One of my favorite takes ever on "male vs. female socialization" ever, that I still use in my analysis to this day, was one that was purported by Jesse Early (the YouTuber). It goes something like:

It's not simply that people assigned male are socialized as male and people assigned female are socialized female. Rather, all persons are both taught the rules and expectations for males as well as females. Then, the go out in the world and police themselves and others accordingly.

Put simply, we are all given both male and female socialization.

(It's unlikely that Jesse was the person who came up with this, but it's where I first heard it, and I don't know any earlier persons to attribute)

@salad_bar_breath Makes sense. Especially since those of us whose gender doesn’t match the one we were assigned tend to pick up the rules associated with (or closest to) our real gender and apply them to ourselves.

@Toni2167 right. I suppose all that really changes is our role in the game.

Fortunately, most of us in the process of discovering this about ourselves also discover the game is bullshit, and we challenge a lot of those things we were taught about both sexes (though there certainly are exceptions).

@salad_bar_breath i think the “police […] others” is definitely the a-ha moment of this – we don’t just police ourselves and others of the same assigned gender: policing the opposite gender (when subscribing to binary gender) is just as common. in order to effectively police the opposite gender, what is expected must be understood.

@rowan exactly!!!!!!

PS: you're really cute 😽

@salad_bar_breath awawa no you