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.
"i'm like this because women are socialized to be shy and quiet and subservient" okay good on you for recognizing it, but that's only the very first step. the next few steps are that you Stop Doing It. feminist thought vs feminist action.
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? 🤔"
like WHY are you telling trans women that they literally have to make themselves smaller and conform to the WORST gender exceptations of women to be seen as real women. since when is it evil and masculine to be confident, i thought we were supposed to be doing that. i thought that was feminism.
also, not all kids actually get that sort of gendered socialization in the first place, like I'm AFAB and brother i was NOT 'female socialized'. i was lucky in that my parents weren't big on gender roles in the first place, so I wasn't getting any messaging about that at home, and thanks to the power of autism any sort of general societal pressures for gender expectations just flew right over my head, so it's always wildly confusing to hear about a lot of that shit.
like what do you mean I'm supposed to feel obligated to wear makeup, when were we supposed to learn that? wait, most women actually feel ashamed of having body hair and have to actively work to be okay with it? why am i supposed to feel insecure about being a tall woman, nobody told me that. what do you mean it's scary to be the only woman in a room full of men, why would i feel safer if another woman showed up, how would adding another stranger change the situation? when did y'all learn this stuff, I feel like i've missed some memos here.
And yeah, now that I'm an adult I understand the messaging that causes a lot of this stuff, but it's just. really not something that i've ever personally experienced. like I was mercilessly bullied for most of my childhood, and it was wildly traumatic; i was actively suicidal in elementary school. my peers were the ones doing it, and it was ALL of them, so. no, i don't find women inherently safer than men, i just engage with people as individuals, and I feel unsafe if they're assholes. at no point does gender factor into the equation.
and people trying to use that bioessentialist shit as a talking point kinda fails to impress me given that i'm walking proof that they're wrong. kinda hard to buy into their bullshit when 90% of the time the arguments are just them saying "Everyone raised as a girl has experienced (thing i've literally never experienced before)". especially because i'm agender, and with my general build (tall, broad, deep voice) I do occasionally get mistaken for a trans woman, even though I'm actually AFAB and not actually woman. so it's pretty rich seeing these people talk about how people raised as girls all have a special solidarity with each other, when my invitation to that table has always been very fucking conditional.
