Identity

submitted by loveSloaneDebate King from self.GCdebatesQT

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[–]loveSloaneDebate King[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

It sounds like something happened in your childhood that prevented you from recognizing that there are many types of girls, that girls can have all kinds of personalities and interests and behaviors.

Socialization happened. We get taught that boys behave this way and like this and that and girls behave this other way and like these other things. If you aren’t socialized as a female, and are socialized as a male, the only thing you learn about the opposite sex is what you’re supposed to expect a girl/woman to be (and possibly how you’re “supposed” to treat her), you don’t learn that that’s just bullshit expectation.

It’s why terms like “tomboy” exist. To explain away a girl who has the audacity to not behave the way shes “supposed to”.

I can’t speak for peaking but I imagine most boys (dysphoric or not) assume that “all” girls like the things peaking gravitated to.

[–]MarkTwainiac 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Yeah, I know all about socialization. But even when I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s, the view of males and females I got (and other people I know of my age and several decades younger) was not as stereotypically and uniformly one-dimensional as the extremely narrow, shallow view that you and peaking seem to have gotten - and which you seem to think has always been the norm. Maybe it was because of bigger families back then, bigger school class sizes, the larger role that religion played in general society, the outsized presence of nuns in popular culture generally and in the particular the kind of education I got as a student at convent school, and the fact that kids spent so much time amongst one another unsupervised by adults and thus had the chance to let our true selves out ... I dunno what caused it, but most people I know who are over 45 or so did not get the idea when growing up that all boys were a certain very narrow way, and only that narrow way, and all girls were another kind of narrow way, and only that narrow way.

Also, in the milieu I was grew up "tomboy" wasn't much used. When not in our school uniforms or "Sunday best," most girls dressed and behaved in a wide range of ways, much of them not at all "girly" as it's defined today. Girls could be rough and tumble, sporty, feisty, nasty, loud, bossy, opinionated, obstinate, difficult, bratty, troublesome, adventurous, curious, challenging, irritable, selfish, tart-tongued, foul-mouthed, argumentative and so on just as much as they/we could be gentle, caring, docile, demure, dainty, patient, yielding, accommodating, obedient, considerate, soft-spoken, well-behaved etc. Girls in some milieus and situations might have been discouraged and shamed for certain behaviors that weren't stereotypically "feminine," but it wasn't like anyone thought that girls and women couldn't naturally have a whole range of personality traits that fall far outside the "good girl" or "ideal woman" box. Because we all knew girls who didn't fit those boxes, just as we knew women who didn't either.

When I was growing up, no one I knew seriously believed that girls were actually made of "sugar and spice, everything nice" because just as there were a lot of mean, fierce, powerful and terrifying mothers around, on every block, in every class room, and in the case of big families like mine, there were real live girls who were often mean, hard-edged and behaved in horrible ways. In fact, one of the poems that I heard most as a child was "There Was a Little Girl" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

There was a little girl,

Who had a little curl,

Right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was good,

She was very good indeed,

But when she was bad she was horrid.

Now perhaps this poem was meant to shame girls, but to me it was a clear acknowledgment that girls' behavior runs the whole gamut from good to bad - and when we behaved badly, it was in our nature and power to go whole hog rather than just be a little bit bad.

[–]loveSloaneDebate King[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Yeah, I know all about socialization. But even when I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s, the view of males and females I got (and other people I know of my age and several decades younger) was not as stereotypically and uniformly one-dimensional as the extremely narrow, shallow view that you and peaking seem to have gotten

This is needlessly condescending lol, I’m not saying that people can’t and don’t understand that people don’t have to fit in gendered boxes, I’m saying that we are taught gender and all it’s roles and expectations. Socialization exists and a part of it is very much saying boys/men like/do this, girls/women like/do that. I can remember being told to not sit this way or dress that way or whatever because I was a girl.

Peaking and other trans people here have said that their parents or other adult figures tried to make them behave differently or play with different kids/toys because of their sex.

Obviously people of all ages behave differently, but the fact that you listed all those different types of behaviors and said that girls can be either or both should indicate that you understood what I meant when I said socialization played a part in what peaking said- otherwise why separate those lists of behaviors. So I guess I don’t get why you’re now dismissing it?

Gendered socialization and the understanding that not everyone is going to conform to it can exist simultaneously.

[–]MarkTwainiac 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I didn't mean to be condescending. Sorry!

I am just so confounded by the whole "identify as" thing. It brings out the worst in me.

I also didn't mean to be dismissing socialization. Again, sorry!

It just seems that so many people who have fallen into gender ideology really took what they were told/taught as children totally to heart to a degree that stands out to me as unusual. And I am trying to put my finger on why this is. What changed in the culture between the time I was a kid and, say, the 1990s?

I had lots of strict traditional ideas about all sorts of things shoved down my throat as a kid. Everyone did. But I recall very distinctly being a child of 7-8 or so and thinking "this is BS" and rolling my eyes, and my siblings and friends all doing the same. For all the socialization and indoctrination that I recall happening - and there was a ton of it - amongst the kids I knew there was at a countervailing widespread skepticism, irreverence and a smart-alecky attitude of "of yeah, right, pull the other leg!"

Perhaps one reason is that I grew up in a neighborhood and community where a lot of people were very religious, but everyone practiced different religions - and so there was a lot of comparisons amongst us kids of the different religious lore, rites and rituals in each home, and in each different house of worship. Whatever the reason, we kids often discussed the stuff we all were being taught at home, in school and at church/temple - and something we agreed on from fairly early on - like 7 or so - was how we sometimes had to pretend to go along with stuff we were told by our parents/teachers/elders/priests/nuns, etc said so as to humor them and not distress them.

Again, sorry for sounding condescending and dismissive.

[–]loveSloaneDebate King[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Nah I tend to get agitated when I go back and forth here a lot in one day. I was already frustrated, Took what you said the wrong way.

I do think there was a shift in the late 80’s/90’s. I can’t put my finger on what it was though. I just know the gender lines were drawn and then the early 2000’s was spent saying “fuck those lines” yet somehow we ended up here lol

[–]MarkTwainiac 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I imagine the emergence, spread & increasing popularity of cable TV, affordable home video players & tapes, in the 80s & 90s were a major factor, and with them the proliferation of often sexist & trite media and "children's programming" meant for little kids (by companies like Disney & Saban). And of course the introduction & popularity of home video games. Along with parents no longer setting any limits on the amount of time a day kids could spent staring at screens.

Used to be, there were only a handful of TV stations in any market, and kids at home could only watch the TV shows & movies that adults running the few stations/channels in their area decided to broadcast, and only at the time when that particular content actually aired. So kids would get to see their fave TV show for 30 minutes once a week, and their fave movie on TV once a year. Even kiddie fare that aired daily or most days, like cartoons or Romper Room, only aired for 30 minutes to an hour or two at one time or select times of the day. But in the 80s and 90s, more people got cable, the number of cable channels greatly expanded, and parents could also tape or buy their kids' fave movie and shows, park their tots in front of the TV set and let them watch the same material over & over. In such a situation, the imagery & messages of the mass-produced media consumed by young impressionable minds was bound to sink in deep, and to loom larger in their psyches than what those same little kids might have observed in and of the real world. If, that is, they had much chance to to observe in the real world - a big if because at that same juncture in history, kids became far more indoor-bound homebodies than ever before.

Which brings us to another huge shift that occurred in the 80s, in the US at least. The 80s marked the turning point when kids en masse stopped spending a lot of time, or any time, outside the home unsupervised and unchaperoned by adults. The highly-publicized and tragic cases of Etan Patz and Adam Walsh put and end to the sort of "free range childhoods" that kids of earlier generations had, when children in suburban, urban, small town & rural settings alike all spent a great deal of their/our free time on our own amongst other kids without any adult supervision & input - and when it was customary to walked to school or the bus stop on our own too starting in kindergarten.

[–]loveSloaneDebate King[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I was thinking about this, and I agree with what you’re saying.

I also noticed this, maybe it’s nothing lol

When I look at old photos of my parents and older family when they were kids, they have a lot of similar toys and stuff that I had as a kid, except the stuff I had was unnecessarily gendered. Meaning- i have a pic of my mom when she was 4/5, she’s in a dress sitting in a toy car, just a simple red little toy car (the kind you can sit in and drive). But when I was a kid I had a toy car that was various shades of pink and had hearts and flowers while my brother had one that was black and red and had flames on it lol. Same brand, same price, same exact design and function- but mine was ultra “girly” and my brother’s was “manly”.

Idk just something that was on my mind lol