socialization is not just what your parents told you
socialization comes from your parents, your brother, your aunt, your math teacher, your classmates, your obnoxious neighbor, your friend from preschool you haven’t seen in years, your friends’ parents, random strangers on the street, your baseball coach, the governor giving a speech on TV, your pediatrician, your favorite character in your favorite novel, the priest at the church your family attends.
it’s what they say to you. what they say to other women. what they say about women.
it’s about how they treat you and other women.
socialization is knowing that your friend, the least athletic one in your friend circle and the one who most hates exercise, is attending self-defense classes. it’s half your female friends carrying around pepperspray by the time they’re 18. it’s being a rape victim and having your male best friend, the one you’ve known since you were both 6, say “I don’t know anyone who’s ever been raped.” it’s being 10 and being told your uncle is going to jail for doing “something very very wrong” to your younger female cousin.
socialization is realizing all of your female relatives got married younger than your male relatives. it’s being married off at 14 because your family was too poor. it’s your ~feminist~ dad telling you to prioritize your education over marriage while your mom tells you to “hold on to that boyfriend of yours” because “men like that are hard to come by”–it’s neither of them knowing your boyfriend once threatened to kill himself if you left him.
socialization is opening up a history book and not finding the name of a single woman in it. it’s turning on the TV to male soccer, to known rapist male film directors receiving awards, to the news of how X person is the first ever female president in Y country and the backlash she’s received. it’s about having to try hard, so fucking hard, to see women in history, in positions of power. it’s historically powerful women being reduced to their “ethereal, mystical beauty.”
socialization is being isolated from everyone when you’re on your period with the exception of other menstruating women. it’s watching a documentary on those “poor third world women” secluded in menstruation huts and never watching a documentary about something like that happening to men anywhere. it’s receiving an endometriosis diagnosis at age 35 because no one told you painful cramps were no longer normal at your age; it’s your younger sister learning from you and seeking a diagnosis only to be dismissed. it’s learning your mother had 3 abortions before she had you and her asking you to keep it a secret from your father and brothers.
socialization is your parents telling you you’re no less intelligent than the boys in your class; it’s your parents not saying anything to your brother because they don’t need to.
socialization is an older woman approaching you with a fake smile and concern in her eyes pretending to know you after your boyfriend jokingly shouted at you at a bar; it’s seeking out other women’s eyes when his shouting becomes less friendly.
female socialization hurts us, and it teaches us to pretend it never has.
titsay
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