How attuned are you to Gender norms attitudes, thought-patterns and behaviour?

[Stephanie]

Hi guys and gals. 

How attuned are you to genetic male norms etc(see title)?   Do you get in right most times?   Do you feel that a genuine transsexual would know all these things and would only need some slight polishing to completely fit into the male/female world?   Or do you believe that because we were so exposed to gender social conditioning on a daily basis and from such a very impressionable age that despite knowing that we are really male/female we still have to learn and unlearn a great many things?   I belong to the second category.  I was exposed to male thought patterns and ingrained beliefs and I would be lying if I said that years of hearing boys talk in general and when there were no females around(little did they know )hadn't had a deep and lasting impact upon me.   There are certain stereotypical female behaviours that my sister loves and I feel uncomfortable doing. e.g. talking about my feelings at length

Guys can you tell when genetic males are being genuinely serious and when they are being mock serious?    Have you become sensitive to the boundaries, limits and contours of genetic male thought?   I was on a train a couple of weeks ago, and a group of about six young men got on the train.  No sooner had they all sat down then one of them said to another:

Young Man #1: 'Thank you gorgeous'.
Young Man #2(jack): 'Your welcome sweetheart.'
Young Man #1: 'Jack will you be my girlfriend?'
Young Man #2(jack): ' Yeah if you'll be my bitch first?'

The whole group laughed at this exchange, then talked amongst themselves about other things.   How would you have reacted if you had been Jack?   What do you think was going on?

[Stephanie]

The reason for my questions is that when I was a boy I was conscious that I was giving a performance.  Now that I am female I still feel a bit of an actor.   Cis-gendered people seem to assume that once you switch over to the 'opposite sex' you just start acting and behaving like a man/woman.   I said above that I am not comfortable about discussing my feelings with others, even some one as dear to me as my sister.   I can tell that she is puzzled by my noticeable unwillingness to talk at great length about what is going on with me.   She tells me everything that is going on in her life and how she feels about it.  When she finishes she sort of looks at me as if to say 'ok now it's your turn, what is going on with you'?   Because I am not in touch with my feelings and don't really know what I feel about anything. I don't have a great deal to share with her.    I feel that she feels that I don't want to share my process with her because I don't trust her.   Nothing could be further from the truth.   My sister believes that girls love to talk endlessly and in depth about their feelings and my not doing so is rather disturbing to her. 

This is what made me think 'do transsexuals frequently over-react or under react in situations where a genetic male/female would always respond in the correct way'?

[sascraps]

I'm still pretty socially awkward, so I'm not very attuned to what's normal for either men or women. 

[xAndrewx]

I get it sometimes but that's because I was raised with a mother who has that huge sense of sarcasm. If anything I find it harder to understand when girls are being sarcastic or joking. I don't always fit in socially but I'm pretty good at being able to find a group out of many who I am going to be comfortable with.

I wish I had been raised male and in some ways I was but I definitely wasn't raised female so I really don't understand the inside "girl jokes" and "slumber party" type stuff.

[kate durcal]

  'do transsexuals frequently over-react or under react in situations where a genetic male/female would always respond in the correct way'?

The so called "genetic male/female" are as varied as the so called "transsexuals" that is why there is no correct response for anybody given a specif situation.

Let me give you an example, close to the one you posed before, a bunch of guys make a macho joke, most of the women in the group do not find it funny and do not lough, but a few women find it funny and do and lough.

Kate

[PixieBoy]

I'm socially awkward, so pretty bad with norms in general.

However, I tend to get along better with boys than with girls, I tend to find boys "easier to read" somewhat. Girls are more like clouds; wispy, hard to grasp, you don't really know where you have them. Boys tend to be more like a rock: solid, easy to grasp, you know where you've got them.

[Northern Jane]

As a young child I fell naturally into the middle of the "typical" range for little girls (which was to later prove inconvenient because my body wasn't female!) and I thought I was a girl and was accepted by (most) girls as one of them. It wasn't until starting school that the problems really started because the more my mother and teachers tried to push me into "being a boy" the more I protested and rebelled. Developmentally, my childhood and adolescence was typical for a girl.

I started living part time as a girl about age 15 and found it remarkably easy to 'pass' as a girl. By 19 and going away to college, I simply couldn't pass as a guy if I tried - within 5 minutes of my best effort, people would be looking at me funny and saying "That's not a guy!" I don't know why or how but I guess enough 'leaked out' to attract suspicion.

I never did understand boys and they always treated me with suspicion, even the ones I had grown up with who knew I was supposed to be one of them. Girls, on the other hand, I understood and was usually accepted much farther into "the inner sanctum" than any other supposed-to-be boy.

With SRS/transition at 24, all I had to do was stop trying, just let my natural self flow, and nobody batted an eyelash.

In all fairness I was diagnosed (by Dr. Benjamin himself) as a "Type VI transsexual" at age 17 with the phrase a "complete psycho-sexual inversion", which mean pretty typical girl in a seemingly male body, the most extreme diagnoses . So, for me, it just meant "stop pretending".

[vanna]

Like Jane, its just very natural for me. I'm just being me. Stopping pretending to be what I am not. By not pretending, I am relaxed and people sense it ...they accept me. They see me. They see a woman. In my opinion, they see a woman because I know it of myself.

Now, keep in mind... we're coming from the perspective of post-transition people, so we're in a different place than someone earlier on their journey.

-Valerie

is funny i said this exact thing to a friend a long time ago, this for me is the key to passing, transition and just living. I am quite a simplistic person by intelligence not by choice and you really can over think, like walking. do you actually think about each step or naturally do it, if you think about the steps you appear awkeward and uneasy, if you just walk you are reflecting who you are, confidence and the ability to be yourself.

others pick up on that

[Stephanie]

"The so called "genetic male/female" are as varied as the so called "transsexuals" that is why there is no correct response for anybody given a specif situation. "


This is probably true.   Last night my mother had some of her friends in.   All they could talk about was their career, their investments, and networking opportunities.   These are mid 40s women, yet they discussed none of the things that women are supposed to talk about.

[quinn]

These are mid 40s women, yet they discussed none of the things that women are supposed to talk about.

So what are women in their mid-40's supposed to talk about? Everyone's perception is different when it comes to social norms.

In regards to your initial question, yes, everyone goes through some sort of "social conditioning," but everyone's circumstances are different so it may have more or less of an impact on them compared to someone else. For example, if there are two FTMs both raised as females, but one has several brothers and no sisters, and the other has several sisters and no brothers, it's pretty likely that the one with the brothers will learn more about how to act in a masculine way, than the one who has no brothers to learn that from. So it's different for everyone, and some of us can quickly learn the nuances of acting as the men (or women, if you're MTF) that we are, while others may take longer to learn all the typical mannerisms, etc. It depends on a lot of things, from how observant you are to how socially at ease you are.

I don't think it's possible to not be affected at all by social conditioning as a child, unless of course you were lucky enough to have accepting parents who never insisted you act according to the gender you happened to be born as (but even then, you probably had teachers at school trying to influence you to act more like your birth gender).

[xxUltraModLadyxx]

really, i still think that i think too much about it. i spend alot of time obsessing over how others perceive me, and then i bring that back to my female identity. the weird thing is, i pretty much had myself detached from the rest of the world before i started transitioning. i was so depressed that i didn't care about other people. i kind of just walked around like i've just been dug up. people made fun of me alot, but obviously i didn't give a damn. i think it's really about learning to come at peace with who you are as a person, and not as a gender.

[Julie1957]

I knew that most of my life I was "acting" like a male (I'm MTF) in order to fit in.  But during transition I was "acting" like a female because even though I felt female inside, I never had the experiences that cis-gendered girls had.  I will never be completely female because I was raised male.
I still need to act sometimes to fit in but I try to be the real me as much as possible.  I certainly takes a lot less energy to be who you are.
-Julie

[xxUltraModLadyxx]

I knew that most of my life I was "acting" like a male (I'm MTF) in order to fit in.  But during transition I was "acting" like a female because even though I felt female inside, I never had the experiences that cis-gendered girls had.  I will never be completely female because I was raised male.
I still need to act sometimes to fit in but I try to be the real me as much as possible.  I certainly takes a lot less energy to be who you are.
-Julie

i think people admire that much more when you just are who you are, and don't try to fit into a mold.