Random bit of trans vocabulary as I've recently seen people rejecting a phrase because they were confused by it.
"Socialized male" and "socialized female" aren't synonyms for someone's sex, they are experiences and culturally relevant.
People are confused because the term "socialize" has multiple meanings.
One is something done by you: "I was socializing with my friends"
One is something done to you: "I was socialized as a man"
To summarize Webster respectively:
The first is "to participate actively in a social group"
The second is "to fit or train for a social environment'
We say someone is "Socialized Male" or "Socialized Female" not to indicate what their sex is, but to indicate that in their formative years they were saddled with the expectations and treatment associated with "male" or "female" in our society.
The trans women getting confused think it means something like "grew up as men" or that our social groups were men, and that's not at all it.
It means we were treated as men.
We usually grew up with more women in our social circles than men, even if we didn't know we were trans yet. We were often seen as an exception, which means even our acceptance was flavored by it.
What "socialized male" means to me is that I grew up being labeled a predator and a threat by default.
Even if I wasn't specifically raised such, I was still affected by the fact that so many men were raised to believe it was okay to lie, cheat, and manipulate to abuse women. And because of that there was literally nothing I could say or do to convey that I was being genuine because far too many were dishonest about it.
I had to build entire patterns and routines of behavior around how to behave around women to make them feel safer, almost always to my personal detriment.
I to this day am still anxious and hesitant in so many interactions because for decades of my life they were forbidden to me because they were far too likely to make someone I care about feel unsafe.
When I say I was "socialized male" it means that was something done to me. I had to figure out how to navigate life and survive while being forced into a traumatic box by society that didn't remotely fit me.
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to Shiri Bailem • •For those familiar with dog training:
Your dog socializes with other dogs.
You socialize your dog to teach it how to behave in public.
One is something the dog does, the other is something you do to the dog.
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Charlie Stross
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Charlie Stross • •@Charlie Stross enculturate might be more accurate in some ways, but it feels much less familiar which means it requires more explanation.
But I do think the lack of context is probably what's throwing people off, particularly in that they're so many steps removed from the definition.
"Socialized male" is basically shortened from "they socialized me male" (transitive verb form) vs people are confusing it with "I socialized with men" (intransitive verb form)
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Charlie Stross
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
pixelbandito
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Charlie Stross reshared this.
Charlie Stross
in reply to pixelbandito • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Charlie Stross • •@Charlie Stross @pixelbandito I mean I think more people than can spell socialization correctly...
"Indoctrinate" is a pretty good word and pretty close, but I honestly think it's too dramatic and is way more active than what we're talking about.
"Socialization" in general is a process we all go through in which we're introduced to and steeped in our cultural norms and values. Not all of it is accepted, not all of it takes, but it all affects us. Like how as an american I was steeped in US propaganda far more intensely than someone in the UK.
The term is talking about how during socialization we were also immersed in the expectations of manhood and masculinity.
Isaac Freeman
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
Tattie
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •in no context or meaning was I socialised male.
I accept that some trans women were. I accept that you may have been.
But I was treated closer to a girl than a boy, growing up.
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Tattie • •@Tattie That's why I pointed out that it's non synonymous with assigned sex and is a perfect example!
Most trans women unfortunately are, at least in western society. Many if not most of us don't even realize we're trans until adulthood, so we grow up being treated as men by society.
For those like yourself who were treated otherwise, I'm grateful knowing that not all of us did.
This is in response to people who were interpreting "socialized male" as them socializing as men or primarily socializing with men, neither of which being the meaning of the term. If it meant that, it would be accurate to push back against it as we were never men and we very often socialize primarily with other women.
In it's accurate meaning, it's an important term and important to understand especially for cases like yours to define what makes your experience different. But also so that between our two experiences we can highlight what parts of our experience is inherent to being a trans woman and what parts are specific to being socialized male.
Tattie
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Tattie • •@Tattie I'm not grateful that it sounds like you were socialized female, tbh it kinda sucks for everyone all around.
But at least it sounds like you were socialized in a way that aligns with your identity.
Also I'm just generally grateful that it's not a uniform experience.
Tattie
in reply to Tattie • • •there was like this pattern where I'd go somewhere new and for like half an hour people would treat me as a boy, and it would be weird and confusing for everyone, and then there would be this "click point" and they'd switch to the way that everyone always treated me, as a strange boygirl creature.
I think maybe I went thru a phase of "male socialisation" for a few years during university? And it didn't bring me any more happiness than my childhood had. But then slowly I started hanging out with more and more woman-dominated friendship groups and being treated as an "honourary" one of them. And then I transitioned.
lp0 on fire
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •@shiri, this looks very much like “$ITEM is releasing on $DATE” vs. “$ITEM will be released on $DATE” to me. I'm quite sure that people just don't see or possibly even understand the difference.
I'm never quite sure why, exactly, $ITEM is holding on to $DATE, and I'm never quite sure what happens if $ITEM doesn't release $DATE – do we just skip that day?
Shiri Bailem
in reply to lp0 on fire • •@lp0 on fire ... that's the most confusing way I could imagine someone saying "I can't tell the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs"
merriam-webster.com/dictionary…
"socialize" in this context is definition 1 of the transitive form of the verb. People are confusing it with the definition of the intransitive form.
Or if you want to dive specifically into the word socialization itself: merriam-webster.com/dictionary…
They're confusing 1a with 1b.
lp0 on fire
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to lp0 on fire • •@lp0 on fire transitive/intransitive is not about the relationship to the subject.
Both "doing to" and "being done to" make a verb transitive. Which is the what you were showing.
Intransitive on the other hand is simply "doing" with explicitly no subject beyond the person doing it.
lp0 on fire
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Juniper 🏳️⚧️🌲 (baking?)
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Juniper 🏳️⚧️🌲 (baking?) • •@Juniper 🏳️⚧️ In regards to the transphobes, any term or phrase about our experience will get used in that way. Not because the term in any way implies it, but because they will bend over backwards to make that claim about us any way they can.
So I don't see any point in dancing around transphobes, all we get down that road is a semantic treadmill.
And yes, how we respond to it varies greatly. The term is unidirectional because it refers only to what was done to us, not how we responded to it.
We all have wildly different responses and experiences, same as anyone else.
The phrase is talking about how we were treated and what expectations were put on us by society.
And "Socialized Trans Female" is a step backwards because not all trans women dealt with male socialization, just the vast vast majority. (Example: a girl who transitions at a young age and is supported in her transition is socialized female)
This is an all too frustratingly common case of people complaining that a simplified phrase doesn't perfectly encompass a whole paragraph's of concept.
If we throw out this term we simply lose a tool to explain and describe our experiences, nothing gets improved.
If someone can come up with a better term to mean "Grew up with society/guardians treating you with the expectations it associates with <gender>" then we'll all hop on board.
Juniper 🏳️⚧️🌲 (baking?)
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •you are writing as though this phrase is commonly used by trans people in this sense. That has not been my experience. I have known far more trans people who actively reject the idea that they are socialized as their AGAB. Your experience may be different, but that is where I am coming from. And I don't think that this is dancing around transphobes; in my experience it is primarily used in a transphobic way, so that is the first way I expect it to be understood. My objection is not that the phrase is insufficiently descriptive, but that it is actively inaccurate.
I was not socialized male. Coming to understand that has been a significant part of my transition. I spent a long time with the self-conception that I was "not like other guys". Realizing that I am actually a pretty standard trans woman has been a trip. And I've also come to realize that I was not treated or even seen on the same way as the cis boys around me. I remember my mom saying once (not to me), after she had babysat her nephews for an afternoon, that now she understood what it was really like to have boys. This fits a pattern that was present throughout my childhood: people did not quite see me as a boy, even though they thought they should. And consequently, they didn't quite treat me as a boy, though they certainly didn't treat me as a girl.
I don't entirely understand your objection to using " trans female socialization". Certainly it is true that trans girls who have their gender recognized young will have a different experience of socialization than those who do not. But trans girls also have a significantly different experience of socialization than cis boys, and putting them into that box is more harmful than having a concept of trans female socialization that is not 100% universal. (No such concept will ever be completely universal. It will certainly differ along other axes like race, region, and socioeconomic status.) 1/2
Juniper 🏳️⚧️🌲 (baking?)
in reply to Juniper 🏳️⚧️🌲 (baking?) • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Juniper 🏳️⚧️🌲 (baking?) • •@Juniper 🏳️⚧️ ugh... socialization has absolutely no reference to how we respond to it.
This is an actual academic sociology/psych term and is entirely about the environment we were raised and the expectations we were raised with.
For instance, someone who grows up in a conservative household and community is socialized conservative, this is regardless of whether they ever accepted any of it.
If you're assigned male across the majority of your interactions growing up, that's what this means. It doesn't mean you are a man, it means you had to deal with the traumas of being treated as one.
And yes, this is something that's shared with cis boys, because it's not about how we responded to it.
Like I've said elsewhere, if we transition early and are accepted then we don't deal with it because we get socialization that matches our real identity.
Saying trans female socialization literally means that we were raised with the expectations that we would act and behave as other trans femmes.
I'm American, I was socialized hyper-capitalist... does that make me a capitalist? No. It means I dealt with the expectations and trauma of hyper-capitalist expectations being put on me.
What about being socialized Christian (which basically means growing up in a Christian, even non-practicing, home), does that make me not Jewish? Nope. Do I get "Christian Privilege" for it? Hell no. Does that mean people can call me Christian? Still no.
And we do end up with many of the traumas of cis boys/men, the difference is for us is that it's in stark relief as we move away from those expectations and re-socialize ourselves.
Socialization is explicitly the expectations that were put on us and not how we responded to them.
If you want to talk about socialization specifically in how we responded to it? It's failed socialization, they wanted us to be men and we rejected it, they failed. But failure doesn't mean we didn't deal with them trying, it just means it didn't take.