The concepts of male and female socialization keep coming up

My parents and friends were good to me. From the 5th grade to halfway through high school they let me have really long hair, I started to dress pretty gay in high school too. I used to wear very short shorts and two or three times I used school presentations as an excuse to wear a skirt. I went to a liberal school in a liberal city.

I just grew out of it, but that's a little too simple to say. When I finally cut my hair and quit dressing like that the response from my peers who were neutral to me before became waaay friendlier. So positive reinforcement of a male acting masculine is a thing, but I don't knock it all up to that anyway. I think I was living in a delusional state. I used to think I was cute like an anime girl or jpop idol. I look back on photos of me during that time and cringe. I was soo tall (Just under 6'), grotesquely skinny (even when women are skinny, they usually have more bodyfat than men giving them a plump/soft look) and my hair was in a state of tragedy. It is soft and wavy when it's short, but given time to grow out it gets dry and frizzy.

I hope I'm not derailing, I just typed the first paragraph and then got interested and kept typing. I'm glad I got "male socialized," though, i guess unsurprisingly. I'm a much more successful person this way, I think. For instance, when I was younger, I desired to play the female role in social and romantic situations. But what the fuck good is that? All that *means* is downplaying yourself, putting others first, and taking the backseat. I think I'm a smart person so I prefer to take charge or copilot during school assignments + in dating/flirting I find that with my height and build, guys see me more readily as someone to lean on/be lead by so why not be that person? It's cute to make a guy feel safe and protected.

>>8170877
That's very interesting. What kind of friendliness did you get from your peers when you presented more masculine? Why did you stop the short shorts and long hair in high school? How did teachers and other adults treat you for your presentation?

When did you switch away from the female role socially/romantically?

Neat that even as a woman now you're better off for that "male socialization" when interacting with guys.

>>8170903
Ok there seems to be a smidge of confusion here. I am a man *now* LOL. I've never not been a man. When I was younger, the idea of trans didn't appeal to me because I liked my penis. If asked what my future was going to look like then, I would have figured I would grow up as a twink and just indulge in crossdressing from time to time for fun.

And now I see the confusion. I didn't go from normal --> GNC. I went from GNC ---> normal.

>>8170914
I just assumed because of the board you'd transitioned and were a straight mtf! So you're a gay guy?

Apart from the last line though, I'm still interested to hear your answers to the rest of my post.

Are you a twink who indulged in crossdressing from time to time, like you could have figured?

>>8170947
Oh i totally did disregard the rest of that post LMAO.

The best answer I can give is that a friend of mine, a friend I made after cutting my hair, told me, "Yea everyone knew you, but we just assumed you were weird." So the kind of friendliness was literally that: I made many more friends who would have been more reluctant to approach me, but we otherwise get along perfectly. The fact that I am the same person inside that I've always been (still kinda girly, still overly romantic, still kinda weebish), but I did not get paid as much attention to these people because of how I looked annoyed me. I'm over it now, though, because I understand people just make judgements of others. We'd all be drained of energy if we tried to engage with every person we met with some level of friendliness. So when I looked freaky, people passed me over. I can be thankful, really, that that's all they did. I got picked on maybe twice in all of high school.

I had one teacher who we were all very buddy-buddy with make lighthearted comments about how my shorts would break the dress code, but we all just laughed at how the girls would get stopped for it but not me. No administrator or teacher ever said anything beyond that.

I stopped the long hair first because, as I said, it was becoming
unmanageable. It was so brittle I was breaking hairbrushes trying to brush it. One day I chopped it all off without telling anyone I was going to, and my parents were so shocked when I got home they took pictures. I guess my clothing style started to change with it when..hm. I can't say for sure. I guess cutting my hair was a turning point from viewing myself as someone who wanted to look female vs. being just a guy (albeit a twinky one), and when I stopped placing myself in a (broadly) feminine category, the desire to keep up appearances in terms of clothing stopped.

1/2. I'm gonna make breakfast brb

>>8170903
>>8170947
2/3

I switched away from the female role, as I said, around the time when I stopped wearing girls clothing and having long hair. WHY I stopped is probably 1) it felt natural, 2) it wasn't doing me any favors because as much as I wanted to be in the female role, I was not a girl so nobody was going to treat me as such, and 3) for as many ways as dressing in a skirt and brushing my hair and wanting to be cute was my "authentic self," putting on a feminine act was just as limiting in the way's I mentioned at the end of my original post. I'll elaborate.

For instance, a fantasy scenario I might have had was the idea of maybe being caught outside in the rain at the end of school without an umbrella and some guy asking me if I needed help getting to the train. To point 2, this was an example of me not being a girl so this wouldn't have happened. Not to say it's impossible that a gay guy or helpful guy could have asked me if I needed help, but it's just incredibly less likely. Men don't really look out for each other that way, which I concede on because I don't really do that either (but as a gay guy I am vigilant on the look out for cute maybe gay looking guys I could talk to). To point 3, this situation is also a bummer because it requires me to stand around looking helpless and annoyed. Which is retarded. If I was really in that situation I would just carry my bag over my head or stop someone I knew or kinda knew and ask if I could walk with them.

Pretty telling that my female fantasies seem to be rather stereotypical stories from music and tv huh. LOL. Romantically speaking, I never actually got with anyone or had any romance when I was going through my feminine phase. Just a lot of rejection from my male friends, with whom I am still best friends till this day. Half of us ended up gay/bi, so there was a lot of cross-contamination going on during that time. The past is in the past, right?

>>8170947
3/3

AND finally to address where I am now is not twink nor crossdresser. I started working out about a year ago so I'm getting bigger I guess (though I still see myself as small). I'm also pretty hairy. This wasn't too bad when I was say, 14 and a freshmen in highschool; I could afford to shave off the bit of hair there was on my legs and I barely had any on my chest. Now? Impossible. I am way too hairy to even think about it. The time and effort it would take to clean up my body like a woman might is ridiculous.

So the picture comes together now, right? About 6 feet, hairy, 170-175 pounds. Some of that is muscle. There would have been little hope for me as a twink, if I'd been born a few years later the tranny route would have been extremely costly (as my genetics would have come to show), but I'll still probably cross dress for fun from time to time (like halloween, or at some theme party, I'd like to try it with a partner). I still think girl stuff is super cute, I'm just no longer under the impression that that is what I have to be like 24/7.

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127KB, 470x1200px

>>8170877
My parents and friends were good to me too, though the rest of the world was not.

Cis bi male here. My family was accepting enough to let me wear feminine, colorful attire and grow my hair long from a young age. Aside from my chosen appearance, my behavior and hobbies were gender typical for the time. From ages 8-15 or so, I was constantly mistaken for a girl. My friends didn't care, but other children and even some adults would make a big deal out of it and bully me. I never understood what was wrong with being a boy that looked feminine, and why it bothered them so much.

Oddly enough, now that I'm an adult with facial hair the source of misgendering has switched. Strangers correctly assume I'm a guy, yet many of my friends and family have seriously asked if I'm trans. Even after I tell them no, it's clear they think I'm not being honest with myself.

Can't say I blame their confusion, given my behavior, but I have no dysphoria, no desire to transition, and am quite comfortable with myself. I guess I'm just some kind of queer weirdo.

tl;dr I definitely encountered social pressure to conform, and though it was annoying I don't think it had a big impact on who I became.

>>8171104
adults bullied you for being girly?

>>8170856
Activists tend to have unnuanced views of "socialization", and just talk about "stereotypes" like boys = math and girls = dolls.

The truth is male/female socialization is real, but it affects you much more deeply. Everything you learn, you learn by imitating, and you do it automatically and unconsciously, day by day, for decades.
As with everything, with socialization, the stuff that everyone talks about doesn't really matter, and the stuff noone talks about matters a ton.
Being into CS isn't male socialization. Subtle mannerisms, word choice, vocal range, emotional expressiveness in voice, diction, subtle and unconscious emotional "rules" ("I shouldn't cry even when grieving", "it's not acceptable for me to vent too much or I'll annoy people" that would be more nuanced if you had received the opposite socialization). This is the stuff that trans people need to work on if they want to really pass, lessen dysphoria and feel less like frauds. I think this is what the Blaire White-types mean when they say "imitate", you have to basically start looking at yourself from the third-person, judge your mannerisms etc. ruthlessly, and consciously work to adjust them since it won't happen automatically.

>me
>socialized

Ahahahaha they think I talked to people and actually HAD FRIENDS lol the normies

>>8171609
>This is the stuff that trans people need to work on if they want to really pass, lessen dysphoria and feel less like frauds.
Good observation. What are specific mannerisms, words, unconscious rules, etc to work on?

>Being into CS isn't male socialization.
It's a consequence of it, isn't it? Different interests, different personality traits that lead to finding different things interesting/fulfilling, etc? Those are socializations too?

>>8171609
But Blaire White's a hon, and doesn't have any female socialization because she never socializes with real women.

>>8171665
You'll still have been told what to do by teachers or given different treatment by your parents depending on your gender. That's gendered socialization even without friends.

>>8171698
>It's a consequence of it, isn't it? Different interests, different personality traits that lead to finding different things interesting/fulfilling, etc? Those are socializations too?
You know how the brains of trans people are in some ways more similar to the brains of the sex they identify as, than their birth sex? I.e. trans women have partly female brains (# of neurons, physical size of regions of the brain) and vice versa. But we also know that trans women don't have fully female brains, and their brains are still very much male in various aspects.

>>8171703
Please don't derail. My point is "feeling like a woman" and presenting like one doesn't undo your socialization, which you need to consciously work on and adjust, in the same way an actor has to refine his mannerisms to fit his character better. This isn't about how you view yourself, but about helping others see you as female only and not giving them double-messages.

>>8171698
>Good observation. What are specific mannerisms, words, unconscious rules, etc to work on?
Hang out around women (cis), you'll pick up on many things (as long as you're not socially anxious, then you'll be too distracted/self-focused to do so), then again conceptualize yourself in the third-person (and actually film yourself so you can be sure you're aware of how others see you) and adjust.

>>8171793
Wouldn't it be more minor things like mannerisms that are down to brain sex and more mental things like interests that are socialization?

>>8171816
>Wouldn't it be more minor things like mannerisms that are down to brain sex and more mental things like interests that are socialization?
No, if you hang out with more masculine people (and you're a guy) you'll become slightly more masculine and vice versa. Notice how not a single faggy college Millenials (and I'm not talking gay/trans/dysphoric, just immature unassertive effeminate dudes) has a masculine father. Masculinity and femininity are based on role models, if your mom is trash and you're a girl, you'll be mostly like that. Again, dysphoria is an exception.

Mental interests are probably both.

>>8171333
Yes, though what the adults did was more subtle than bullying from children. Most just realized their mistake when I corrected them, but some would rub it in, questioning why I had long hair or looked the way I did. Some made comments that I must be raised by a single mom or "liberal parents". Others showed genuine, but fucked up concern, letting me know that I looked like a sissy and that I should dress more manly if I wanted to avoid getting beat up.

>>8170856
>What gender socialization have you seen,
Feminism.

i grow up with dolls and cars helping my mother cleaning and my dad with repaired stuff ,my parents have a toy shop so i would get mostly ,,broken,, toys and unsell ones that with the help of my dad i would fix it .

the thing that i dislike the most is when a parent don't let their children have a toy because is ,, girls toy,, or ,,boy s toy and is too violent for you,, (i remember once a mom cant calm down her son because he wants the red cooking set and the mom refusing him because is a girl toy )
if the parents would let their kids express whatever they want we wouldn't have the problem in the first place ,the problem being that you need to be x to enjoy something or y to do something

Parents are usually much harsher, even neglectful, towards boys than girls.

>>8181149
[citation needed]

>>8171609
>the Blaire White-types
???

>>8171051
So instead of dressing like a presentable young lady and using conditioner on your hair you gave up? Gotcha

>>8170856
From the moment I was born until now, parents/other kids/teachers/school/society-in-general wanted me to never exist, beat me, called me names, starved me, disowned me, refused to associate with me, molested me and ignored me.

>>8188700
;_; why?

>>8188720
Various reasons, none of which were ever or will ever be within my control, so it doesn't really matter to me.

>>8188726
because you were trans?

>>8171904
What if I was taken away from my heroin addict mother when I was 2, never knew my father, and was adopted by my grandparents, my grandpa being verbally abusive (and formerly physically abusive) to my grandma, emotionally distant towards me, and my grandma being straight up emotionally and verbally abusive towards me. Am I screwed?

>>8188834
Because straights behave straight.

are you kidding me? Men have to deal with so much more social expectations moreso than women because society expects men to be emotionless and take care of everything otherwise they get called a faggot who loves taking the dick up their ass. Trust me if you ever hang with alot of guys and you do somthing slightly feminine you will get railed for it. Being called a man because the way your mind works since its a female mind you will realize that being treated that way is fucking torture and only makes you repress more into an emotionless husk.

>>8192811
>In the modern day, we know that is anything but the case and that men and women have almost entirely different mentalities, one of the biggest examples is sexuality. I dont want to ramble about specifics, but a woman is aroused internally whilst a man is aroused externally- as an example, a man is mostly turned on by the physical characteristics of his partner, whilst a woman is arised by feeling sexually desireable. Any of you who have slept with cis women in the past have probably dealt with girls telling you they dont feel pretty and as a result are not aroused. It also speaks to these differences when you consider a standard method of seducing a woman is telling her how sexy she is.
>>8192866
>Men are more focused on tasks and competetion, women are more focused on social status and relationships. Teenage boys play sports, teenage girls gossip.
>Both The Female Brain and The Male Brain by Louann Brizendine are good reads on the topic. She's an actual doctor, so she knows what shes talking about.

>>8170877
This is such a similar story to me and I noticed the same thing. It's really bizarre at the difference in treatment I received when I cut my hair and whatnot. I think I act even gayer than I did before yet people are still more positive toward me cause I guess I don't try and look like a girl anymore or something...

>>8193469
gender is weird

So the idea of gender socialization is a way that feminists can justify their exclusion of trans women. It is an idea that trans women can not be real women because they were not raised and socialized as women.

It is a completely ridiculous idea as different cultures have different ideas of what women are. You wouldn't tell a cis woman she is not really a woman because she comes from a culture that socializes women differently than they socialize you your culture.

Why feminists think they should be the gatekeepers of trans identity is beyond me. But with the amount of female privilege they have it is no wonder why they lack empathy for anyone other than themselves.

>>8198847
i hate feminists but i love threads like this so i can try to imagine what i missed out on being raised a boy.

>>8191060
>Being called a man because the way your mind works since its a female mind you will realize that being treated that way is fucking torture and only makes you repress more into an emotionless husk.

Pretty much this!
Knew I was a girl from the time I had my own thoughts (3ish)
I noticed that girls and boys that did things out of the norm for their gender were "corrected" for lack of a better word.

With my simple baby logic I assumed that boys and girls are born the same and its the parents or drs that say you're such and such gender and then they force it on you and that's life.

As a result I repressed any feelings I had for wanting long hair, girl toys etc and pretended to like boys toys and even mocked boys who did anything feminine cos that's what you do to anyone who steps out of line right?

Not being able to tell anyone how you feel about yourself from the age of 3 and actively put a cap on emotions so as to not appear "girly" has made me extremely detached from my emotions as an adult, it appears that having gender dysphoria and feeling like a girl from an early age has resulted in a far more masculine personality than even a normal male would have.

>>8171793
>My point is "feeling like a woman" and presenting like one doesn't undo your socialization.

Actually it does if given enough time and you pass as cis, if you pass you get treated differently, you adapt to this different treatment, consciously or sub consciously if you look like a girl you're gonna get socialised as one over time, and the more you socialise as one the more you don't appear trans and people just assume you've always been a cis girl cos that's whats right in front of them.

Unless you actively avoid society, in which case you're stalling your own development.

>>8199837
Can you share examples of what you repressed and how you saw girls and boys being corrected?

>>8199859
>Can you share examples of what you repressed

Basically wanted to do/wear/look exactly like all the other girls I saw, wanted female friends but adults would say we're gonna be boyfriend and girlfriend whenever I made friends with a girl, in a awww they look cute together way, started to avoid girls, hated the idea of being a "boyfriend" to a girl.

Freaked the fuck out when I'd get a haircut cos I wanted it longer, some boys had longish hair so I knew I could ask for just a little bit more.
Girl once came to school crying, her dad fucked up and cut her hair short, she looked like a boy and cried all day, I knew exactly how she felt.

By 7-8 I was conscious of the way I walked, talked and used mannerisms, making sure I didn't look too girly.

Occasionally cross dressing or some sorta gender swap would happen on tv, it would take a shit load of effort not to yell out "that's what I wanna do!", controlling what you're feeling/thinking at that age was hard

Got extremely depressed at 7, didn't want to go to school cos there was girls there and I didn't want to be reminded of what I'm not, never told my parents why I didn't wanna go to school
Hated sports, pretended to like it to fit in.

>how you saw girls and boys being corrected

A boy put on an apron that looked like a dress, everyone laughed at him.
Another boy cried for some reason and was shunned the rest of the day.
Girls forced to wear dresses to special events
A girl once told me that girls aren't supposed to be good at math, so she won't even try.

>>8199995
>Another boy cried for some reason and was shunned the rest of the day.
>A girl once told me that girls aren't supposed to be good at math, so she won't even try.
[rages internally]

>>8199837
>it appears that having gender dysphoria and feeling like a girl from an early age has resulted in a far more masculine personality than even a normal male would have.
You probably wouldn't have dysphoria if you'd been allowed to be girly.

>>8193440
>Men are more focused on tasks and competetion, women are more focused on social status and relationships. Teenage boys play sports, teenage girls gossip.
I think that's socialization, not biological differences.

>>8170856
>tfw jelly of female socialized cis girls but know i wouldn't have liked it either

>>8215098
this feel my sister

>>8215098
>>8215144
girls in highschool can be so mean... at least getting beat up by boys mostly meant physical trauma

>>8216381
>girls in highschool can be so mean...
what did they do?

>>8236318
spam

>>8170856
It's impossible to tell what is socialization and what is biological.

>>8199995
This is why I just became a turbo autist and spent all my time on the computer playing video games.
My parents didn't know how to deal with me so I got significantly more freedoms than my siblings. I could grow my hair long, hated sports, didn't have to excessively worry about doing too many girly things either.
They still kind of scolded me if I got 'too gay' though, but overall the fact that my parents didn't know how to deal with how weird I was really opened up a lot of possibilities.

>>8241861
How were your siblings more restricted?

>>8199995
>girls forced to wear dresses to formal events
This hit me hard. I was always a bit autistic and weird, had a masculine personality and didn't really pick up on social cues, but that was mostly okay. What really wasn't was the expectation I had to look sharp and pretty. I begged and begged and begged my school (private, for the record) to let me wear the men's formal uniform. They refused. I eventually started skipping field trips and music performances.

Now that I'm much older and coming to accept and love my masculinity, the people in my life are beginning to say, "you should really (get rid of masculine trait), you'd look so pretty," or "you're so tall and slender, you could be a beautiful model," or "you'd look so much like (dead mother) if you (did feminine thing)." As if femininity is the only way I could possibly be attractive or worthwhile.

Women don't pressure you by physical force or outright threats, but by manipulation and ostracism. I never much minded the social bullshit, so it never much affected me. But I could see how that could ruin someone a bit different.

>>8244890
Are you FTM or lesbian?

How did your school justify turning down your request not to wear a dress?

>>8204715
it's infuriating

>>8244890
fuck gender roles

>>8241861
>My parents didn't know how to deal with me so I got significantly more freedoms than my siblings.
The squeaky wheel...

>>8258459
???

>>8244890
>Women don't pressure you by physical force or outright threats, but by manipulation and ostracism. I never much minded the social bullshit, so it never much affected me. But I could see how that could ruin someone a bit different.
Interesting. How do mtfs feel about switching to this kind of social interaction?

>>8170856
Sorry if this bores you. Basically my dad assigned my sister's hand-me-downs to me to wear in life/school. I don't want to get into legal stuff but there was a reason why he was doing this besides being poor. Everyone outside my classroom routinely thought I was a girl because of the clothes, but the people inside my classroom knew who I was. Notably, the males in my classroom ostracized me (and the teachers looked down on me), but the people outside my class treated me nice because they didn't know better. My friends were all girls from another classroom, and it stayed that way until my stepmom moved in and replaced all my clothes with male clothes. My best friend didn't know I was a boy until someone at the basketball court referred to me as a male several days later.

Despite growing up gender dysphoric, I don't think my socialization had anything to so with it because I got gender dysphoria the summer before elementary school, and all this nonsense happened the the following years (kindergarten to grade 3).

Aside from that I also wore nail polish with the help of my baby sitters, but my brother also did that.

Clothing didn't feel male or female to me, but I reveled in the times that teachers would gender me female because of it.

>>8264688
He wanted people to think you were a girl? Why did the teachers let you dress like that?

How feminine were the clothes?

>>8264753
He wanted me to look like a girl because there was a custody battle going on and he knew my mom would get blamed "because they always blame the mother." The teachers were visibly annoyed sometimes, but there was other stuff they didn't like. Like my homework was often incomplete, my parents didn't get me to school on time, ect, ect. My teachers didn't have an opinion about my clothes except sending me home twice because of them, but that was more to do with the rattiness than the gender. They took it upon themselves to do things that my parents wouldn't do, like cut my nails for me. Like I could tell they were annoyed, but it was more towards my parents than me.

My mom tell me they were pink, but I just remember hearts and cows on them.

>>8264688
like something from a forced fem story!

>>8264753
And I'm assuming you're one of the researchers of this board. Studying AGP? Or something else

>>8264895
It didn't feel like forced fem story at the time, but I wish it could've continued >:O

>>8264919
AGP is one topic but trans experiences in general. I don't expect you are AGP for instance.

>>8171777
>You'll still have been told what to do by teachers
Implying individual attention from teachers is a thing in schools with more than 20 kids a classroom is a thing for most students.
>or given different treatment by your parents depending on your gender. That's gendered socialization even without friends.

>>8264962
I have so many questions to ask about this research. Firstly, where is this going to get published? Second, how many anons are working on this? I have more questions but it doesn't fit the scope of this thread

>>8265088
It isn't guaranteed to be published anywhere. It's just personal research. Lots of anons do their own. I don't know how many others.

Gender roles are another research topic so this thread is relevant.

>>8264212
Either is shit, just different. I went trough both.

Dudes is throwing things at you, beating you to a pulp in the back alley... the Girls is spreading mean rumors and isolating you.

In a way the way women do bullying is nicer in the way you wont be a bloody mess, but womens bullying is so much more of a strain on your sanity.
Backstabbing cunts, cant trust anyone.

>>8265123
>>8264962
Why don't you think I'm agp?

>>8265252
Your experience >>8264688 sounded very HSTS. Enjoying being gendered female at such a young age, being dysphoric already, and being friends with all girls, although the clothes are another reason for that.