I think the actual genuine problem with the ideology around "male socialization" is that I think a lot of you are misunderstanding that while a lot of AFAB kids are growing up, if they cannot achieve "correct" presentation of girlhood, they are told to try harder. To stop being masculine, to grow out their hair, to just "be a girl." A lot of people will even be lenient with a level of masculinity in AFABs as long as it is not too "deviant". (this does not apply to every case, but every AFAB queer person I know had similar to this to some extent) By and large AMAB kids who do not align with masculinity raised post like 1995 do not have that experience. If we cannot just "be a boy" in the "right way" we shouldn't be AT ALL. The amount of times before I even knew I was trans that I was told that I just wasn't actually a boy because of something I viewed as arbitrary, the amount of times I was physically assaulted or attacked under the age of 18 for my "wrong" behaviors. And that is not to say the first situation is not also very bad and traumatic. But the reason so many trans men feel that being told "you'll never be a real woman" is backwards affirmation, even when it is misplaced transmisogyny, is because they are FINALLY getting womanhood actively removed from the view of them, even as an attack. This weird idea that TERFs are saying that "no one but you could tell you thought you were a girl" is like so patently not true. I was hit so hard in the chest with a basketball by a middle schooler when I was 4 years old that I had a bruised lung. The first time I was attacked in such a way that I could not fight back and literally almost died, an older boy held me down on the playground and choked me until I was blacking out, and he only stopped because a teacher caught him. Both of these children claimed it was because (paraphrased) "I just don't like that he's not acting like a boy, he just needs to go away". Other people knew something was not aligned with what they were taught in me, they just couldn't articulate. And this wasn't just other kids, my grandmother literally complained to my mother every Christmas and birthday that even buying neutral things I actually liked (coloring books or art supplies or neutral creator legos even) was too difficult to do it anymore, so she stopped. My own grandmother got every other one of her grandkids gifts every birthday and christmas, but me, because I "wasn't right". My mother had to bring gifts and mark them as from her own mother. People can tell these things, you all act as though children don't... talk? Or have personalities? Or IDENTITIES?? As someone who has a behavior sciences degree, I feel like this is an extreme and overwhelming mistreatment of even the idea of children. You can tell a lot about a kid just from the toys they pick up, or look at a little too long in the target when their parent isn't looking. I was paired up with the girls my entire childhood, even before I transitioned. I was in the girl group in every separated P.E. class. People asked me if I was a boy or girl literally every day. Going places with friends I would almost always get a "welcome in ladies". PEOPLE CAN TELL. And a lot of the time if you couldn't before the transition, it means that shit was bullied, beat, and berated out of that person. I am not saying that there is no such thing as socialization, but... most of behavior theory around socialization came from... dog breeding? Some people are nurtured into being male, everyone is nurtured into being a misogynist. But kids know what they are, like, a lot of the time, even if it's not permanent.
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