the binary genders, i don't think it really works in all cases. Some people clock me as trans, to some i pass as a butch cis woman, some are absolutely convinced to see me as a gay man, some just get a stack overflow error when they try to read my gender. Idk how i do that, but these are things that happen to me regularly, they're just part of my life. Less often now as i progress in my transition, but it's still not always a clear picture and probably never will be, because the better i pass, the more liberties i take with queering femininity, being more butch and enjoying androgynity. And this uncertainty that we give people affects how we experience gender-based discrimination - when people read me as feminine, they are more likely to violate my boundaries and touch me without asking, they are less likely to take me seriously, they are more likely to start making unsolicited sexual advances. When they read me as trans, they act extra weird in ways they don't when they read me as cis. When they read me as a queer man, i'm subjected to an entirely different set of prejudices and get completely different kinds of stares (i've come to tell apart a very large number of unique stares from "i want to punch him" to "she can't wear that" to "omg i can't make up my mind if i would fuck them"). And that goes for a lot of trans people, because passing isn't this reliable either-or thing for many people, but highly dependent on who's looking. Like, the entire TME/TMA discourse, that doesn't work for a large number of the AFAB trans people i know because they're usually or at least frequently read as and misgendered as women and are regularly subjected to the full gamut of mysogyny, and when they say they are trans, that quickly shifts into transmysogyny because people have this "trans = trans woman" assumption. At the same time, they are also confronted with the host of transmisandrist stereotypes like "you just want male privilege", "are you sure this isn't a phase, i've also really struggled with being a girl when i was younger", "don't you want to have kids at some point, is it really necessary that you medically transition when you can just live as a masculine woman", "you're so pretty, do you really want to ruin that with hormones and surgery" and so on. There's often no either / or of what kind of transphobia AFAB trans people receive. To me, it seems to generally be a pretty big part of the trans experience that we confuse and overwhelm people just by existing, that the way we live our lives make the gender binary ache under its internal contradictions and that is reflected in the weird and unpredictable ways in which we are treated.

And honestly, what is "opposite gender" even supposed to mean in my case? I'm a nonbinary trans woman, according to your line of thought the opposite of that is a nonbinary trans man. And that works in a lot of ways - when i talk about dysphoria with nonbinary trans men, their triggers tend to be the polar opposites of mine, for example. And a lot of their other experiences are like mirror images of mine, too. But then, we also share that we're both trans, that we're both nonbinary, that we are both trans and nonbinary and in spite of being nonbinary claim a term for a binary gender for ourselves, and that means that a lot of our experiences are not the opposite, but the exact same. We face the same transmedical ideas about not actually being our gender before bottom surgery, we both get impostor syndrome and ask ourselves if we're even allowed to call ourselves nonbinary and so on. So under that perspective, when i try to find the opposite gender for ALL of my mentioned labels, that polar opposite of my gender would be binary cis man. And yeah, i can get behind that, that's very unlike me in all the ways possible. But it also is supposed to be the opposite gender of binary cis woman, and then we have the inverse of all the things i just got into, that binary cis men and binary cis women take up opposite ends of the binary cisnormative spectrum, but have all these aspects of binary and cis privilege in common. And you could argue that binary trans woman is in some ways an opposite gender to mine, or that binary cis woman is, or that these two are opposite genders to each other and so on and so forth. Framing things in a way were genders have just one opposite just doesn't strike me as particularly productive when i get into the day to day experiences in the communities i'm active in.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I get that you can't talk about a binary normative system without recognizing that there's a reification of a binary happening that materially affects people, but idk, i just really fucking hate the term "opposite sex" or "opposite gender". I'm sorry to get argumentative about that, i know that people here are more or less on the same page, but i really think it's good if we just phase that term out of use and be mindful of not re-introducing binary reasonings when we discuss trans issues. Like you said, it's probably worth typing some things out just for the people who are only reading along.

Fair. I agree.

I also don't really disagree with the rest either, the problem is that it's not very conversational to write too much, and that necessitates generalisations with the expectation that people reading will understand they're only generalisations to make communication easier. I could individually go through each and every single difference on the spectrum of gender for inclusivity but what I'd end up with is an absolutely enormous wall of text that ends up communicating less effectively because fewer people engage with it. On the offchance this is misinterpreted I want to emphasise this is not a dig, I do not mind reading large amounts of text, I'm just explaining why I try not do it.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago

Whipping girl is also a great read!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I still need to read this article... It's good to see Serano posted here

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I just found it last night when I realized i'm not following her on any media.

Also found out there's a new edition of Whipping Girl coming out.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago
[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Interesting read, one thing id like to address is toxic masculinity in relation to term "male socialization" though my own exp and friends. I'd often find myself gravitating to stereotypical toxic masculine behaviors and actions I saw in movies, TV, friends and family in an attempt to blend in and adhear to gender stereotypes. Most of the time when I would do a toxic masc behavior id be met by praise from my male friends and relatives creating a really fucked up feedback loop. Idk if Id say it was solely fear pushing me in that direction like the author describes it, imo it was part of it but definitely multifaceted.

Eventually after a lot of reading and self crit I attempted to socially transition and had to confront a lot of learned behaviors, some of them being almost subconscious displays of toxic masculinity. I was called out by my friends about how X or Z was due to my "male socialization" it always rubbed me the wrong way and I would often dismiss them. It took even more introspection, discussions and reading to identify what they where referring to and more often then not it was toxic masc shit I brought with me after social transition. All of this took years to figure out and come to terms with but I don't think I truly grasped how fucked all this was until I saw this same behavior again and again in some of our trans peers.

I do agree that the term "male socialization" is used by our critics as a way to dismiss who we are thorough this concept of poisoning the well. I don't agree the terms “male socialization or energy,” serve only one purpose when used by our friends or family. Personally I see nothing wrong with male/female/non binary/ etc socialization or energy as I try my best to not assign any form of gender as inherently bad or good.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

why use the terms "male socialization" or "male energy" (second one seems extremely invalidating, too) when you can just say "leftovers of ingrained toxic masculinity" or "toxic masculinity" and have it be more specific

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Why did I use them? As a direct quote of friends and family and to directly quote the article.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

No, i mean in general. Why would you use it in everyday conversation? I understand using it here, because it’s… the subject of the post

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

I don't use either term in everyday conversations. In general, I am more forgiving with my friends and family's terms or lack of understanding.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Yeah, that's a big part of this that terfs have completely refused to acknowledge for several decades now: Gender is performative. As in, you have to actively uphold it through your behavior and you subconsciously do that because you want to be seen in a certain way. Toxic masculinity is maintained by the feedback loops you're describing, men keep acting that way because they want to be seen as men by others and transfem eggs keep acting that way because they've been led to believe they want to be seen that way by others. For the eggs, this has one big advantage that makes it a lot easier than for men to stop engaging in toxic masculinity: At some point during our cracking, we realize that we do not want to be seen as men anymore, that in fact this is something we want to avoid at all costs. And that just pulls the rug from under these behaviors in a way that is not accessible to men. A dude that wants to stop engaging in toxic masculinity not only has to create a non-toxic understanding of a male gender role, he also has to find ways to make others perceive himself as a man when he acts that way. We don't.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I guess to me it's not clear what she means by Male Socialization. I haven't heard transphobic talking points about male socialization. Tbh my "male socialization" kinda totally fucked my brain up and made me suppress a lot of natural feminine affectations. I mean I guess the alternative explanation is that I have some natural tendency towards male coded body language.. but I kinda find this doubtful because throughout my life I was ALWAYS very aware of my feminine affectation and actively beat those out of me due to male socialization. So yeah I don't really get what she's saying about that

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Male socialization rhetoric is just a way for terfs to call you "still a man" but not outright say it. Maybe you haven't seen bigots say that, but I have.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Oh interesting. Yeah I'm sure it makes sense in context. But to me my socialization was outside of my control, but clearly socialization may explain certain behaviors, mannerisms, etc, but obviously socialization doesn't determine gender anyway. An AFAB person could be socialized as a male for one reason or another and end up still a cis woman, but have more ""masculine"" mannerisms or behaviors or something.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

socialization as a concept is a real enough thing. 'male socialization' and 'female socialization' as immutable constructs applying broadly and equally across humanity is crackpot terf shit.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Same, talk about flattening an entire life experience. And these freaks couldn't define what male and female socialization even means.