I gotta agree, I don't think you can really say you were socialized male in those cases. It's very different. I was just thinking about this earlier, but I actually do struggle with my socialization. There's this urge to act like it didn't penetrate into my personality, I didn't develop the same complexes that men develop, stuff like that, but the reality is, it DID affect me. Differently, yeah, but definitely at least to some extent in some way.
(And forewarning: I'm sorry if this sounds preachy or like I'm talking down to anyone. I totally don't mean to be doing that, I'm just giving my perspective, feel free to ignore me if I seem wrong about this lol)
One thing that strikes me about the way y'all talk about it is that you think being treated as one of the boys or given responsibilities is more in line with male socialization... buuut, that's not how it works. Male socialization is being tested, then told you're NOT a boy if you don't do X and Y. Or if you do Z. That is the gist of it.. what I mean is, acceptance isn't a sign of male socialization... being doubted, challenged, questioned, made fun of and accused is.
Female socialization endows every female-perceived person with a certain base level of worth and protections that is hard to increase or decrease. But male socialization tells them they only have the worth and comfort that they earn and prove their way into, which could be infinite, but they will have to constantly prove they are worth it, and they will constantly be challenged and assessed for it. If a typical male sees you as female, being accepted by them is more likely an indicator that they definitely see you as female, because men are socialized to pull their punches around women and just let a woman have her way--then roll their eyes at each other when she leaves. She has her base worth, she can come and go, doesn't mean she's gonna ever be respected as an equal as long as she has a female body. That's what men are brought up to be like. I've talked to males as a male, and grown being perceived male, and I'm pretty sure that a large portion of them struggle to respect anything with a female body as equal. They would say they do, but they wouldn't act like it if you put it to the test. They frequently hold onto misogynistic beliefs deep down and believe that women are objects. I forget, what percentage of men said they'd rape a woman if she was unconscious and they definitely had no chance of getting caught? Like half? (Oh, 35% according to
http://www.uic.edu/depts/owa/sa_rape_support.html)
And they'd bottle up a lot of resentment if they were forced to respect a woman as their equal. Because men are socialized to take control of women and be better than women too, and never to be *like* a woman. With all that, for most men, truly accepting a woman as their equal would take some astounding conditions, tomboy or not. I'm sorry if that all sounds ridiculous, but that's what you grow up with as a male. I think female-socialized people generally would find it shocking. Because they spent most of their life getting the "show this nice exterior to females" version. Men don't wear their feelings on their sleeves, and most men have bottled them up so long that they'd have trouble even identifying them in their own head. Male socialization is steeped in shame and pressure, and male socialization doesn't value honesty or transparency like female socialization does.
I'm not really trying to paint a bleak picture or be invalidating here... I'm just giving my perspective because I think it's interesting, and the same topic has come up the other way around. Personally, I think both socializations are awful. Female socialization is a prison with a decent food cart, and male socialization is a deathmatch with a great prize to the lone winner. Both poison.
I do think people get different extents of their socialization, and internalize it differently based on their personality--obviously, nobody is entirely a prisoner to their socialization... but it's true that male-perceived people and female-perceived people are socialized incredibly and shockingly differently except in very unusual circumstances, and I think it's very common and understandable for one group to misunderstand how it was for the other group because it all seems so subtle on the outside.... none of us can probably ever really know what it was like on the other side of it though. How it really felt.
