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kaberett(Cis friends, by all means ask me questions to clarify, but maybe consider sitting out of actually having an opinion in comments on this one. Anon comments are permitted but will be screened; I expect to unscreen unless otherwise requested.)
Here's the thing: I am absolutely done with permitting trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) to set the terms of the conversation. I am done with ceding ground to them. I am done with accepting their framings.
I will take and I will keep and I will own that I have been socialised as female. This is the flag I bring to the battle of my days.
Because here's the thing: socialised as has absolutely nothing to do with what I am; like privilege, it's about perceptions, and how people treat me. It is, absolutely and unequivocally, an externality, a thing that was done to me, not a reflection of my self and my interior, and - much like abuse - not something that I could possibly have meaningfully influenced from the inside out. That people abused me says nothing about who and what I am; that people treated me as female, similarly.
But it is a simple statement of fact that adults treat children differently depending on whether they are perceived as male or female (because the concept of other options has not, by and large, made it to the mainstream of the cultural context in which I am working), and it is a simple statement of fact that this has a measurable effect on how children - in aggregate - perceive themselves. This is how stereotype threat works. It is why, in aggregate, in my cultural context, children perceived and consequently treated as female consider themselves worse at mathematics. It is why children perceived as female ask fewer questions (up to undergraduate level!), and apologise more for speaking.
I need to have a language, a framework, in which to discuss being sexually harassed in maths lessons, by boys who perceived me as female. I need to have a framework that acknowledges that my apologising for speaking, my being taught to be silent, forms a pattern. I need the acknowledgement that children perceived as female are massively underdiagnosed when it comes to autism. I need all of this, and I need language to speak about it, and I need to be able to acknowledge the effects of the ways external agents treated me, without people telling me that the terminology we have to describe this experience - "socialised as female" - contains any deep truth about myself, means that I'm really a woman. It is entirely apparent that I am not.
"I was socialised as female" places agency in exactly the same hands as "I was abused". Both are statements of how other people treated me; both are routinely framed in a way that (unhelpfully) obscures the existence of external actors. How individuals interpret or react to similar treatment varies enormously: there are people who were subjected to the same shit I've survived who don't have PTSD. That doesn't mean that how they were treated was right; it doesn't mean that either of us is reacting wrong; but the belief that I'm female because I was treated in the way that children-perceived-as-female are treated is as misplaced, as wrong, as the idea that I deserved abuse because I was abused.
TERFs want you to believe otherwise. TERFs want you to believe that "socialised as female" is an integral part of womanhood; they want you to believe that there is a single unitary experience of childhood-while-perceived-as-female, and they want you to believe that anyone who didn't have it isn't a woman (and that anyone who did is).
They're wrong, on every single count, not least in that childhood socialisation is inherently, unavoidably intersectional: there is no such thing as a universal experience, and, again, how adults chose to treat me says nothing about who I am; and the way I respond to particular treatment are self-evidently not universal responses. Nonetheless, in aggregate and statistically, how adults treat children varies by gender (and a whole host of other factors), and how children in aggregate behave is shaped by how they are treated.
I refuse to let TERFs take this terminology away from me. Their attempts to co-opt this language are completely inconsistent with the rest of the theoretical framework in which we discuss privilege and oppression and misogyny and toxic masculinity; their attempts to poison the discourse through deliberate misapplication and misrepresentation of theory do not render the theory itself incorrect.
They do not get to silence me.
Here's the thing: I am absolutely done with permitting trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) to set the terms of the conversation. I am done with ceding ground to them. I am done with accepting their framings.
I will take and I will keep and I will own that I have been socialised as female. This is the flag I bring to the battle of my days.
Because here's the thing: socialised as has absolutely nothing to do with what I am; like privilege, it's about perceptions, and how people treat me. It is, absolutely and unequivocally, an externality, a thing that was done to me, not a reflection of my self and my interior, and - much like abuse - not something that I could possibly have meaningfully influenced from the inside out. That people abused me says nothing about who and what I am; that people treated me as female, similarly.
But it is a simple statement of fact that adults treat children differently depending on whether they are perceived as male or female (because the concept of other options has not, by and large, made it to the mainstream of the cultural context in which I am working), and it is a simple statement of fact that this has a measurable effect on how children - in aggregate - perceive themselves. This is how stereotype threat works. It is why, in aggregate, in my cultural context, children perceived and consequently treated as female consider themselves worse at mathematics. It is why children perceived as female ask fewer questions (up to undergraduate level!), and apologise more for speaking.
I need to have a language, a framework, in which to discuss being sexually harassed in maths lessons, by boys who perceived me as female. I need to have a framework that acknowledges that my apologising for speaking, my being taught to be silent, forms a pattern. I need the acknowledgement that children perceived as female are massively underdiagnosed when it comes to autism. I need all of this, and I need language to speak about it, and I need to be able to acknowledge the effects of the ways external agents treated me, without people telling me that the terminology we have to describe this experience - "socialised as female" - contains any deep truth about myself, means that I'm really a woman. It is entirely apparent that I am not.
"I was socialised as female" places agency in exactly the same hands as "I was abused". Both are statements of how other people treated me; both are routinely framed in a way that (unhelpfully) obscures the existence of external actors. How individuals interpret or react to similar treatment varies enormously: there are people who were subjected to the same shit I've survived who don't have PTSD. That doesn't mean that how they were treated was right; it doesn't mean that either of us is reacting wrong; but the belief that I'm female because I was treated in the way that children-perceived-as-female are treated is as misplaced, as wrong, as the idea that I deserved abuse because I was abused.
TERFs want you to believe otherwise. TERFs want you to believe that "socialised as female" is an integral part of womanhood; they want you to believe that there is a single unitary experience of childhood-while-perceived-as-female, and they want you to believe that anyone who didn't have it isn't a woman (and that anyone who did is).
They're wrong, on every single count, not least in that childhood socialisation is inherently, unavoidably intersectional: there is no such thing as a universal experience, and, again, how adults chose to treat me says nothing about who I am; and the way I respond to particular treatment are self-evidently not universal responses. Nonetheless, in aggregate and statistically, how adults treat children varies by gender (and a whole host of other factors), and how children in aggregate behave is shaped by how they are treated.
I refuse to let TERFs take this terminology away from me. Their attempts to co-opt this language are completely inconsistent with the rest of the theoretical framework in which we discuss privilege and oppression and misogyny and toxic masculinity; their attempts to poison the discourse through deliberate misapplication and misrepresentation of theory do not render the theory itself incorrect.
They do not get to silence me.