It is incredibly strange to see that some trans people's response to the distorted ideas of gender socialization that TERFs sling around is to basically deny their conclusions... but validate the premise?
"Trans people do not have the same experiences of internalizing gendered teachings as cis people, because even before we come out our transness influences us"
"...by which I mean even before we came out we were always innately boys/girls and therefore naturally were only internalizing the ideas about our Correct gender about ourselves. So actuallyyyy ☝️we are not (agab) socialized we are (gender identity) socialized."
A. This is engaging with the knock-off TERF version of socialization way too much. It's actually, really, super not how this works. You're ascribing too much legitimacy to an approach to gender and socialization that is genuinely incoherent, because it's bio-essentialism pantomiming faux-sociology. It's just more essentialist boy-brain/girl-brain shit. Which brings me to:
B. You are participating in some essentialist boy-brain/girl-brain shit rn. But doing it where you have the Right Brain. This is not the validation you think it is.
We are going from "trans people have nuanced experiences navigating gendered teachings" and into some mystical "I only subconsciously absorbed messages directed at my latent identity in a completely exclusive, binary way, because of some innate, pure gendered impulse which had complete and proper discernment onto knowing which messaging and experiences society treated me with were for me or The Other. So anything directed towards me because of my agab was water-off-a-ducks-back, I did not take it personally, and it had no lasting effect, therefore did not impact my gender-psyche. Because my True Gender warded it off.
Because of that I was actually socialized Correctly, with all the Correct implications on how that effects my behaviors and thoughts, because men and women integrally are/think/act differently and I'm like that but the correct one ✨✨✨ yay ✨✨"
C. ...nonbinary people who????? Whats that
It's like. This is coming off like you are terrified of being invalidated right now but this is not a validating rebuttal. Or realistic. It's not even this black and white for cis people? There are so many issues here.
I guess I'll put it like this.
If there is a trans person who grew up as their agab, lived as cis for decades, totally gender conforming, completely internalized what society said they were supposed to be like according to their agab, were taught specific behaviors and ideas because of their agab, and took those on as a part of their self perception, like really did live thinking they were a girl/boy for a long time- then one day began to question their gender and only then realized they weren't their agab? They're still trans, and still valid in their identity.
Like, there still would be nuance to their historical relationship with gender, it wouldn't be without trans influence long before knowing they're trans, but they could totally have internalized any degree of agab targeted teachings from the start and had that influence their perceptions of themself and the world, and that fact is not invalidating their identity or dooming it.
In fact, that's not unusual at all? It's normal for stuff like that to have some kind of impact on us. The obvious fact being ignored here is that at any point we can call these ideas, behaviors, and teachings from past experiences into question, and reevaluate our relationship to them- and you know what? Cis people do this all the time too. Their ideas of what their gender means to them changes, they experience new dimensions to it, they reject old ones. It's all complicated and affects us in personal, ever evolving ways. Socialization is an ongoing, lifelong process. One thing of many that TERFs ignore.
Being influenced in some way from living or being raised as our agab is nuanced for trans people but it is real, and completely denying any impact from it comes off more like dysphoric insecurity than anything else to me.
Which I don't want to be totally unsympathetic to, it is a fear born in reaction to transphobic attitudes like that of TERFs, and a world which treats out agab experiences as tainting us and invalidating us.
I also feel this kind of thinking is an extreme response to what is really needing to be communicated- that you experienced things differently than cis people of your agab, that it isn't a simple binary "male" or "female" socialization you lived. There really is no one universal "male" or "female" socialization, especially for trans people, and trying to fit us into one and is not ever going to be truly reflective of our variable circumstances. I think that's extremely important to acknowledge.
But saying you exclusively experienced the secondhand pure socialization of your gender identity is not communicating that reality, neither is it saving you from invalidation. It's building a mythology for yourself still set upon that same strict gender binary, which was made to exclude us.
The thing is, having a mixed gendered experience is literally okay, that's extremely normal trans shit, and TERFs are just plainly wrong about what they think those experiences imply.
Because gendered socialization isn't some bullshit where how we grew up makes us have permanent, terminal boy-brain/girl-brains, that our minds just calcify into for eternity. Acting as Proof to why The Two Genders are fundamentally and distinctly Different, as we are irrevocably Separate and rigidly assigned forever and ever...
Because... I mean come on. That's just kinda dumb.
