I talk a lot about how much gendered socialization hurt me growing up. Being forced to experience a boys adolescence and feeling ostracized by my girl friends because they saw me as a boy.

But that doesn't mean I wanted "female socialization" either. It's all toxic.

My dad was awful at raising me. Only let me do "boy activities", called me a faggot when I cried, did everything he could to "make me a man" but my sister got the girl version of that and it enforced a lot of awful ideas about her place in the world I wouldn't want in my head.

Gender norms based on patriarchal expectations are all bad. Especially when they're reinforced rigorously and violently.

I am a woman, but I know if I was "socialized female" I'd have a whole other slew of emotional problems to work through in adulthood.

Maybe it has less to do with where I fit in on a gendered spectrum and more to do with being neurodivergent. Is there a version of Mia that could have existed within the confines laid out for me and thrived within them? I fucking doubt it.

I reject authority because I can't not.

We as trans people blame so much of our upbringing on "being raised wrong" but it's the system that allows those things.

Would I be more well adjusted if I was "socialized right"? Sexualized by creepy men at age 12? If my dad threatened my boyfriend with a gun on prom night? No.

MALE vs. FEMALE SOCIALIZATION says "You were raised as a boy and you'll carry that forever. You're not a woman because you didn't experience the pain of girlhood."

My womanhood isn't defined by trauma and we need to stop gatekeeping based on how much society hates you.

I wasn't "socialized male" I was "socialized as a faggot" People knew I was different from age 4 and they tried to beat it out of me. I didn't benefit from male priveledge, I didn't want to, I was a casualty of it.

Gendered socialization is inherently traumatizing. Burn it down.