Transphobic Tropes #7 – Socialization as a Child
I wrote this elsewhere as part of a conversation, in response to a question about trans men and male privilege. Specifically, in response to someone suggesting that trans men do not receive male privilege because they are apparently socialized as girls and trained to be women. With that in mind, a lot of this is really an answer to those comments.
Also, I’m throwing in a link to little light’s Fair and an article on sexism and trans people relating to Dr. Joan Roughgarden’s and Dr. Ben Barres’ experiences with transition, male privilege, and sexism.
The question of socialization is one of those topics where we all start debating how many trans people can dance on the head of a pin, and focusing onsocialization as if we’re all programmed like little computers while we’re growing up, as if gendered socialization is launched at us like laser-guided missiles and CAFAB children receive only socialization aimed at girls and CAMAB children receive only socialization aimed at boys, and all us trans people are just like cis people who share our CASAB until the day we start transition.
This is not only not true, it’s simply not relevant. You might as well argue that god implanted instructions in your brain on gender.
First of all, I would argue that the nature of socialization changes over time. For example, I doubt a two year old is being socialized in supporting rape culture. I suspect most of their socialization involves toilet training, playing, watching children’s shows. Sure, you can argue it’s there in the culture, and it is. But it’s something that CAMAB and CAFAB children both receive. The only difference is whether or not children perceive themselves as the target of the attitudesbehind this socialization. After all, men don’t exactly hold an exclusive patent on victim-blaming women for rape or domestic violence, right?
We’re all socialized into a sexist culture. We’re all taught that being a man means X and being a woman means Y. There is no outside for any of us.Women, just as men, are socialized to be sexist.
The talk about what this socialization means, however, always positions children (and eventually tweens, and then teenagers) as passive receptors who never react to that socialization. We don’t even talk about whether children who receive these messages perceive themselves as the target, the instigator, or both. We don’t talk about what these messages mean to trans children who may not perceive themselves as having a gender at all, or perceive themselves as having a gender that differs from their CASAB.
For example, I have seen several cis women assume that trans girls as children and teenagers interacted with images of the beauty ideal (models on magazine covers, for example) just like cis boys do, and don’t realize that this ideal really does have an impact on us and on our self-image, and that combined with body/gender dysphoria is one of the many reasons we can be suicidal. I know multiple trans women who pre-transition developed eating disorders in hopes of developing a more female appearance.
Socialization is not privilege. It is a way that privilege is perpetuated. Privilege is based on many things, most of those being how you are perceived and how other people treat you. Trans men who are passed as cis receive male privilege. Many trans men who do not always pass as cis receive male privilege depending on the situation and context.
Similarly, trans women during or post-transition who are passed as cis do not receive male privilege. But, trans women who are read as trans also do not receive male privilege, generally under any context. Being a trans woman is not culturally supported because being a woman is not culturally supported in the same way that being a man is culturally supported, and it seems like in many (but not all) contexts, trans men are given a pass on things that trans women are not, often times explicitly. I have heard Adam Carolla say this explicitly on Lovelines more than once, years ago. I have heard cis feminists (radical feminists and otherwise) make harsh characterizations of trans women and more forgiving characterizations of trans men even while being transphobic to both. I have heard trans men say things like this.
I am not trying to argue here that trans men have it good forever and always and trans women have it bad forever and always, but what I am saying is that there is not only privilege in being a man, whether trans or cis, but that there is privilege in being seen as reaching toward manhood (per cis perspectives) as compared to being seen as reaching toward womanhood (again per cis perspectives) and socialization is not the central factor either way.
I want to add to this that we don’t really discuss day to day pressures toward gender conformity and cisnormativity, toward having the right narratives, toward matching cis people’s standards of what men and women should be like, and how this affects us every day.
Power – in this case sexism, heterosexism, cissexism – normalizes through constant enforcement and women – cis and trans – are always failing at femininity. For trans women, this perceived failure has harsher (cissexist) consequences and higher enforced standards. Trans women who are too feminine are derided for trying too hard and thus really being men. Trans women who are not feminine enough or even masculine are derided for not trying hard enough and thus really being men. Trans women who are lesbian are derided for failing at womanhood, because the expectation is women are attracted to men.
Psychiatrists give us dress codes and standards of behavior. We have to give them the stories they want to hear – cisnormative, heteronormative narratives that establish our genders as static. Many times, we have to actually meet a dress code just to have our transness treated. Trans women are disciplined in modes of dress, behavior, and orientation just as any cis woman, and the penalties can be anything from violence to denial of necessary medical care to being constantly and maliciously degendered or misgendered. When we’re passed as cis the best we get is sexism and judged by the standards of the male gaze. It doesn’t matter whether or not we’re behaving with whatever “male socialization” or “male entitlement” is supposed to be, we’re not being granted any male privilege. We’re either women, or we’re genderless things and failing at both womanhood and manhood.
And you know, when you’re dealing with that every day? It’s going to affect you. I took four years of high school drama, and in that time I learned how to speak up and project my voice, and basically make myself heard – this was something that I completely sucked at until my first drama teacher made a point of teaching me how to do this. My first year out of high school, I lived with another trans woman who attacked me ceaselessly for “speaking too loud,” and I lost every bit of that for years. It barely took a full month before I was always speaking quietly again.You can’t underestimate the impact of daily sexism or male privilege and what that does to your socialization no matter what your age. And this happens to all adult women, we’re policed daily on being women, told how to behave, how to dress, how to talk. Everybody does this – men and women both do it to women. This happens on every level. It’s pervasive.
Socially and culturally, men are supported as men. Women are not supported as women. Yes, there is gender policing aimed at men, but there’s also stuff like Old Spice Guy, which praises and only gently mocks hypermasculinity*. But look at Axe commercials. Look at action movies. At television shows of all kinds. Look at magazines. Look at everything.
This extends to transition. The social scaffolding for female identity that’s supposed to help a trans woman become a woman per social definitions is by design the opposite of support. The process by which you become a woman involves making you abject, teaching you that support is something that women don’t deserve, and this is hard for trans women to defend against because being trans is also wound up in abject status – your success is determined by others’ approval.
Now, while trans men are also policed as men, and have to fulfill the trans narratives and try to “properly” be men, being a man is a valued state. Masculinity (and since men are conflated with masculinity) is valorized and admired over femininity and being a woman. While being trans is, as I said above, an abject status, being a man is supported as a good thing, the best of all available options.
This contrast affects trans men and trans women in different ways. Trans men are given leeway and respect that trans women are not. This happens on a daily basis. If you are given $100 a day for 30 days, would you expect to receive that $100 on day 31, or would you rely on your childhood where money may have been more tight? How about receiving that money for 365 days? Would you expect it on day 366? Are immediate punishment and reward systems overridden by past systems?
It’s not possible to reduce our socialization to our first 18 years, to our first 12 years, to our first two years (as I have recently seen one person try to do). We cannot coherently discuss trans people and male privilege while treating trans people as if we’re cis people, while ignoring our lives during and after transition and focusing strictly on our lives pre-transition. This is cissexism and straight up sexism to try to exclude experiences inconvenient to the assumption that trans women are supposedly really men and trans men are supposedly really women.
Note: CA/S/F/M/AB = Coercively assigned sex/female/male at birth
Note 2: I don’t want anyone to take away from this post that trans men do not experience sexism. They do, most especially pre- and often during transition. There are differences in how misogyny manifests against trans women because the intersection of transphobia and misogyny differs for trans men and trans women.
* Note 3: Jane LaPlain points out this section is focused on whiteness in this comment.
>>> Yes, there is gender policing aimed at men, but there’s also stuff like Old Spice Guy, which praises and only gently mocks hypermasculinity.
I think the difference is, men are policed almost entirely for being too feminine, but women are policed *both* ways – to not be too feminine (femmephobia, slutshaming etc) and not too masculine (too butch, too queer looking, transphobic cracks etc). Even socially rewarded forms of cis female femininity are also punished in ways that cis male masculinity are not…
Queen Emily
30 Aug 10 at 4:58 pm
Yes, I agree with that.
I was trying to write to that point but kept getting slightly sidetracked.
Lisa Harney
30 Aug 10 at 5:00 pm
Ooh this is an amazing post thank you. <3
I hear the socialization argument a lot but I never really had a coherent argument against it that didn't just sound like I was dismissive of sexism in general.
Nicole
30 Aug 10 at 5:01 pm
Yeah, when I read someone going on about how socialization starts in the womb and therefore all trans women are indelibly men because you can’t undo that socialization*, I sort of lost all my patience.
* Socialization in the womb is caused by the mother’s emotional state and nearby sounds. Somehow, I doubt this is causing anyone to become superpatriarchal
Lisa Harney
30 Aug 10 at 5:10 pm
Lisa Harney, you are made of awesome.
Marlene
30 Aug 10 at 6:54 pm
Thank you, thank you.
This discussion on Restructure! is relevant.
Lisa Harney
30 Aug 10 at 7:07 pm
Interesting article, and I really approve when you say “It’s not possible to reduce our socialization to our first 18 years, to our first 12 years, to our first two years (as I have recently seen one person try to do)”.
I find a bit weird how socialisation is often only used in “past tense”, like, you have socialized, but now you don’t anymore.
For me, it’s not just a male/female thing: e.g.I find socializing as a dyke very different from socializing as “woman assumed to be straight”. Strangely, I see less discussion about the privileges yielded by the fact of having an heterosexual socialisation in your childhood.
Ellie
30 Aug 10 at 7:30 pm
That’s one of the big problems, that we only hear about male and female socialization. No one who brings this up talks about how being cis or trans or straight or gay or lesbian or bisexual or white or a person of color or being neurotypical or temporarily able-bodied or having a disability or being neurodiverse or of being or not being a survivor of child abuse or sexual abuse has any effect on us.
It’s just so much easier and simpler to make it all about male and female and ignore – even make invisible – everything else.
Lisa Harney
30 Aug 10 at 7:35 pm
>>>I find a bit weird how socialisation is often only used in “past tense”, like, you have socialized, but now you don’t anymore.
Right. As though there aren’t important social, cultural, political, technological processes socialising us RIGHT NOW? Ideology is a constant process, it has to be in order to be effective.
Queen Emily
30 Aug 10 at 7:35 pm
That’s one of the big problems, that we only hear about male and female socialization. No one who brings this up talks about how being cis or trans or straight or gay or lesbian or bisexual or white or a person of color or being neurotypical or temporarily able-bodied or having a disability or being neurodiverse or of being or not being a survivor of child abuse or sexual abuse has any effect on us.
Not to mention being of non-binary gender. Which is a whole ‘nother ball of wax … how does forced socialization to a binary gender interact with being non-binary?
GallingGalla
30 Aug 10 at 8:00 pm
Sorry, I was thinking of non-binary gender when I said trans, but I should have been explicit about binary vs. non-binary.
Lisa Harney
30 Aug 10 at 8:03 pm
As always, Lisa, you remind me of why I want to be like you when I grow up. *smiles*
I have done a lot of thinking on this subject and was planning to write something about my own experiences as a child and what that meant- I had the privilege of speaking to a gender studies class about this very topic actually: the misconception that trans girls are somehow sheltered or shielded in childhood by dint of having been assigned male.
I spoke in no holds barred terms that evoked pretty much what you said, and I blatantly told them that as a woman who is constantly bombarded with misogynist socialisation and media, but is being told by everyone she’s a man who, by the way, is better than women and should prey on them… that fucks you up on very deep levels. It’s a level of self-hate you’re raised to have that grips your soul like a vise.
There is no privilege in this. In feeling as if you should be dead because you’re been raised to hate yourself as a woman, but made to feel a failure as a man, and the only way “out” being either death or a life of mockery and derision. I told the class, on the verge of tears myself, that a young trans girl saw only crude caricatures of crossdressers and trans women in movies and on television and thought “is that what I am?” For my only ‘role model’ to be joke designed by and for cis people.
Socialisation has power, immense power yes. But these so called feminists who expend incredible amounts of energy attempting to demonstrate that we wield male privilege or possessed it because we were assigned male at birth (coercively assigned, actually, I like that phrasing of yours) are as usual privileging their own perspective above all others and projecting the experiences of cis men onto us. But, as you tirelessly prove Lisa, our voices matter.
I’m sorry if this comment was a bit purple prose, but it needs to be said when talking about this farcical idea of how we, compared to cis women, had it so good in our childhoods. It’s an idea that still inspires a good deal of anger in me.
Quinnae
30 Aug 10 at 10:43 pm
Yes to all that. I’m sick of cis people talking about trans socialization because they don’t have any idea what they’re talking about. Apparently being erased, seeing yourself mocked and derided in media images of women like you. We’re not supposed to acknowledge this because that would mean trans is real and all the things they’ve done to us make them accountable to us for what they’ve perpetrated.
So they continue to cast us as men and use every excuse in the book to do it. Of course, they could, at any point, just stop.
Lisa Harney
30 Aug 10 at 10:54 pm
just wanted to thank you specifically for bringing up the age part of the “socialization as a child” trope. those who seek to degender and discredit trans women seem to talk about transition and non-cis narratives as all occurring among adults and only adults.
yet when a trans girl begins kindergarden being recognized and affirmed as a female (and there are more families than one would think for whom this is a reality and not a hypothetical), the argument that she’s getting male privilege seems even more absurd than usual (and it’s always absurd imo). as you pointed out, some will certainly try to locate some male life bonuses in her toddlerhood or her mother’s womb… but this reveals much more about their commitment to cisnormativity than the topic at hand.
anyhow, I’m very happy to see someone write about this trope.
MHS
31 Aug 10 at 4:08 am
@MHS: Very, very good point. It’s interesting how this ties into the other thread on community, because one of the things that has developed in the last decade is young trans children who are increasingly being supported (by their parents at least) in being and expressing who they are. And this is being brought to the public’s attention in mainstream media (though granted, the portrayals are often busted by cissexism).
What will the radical feminists do in another couple of years when this becomes even more commonplace? They will have to do shit like “hormone washes in the womb”, “socialized by what they hear while in the womb”, or some secret special Y-chromosome-through-the-ether bit; they’ll have no choice but to engage in biological essentialism and evo psych nonsense to continue to justify why one or two trans women are such a horrible fucking threat to a thousand cis women.
I eagerly await the spectacle of transphobic misogynistic radfems falling over each other with more and more ridiculous assertions about why trans women are really men. Something about narrow hips acting as a male-socialization magnet, or some such bullshit.
[snark-at-radfems]
So see, Lisa? They aren’t laser-guided missiles. They’re narrow-hip / broad-hip seeking missiles. Or something.
[/snark-at-radfems]
GallingGalla
31 Aug 10 at 7:48 am
Thanks for this. I’m not that up on trans issues, but I know that as a cis-woman, I’ve long had a push-and-pull relationship between what (I thought) was expected of me, and that I actually wanted. When this was brought up at Restructure! it just stunned me. If socialization can’t define me as a cis person, how the hell could it define a trans person?
Anyways, it’s always great to hear from someone on the inside of an issue.
Jayn
31 Aug 10 at 8:03 am
The only issue I have with this article is the word ‘privelige’. It is constantly used especially by queer and trans folk with such a degree of bitterness and yet you dont hear anyone else using it (even though I agree they may be affected by it- eg cisfolk especially men). I am not saying that it doesnt exist, but Im really tired of transfolk complaining about others supposedly having privelige to such a degree that it appears they have lost all focus on everything else except sulking about what they dont have.
I am a transguy and I dont pass 100%. I have to live with not passing every day. I probably do get ‘privelige’ in some areas in my life, but I prefer to look at it as a whole overview instead of concentrating on the negative all the time. The good with the bad. And often I feel that so called privelige is just an illusion. I think that cisfolk especially males born male at birth have a much harder time of it than I do- the pressure to be perfect and live up to peoples expectations in society is much greater for them than it is for me, so if something happens to them that means their so called privelige is removed or they have a situation where theyre exposed to trans issues or have a gender crisis (such as a family member transitioning, or they lose their penis, or something like that) then they completely freak out because they dont have the skills like me to be able to cope with it. I am the one in this case with the ‘privelige’ because i know how to survive under those circumstances. So who is the lucky one?
transman
31 Aug 10 at 8:06 am
GallingGalla,
Transphobic radical feminists are way ahead of you. They’ve already started with how male socialisation and privilege begins in the womb. It’s ridiculous stuff but hate seeks out post hoc reasoning so I suspect they will continue into the indefinite future. One can only hope that most people will start to wonder as they increasingly make more bizarre statements.
Lucy
31 Aug 10 at 9:00 am
MHS: The person in the Restructure! thread I linked has stated on her own blog that “socialization begins in the womb.”
Jayn: I know, right? But a common feature of cissexism is that trans people are supposedly rigid and overcompensating about gender, so obviously stuff that wouldn’t affect a cis person totally and always and irrevocably affects a trans person.
transman: This post isn’t complaining about privilege, but responding to complaints about privilege. Just using the word privilege? Doesn’t actually mean it’s a complaint.
I didn’t say in the post that all trans men pass 100% of the time. I didn’t even say all trans men get male privilege 100% of the time. I did even say that trans men get that alongside transphobia, which means that the privilege is complicated by intersectionality.
I understand it’s easy to be defensive if you feel like someone’s talking about privilege you may have now or in the future, but that wasn’t the point of this article. The point isn’t that having privilege makes anyone a bad person. But, well…go read that article I linked at the top about sexism and trans people. A trans man and a trans woman both talk about the role sexism and male privilege played in their lives pre- and post-transition.
Anyway, social power and oppression are not illusions. One simply cannot exist without the other. That’s why men are valorized over women and cis people are valorized over trans people.
Coping skills aren’t a privilege in that sense. They help you deal with things, but privilege means not needing to have those skills much of the time.
Lisa Harney
31 Aug 10 at 9:16 am
GallingGalla,
Not just that there are trans children who are in the media (although as Gina at Skip the Makeup points out, this could complicate things for those children in the future, as they cannot be stealth). But also that trans children actually have some hope of being treated and yeah, being supported in transition by their family.
Lisa Harney
31 Aug 10 at 9:18 am
BTW, Quinnae, I meant to say earlier and forgot: I appreciate that you specifically mentioned the toxicity of being a trans woman and dealing with male privilege. I’ve tried to bring it up before, but what I say tends to be recast as “describing myself as an ally to women” but since I am a woman that’s just inane.
Lisa Harney
31 Aug 10 at 11:08 am
“socialization begins in the womb” um. well. you know, life begins at conception, and the fetus gets to observe social interactions with its finely-tuned and fully-developed senses, the data of which it can then place into its completely functional brain, where it processes the information with well-honed algorithms.
and pigs can fly, too.
b. sanford
31 Aug 10 at 11:47 am
Lisa-
I went over there (the Restructure! thread) and read some of her comments, as well as yours. I’m not sure I understand your comment to me. when I said, “as you pointed out, some will certainly try…”, I was referring to where you in your post said, “…to our first two years (as I have recently seen one person try to do)”
after reading over on Restructure!, I assume she (the one cissplaining) was the “one person”. have I missed something?
MHS
31 Aug 10 at 12:15 pm
MHS –
Yeah, that’s her. You’d have to follow links back to her blog from that thread to find the comments.
And I forgot I’d already said something about socialization in the womb.
Lisa Harney
31 Aug 10 at 12:19 pm
OK. all good :)
MHS
31 Aug 10 at 12:28 pm
god, the comments after that roughgarden/barres article are ridiculous.
i must be new to the internet.
jayinchicago
31 Aug 10 at 1:23 pm
There must be a rule for “Never read the comments on news articles or youtube.”
Lisa Harney
31 Aug 10 at 1:24 pm
I have to quote this entire section:
>>> Yes, there is gender policing aimed at men, but there’s also stuff like Old Spice Guy, which praises and only gently mocks hypermasculinity.
I think the difference is, men are policed almost entirely for being too feminine, but women are policed *both* ways – to not be too feminine (femmephobia, slutshaming etc) and not too masculine (too butch, too queer looking, transphobic cracks etc). Even socially rewarded forms of cis female femininity are also punished in ways that cis male masculinity are not…
…..
If anyone is wishing for a rude introduction into the ways in which cis men are regularly both punished AND praised for performing traditional masculinity and/or hypermasculinity, all one has to do is leave Whiteness as one’s frame of reference.
Black men. Brown men. THEY get punished for performing traditional masculinity ALL THE TIME. Black and brown men are also praised, currently, for exuding a “natural” maleness and masculinity that all men should emulate. But only white male bodies who perform the type of masculinity regularly projected upon black and brown male bodies seem to be able to perform their masculine genders without automatically being branded thugs or criminals, or simply dangerous.
These high-minded tho heartfelt discussions about male and female socialization invariably baffle me or leave me out altogether, which I find frustrating as hell since I feel I have much to contribute. These discussions always seem to hinge upon an assumption of WHITE maleness or femaleness.
I don’t think I could say with a straight face that as a black person, my transitioning from male to female forced me to leave behind a world of male power and privilege that would otherwise have elevated me over all other bodies in this society. In all honesty in some ways the shift has been either lateral, and in some very specific instances, I’ve actually gained MORE power and privilege than I had before by transitioning (neither effeminate black males or openly trans black girls aren’t nearly as employable as gender normative appearing black females, for instance).
To be sure, there ARE aspects of male privilege that I most certainly did benefit from (namely, I escaped being actively coerced into believing that attracting and holding on to a “good man” was the most important thing I could ever do as a woman, unlike most of my female relatives. I also appreciate never having been forced to wear frilly pink things and bows and dresses and other girlhood barbie accessories I always figured must be mortifying to have to wear especially if you look nothing like barbie but you are expected to try anyway… like being forced to dress up like a xmas tree or a clown or something.. but I digress).
Anyway. My point is that there is no discussion of gendered socialization without discussing expectations of gender based on Race, and no discussion of race without its specifically gendered expectations for men and for women of a particular race. The opportunities and socialization I received as an openly feminine black male child is remarkably different than anything I would have received as a feminine white male child or even a gender normative black male child. My life experiences now as a black woman who passes for cis are different than experiences I’d be having as a black woman who was regularly read as trans, or a white woman who either passed for cis or was identifiably trans. Race makes a HUGE difference in how you get treated, and what privileges you may obtain. How well you perform whatever gender people expect of you can have very specific consequences according to race.
So my question is, how how HOW is race always being left out of or mentioned as an afterthought in these kinds of discussions which obviously cut everyone here so deeply? Are you really only talking to each other, and by you, I mean you white people? Or… what’s the deal? I have nothing but admiration for the discussions here, but somehow I always feel like I’m waiting for a turn at jump rope that never comes, so I have to jump in uninvited.
Jane Laplain
31 Aug 10 at 2:48 pm
Thank you for the calling out – my own ignorance about how men of color are policed wrt masculinity as well as my rush to get a post out debunking socialization as mind control satellites contributed to me making a total mess of intersectionality and I am sorry about that, and I am sorry for causing you pain and failing you.
I did not set out to exclude anyone from the conversation, but of course that doesn’t matter when you are excluded, right?
Lisa Harney
31 Aug 10 at 3:12 pm
Yes Jane, you’re very right – I universalised from whiteness and that’s not on. I’m glad you did speak up, though I apologise for making it necessary to feel like you’re interrupting (you’re not).
Queen Emily
31 Aug 10 at 3:15 pm
I missed that she was quoting your comment, oops.
But still, my intersectional analysis could have been a lot better. Or, like, fully present.
Lisa Harney
31 Aug 10 at 3:24 pm
Yeah. I think that flaw is in the larger feminist narrative of “male privilege” that you’re in dialogue with Lisa. White feminists (cis and trans) have persistently done the kind of universalisation that we both just did and collapse the very real differences between men into the one thing – the Patriarchy.
You make a good point about black masculinities and punishment, Jane. In Australia, there’s similar kinds of ideas that circulate about Aboriginal men as dangerous, potentially violence–in other words, *too* masculine etc.
The lack of a double bind I mentioned for men is very specifically a white, Anglo thing.
Queen Emily
31 Aug 10 at 3:37 pm
Lisa and Emily
Thank you for responding. For the record I am not as “hurt” as I came off sounding in that reply. I just don’t know how else to say these things without dancing around the heart of the matter. It wasn’t my intention to call you out, rather I just wanted to highlight the racialized realities that make Emily’s following observation so true:
“The lack of a double bind I mentioned for men is very specifically a white, Anglo thing.”
Yes. The lack of punishment for white male bodies for existing is precisely the kind of privilege the larger feminist narrative decries… and you are very right to point out that “white male privilege” is collapsed into Patriarchy…This failure to identify the male privilege they speak of as largely WHITE male privilege has obscured the ways in which Patriarchy (which certainly predates Racism) manifests in overtly and covertly sexist and heterosexist terms, regardless of race. It also obscures the specifically racist context in which patriarchy NOW functions on a global scale. These universalisations about male and female socializations collude with both Patriarchy and Racism to remain invisible at their intersections and thus unexamined and unchallenged.
Before we can begin to discuss how race intersects with socialization, we must acknowledge the way white bodies are valued and rewarded for existing in the first place. There ARE privileges one gains for being a “good” man or a “good” girl if one is white. In contrast, black and brown bodies are interpreted as surplus population at best…and thus our normative gender expresssions are policed more heavily than white people’s and our gender transgressions are punished differently than white people’s.
I submit that the reason I transitioned as young as I did was not because I was “more transsexual than” people who transition later in life (As the so called Harry Benjaminers would have us believe), but simply because there were far fewer social rewards for me NOT to transition. That is to say, fewer rewards for pretending to be a heterosexual cis male person with a black body. Regardless of my sexuality or gender, I am seen as Black first and foremost… and being treated as a typical, heteronormative black male would have meant being seen as a hypersexual criminal threat who must be followed and contained and possibly jailed as much as possible. What on god’s green earth was in it for me to pretend to be a straight dude just to have to deal with that? When I already having to deal with people watching me in stores just in case I stole something, people assuming I’m of low intelligence, assuming I’m an affirmative action student or hire and thus less qualified for whatever I was doing, assuming I’m a prostitute, assumeing I’m an intruder or servant wherever I go, assuming I have AIDS etc…. I would merely be trading one set of extremely limiting racial stereotypes for another. None of the aforementioned assumptions would have gone away, I would merely be adding the stress of maintaining a cisgender het facade on top of that indignity. That leaves very little time, energy or incentive for pretending to be the person I was assumed/assigned to be from birth.
Now if I had been born white.. I imagine my gender trajectory might have gone very differently.. if only because ALL the white trans people I have known have had such radically different trajectories from mine. There’s got to be a reason for that. So it’s these sort of differences I’ve been waiting many years to see the trans community discussing and applying these observations against the arguments of our so called radfem critics (and trust me, they hate us black transies every much as they do the white ones)…. But I’ve found that getting white people to acknowledge the role race has played in THEIR lives is very difficult… even when we are otherwise united by other oppressions.
Jane Laplain
31 Aug 10 at 7:08 pm
Yeah. Seriously, it’s really easy to just get on the defensive in this conversation too. Just pushing back against the multiple arguments about how trans women have indelible male privilege. And of course the arguments we’re pushing back against never bother to take race into account or acknowledge how Black male bodies are punished for being black and male.
That’s not an excuse, but it is one element for me.
I have actually said in the past that white male privilege is a very specifically privileged cultural space and that race plays a large role, but I haven’t really explored that in a lot of detail. Of course it’s true, just looking at conviction rates, sentencing, “driving while Black,” characterization of Black men as you say, violent and hypersexual and aggressive and criminal.
I’ve known for two decades about how white people (and this included me until I had it pointed out) protect our purses and wallets when we see a Black person nearby. And of course there’s the fact that many white women react more strongly when they see Black men on the street than when they see white men.
In retrospect this is so obvious I really should have thought about it sooner. I know Monica Roberts has talked about this as well.
Lisa Harney
31 Aug 10 at 7:22 pm
Thank you for this post, it wonderfully refutes simplistic assumptions about how socialization functions, that is it sharply targeted and monolithically received, as well as attacks the conflation of socialization and privilege. I have felt pressure in many different directions with regard to gender performance, feeling guilty about not being masculine enough as well as internalizing feminine standards of beauty for my body, just to start. Being raised male does not mean I did not struggle with and was confused by what was expected of my gender performance. I didn’t receive special male-only (or for that matter white-male only) socialization, as you pointed out, I was socialized just as everyone else, but my reactions/internalizations to it, and how that socialization and self-perceptions changed over time are important. The privilege I have is based upon what is perceived of me by others, which is perpetuated by socialization norms but it is not the same. My reactions to socialization, whether seeing myself as the target, instigator, both, or excluded, may only affect my privilege as much as it effects my presentation and the perception by others. However, those reactions are important none the less, and cannot be discounted based on cisnormitive expectations and thus viewing my identity as invalid without the “proper” socialization. I struggle with people telling me what I really am, as though they know my lived experiences and as if reality lies only with their normative expectations of socialization. This post was refreshing and comforting to me, thank you.
I did also enjoy the comments made by Jane and yourself regarding the different expectations of Black male bodies as it relates to ideas of hyper-masculinity and the way in which most formulations of patriarchal privilege are assumed to be white. This formulation is of course, as pointed out, deeply problematic. I really appreciated the comments on it because frankly it is not something I think about and encounter, not that that is an excuse to ignore it. I’m white and thus have a particular relationship with the socialization of masculinity and the ideas of hyper-masculinity being encouraged on my body. This socialization is relevant for me, and is an important dynamic to understand those intersections of white and male privilege, but clearly not universal and excludes many racialized bodies. I have in the past been guilty of neglecting other lived experiences, and probably will do so in the future, because I don’t know them and don’t have the language to speak of them. Seeing conversations like this help me yank myself out of my own experience and expose me to, and hopefully glean some understanding out of, other lived experiences. Thank you.
Ostien
1 Sep 10 at 11:31 am
This post brings up something that’s bothered me for a while. When discussing how trans women experience the world trans men are often held up as a contrast.
Please stop doing this.
Please stop talking about how we are accepted more this way or that way. Please stop talking about how we have more role models. Please stop talking about how we pass better, get better results, get better access to care. Please stop implying that our attempts to include our voice in discussions about trans people are nothing but male privilege.*
When you talk about our lives you are framing the discussion in a way that makes sense to you but might not make sense to us. It’s not enough to say “We know you experience sexism too” when you pick and choose your examples so that we come out on top every time in some imaginary power game.
This framing framing is very powerful. In an LJ post about trans men and male privilege I was shut down when I brought up how sexism has impacted my life. I was told that that discussion did not belong in the post – that it was derailing. Until today I did not understand why that had happened. The answer is simple: There’s a set narrative about our lives we are instructed to discuss. We must talk about we are treated just as well as cis men, how we are universally better received than trans women, and how we must now watch what we say very carefully because of all the male privilege we carry.
Those discussions should happen. I will never suggest that they should not. What has happened is that they are now the only discussions. We are expected to stick to a discussion path that, honestly, has very little to do with my life. But when it’s used in so many blog posts, when it’s a central part of a story, that creates a lot of pressure not to rock the boat by talking about other issues.
The outside world may be kinder to me now that it perceives me as male but I will never be able to capitalize on it. I will never be able to hold a leadership position because assertiveness has been bullied out of me. I suffer not only from the strong male-coded pressure to be muscular but from the female-coded pressure to be rail thin and as a result I’ve been on the brink of disordered eating for years. I do not argue with my “betters” or scream or raise my voice, even when I am being abused. That wasn’t an accident. It was directly related to being assigned female at birth.
You have an important story to tell. The way socialization rhetoric is used against trans women is disgusting and it highlights how little time these women have taken to think about your lives.
You are a respected blogger. Your words carry weight. They shape the way important discussions are held. I would appreciate it if you stopped using us to make your points, especially when you pick and choose which parts of our lives to highlight.
*Not all of these come from things you’ve said (or at least I don’t think they do – I don’t have time to look through every entry and every comment you’ve ever made). This comment has been building up for a long time and I can no longer keep track of who said what. I don’t mean to pin everything on you.
Tobias
2 Sep 10 at 6:40 pm
I’ve waffled on whether to reply to this, as the next thing I say will be speaking from a place of race, gender, and class privilege.
It hurts me that you have chosen to use CAS(M/F)AB.
Over several posts that you’ve made about childhood and being trans, I’ve inferred that we’ve had vastly different childhoods, and that mine, a upper-middle class, white one, had a lot more freedom to explore a range of gender, especially as a young girl exploring masculinity. I understand that you understand your sex/gender to have been coercively assigned to you when you were born, and I have no issue with you applying that to yourself. I want to make that clear. I also understand that it is a neat way to make the force of gender binary pressures apparent.
However, I feel that the use of “coercive” elides the part of my life where I understood myself to be, identified as, took strength from being a girl/woman and loved that. It’s a constant struggle for me, in both cis and trans circles (for different reasons!) to be able to talk about that honestly, because, as you say, “we don’t really discuss day to day pressures…toward having the right narratives”. And my narrative is the “wrong” one. Mine is the one cis people don’t want to hear because how can I really be sure. Mine is the one that trans people don’t want to hear because the gatekeepers will never believe us.
In general, I’m wary of the “assigned at birth” terminology because it genuflects towards putting cis and trans people on the same footing, but in practice, it gets applied a whole hell of a lot more to trans people. But “coercive”, for me, makes me feel elided in the very post that talks about not making assumptions about the socialization of trans people.
twostatesystem
2 Sep 10 at 6:53 pm
twostatesystem,
I’m not enamored of the terminology, and I am sorry that my use of it has hurt you. I’m constantly trying to talk about what cisnormativity does to trans people in new ways, and I cannot guarantee that I will ever get it perfectly right for all trans people, but I will continue to do my best to find better ways to say these things.
I agree with your last paragraph.
Lisa Harney
2 Sep 10 at 7:44 pm
Tobias,
I’m not sure what is problematic about talking about the fact that trans men who are passed as cis receive male privilege? The second link at the top of my post has a trans man’s (Ben Barres’) own words on this, his own experiences as he transitioned.
I don’t want to elide the fact that trans women do receive passed-as-male privilege prior to transition, either, and that this affects many trans women’s lives in so many ways. But I think it’s important to be able to talk about these things. Especially given the ways that trans men and trans male spectrum people have been able to access queer spaces in ways that marginalize and sometimes exclude trans women, whether that is their intention or not, or characterizations of trans men in ways that elide or minimize the privilege they receive for being passed as cis men when they are passed as cis men – let alone the fact that the majority of insulting, toxic, offensive transphobic humor is directed at trans women.
And I think it is important to talk about these things, and that we cannot make assumptions about everyone – after all, despite my notional “boyhood” I have also had much of my assertiveness bullied out of me, while I have known trans men who never internalized that at all and feel quite capable of assertiveness.
Unfortunately, much of my post is generalization about trans men/male spectrum people and trans women/female spectrum people. It’s not 100% applicable to any of us, and that includes me. There are simply too many variables, intersectional and otherwise, that complicate every bit of it.
But my core point is valid: That it is cissexist to expect that trans people are socialized just like cis people. This does not mean we are all socialized in the same way depending on sex assigned at birth, and I am sorry that I gave that impression.
Lisa Harney
2 Sep 10 at 7:55 pm
Lisa,
This is difficult to write succinctly, first because of my lackluster writing skills, and secondly because I’ve never seen these ideas expressed before, so forgive me for the lack of clarity in my first comment.
I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I am not implying that trans men do not receive privilege from others, or that there is anything wrong with the core point of your post. Trans men are often accorded male privilege when they pass as cis and the socialization of trans people is not the same as cis people. We agree on those things. They are not the focus of this comment or of the last one.
What I’m trying to say is that the narrative about trans men that has been constructed on trans-focused blogs runs in a specific and predictable way. We talk about how trans men are granted male privileges by those around them and how our lives compare to the lives of trans women. I would like this to stop for two reasons.
First, it is overly simplistic. There are many ways in which we are treated like cis men but there are many ways in which we are not. Huge parts of our lives are eliminated by focusing only on how masculinity is valued.
Second, it reduces us to rhetorical device. I’ve noticed that trans women often highlight how their issues work by comparing them to trans men. Trans men are not spoken of in their own right, but are used only as opposites. The parts of our lives that are highlighted are the ones that directly contrast your lives. Other parts are erased from the discussion.
That’s the third problem: important aspects of trans male life are discouraged from being included in discussions. This is a side-effect of talking about us in only one way. Your blog is powerful. The way you represent a concept travels and becomes mainstream. The language you use, the issues you highlight, frame a larger discussion. If you make use of certain rhetorical devices, such as framing trans men and trans women as contrasts, then others will use that device. When enough people use it then it becomes difficult to say anything else.
Recently you made a post about bullying and social justice. Your argument was that the attacks among internet activists are being enabled by rhetorical devices that were originally meant to do positive things. Nowadays everyone knows what “calling out” and “tone argument” mean because that language has been widely adopted. I’m seeing the same thing happening with the way trans men are depicted in trans spaces. It’s a pattern I’m deeply uncomfortable with, not only because it misrepresents me but because the more pervasive it becomes, the more pressure is going to be exerted to stick to it.
Is that any clearer?
Tobias
3 Sep 10 at 1:11 pm
I’m not really sure how to respond to this right now, but I’ll give it thought, Tobias.
Lisa Harney
4 Sep 10 at 5:37 pm
Thank you. And please let me know if something isn’t clear.
Tobias
4 Sep 10 at 9:07 pm
[...] time we dismiss or denigrate any of the three, we’re missing the whole picture. Currently, our society still overemphasizes and distorts the effect of socialization and are just starting to revisit the instinctive. But our collective attitudes about choice are [...]
Choice « Dented Blue Mercedes
5 Sep 10 at 7:58 am
Tobias, I can see where you are coming from in terms of your own experience, and I am glad that you have said something. I only ask that you be a bit more careful to speak for yourself personally rather than “trans men” generally. I see you using some generalizing phrases (“we”/”us”/”trans male life”) and, since I personally disagree with many of the things you’ve said, that’s rubbing more than a little. in turn I will try, here, to do the same– to remember that I don’t speak for all who’ve transitioned and were assigned female at birth.
MHS
5 Sep 10 at 9:30 am
Sure thing MHS.
Tobias
5 Sep 10 at 1:04 pm
@Twostatesystem. A heartfelt echo.
And to put forward the fact that being an unfashionable essentialist feminist has it’s problems, but when it comes to dealing with socialization and identity, it’s just a pure win.
Sophia
8 Sep 10 at 10:27 am
Oh, but being an essentialist fails to meet the ideological purity test and makes everything you say wrong.
(btw, please no one get mad I linked videos of an evo psych guy just because he knows everything about adhd)
Lisa Harney
8 Sep 10 at 11:47 am
I mean, I disagree with a lot of essentialist ideas, but do we have a conversation about it or a fight? That’s where the line is and I think some people just want to fight.
Lisa Harney
8 Sep 10 at 11:48 am
I suppose if I were in a fight with a rad fem on the point of socialization, as a essentialist I could more fight on grounds of my own choosing.
That I could take the position that the gender differentiated aspects of socialization are secondary to the prime kyriarchic mechanism where gender difference is repressed in order to universalise value systems based on testosterone fuelled cognitive /emotional maps.
In that instance I could reproach a rad fem with the notion that playing the socialization card is simply asserting their own internalization of kyriarchy.
But that would be fighting and impure so I’m
just saying.
Sophia
8 Sep 10 at 1:16 pm
Naturally! :)
Lisa Harney
8 Sep 10 at 1:20 pm
[...] been inscribed upon by living in a transphobic, misogynist culture. As I said in my post about socialization, socialization does not indelibly define us for life, and of course people of all kinds have the [...]
Ignorance at Questioning Transphobia
9 Sep 10 at 1:07 am
[...] to consider that, excluding mass messages, girls aren’t all socialized the same way either. Is ignoring what actual transwomen say about this, yes, but really wouldn’t even have needed to talk to one to figure this [...]
Your ignorant transphobia is not okay « Skyborne
17 Sep 10 at 4:12 pm
I came across this blog kind of late, but I have to say something specifically in regard to this supposed socialization of women as being less assertive… I have noticed this in many women, but being a trans woman who IS very assertive and sometimes even aggressive, I resent the implication that this is only because I was born male. As a matter of fact, my own mother, a white middle class woman (to debunk another popular stereotype) is very loud and aggressive, and dominates her relationship with her husband. I know many women like this. I think people like to make generalizations but don’t take individuality into account. I don’t feel the need to change anything about myself in order to be seen as more “feminine”, when my voice and mannerisms have always been traditionally feminine, and growing up I was often “mistaken for” a girl, though we know now that this wasn’t a mistake. My point in this rambling is I don’t care one bit about keeping quiet or demure, and that has nothing to do with my gender. I’m a strong person, a strong woman. I feel especially sorry that there are trans men who aren’t strong enough to be assertive despite whatever supposed “female” socialization they feel they have received. I think statements like that are sexist. As if a man can’t really be a strong man just because he began life as a female. Ridiculous. Women can be every bit as strong as, if not stronger than, men, and the only things holding people back are weakness and fear.
Morgan
6 Feb 12 at 3:25 am
I’m just a simple guy, not up on terminology or socialization issues. I was going to an FtM meeting because I live/exist in the limbo of a small farming town in Wisconsin. And it was weird, listening to everyone talk because they talked about the “lesbian paradigm” and women crossing the street because men are a threat. Maybe I’m an anomaly.My mom was given DES. But I spoke up with..”What about man as the hero? The protector? Man as the builder, the one willing to stand between threat and those who can’t defend themselves.” They didn’t want to talk about issues like…how to shave properly, or how do you deal with the side effects of T injections. I still have a very large set of breasts…gave birth to a kid that’s 20 years old now, who is my best supporter in all this. I know what I am. I’m male. I’m too aggressive for people who perceive me as female, I’m threatening to anyone else. Worse yet, I’m a conservative and former military. Boxes are for storage and labels are for soup. I am.
Jason Valentine
28 Feb 12 at 2:38 pm
[...] Designated male at birth trans* people are often accused of having residual male privilege, regardless of their actual experiences, and their experiences are often co-opted by designated female at birth trans* people who seek to [...]
“Not [Really] Trans* [Enough]“: Trans* Regulation and Transnormativity « A Genderqueer Menace
13 May 12 at 9:08 pm