Retroactive Nightmares

Jeff found a genie in a bottle Who said, "I can give you anything you ask" "You can have your wishes three And a million more for free It's unlimited, just set me to the task."

Well, Jeff thought a while, Said, "I want houses, "I want boats, I want fancy modern art, I want tickets to the Met, I want my own private jet, And a rocket into space just for a start."

Well, the genie waved her arms and made it happen His every wish bolted from the blue And folks all over town grew enamored, gathered 'round To admire the man whose wishes had come true

They said, "Let's hear it for the man who has everything! By good fortune he's been set so far apart." "Yeah, let's hear it for Jeff who has everything! 'Cause his wishes are only at the start."

Well, Jeff heard their shouts and he grew worried He said, "Everybody's getting in my way." The genie smiled as before, "You've got a million wishes more. You can even give a bunch of them away."

Well, Jeff got confused and sorta quiet 'Til he finally said, "I have just one wish more." "I am satisfied, so I wish that you would die So you cannot grant wishes anymore."

Well, the genie's eyes got big and sad and shiny 'Til she finally said, "Your wish is my command." And with an effervescent sigh, she disappeared before his eyes And no wishes were ever granted there again

I’ve noticed this with hairdressers. multiple times I’ve gone to lady hairdressers and said “cut it all off,” and they’ve gone “hmm alright,” and basically just trimmed the split ends. meanwhile I can go to a dude and say “hey, can you make my hair slightly shorter?” and he’ll go “on it boss,” and shave me bald.

twice now, I’ve also had lady tattoo artists add pink to femme up a tattoo, despite that not being on the initial design.

god, also thinking about this brought back a memory. my mom once threw a fit because my shoes were “too masculine” (they were black women’s flats), saying that I’d upset my dad and ruin the formal event we were going to. I wore the shoes, my dad didn’t give a shit.

women are always going to be the biggest enforcers of patriarchal femininity because men can only enforce as outsiders. Women, as you say, can gain by it more than men, but also it's part of what we're taught being a woman is - passing judgement on Improper Women to train towards Correct Feminity.

That is to say could the word/idea you're looking for be Social Reproduction? It's an idea that builds on Marx's theory of economic reproduction to examine the way social structures are passed down, and who's responsible for that labor. It covers the way women are most often the ones to teach and reinforce gender roles as you said, and examines how it's vital to capitalism's continuation.

Socialisation is a specific mechanism of social reproduction. An individual is socialised as X; an individual is not socially reproduced as X. Social reproduction occurs when individuals are socialised along class norms. They're different but related concepts.

TERFs use the term completely cackhandedly and end up meaning something almost opposite to what socialisation means in every other context - "fe/male socialisation" per TERF ideology is something static, essential and immovable, whereas socialisation is meant to describe an active and continuing process.

Gender in specific is a site of multiple progressive resocialisations even for cis - enforced gendered behaviour as a girl child is different to enforced gendered behaviour as a teenage girl is different to enforced gendered behaviour as an adult woman is different to enforced gendered behaviour as a post-menopausal woman, and the same is true for boys/men, and the fact that gender is perpetually reenforced through social norms, and that the gendered role you're socialised towards changes throughout life and therefore we're in a perpetual state of active social conditioning, is a pretty foundational argument for gendered socialisation in toto being a social construct and therefore mutable/reassessable.

Sorry to get heated because I do understand where you're coming from, but frankly a) you're being really fucking condescending and b) I am sick to the back teeth of being expected to cede basic feminist theory and language to a minority of fucking idiot bigots who willfully misinterpret it into an antifeminist form.

Obviously my main beef with TERFs is that they're committed to fucking up trans people's lives for no reason except blind bigotry and an unwillingness to accept the necessary discomfort of questioning their unexamined bias. But a close second is that the ascendancy of TERF "feminism" has set actually useful feminist conversations back decades (not to mention the targeted impact on survivor services and lesbian/dyke/queer spaces).

Giving ground to reactionary bigots' bad faith interpretations of useful ideas and going 'well I guess that's TERF shit now' doesn't fucking help. What that does is help play into the illusion that TERFs are the Real Feminists because they are gradually claiming a monopoly on the aesthetics and language of more and more feminist conversations.

Where possible, we should examine our theory and language and steer towards clarity. And sometimes that will mean picking a synonym that's been less co-opted because that cooption does become part of the meaning.

However, in this case, I mean socialisation. As in the process of social reproduction through regular classed interaction and mutual conditioning. I don't mean social reproduction and I don't mean social conditioning, I mean the specific process of learning-by-doing around social role.

"Gendered socialisation" doesn't mean "an innate and insurmountable fate to end up the gender you were when you were 2" and the pretence that it does is legitimately incoherent in relation to the Actual Words Being Discussed. And given that it's quite an important process to talk about to understand a social model of gender as class, I'm pretty comfortable choosing that as a hill to die on.

If someone were, as a random example, say hospitalized for over two weeks with no explanation, I think that should automatically trigger a special election to replace them.

If you're still able to do your job, then prove it. And if you're not, then you're actively obstructing democracy by not stepping down.

Which is to say, that if a public official were to pass away or into a coma, and their handlers choose to obfuscate that fact, this should be seen as intentionally obstructing democracy.