Doritos Roulette Memorial

what about "i'd live for you" romances? what about "i never thought i'd be worth the work it would take to piece myself together"?

If you’re AFAB, you were raised with the socializations that are given to women in your culture. If you’re AMAB, you were raised with the socializations that were given to men in your culture.

NONE OF THIS discounts or undermines your gender identity.

But saying to a trans woman “hey, maybe the fact you feel this amount of aggressive/impulsive instinct might have something to do with the people who raised you assuming you were a boy and thus teaching you the usual responses that they wanted cis boys to have? That experience MAY mean that you have a slightly different experience than AFAB people with regards to womanhood and shit.”??? if you say ANY of that, you’re somehow transphobic. Even if all you’re trying to do is start a conversation that acknowledges that some people react to things differently.

I am a man. Nothing changes that. But you know what? I was raised with the expectation that I was female, and that absolutely affects how I respond to situations and emotions, and even how I act!

- I apply to jobs “like a woman”, e.g. only if I’m 100% qualified (I’m working on this)

- I have a much better handle on my emotions than my cis brothers, both because I’m older and because I was expected to regulate my emotions (this is very obviously a raising thing - my stepbrother and stepfather are way worse about emotional regulation because they didn’t have my mom helping them like my brother and I did)

- I am far more physically affectionate than either of my cis brothers because “women” are socialized to be more physically affectionate

- If a customer gets mad at me, my reaction is to defer and give them what they want, rather than stand my ground

- I “see” more of the mess around the house (I take over chore assignment when Mom doesn’t have time)

- I’m very aware of the emotional state of those around me

Now. Are any of these “female” traits? No, of course not. Are these traits emphasized in me because I was “socialized” female? Yes! We absorb the expectations and reactions of people around us as we grow and change.

Does any of this make me less of a man? Shit no. I’m a man, and that’s that. But ignoring my socialization undermines who I am, how I got here, and a lot of my identity struggles. We can’t have a complete, nuanced conversation without talking about that.

Like, maybe being “raised neutrally” has some impact on the way I’m like “but what is a gender, I don’t have that box” now (side note: my mum’s gender is entirely tied to motherhood. Like, for her, being a woman is so tied to having and raising kids, and that’s kinda it).

Op is not saying “trans women are generally aggressive/impulsive!” What they are actually saying is that if one trans woman were to find herself struggling with aggressive/impulsive instincts, it might be helpful for her to examine the relationship between her own behavior and the way she was socialized as a child, and that to suggest such a thing is fundamentally different from TERF rhetoric because it’s about acknowledging the potential impact of the way you were raised instead of defining yourself and other people by it.

We all experience socialization. That’s literally just the word for how we learn about society and, like, internalize our “place” in it (if you take a political science course, you’ll probably learn about political socialization, which is pretty much the same thing but specifically through the lens of political views). And the way we are socialized does affect the people we become. Like, when we talk about “gifted kid syndrome,” that’s socialization playing out. We grew up being told that we were “smarter” or “better,” as well as being isolated from our more “normal” peers, and that’s affected the way we see ourselves, the way we interact with society, etc. It gets a lot more complicated than that, but this is probably as much as I’m qualified to explain.

Obviously, your agab doesn’t determine your actual gender, your personality, or anything else, really, but it does affect the way you’re socialized because of how society treats you based on your perceived gender. Not all trans women are socialized as if they were men, much less affected in the same way by that socialization, but it’s not transphobic to suggest that some of the ones who were treated as men while growing up might pick up some of the traits that treatment tends to bring out. Just like ending up in the “gifted” classes, even by mistake, would probably give anyone some of the symptoms of gifted kid syndrome, regardless of whether or not they were actually “gifted.”

Op is also not generalizing trans experiences or assuming that theirs are universal. They literally said that “some people react to things differently,” and they made it pretty clear that while socialization affects everyone, it does not affect everyone the same way. Somebody was harping on the “your culture” thing, but that’s literally just? to acknowledge??? that gender norms are different in different cultures?? and therefore the gendered aspect of your socialization depends in part upon the culture in which you were raised? Honestly idk what else y'all want from them.

(Let’s get it straight: Most societies over history have defaulted to skirts for everyone because you don’t have to take anything off to relieve yourself, you just have to squat down or lift your skirts and go. The main advantage of bifurcated garments is they make it easier to ride horses. But Western men wear pants so women wearing pants has become ~the universal symbol of gender equality~)

The book I’m reading literally just had its medievalesque heroine declare that peasant women wear breeches to work in the field because “You can’t swing a scythe in a skirt!”

Hm yes story checks out

peasant women definitely never did farm labour in skirts

skirts definitely mean you’re weak and fragile and can’t accomplish anything

skirts are definitely bad and will keep you from truly living life

Skirt hiking: Definitely a Thing. (Janet’s tied her kirtle green/above the knee and not below…)

“Who are you to stand so fearsome

With your wavy locks of auburn hair and eyes of emerald green?”