Please we need to stop

Like, I get that being called "female or male socialized" is used as a cudgel by transphobes, particularly radfems, to say that we can't Really BE our gender cause we weren't "socialized" the same. I get that there is a valid knee-jerk dismissal given how it is bandied about as some sort of litmus test for if someone is oppressed or privileged or whatever the fck other box people want to say has no nuance or needs credentials for having an opinion about.

But like, socialization is a thing. it is a thing that happens to people, and it is a useful academic term for understanding acculturation and how social norms and practices are reproduced. Male and Female socialization are things that have coherent meanings, but are context dependent and nuanced. it feels kinda like throwing the baby out with the bath water when we categorically say that socialization is "bullshit" or "not a thing" because it absolutely is.

It just Also has nothing to do with whether or not someones gender identity is "Real" or "Valid". it actually does not matter whether or not a trans man or woman or non-binary person is female or male socialized, that does not make their perspective less real and valuable or make them less their gender. It just doesn't. It's a non sequitur. If we can understand that someone who was put into one sex category is and can be a different gender...why does their socialization suddenly matter for whether or not they experience that gender?

Honestly, I think it just comes down to people reaching for logical short cuts, for ways to control and gate-keep spaces/discourses by misusing social science as a purity test. People are very obsessed with trying to find the "truest" or "most oppressed" experience that they ignore that actually every human has a unique perspective and you actually have to look at their arguments and actions not some immutable characteristic that you can somehow use to explain their entire perspective.

The problem with people who make socialization arguments are that their arguments are bad. They don't actually prove anything, because socialization can't actually prove gender identity or amount/type of oppression someone faces.

You can say "that's not what socialization means and is a gross generalization" with just as much ease and much more truthfulness than "gendered socialization isn't real".

There are effective ways to argue that point, and "socialization doesn't exist" isn't one of them. It's a bad argument that doesn't account for a lot of people's lived experiences, which means it isn't actually persuasive to anyone who has ever seen themselves represented in a conversation about socialization, and who needs a replacement for the words and theory they've used to describe that truth about themselves. If anything, it's actively counterproductive.

While socialization is a thing per se, it doesn't mean male/female socialization exist and that these are two binary categories you are socialized into as a kid and can never move out of. That part is bullshit, and socialization is much more complex, multifaceted, and continuous (especially for trans people, who go through a new form of socialization during their transition). The labels male socialized/female socialized are pretty much inconsistent with reality and need to go.

You were replying to nothorses, but I do want to be clear that why I brought this us is not to excuse people using it to make wild generalizations. I brought it up because people making the wild generalizations are actively using the term wrong, and are completely ignoring the fact that socialization cannot and does not actually tell you whether or not someone is or someone "Really is" their gender, or dangerous, or privileged etc.

using it for individual people isn't the point of the word, claiming "well your this way cause people tried to force you too be a boy or girl" is not only rude and weird, it's bad sociology and theory in general. socialization is about analyzing systems. male and female socialization, or more nuanced derivations there of, are just describing the process by which society socially tries to create gendered people.

No more no less.

When we describe how someone or some institution coercively punishes "boys" for crying and "being sensitive" or wearing pink or rewards them for "being tough", or rewards little "girls" for wearing pink and being "nice", and punishes them for being "stubborn" what we are describing is gendered socialization. It's a thing that happens and is part of why transphobia and intersexism is so pervasive. you have to *Do* gender in some way to interact with society as we have constructed it, and we are taught how to do that via socialization.

this doesn't stop people from not being those genders, it doesn't stop them from having an absolutely shit time of it, it doesn't magically make someone more or less privileged, it doesn't make someone inherently more good or bad.

So if people are using it to mean any of those things, they're just wrong, are making bad arguments and don't actually know what they are talking about.

like. yeah, sure. people who were raised to fit the "female" gender role are generally expected to behave a certain way by society. but gendered socialization can be deeply complicated by other intersections of identity. i don't really identify with discussions where people talk about specific xyz experiences as being central to "female socialization". and that's because of 2 main reasons: 1) my mother identified as a feminist and wanted to avoid enforcing restrictive gender roles on me as much as possible, and 2) my nature as a visibly neurodivergent child/teen meant that my peers only identified me as a "failed girl" rather than an actual "proper" girl. many experiences people tout as being central to "female socialization" are ones i never experienced as a result. i was not seen as desirable by boys, so i didn't get harangued into accepting dates. i've always been considered intimidating, so people don't catcall or harass me in public. i was never pressured by my parents to wear makeup or dress femininely, and if i did engage with feminine signifiers like long painted nails i would get belittled by my peers for how i didn't "look good" wearing these feminine accessories, because i was so bad at being a girl that even TRYING to be feminine meant that i was a malicious facsimile of girlhood instead of an actual person. my early diagnosis of oppositional defiant disorder meant that i was assumed to be aggressive by adults, too. there was never any point in my life where true acceptance into the "sisterhood" or whatever the fuck was ever an option for me. i may have been raised "as a girl", but my socialization was not what people usually have in mind when they say the term "female socialization".

And again, I don’t think this is all trans women! I think it’s essentially just people who went “oh I’m a woman now” and then carried on with their current world view from a society that viewed AFAB people as lesser without unpacking that.

sorry, but this is not it, anon

I have trans masc friends who deal with it a lot and it's really frustrating to see them have to put up with this kind of bullshit in my name.

But it's also at least a little selfish, because the 'in my name' thing really fucks me up. TMA/TME discoursers want me to be the biggest victim in the room and they actively prevent me from feeling like that's true. Trans mascs getting ran through the dirt to elevate trans fems feels like I'm the Bad class of person the same if I were a cis man or something. It is literally accomplishing the opposite of their goal lmao. So, I try push back against that, and hopefully make trans mascs feel like they have trans fem support.

And like, for all they want to say that believing in transandrophobia is a TERF dog whistle, it's like, hello? The narrative that the trans community favors AMAB trans people and walks all over AFAB trans folk is a huge TERF thing, what the fuck are you doing walking into this bear trap. Making this fantasy scenario TERFs made up to paint being trans as a patriarchal psyop a reality does nothing but invalidate me and cause serious damage to the entire community.

It’s medical misogyny and medical sexism, it’s social misogyny and sexism, etc etc.

But that’s not all!

Transandrophobia also involves how much society hates it when afab people act masculine. Butch women deal with this all the time. Little kids labeled as tomboys deal with it. Society really hates masculine afab people.

But wait, there’s more!

Transandrophobia ALSO involves how much society hates men who are men in the “wrong way”.

And one more thing!

Transandrophobia ALSO involves homophobia, because whether the trans man is straight or not, society views him as a woman. That means he’s treated as either a lesbian (though some trans men do identify as lesbians), or a straight woman, either way erasing his true identity.

And all of that is transandrophobia.

It’s not just transphobia. It’s not just misogyny. It’s not just those things separately. It is an interaction of those things that cause transmasc people to be uniquely abused by society - and a lot of that abuse is invisible, or shoved under “just misogyny” or “just transphobia”. But it’s not.

And the radfems harassing trans men for having top surgery are, in my experience, genuinely not even a little bit more sympathetic to cis women who get voluntary mastectomies—watching that discourse twist itself into knots trying to justify reductions and radical reductions (but not TOO radical) while drawing the line at the same women getting top surgery is dizzying.

One example is the very blatent tirf claim that transphobia on its own isn't real, that it is all misdirected transmisogyny, and that transmascs only experience oppression due to our association with transfemmes.

But there is also the insistence that anti abortion laws and similar things are targeted at cis women and therefore are "women's issues" - transmascs shouldn't complain about being excluded because it "isn't about us". Same with homophobia and butchphobia. Even the terf talking point that they are just protecting "little cis girls" from making irreversible mistakes pretends that actual the transmascs being harmed is just an accident and not the goal.

Trying to talk about transandrophobia is a constant stream of "It's just transphobia. It's just misogyny. No, you can't call your experiences misogyny because that isn't about you. You can't call yourself a lesbian or a butch or compare your oppression to lesbophobia. It isn't about you. Yes, terfs hurt you, but you aren't their main target. This isn't about you. Yes, you need abortions and experience medical misogyny, but you can't talk about it because this isn't about you. You were sexually assaulted because of misdirecred misogyny. Don't make it about you. You've never contributed to the history of gay men, or lesbians, or the trans community. It isn't about you. Those cross dressers weren't trans. Stop trying to make women's history about you. You can't reclaim cunt or faggot or dyke because those words aren't about you. I don't care how many times you've been called a tranny. That word isn't about you. Why must you make everything about you?"

Because sure, transmascs exist, and we might be impacted by everyone else's oppression, but it is always thought of as a theoretical consequence of what is really going on, if it is thought of at all. Transmascs are not considered to be oppressed in our own right.

This idea gives the lawmakers plausible deniability, allies an excuse to ignore us, and feeds into transmasc erasure. If we are never the actual target to begin with, then clearly, we can't be uniquely targeted. The law makers don't need to be held accountable for their transandrophobia because it isn't like they are trying to hurt transmascs, right? We need to let the real victims speak, the ones being targeted on purpose.

Nobody ever sees the way it all piles up, and even if they do, they think "well it's just an accident, right? If we fix the main problem, then this fringe issue will go away on its own" without ever considering that transandrophobia isn't as rare, fringe, or accidental as society wants it to appear and that actual effort needs to be put into dismantling it.

It isn't that they actually believe that transandrophobia isn't real. It's that they just don't believe it is about transmascs. Because even if we are the common denominator, we are still just collateral damage and could not possibly have anything of value to say. Because as collateral damage, our issues are never our own and thus never need to be discussed on our own terms.

100%. And I think this is exactly what this sort of cycle of erasure depends on.

We are erased, our problems are erased, and our oppression is erased, which means it's easy for people to ignore us, our problems, and our oppression. There's so little evidence, so few people talking about it, and they never really see or hear anyone name us in this violence, so surely, it isn't about us at all! It must be about the people they know about already, the problems they know about, and the ones who are always readily named in these conversations.

If we're speaking up, there's no reason to believe us; if anything, we come under scrutiny for trying to talk about these issues nobody else can see. We must be crazy, hysterical, whiny and overdramatic, or perhaps malicious. We're stealing attention, stealing space, and stealing help. We might be victims, but we are incidental and unworthy victims.

And ignoring us, our problems, and our oppression means we continue to be erased. Which makes it easier to ignore us, and erase us, and easier to perpetuate violence against us. And so on.

It's understandable, in a way, for people to ignore us; most people don't know about any of this in the first place, and when they do, they're not inclined to take any of it seriously. Even if they do see convincing evidence that our problems are real and worth talking about, it's easy for that to be a one-off that they eventually forget about. Everyone else is talking about everything else, so we sort of fade away.

It's not their fault; they're not trying to ignore us. They just haven't learned to recognize violence against us, and they just don't seek us out, and can they really be blamed for that? Can they really be blamed for the violence that continues because they and others don't see or try to stop it? We're so hard to find in the first place. You know, because we've been so thoroughly erased.

I mentioned how common it is - especially in more conservative Christian places - for trans men to be set up with a husband by their family and then be forcibly impregnated as a way to make them detransition to someone who runs a whole blog about ‘spreading awareness about trans issues’ and she looked at me like I was crazy and said “woah I never knew that happened to trans men.”

Seeing Myself in the Stories of Other Conversion Therapy Survivors

So I started to research more about conversion practices. I read Gajdic’s book and other memoirs by conversion therapy survivors. I also found a book called Pray the Gay Away, by a sociologist who studied gay and lesbian people in the Bible Belt of the United States. That book had a chapter on the ex-gay movement, including the author’s experience of attending a conference organized by Exodus International, which used to be one of the largest ex-gay organizations in the US before it shut down in 2012. Reading that book, I learned that ex-gay Christians still encounter homophobia from conservative Christians even after “leaving homosexuality” and that they try to counter this by arguing that the “sin” of homosexual behavior is no worse than other sins. This reminded me of how detransitioned women often still encountered ignorance and hostility from transphobic cis lesbians and radical feminists. They acted as if we were forever “tainted” by our transitions and time spent living as trans people. We tried to counter this by arguing that yes, we had given into patriarchy but so had most women in one way or another before finding radical feminism, and our way of trying to survive in patriarchy was really no worse than what other women did. The semi-outsider status of ex-gay Christians in conservative Christianity and the strategies they used to argue for better treatment reminded me of the status of detransitioned women in radical feminism and the arguments we made to try to get other feminists live up to their promise of sisterhood.

Statement about Devorah Zahav

I wasn’t the first detransitioned women she’d dated and it appeared that she was both attracted to my suppressed transmasculinity and wanted to control it. She was attracted to parts of my body that were different as a result of taking t and treated me in a way that left me feeling objectified and used. I’ve more or less been stone since my relationship with her and no longer engage in sexual activities that used to bring me pleasure because they’re too upsetting now. I don’t think she ever cared about me, she just tricked me into thinking that she did so that she could use me psychologically and sexually. I don’t think she cared about other people in the detransitioned radical feminist community either, she was using them too. She’s basically a cult leader or something close to it, using her own charisma and manipulation combined with anti-trans feminist ideology to draw people to her so she can control and abuse them. She especially targets transmasculine people with a history of trauma, trying to convince us that our transmasculinity is a result of that trauma. She does this in order to control us, she has no interest in actually helping people heal from their trauma because then they’ll no longer need her “support” and she wouldn’t be able to control or use them anymore.

Risks/harms of ideological detransition/“alternative treatments for gender dysphoria”

On the one hand, we have people saying it's fine to make "have you considered you might not be cis" comments...about friends. Because sometimes someone is giving egg vibes, consciously or subconsciously, as a means of looking for support, looking for the people they know and trust to still be cool with it or tell them what they're thinking is a valid option, and it's good to turn toward those bids and offer support.

On the other hand, we have people saying not to make those kinds of comments or jokes....about strangers. Because you don't know them, they might be trans in a totally different direction than you think, and second-guessing someone you don't know about their own gender - often in a way that treats nonbinary identities as a fake thing, a phase, just a step in a pipeline for people with only one foot out of the closet - is not the compassionate trans-positive action that a small but frustrating number of people think it is.

And the thing is, both of these things are true. You can't treat strangers the way you treat your bestie! You will do more harm than good if you try!

Than it is to make broad and generalized jokes about no one in particular, about the emo-kid-to-trans pipeline and along the lines of "shoutout to the high school alt couples who are still together but traded genders" or "if you were the weird wolf girl in school how's being trans treating you?" or "isn't it touching how 10 years ago we saw hundreds of nervous, nerdy boys lining up to see [MOVIE] and now 10 years later those same girls are having line parties for [SEQUEL]?"

Than it is to look at an individual total fucking stranger in a store buying something that doesn't seem to match their gender, let alone having a weird gender presentation on the internet, and "lightheartedly"-but-persistently INSIST they're OBVIOUSLY just 2 years out from a binary transition, come on, people NEVER do THAT unless they're a [MAN/WOMAN] deep down, DUH!

And I suddenly can't help but notice that a lot of people will criticize the latter...and then get misinterpreted as saying the former two are inherently evil and degrading (often because the people doing the misinterpreting haven't seen enough of the latter to even realize it's a thing a small but frustratingly substantial number of people do)-

And I can't help but notice that people will defend the former two...and get misinterpreted as demanding the divine right to do the latter, or saying no one can have individual boundaries within the former,

Are all trans mascs sexual harassers? obviously not. Are you responsible for that guy's actions in any way? No not at all. But I find the inistance that any sexual misconduct or transmisogyny purported to be from a trans masc is an outsider troll to be very off putting from the perspective of a trans woman. I think there is a problem of trans women being treated like sex objects by the broader trans community, (enby's trans mascs etc). The problem will never be resolved if we can't even aknowledge it exists without getting shouted down.

Yes actually because that is what Radfems on Tumblr do and have done and will continue to do for literally the entire time I've been on Tumblr.

Just being completely clear - I mentioned this already but to be extra extra clear - It was not even my original idea that it was probably a Radfem and I've directly said that. I honestly thought it was probably one of the trans guys that white knights extremely hard against the idea of transandrophobia trying to cause shit because of the typing style.

It was in fact my trans fem ex-gf and current very close friend who I still live with, who suggested to me that she thought it was a Radfem. And you know?

Her reasoning combined with my experiences with TERFs actively trying to recruit my friends and I into Radical Feminism because we're actively Feminist trans mascs - it would make a ton of sense.

You have probably not experienced this because you are not a trans masc, but there is absolutely a subgroup of Radfems on this website that try very hard to learn about trans infighting as a way to target trans mascs for recruitment.

Trans masculine people have HUGE targets on our back for Radfem recruitment on this website. It's something I've literally personally seen people fall into and detransition for. Radblr actively loves to target vulnerable, politically vocal trans mascs as recruitment targets, especially doing so by trying to pit us against each other, especially by trying to pit us and trans women against each other.

It's scary as hell. It's also not a new thing by any means. Like, "This has been happening consistently at least since 2015" level of not a new thing. So, I've learned to become very aware of it because I'm a trans masc who is a Feminist advocate who actively studies the history and tactics of Radical Feminism in order to protect myself and other trans people from it.

I'm also sorry, but there was literally an anon like that that went around trans masculine blogs a few months ago. Exactly the same premise but flipped in a "transandrodorks need to be fixed by being impregnated with girlcock" kind of deal. There was an almost immediate "we need to assume this isn't actually a trans fem and assume that it is a troll" response both internally and externally. If any of us had assumed it was actually a trans fem in the same way and projected our pain at trans fems in the same way this is getting projected onto trans mascs...? Could you imagine? The double standard would be insane.

I know this is something coming from a place of our own hurt, but where the hell was any of our support during that? What were we supposed to do besides assume that it was probably a troll? Like those are hypotheticals without real answers, but come on? You know?

Of course anything is possible. No one knows who that anon actually was. And it is an issue the way trans women are sexualized by the community, especially right now on Tumblr. It deserves to be addressed. But not in the weeds like this.

Most of the trans mascs who received the original harassment off anon had assumed the anons came from this group of trans mascs already known to be causing trouble this way. The ones that didn't mostly assumed it was a TERF. We'll never have an actual answer unless whoever did it fesses up, but there was an active effort to communicate that it probably wasn't actually a trans fem despite the anon saying it was, and even it was it was a very obvious attempt at trolling and should be blocked and deleted.

And because we don't know who it was, for all we know it's the same group or someone who saw the deeds of that group and decided to copycat.