Male socialized = beaten with a belt
I think plenty of girls are beaten with a belt too
"male socialized"? IM NOT SOCIALIZED AT ALL!!!!! my gender is neurodivergent socialized
Hey, Im a straight cis male. I have no idea what this means, however i do like to keep my head on a swivel for new dog whistle, ways to be hateful, stereotypes, so on and whatnot, so I can avoid people like that. Can someone please explain this to me?
The term "male socialized" is mostly used to try to split trans and cis women appart. People that use this word basically use the logic men are bad, and they behave bad, and if one (trans) woman was treated as a man before they adopt that behaviour.
This is just a way to basically call trans people their Asigned gender at birth without really doing so.
People tried to "socialize" me as male a long time and guess what? It did not work. Like I was and still am a woman. The thing I rather say when talking about that concept is that people treated me as if I were male.
This is a thing i struggle with a lot because i realized i was trans late. So the term makes sense to me on a superficial level. But it also ignores the lifetime of struggle i had trying to fit in as a male, and disliking so many aspects of male socialization. The term is avoiding conflict, while still denying the experience of trans women.
Also to add to your point, so much of anti-trans rhetoric is structured around the idea that all cis men are actively preying women.
"Male socialized" is often just used as a euphamism for "manly mannish male man men" by transphobes. They're not that deep with it.
"Socialized male" is one of the key tools in deploying transmisogyny specifically against trans women.
transphobic examples
Oh, you're angry? That's because at root, you're really a man. Sorry, fem-card revoked for 30 days.
You dress masculine-ish because it's more comfortable? That's because you were grown up as a man and you really are one at root.
Hey, you're wearing too much makeup and those costume jewelry look like a cartoon of a woman. That's because you're really a man and you were raised as one.
And on and on and on. It's crap. Just walk away from it. Transmisogyny is just one form of gaslighting.
Also, it's unfalsifiable.
And then there's "biological man"/"biological woman", which simply don't exist but get used frequently anyway.
Well of course I'm biological, what else would I be? Synthetic?
Oh, those terms exist and can even have reasonable meaning, just not the one the transphobes think they do:
I am a biological woman: My metabolism runs on estrogen, my T is basically nothing, I have breasts and at some point in the future I'll even have a vagina. If I am to receive sex-dependent medical treatment I have to receive the female version, because that is just how my body works now.
What I'm saying is that the term can be useful in certain contexts, but the dividing line is not cis/trans but if anything what someone's hormones are doing, assuming that it even aligns with what is typical for one of the two peaks in a bimodal distribution (meaning that there are very much people who can easily be classified as āneitherā).
But unless you are a biologist or directly engaging in medical treatment or research, it is just not a relevant thing.
I didnāt realize I was trans until I was 21, and I sometimes use it to refer to the habits/tendencies ingrained in me (many of which Iām trying to un-learn) through my youth. I try to avoid it because of the general connotation, but sometimes itās the best descriptor to encapsulate that in one term
You were raised "trans in denial". That's not the same thing as being raised as a cis person of your assigned gender, even though it may look like it from the outside.
i was raised to be a man. that was not my fault. this was done to me by this fucked up patriarchal system, and turns out i neither want to be a man nor am i a man now.
but being trans did not make me immune to the harmful behaviours and ideas that are taught to those children perceived as boys. i internalized many patriarchal ideas, and while realizing that i am trans at the age of 20 helped me unlearn some of that shit, i am still not free of it and am still unlearning.
not everyone goes through the same and not everyon processes it the same, so i don't doubt that other people who were raised to be men (both cis men and trans people) made different experiences, but it is certainly true for me.
i don't know if "male socialisation" is the best word for it, but i think it makes sense to have a word to describe what i and many others went through
it definitely should not define us. everyone can and should unlearn the patriarchal ideas and behaviours they internalized. overcome and reject their socialization.
it is cruel and pointless to hate people for what was done to them; for a past they left behind.
I think its important to draw a line.
"Male socialisation" implies that everyone who was AMAB went through the same kind of upbringing and was exposed to the same kinds of indoctrination, toxicity, and bias. It is an over generalisation at best, and intentionally misrepresentative at worst.
If you want to talk specifically about what being assigned male at birth did to your upbringing, I can see it being useful to have a generally understood terminology for that. But you aren't talking about something that is necessarily applicable as a broad term like "male socialisation".
I was raised by people who thought I was a male, and part of that bombarded me with machismo and objectification of women. Traditional masculine values were, or at least there was an attempt to, pasted onto me. But many of them slid right off because even if I didnt acknowledge it until a decade or more later, I was a woman, and these values did not align with me. Some stuck, and took learning and introspection to undo.
I am still undoing some of that and I'm sure theres more that I'm unaware of that I will be undoing for years. But my experience differed so greatly from one whose identity aligns with their assigned gender at birth, because the core assumption at the root of what those around me were trying to impart upon me, was wrong. I was not a man. I have never been a man.
I can plant a seed and a plastic bead in the same soil, give them the same fertiliser, water them the same, and only the seed will grow into a plant. The bead might be wet, or dirty, just like the seed, but to expect that it would have experienced the same resulting changes as the seed would be unwise.
"Male socialization" paints transgender women as invariably unable to escape the chains of their assigned gender at birth. Let us rather discuss, on an individual basis, the toxicity and unhelpful values that were or were not taught by those we trusted.
It's not that it is always an anti trans dog whistle, just that it's frequently used as one. When you see otherwise used that way, it causes PTSD when people use it innocuously. I still can't here "fren" without instantly being suspicious
Oh no, what's wrong with "fren" I've used it a lot without any further meanings.
The neonazis once used it as a dogwhistle to signal to each other. They had a subreddit so bad that even that useless company banned them fairly quickly. They really don't use it anymore as far as I know, so it really isn't a problem to use it. That doesn't stop me wincing whenever I hear it though
Are you talking about āfrenā as in a funny word āfriendā or am I just that much out of the loop of queerphobic language?
basically the subreddit was called frenworld, and they referred to each other as fren while using funny speak to talk about all their Nazi views.
One of the worst things about the "male socialized" or "biological male" dog whistles is that it's used to treat transfems as having all the worst traits associated with men but none of the privileges. We can be accused of being aggressive, predatory, violent, etc. But we are never get taken seriously like men do, never get the benefit of the doubt, and certainly don't benefit materially like they do. Men don't get discriminated against for employment or housing like we do, men make a ton more money than we do. In fact trans women make less than cis women do on average. Also transfems are the only group that are systemically sex trafficked by the government (look up v-coding)
Nah I'm a biological male, that's not something to be ashamed of. We don't have to change our language just because someone else is using the same term to be mean. I mean, look at reclaimed words like queer, gay, tranny, etc
I think it's rarely a useful term, as trans women on HRT have so many biological differences to cis men that they're frequently closer to cis women in their needs. In most cases, it's better to just say transfem or people with (trait both cis men and transfems share). Besides, I avoid saying it more because it makes me uncomfortable than because people use it maliciously.
Also, avoid saying the t word here, as people may find it especially triggering
Also, avoid saying the t word here, as people may find it especially triggering
Thank you... I've seen it thrown around here or there, and rationally I get it, reclaiming terms like this can be empowering.
Sadly doesn't change that I feel like shit when I see/hear it currently.
I meanā¦. Depending what steps youāre taking with transition (particularly with medical transition), Iād argue Iām very much NOT ābiologically maleā.
When I think about all the physical changes that have happened to me, I canāt really attribute a lot about my body that feels or is functionally āmaleā.
Do I have a dick? Yeah. But does it work like a guys? No. Itās closer to a clit than anything else, for example.
The vast majority of transfems would very much like to not be called "biological male" because they simply are not that and that label is used as a form of violence against us. Do not refer to us as that.
To me it seems obvious that ideas are tools made and modified by particular people for particular purposes. Ideas are not instantiated in the world. "Biological sex" as an idea is almost always a sciencey attempt to distinguish natural and normal sex/gender from unnatural and abnormal sex/gender. I am no more or less natural by virtue of being unusual. You do you, but I have no use for "biological male".
Edit: Perhaps I should add that usual sex and gender seem to me very obviously socially constructed.
Wait wat. Then how am I supposed to express exactly that? I only realized I was trans close to graduating high school. All my close friends up to that point had been male. Male gender stereotypes influenced what I did in my free time, how I behaved in class, how I saw the world.
It took effort to shed some of that. Maybe it's because I haven't heard it used in a transphobic context yet, but "I was male socialized" is, I'd have said up to this post at least, very apt.
There ARE transphobic contexts that other people here can better explain, but also, "Male/Female Socialization" generally implies that everyone has the exact same set of experiences they go through based exclusively on assigned gender, ignoring race/ethicity, sexuality, class, ability, neurodivergence, etc.
Like were you "male socialized" as a middle-class neurotypical white guy or what? It just doesn't provide a lot of useful context compared to how often it's used as a thought-terminating cliche to dismiss trans people discussing gendered issues.
Let's not forget how this also degrades gender-nonconforming cis women. Saying "oh, that thing you're doing is a male thing from male socialization" works to tell trans women they're not "real" women, but equally signals to some cis women they're not "real" women either! This really just boils down to policing women, just the same old patriarchal standards.
Maybe I just haven't seen it used by transphobes, but I don't see what's wrong with male socialized. The first time I heard it I thought it described how being raised male and peer pressured into acting male has fucked me up.
Literally everybody has "male socialisation," it came free with your patriarchal society that centres male narratives as the default human experiences. It's why I don't think it's a useful term with any real practical applicability beyond bullying trans women.
I agree that the term is mostly used to bully people. But to be fair, you're inventing your own definition for the word.
The definition you're using:
male socialization (n): the cultural conditioning produced by a patriarchal society
The standard definition:
male socialization (n): the cultural conditioning applied to those in society assigned male at birth
As far as usefulness, it does have actual positive use even in the trans community. Sure, some portion of the trans community doesn't care about passing, but most do. And if you're a binary trans person actually trying to be seen and treated by strangers as your gender, adjusting your behavior is part of this. Cis society expects men and women to behave differently. Boys and girls are raised differently to reflect this behavior.
And for a lot of trans people, a bit of deconstructing of their own male or female socialization is necessary if they want to integrate into a binary role in society. Even just simple things like how men are conditioned to take up space, while women are conditioned to take up less space. If you're a trans woman and you seek to blend into society, if you don't work on some of your male socialized behaviors, you're likely not going to be able to pass. Sure, some trans people just completely reject the socialization forced upon us, but most of us don't. Most of us absorbed a lot of our gendered socialization growing up as a survival mechanism. And for most trans people, deconstructing that socialization is part of transition.
male socialization (n): the cultural conditioning applied to those in society assigned male at birth
I guess my problem here is that I don't consider that definition as being descriptive of a coherent and observable phenomenon. Idk, I'm having trouble trying to understand what it's even supposed to mean here, could you perhaps be more specific wrt what that actually entails?
Yo some of y'all in the comments really need to get educated on Transfeminism. Quit trying to argue trans women are "biological males" that's just transmisogyny.
I prefer to say, "I didn't go to the girl academy."
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