★

the thing about the concept of gendered socialization is that so many people use it as like another kind of gender essentialism. you know it's not an immutable trait right. you can literally overcome it.

and when ppl see a trans woman being confident and unafraid to take up space and decide it's because of her evil evil male socialization, i'm always like "wait you're saying this woman was raised as a child to be loud and confident and take up space? that's awesome, i thought that's how we WANTED people to raise girls? why exactly is it a problem now? 🤔"

They also treat socialisation as some indelible artefact of the past, not an ongoing process. Women aren't just more shy and cautious on average because they were taught that as small children; they're like that because of the environment they're still in at forty or fifty. It's not some irremovable childhood brainwashing, it's a reasonable reaction to current circumstances. A great many trans women become more shy and quieter after coming out or transitioning because the people around them socially punish them for not doing so, same as previously shy and quiet cis women become more confident and take up more space when put in environments that don't punish them for it. They act like someone's personality and behaviour are branded into them based on whether they have a penis at eight years old, but that is simply not the case.