Denial is a helluva drug. It can turn abuse into love, rage into wisdom, and women into men.
Without my Lovie, I just don’t feel safe!
Since I spent my writing time this week making videos, I was probably a little too happy to find Female Socialization is a Transphobic Myth by Devon Price. Devon thinks she’s a man, and she loves sharing how her masculine essence insulated her from growing up female.
I’m going to introduce Devon by way of a random anecdote she probably should have cut: “I remember deciding one day in middle school that I was going to emulate my favorite fictional character, Hannibal Lecter.
“I inhaled Thomas Harris’ books, and tried to speak and carry myself like the classy cannibal: aloof and well-read, fussy and austere with a deep-seated penchant for violence. I spoke in a practiced, artificial elegance.
“I got into fights that year, stabbing a boy who had been teasing me in the thighs with a pencil several times. Nobody messed with me again after that. I was proud of myself for living like a masculine, queer-coded villain.”
I wonder why no one messed with her after that! I, too, was once a small girl empowered by imitating nasty old men. I still haven’t managed to exorcise Lewis Black from my internal monolog, but that’s my cross to bear.
Devon begins her article with a conversation between teachers, “Skyler’s school has just gone back to in-person classes after a year of remote learning, and an old, familiar demon is back to torment her: the presumption she is incompetent because she is a woman.
“Every day is a battle for her dignity. She was free from all this sexist bullshit last year, but now it’s like she’s teaching with a set of weights on.
“’My students have never treated me like that,’ I say.”
Devon’s friend is confused. Thankfully, Devon is there to explain, “Even if it is annoying for me to bring up, I find it’s important to acknowledge the status I have.”
Is it annoying to acknowledge your privilege? I don’t have much experience in that area. Being privileged sure sounds awful!
But Devon has the secret: “’I have never had a student question my knowledge,’ I tell her. ‘People get quiet and listen when I talk. They ask me for advice. They call me Doctor.'” Because they can sense her man essence!
I’m sensing bullshit!
“Even when I was young and had long hair and wore dresses, students had no difficulty listening to me. “ Oprah said we teach people how to treat us. Everyone listens to her. Is she a man, too? Someone should tell her!
“When I talk, people listen. When I walk down the street, people get out of the way. When I present myself as an expert on a subject, people believe me.” So, it’s true! Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man, ladies! Just try a little harder and everyone will respect you.
“When I am uncomfortable or unhappy, people bend over backwards to accommodate me. I rarely have to assert a boundary more than once.” Not sure you should be bragging about having people bend over backwards for you. How are you communicating your needs? They might just be dealing with a high-strung, high-maintenance weirdo…
“I have to confess I find it irritating and offensive when cisgender women assume I have led the same kind of life they lead.” Do you, though? Do you have to say this again? Our attempt at empathy grinds your gears because you’re Not Like The Other Girls, we get it.
Don’t worry, keep writing stuff like this and the charity won’t last long. “It feels very invalidating to be treated like just one of the girls no matter how frequently I articulate that I am not one.” What exactly do you think a girl is, anyway?
She’s not very clear on this, but she is careful to project her biases onto the entire rest of the world: “There’s this assumption,” Where? Over there? “…that every person who was assigned female at birth was undermined, disbelieved, talked over, deprioritized, and physically intruded upon throughout their whole lives, and that everyone who was assigned male at birth was believed, heard, valued, and rewarded for their brilliance.”
I guess we know which side Devon wanted to be on!
As is the custom for transgender rationalization manifestos, Devon’s article is overly long and repetitive. Her circuitous prose is brimming with redundant personal anecdotes because, just in case you weren’t convinced by conjecture, she throws in emotional appeals for good measure.
I’m skipping around a bit, for brevity and sanity’s sake.
It’s easy, because Devon’s writing is littered with gems like this – “This idea that sexism is linked to one’s genitals or one’s assigned gender at birth gets a lot more dangerous.” That’s right, people need to remember that sexism has nothing to do with sex!
And to make sure they don’t feel left out, she reaches over to blame transwomen’s problems on feminists: “Since TERFism lauds feminine suffering as a sign of moral virtue, any woman who didn’t experience a traumatic ‘girlhood’ must be suspect.” Shockingly bad analysis here from someone who probably knows better (that’s what inspires her to pretend she doesn’t!) Anyone who got through girlhood unscathed must have grown up on another planet.
Come, my love! The time has come to fuck with Earth!
And her goal is to alienate every single Earthling. The purity politics run deep – “Many trans allies … still dabble in the idea that a person’s gender assignment at birth determines how they grew up and who they are at their core. People who claim to support trans rights throw around the words ‘afab’ and ‘amab’ as if they tell you anything about a person’s life or identity.”
How awful! What uncouth asshole is inferring anything about anyone based on their background or physical state?
Devon name-drops several prominent trans figures, but the TERFs are a mob of faceless hobgoblins: “They describe ‘female socialization’ as if it were some singular, universal experience that cuts across all classes, races, cultures, and families, but somehow never across assigned sex. What it means to be a woman or a man varies across culture, time period, class, and social circumstance.”
Ah, this old gem. Regardless of any linguistic sleight of hand, despite ever-shifting behavioral and social norms, somehow they always know whom to draft and whom to rape. Weird! It’s almost as if sex and the social roles built on them are, in fact, two different things!
But Devon has plenty of straw men to burn. “If people viewed you as a girl when you were a child, the logic goes, you learned what it meant to be a girl. You absorbed the lessons and traumas of girlhood, and they will never, ever go away. This is a laughably simplistic understanding of how humans develop.”
“Though we may remember our early childhood experiences … our minds aren’t locked in amber … So to speak of ‘gender socialization as a single, linear experience that ends in childhood is inaccurate.”
What brand of gaslit bullshit is this? No one is saying adults don’t still experience sex-based discrimination. That’s feminism’s big issue! Get that windmill, Devon! You’re so brave.
“Human development never ends. Our brains are forever adapting … the best predictor of a person’s actions is typically the social context they are presently in, not their personality or identity.
“So even if a person used to move through the world being seen as a “girl,” they can quickly adjust, behaviorally, to being deferred to as a man.” TRANSlation: Downtrodden people are resilient if you stop treating them like crap.
“If a person were ‘raised as a girl,’ so to speak, their actions and sense of entitlement can rapidly shift once they are given the power a man has.” Treat a woman like a full human being and she’ll begin acting like one. Yes, I hear Victorian men found this especially vexing.
My degree says you’re an idiot!
Devon seems to get a real kick out of interpreting things upside down: “I’ve seen this play out many times. A transgender man will come out of the closet, start presenting and behaving in a more masculine way, and suddenly everyone treats him differently.“ But why couldn’t they see his masculinity before?
“Colleagues think his ideas are brilliant and his manner of speaking is compelling. Guys start regaling him with lurid stories about sexual conquests, and women start crossing the street to avoid him at night.” In her zeal for inversion, she seems not to notice she’s providing evidence for that sex-based socialization her title says doesn’t exist.
And she keeps twisting common wisdom to fit her narrative. “The trans man is being ‘male socialized’ – because socialization is an ongoing process that never stops, for anyone.” Yep, our approach to life is a choice we make every day. The self-help industry makes bank reminding people to be proactive.
Devon’s main point comes down to a nebulous but palpable male essence. She can’t stop giving us examples of masculinity as some sort of magic respect pheromone: “People appreciated his work more, simply because he was a guy.
“The scientist even overhead people gossiping about him, saying that his research was much more well-done and impressive than the work of his sister. Of course, the scientist didn’t have a sister – People were speaking about his own pre-transition research, which was done under his old name.”
What a relief to finally be seen! Thought the scientist. Masculinity was the missing ingredient all along.
THIS IS FEMALE SOCIALIZATION. And yes, it continues all our lives.
Not to worry – As soon as she’s done explaining away girlhood, Devon gets right to explaining why we share it with transwomen – “Numerous trans women have been vocal about losing what semblance of ‘male privilege’ they enjoyed upon coming out – To the extent they ever enjoyed it at all.”
Her own pernicious female socialization betrays her, reminding her not to assign the TW too much privilege while describing their loss of privilege. It’s only because everyone can see their woman essence!
Pictured: The Author, waiting for someone to see her essence
“They’re on the receiving end of misogyny, but when they name that misogyny, they’re accused of being dangerous pretenders who are appropriating womanhood.”
Yeah, reality bites. No one can see your magic gender essence! Acting all shocked and entitled when no one listens to you spout nonsense is generally the territory of men. But take off the dress, take off the misogyny. Right, Devon?
There are many more anecdotes, and I had prepared responses to most of them. But it all amounts to the same thing over and over – If you emulate stereotypically masculine or feminine behavior, people will respond accordingly. And this proves Devon was really a man all along!
I spent way too much time yesterday untangling Contrapoints, whose motto might as well be Boys Can’t Be Pretty. It’s tearing him up inside, because that’s his dearest wish in the world. In the same vein, Devon’s motto could read, Girls Can’t Be Strong.
But the sickest part, of course, is how these people have themselves and so many others utterly convinced they are tearing down sexist stereotypes. By embodying them to their utmost while insisting they don’t exist.
How long until the fever breaks and everyone admits the Emperor has no clothes? Is it possible for a metaphorical fever to cause literal brain damage?
This unsustainable state of affairs can’t go on forever. I wonder how people like Devon will rationalize their next identity.
“I never wanted to be good at girlhood.” Pity you never thought you ask yourself why.
Recent Comments