this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2026
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Trans Memes
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Hey, Im a straight cis male. I have no idea what this means, however i do like to keep my head on a swivel for new dog whistle, ways to be hateful, stereotypes, so on and whatnot, so I can avoid people like that. Can someone please explain this to me?
The term "male socialized" is mostly used to try to split trans and cis women appart. People that use this word basically use the logic men are bad, and they behave bad, and if one (trans) woman was treated as a man before they adopt that behaviour.
This is just a way to basically call trans people their Asigned gender at birth without really doing so.
People tried to "socialize" me as male a long time and guess what? It did not work. Like I was and still am a woman. The thing I rather say when talking about that concept is that people treated me as if I were male.
This is a thing i struggle with a lot because i realized i was trans late. So the term makes sense to me on a superficial level. But it also ignores the lifetime of struggle i had trying to fit in as a male, and disliking so many aspects of male socialization. The term is avoiding conflict, while still denying the experience of trans women.
Also to add to your point, so much of anti-trans rhetoric is structured around the idea that all cis men are actively preying women.
It's crazy to me, i thoght the bathroom thing was about cis men pretending to be trans, i missed the part where the crazies thought that trans people themselves were a danger???
That's the thing, the whole idea is a denial of trans existence, because trans women dont exist, its just cis men pretending so they can invade women's spaces. Because its so much easier to go through therapy, and doctors visits, learn how to dress an present as a woman, endure the stigma, run the much higher risk of assault, possibly be ostracized by society, lose one's livelihood, and run a much higher risk of suicide than to just follow a woman into the bathroom with intent to harm her.
Oh. That is truly the dumbest most asinine logic I've ever heard. (Them not you ofc)
Thanks for the input.
Also, thats just fundamentally not how socializing works with humans. I mean yeah, your environment can impart traits on you. But it can also not. Like, I grew up in the south. Lots of racism. Lots of homophobia and bigotry. Im not a fan of hating on people of a lesser minority, and definitely believe anybody should be comfortable in their own skin and love who they love.
Also, you can easily 'resocialize'. Ask literally anybody if they have a friend who started dating someone they didnt like, and if that friend started to act like their partner. Then ask if they broke up if they went back to normal.
Yes you seem to get it!
Resocializing is also a big part of transition for many Trans people, becuase the world around you is literally starting to treat you different and expecting you to exhibit certain behavior. Navigating that can be difficult but also so fullfiling.
Ah, it's TERF logic. This is the first time I've heard this term, but that makes sense for them to be using. Just another excuse to exclude trans people.
You trying to tell me what my experience of this world was and is like is really rude and ignorant.
Like obviously I adopted some bad/toxic behaviour of people treating me like a man but you can unlearn that, be better.
Silly example: lots of men do not wash their hands after using the toilet, it is in male circles generally accepted as normal behaviour. When transitioning I very quickly washed my hands everytime, because of how normal it is for all women in the bathroom to just wait their turn to wahs their hands...
Am I now "feeeemale socializeeed" wahahahahha?
No I would not even say so.
female and male, in this context, are used to mostly describe the bad manly and good womanly behavior.
This bad male behavioral traits however, you will notice are not exclusive to men in your life. If a cis women is speaking up loud and interrupts other people (and there are those that do this) you would not call them male socialized but obnoxious, inconsiderate and loud. There is literally no reason why you should not just call out bad behavior for what it is, rather than to blame a persons asigned gender at birth for it.
Just do not push your ideals of gender on the behavior of people, judge them by their character.
I get what you're saying, but also, it's an intellectually bankrupt idea. For the idea of male or female socialization to have any consistent meaning, it must assume some cultural universality in the constructs of of maleness and femaleness. Additionally, lending the idea credence requires ignoring the reality of cultural, regional, and individual variation in the ways that individuals are socialized. It's one of thos e things that make sense if you don't think too hard about it.
The use of "male socialization" (it's invariably "male socialization" because trans men are invisible to transphobes) to invalidate the gender identity of transgender folks without discarding gender altogether raises too many intractable questions to survive scrutiny. Is a girl raised around men who make no meaningful distinction in her treatment, who is a tomboy and ends up working in the trades and considers herself "one of the guys" "female socialized" despite the fact she has neither knowledge nor interest in what the dominant culture considers feminine? If the answer is yes, it can only be the saddest, most technically correct "yes" imaginable. If it's a yes, it's a useless yes that illuminates nothing.
Honestly, I don't have the patience for a lot of this navel gazing queer theory.
We're talking human beings, not mathematical proofs. You can't disprove a concept that applies to 99% of the population by citing edge cases that only apply to 1%. You're making the mistake of seeing me use words like "most," editing that in your head so you think I said "all."
You need to get out of the ivory tower. You're too deep in theory to see the real world. Edge cases don't disprove the fact that 99% of trans women will have been treated according to male gender norns as a child, and vice versa for trans men.
Navel gazing about intersectionality doesn't change this fact. Yes, every culture has slightly different standards for male/female socialization. All that means is that you'll have been socialized according to the norms of your culture. That doesn't erase socialization. It just means trans women in India have a slightly different experience with male socialization than trans women in the US do.
Every country has slightly different currency. That doesn't mean we can pretend that money is a concept with no universal meaning.
"Male socialized" is often just used as a euphamism for "manly mannish male man men" by transphobes. They're not that deep with it.
Trans women are women, period. No ifs, ands, or buts. Anything that tries to if, and, or but is almost always warped, uneducated, and deeply, insidiously bigoted, hateful, and ignorant.
For example, when you take hrt, you are literally changing your biology. There is no "average" that defines, there is no cut and dry in science, gender is a social construct, sex is a social construct, sexuality is a social construct, ethics is defined by morality which is defined by world view which is defined by all kinds of things but most often by people's religions, which is defined by bullshit self serving self protecting self perpetuating irrationality.
My rights to exist as I actually am are not defined by random person x's worldview and their fucked up rhetoric. Might doesn't make right, popular doesn't make right, buzzwords don't make right, cliques don't make right, being mean doesn't make right, billionaires don't make right, religion doesn't make right.
When somebody uses language to box people such as " a transfem" or "person who is socially male" or "biological male" (replace any of these with female) they are using deeply ignorant language. Sometimes trans people use it ironically, such as jokingly calling each other faggots or whatever, and I think that's problematic too in an obviously edgy way. But like other minorities who have been slured and collared by oppressors, using these terms is an expression of frustration over being called them. I think trans people need to stop using them right now because we aren't out of the woods, yet.
But when you hear those terms being used unironically, LISTEN. That's people telling you who they are: bastards, oppressors, ignorant.
Don't "they" a (trans) woman or a (trans) man. You can use gender ambiguous language for if you don't know or if the person is literally gender ambiguous like a nonbinary person. But if that person is expressing THEIR ACTUAL GENDER (not their "identity", because, remember, gender is a social construct and it is not based on whether or not you are sterile, or if you have breasts, what your chromosomes are (nobody fucking knows anyway), if you have a penis or vagina, how tall you are, if you have long hair or not, if you wear dresses, how wide or narrow your hips are, how big your head is, what shape your nose is, how wide or narrow your chin is, if you have facial hair or not, or even how hairy you are. Gender is gender, that's it.)... So if that person is expressing THEIR GENDER, you can start off with that pronoun. If you're unsure, ASK. And if they tell you, LISTEN, because that's what their gender means, that's who they ARE.
If people aren't following these, call them on it. Normal people go "oh, sorry", listen, and move on. Making mistakes is okay, we all make mistakes, even trans people - hell, the fact that some of us transition later in life IS a mistake. That means that before, we were also skullfucked by society into not knowing or understanding or repressing what really was. We are all learning together.
And if you call somebody on something and you start to smell the bullshit, well... There's a lot of bullshit. There's a lot of the same arguments coming up, time and again, over and over and over. It's awful. I actively hate it and I'm tired of it, which is why I don't speak out about it all the time. People get defensive and closed off, and right now in the world, the prevailing media and news and communication platforms and all of the money flowing to creators is ALL hyper conservative far right fascist racist billionaire money. Far right basically means Nazi. Because it is. Nazi was not alt right, it is just far right. It's what happens when nationalism evolves into believing racism, and frustrations turn into hate turn into ignorance evolves into bigotry, and that NA-ZI becomes the platform of society. Which is where a lot of the world is moving back to. Germans have a really specific definition of what a Nazi is, and take it very seriously, but that leaves them totally blind to the behaviors and traits that lead there. A lot of Germans didn't learn anything except Nazi = crime. But a lot of Germans, even now, are sounding the fucking alarms and panicking.
The vast majority of money and power (like 90%) in the USA is like this. That is a SCARY piece of information to know. And those in power are spreading the fundamental building blocks of their worldview in everything they touch. They don't need to do much more, because they KNOW that as long as people keep fighting civil rights and hurting each other over it, that fight will self-perpetuate, and people will turn to Nazi rhetoric because that's the seed that's planted. Capitalism, race is real, language, ways to think, nationalism, who is right and wrong.
We are not in a culture war.
We are in a Cold World War.
Not against nations. Against ideas of what we all are.
We have been in this war for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
And we are losing.
No, we are not! Don't let the shitty trends in some places get to you, don't take the black pill. Even if it may take some time, culture is moving in our favor. You can nowadays just be an out and proud trans person, and live a pretty normal live. That would have been almost unthinkable 20 years ago. Everyone has at least some idea of what trans people are, and you basically cannot be a broadly respected person, especially within educated and urban circles, if you are hateful. Kids nowadays have early access to information of what it means to be trans and role-models.
Yes, there are setbacks, losses, pain, and many lost battles. But there is no way for them to win this war. After all is said and done victory for us may take time but is ultimately inevitable. Don't loose sight of that and don't loose hope!
I like your attitude.
But seriously, you make valid points, and I tend to agree: culture is largely moving in the right direction. However, a lot of that is surface progress.
Structurally and who is in power and their level of influence remains largely the same or even worse. We are ALSO having a massive setback in society (more of what I'm talking about in all of this, moreso than trans issues, alone) as the rich and powerful assert their dominance over us all, in our faces and behind the scenes.
I'm by no means black pilled, I don't think. I just prefer to see the problems to be solved, unfortunately that's who I am and has always been who I am. Despite that, bizarrely, I do remain an optimist and see good outcomes. Maybe that's why it all hurts so much to see happening.
I get not wanting to bring people down. But at the same time we shouldn't lie to ourselves as a community. Denying reality does us no good.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/26/americans-have-grown-more-supportive-of-restrictions-for-trans-people-in-recent-years/
Rights can move backwards. No struggle for rights is inevitable. The arc of history does not automatically bend towards justice.
Sure! A meme is an amusing/interesting item/content that is spread widely online especially through social media platforms, such as Lemmy. These memes typically spread within a given digital culture in a quick lifecycle, but many memes have proven to be tenacious.