I got bored

some idiot: um just tell them you’re gay sweaty

meanwhile,straight men:

There have been thousands of allegations against the UN’s military peacekeepers, but only 53 have been jailed for sexual offences

Didier Bourguet shifts in his seat and adjusts his red tie. He is finding it hard to recall how many children he raped when he was working for the United Nations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2004: “I would say about 20, maybe 25. I didn’t count.”

Bourguet was earning $7,000 a month as head of logistics in the peacekeeping mission in Goma while getting locals to procure children for him. He had two assets that ensured children trusted him: he was white and he worked for the UN.

He said the sex was consensual but is unsure whether the children were afraid to say no: “I’m not sure. I don’t think so but I’m not sure. Could be.”

After the Congolese police arrested Bourguet and the French authorities jailed him for nine years in 2008, the UN made a public promise to help his victims. That promise was never kept.

The UN said it could not find the victims. But 14 years on, when we investigated UN sex abuse for Channel 4, it took only one afternoon for my producer to find four women whom Bourguet had raped when they were children.

Bourguet’s hunting ground was the slum around Goma airport where barefoot children in ragged clothes scamper through the alleyways.

Adults remember the rapes well. Valerie Safari was 14 when she used to sell bananas by the side of the road to pay for her education. Luring her with promises of help, for six months Bourguet took her to a hotel where he abused her.

“He was so old, as old as my father,” she whispered.

Bourguet, a civilian, was part of a culture of UN personnel having sex with prostitutes — including children. More than a decade on, that culture persists.

Let me post a different question. If gender socialization were rigidly deterministic, how could we account for the variety of social and subjective outcomes produced by it? 

I’m not prepared to give a thorough overview of socialization. However, it’s clear that for many feminists, the actual nature of gender socialization is less important than its political use as a boundary marker for womanhood, for feminist authority, and for feminist priority. Any conversation about socialization needs to address this baggage first.

As it is, the concept of gender socialization has been distorted and ossified within radical feminism (especially) to fulfill two functions. First, to explain how people with a female birth assignment are meaningfully “women.” And second, to rationalize why trans women couldn’t be. Both represent the same project IMO, which is to define what and who is the subject of feminism or lesbianism (with all the political and social implications associated with that). Explanations of socialization have been tailored to produce the desired answers to these questions. 

Defining “women” as a political or social position (e.g. a class within patriarchy) would bypass the problem of gender/sex essentialism, which many feminists rightly call into question. However, in an effort to limit this class position to “females,” radical feminists have re-linked it to anatomy through the concept of socialization. The result is a new gender/sex essentialism. Womanhood is identified in an essentialized result of “female socialization,” which is said to proceed exclusively and inflexibly from female sex assignment. A natural, rigid, biological distinction between “male” and “female” is uncritically affirmed as a basis for this assignment (and subsequent claims to womanhood). 

With “female socialization” named as the maker of womanhood and linked intractably to sex assignment, it can then be used to disqualify trans women from womanhood. The logic goes that trans women are inherently male, therefore are male-socialized, therefore are embodiments of patriarchy and female oppression. Their bodies, presence in women’s or lesbian spaces, and very conceptual existence are framed as a (sexual) violation of “women” and as a reinforcement of patriarchy. If this were true, trans women would necessarily need to be eliminated as part of a feminist program.

I’m sure you’re aware of this loaded nature of “socialization.” What I’m hearing is that you want recognition for the way socialization has shaped you and dictated your childhood experiences, and you sense that a shift in the understanding of socialization could compromise your interpretation of your experience. 

To be clear, interpreting FTM/trans men’s socialization isn’t a primary concern of this blog. But if we want to understand the process of socialization, we first need to think about what socialization is. 

Just grabbing some sociological definitions from google, socialization is “the process of internalizing the norms and ideologies of society;” it’s “a learning process, one that involves development or changes in the individual’s sense of self.” What’s important here is that socialization is: 1) a learning process; and 2) related to subjectivity (an individual’s sense of self). 

The learning process by which we internalize the values and worldviews of our society–and form a subjective location within the social matrix–is complex. Social learning in general is complex. It can involve both direct and indirect messages about gender. A parent encouraging a child to behave in some ways while scolding them for behaving in others, on the basis of whether the behavior is appropriate for boys or girls, sends a direct message about what boys and girls are supposed to be like. The parent is also sending the message that the child is/should be a boy or a girl, but that’s just one part of the lesson, and won’t automatically determine a person’s sense of self just because it is repeated.

Children (and adults) are also inundated with indirect messages about gender. We constantly witness gendered behaviors and interactions, and the responses they elicit. A child might witness how their mother interacts with their father and vice versa. They’ll see how adults interact with other adults and children of different genders, and how other children interact with each other. Gender and gendered interactions are depicted in media, in marketing, through divisions of labor, and in other areas. These interactions do not just broadcast messages about gender in isolation, but also signal how gender is constructed through race and class, etc. 

The result is a complex system of gendered meanings, which we all encounter, learn, and (re)produce throughout our lifetimes.

How a gendered subjectivity and social location is developed in an individual must also be complex, and it’s a process that’s poorly understood. There is not a universal “female subjectivity” or “female experience of socialization.” Not only are our experiences informed by factors such as culture, race, ethnicity, sexuality, ability, religion, and class, but they are also personalized in terms of our immediate social and family environment. The structure of our family; the beliefs and values of our family members, mentors, and friends; idiosyncrasies in the way people interact with us–not to mention sheer random events in our lives–all influence our social experience and subjective development.

Furthermore, our own individuality must be taken into account. Our personality, neurotype, interests, beliefs, affinities, and mode of presentation (etc) can also affect what we are exposed to, who or what we identify with, how people interact with us, and what subjective effect our experiences have on us. 

For example, I’m the oldest of three sisters. As pre-teens and teenagers, my sisters began to express an interest in makeup and clothes, and cultivated more typically feminine aesthetics, often with each other or with their friends. I’ve never been interested in makeup; it wasn’t pushed on us by my parents and it wasn’t a big deal among my friends. Consequently, I never learned much about it. Many of the other trappings of femininity are also a mystery to me, and I don’t relate to many images of feminine womanhood. Why did this aspect of socialization pass over me and not them?

Given the complexity of the learning process and the variability in individual subjective outcomes, I can’t conclude that socialization is tied deterministically to a single factor like biology or sex assignment.

I work in a psych hospital, particularly with a lot of suicidal, or post-suicide attempt patients. We get a fair number of trans patients, absolutely more than the general population in mental health care. I also, unsurprisingly, know a fair number of trans people who have survived suicide attempts or been suicidal.

And I legitimately think people misunderstand why trans people kill themselves.

It isn’t simply dysphoria, although that’s also a big deal as well. It’s also PTSD from childhood, assault, and harassment. It’s being in unsafe enviroments that are hostile to trans people. It’s not having access to good healthcare. And studies support this too, showing higher rates of suicide when harassment is higher and support is lower.

So yes, dysphoria is big, especially when people can’t, or aren’t allowed to, transition. But don’t talk about suicide rates among trans people without also talking about the society we live in, and what it does to us.

I have reason to believe that someone is going around into other people’s accounts and sending them messages on IM with fake links. 

This happened to me just now. I thought it was suspicious after seeing the tinyurl link, but I clicked it anyway and it brought me here:

Whatever you do, DO NOT LOG IN. Take a closer look at the URL at the top.

This is a scam. It’s a website made to look like tumblr’s home page, and it will steal your information and hack you right out of your account.

My guess is that this has already happened to tumblr user @turntableking and their account is being used to drag more people in.

Honestly, the Feminist notion of entitlement is ridiculous. What the fuck is with the idea that women need to be respected? Gender has no fucking role in respect. I will respect who I respect, their gender means jack shit to me. Its selfish and extremely misogynist to think that because you are a woman or because you are a person of color that you deserve respect. You do not ‘deserve’ shit, the only thing you are entitled to you is your human rights, of which respect is not one. You have to earn respect.

Body Positivity. This is the stupidest movement I’ve ever heard, and I’m overweight as fuck. Don’t be proud that you are expected to break your wooden casket after death in 5 years. Either care about preserving yourself or don’t. You don’t get entitled to having people not complain about you taking 3 seats on the subway. Seriously though, its so stupid that people think they deserve praise for being 400 pounds. For needing custom-made clothing to fit you. Don’t be proud of that, don’t complain about society for you being fat. Work to fix it, lose weight, there is nothing wrong with doing so.

You're probably thinking of the first one. They're using the second.

like the fact that the person who coined the term also coined “emotion work” to describe the same thing in private contexts isn’t really relevant here, people are just hearing a term and using it literally, they’re not looking it up, they’re not using it technically, and these two terms have the same literal meaning anyway, it’s an arbitrary distinction. it is Weird for you to expect people to talk about their experiences in the approved academic language.

like we should talk about emotional labor in relationships (and you can call it “emotion work” if you want) because it is worth talking about the give and take of support and guidance that people offer each other. it is useful to be able to talk about when someone is asking too much of you while being unable to return the favor, it is useful to be able to talk about always being the one who has to initiate reconciliation after an argument. those statements don’t imply at all that we shouldn’t comfort people, that we shouldn’t apologize and it is the same when we talk about them as a whole by calling them emotional labor/emotion work. it just gives us the tools to discuss them.

like the dismissive example i just saw was “idk it kinda sucks when i have to listen to my boyfriend” and uh yeah it does suck if he never listens to you, if that emotional support is all one-sided.