On the born female perspective

[Nero]

Coleen has articulated so well many of the points that have crossed my mind in the last few hours. I have been left pondering why my responses have been so defensive.

While it was never FA's intent this thread did hit close to home to me because of all the toxic BS spouted by TERFs that has corroded my mind. I still do grapple with feeling authentic in calling myself a woman when I never grew up a girl. I still feel obligated to somehow "earn" that right.

Also I need to work past a lot of "male guilt" (for lack of a better term) that I seem to carry. Reading Arch's account brought this home to me. I have been aware that these are daily worries faced by FAAB individuals by talking to cis female friends, in school and more recently the media. I am sickened by the fact that these things still continue today. I feel guilty about being associated with the perpetrating gender and in some twisted way do feel guilty for being spared.

But enough of my whining already. I too want to thank FA and Arch for bringing these issues to light. I clearly have some growing to do.

Oh no hon, I understand. There's been a lot of serious hate against trans women by TERFs. And this lack of female childhood/male privilege thing is just something they use to try justify it. And it's not fair at all. And I can get kind of forceful sometimes, if I think people aren't getting my point. lol I don't mean to.

I guess for me when people try to insist it's all equal, or not that bad, or something that sounds similar, it seems unfair to FAAB people (especially for people my age and older; I can't speak to how it is for young girls now). I think saying 'male privilege' has kind of become a shorthand to explain the difference in growing up female. But like I mentioned before, I think the concept is too simple and has been too abused. Talking about 'male privilege' might have been useful when the term was first popular. But it's kind of lost its luster now. And I wish there were an easier way of saying there is a difference without putting MAAB people on the defensive for something they have nothing to do with, didn't ask for, and in the case of trans women would willingly trade.

[Colleen♡Callie]

I guess for me when people try to insist it's all equal, or not that bad, or something that sounds similar, it seems unfair to FAAB people (especially for people my age and older; I can't speak to how it is for young girls now). I think saying 'male privilege' has kind of become a shorthand to explain the difference in growing up female. But like I mentioned before, I think the concept is too simple and has been too abused. Talking about 'male privilege' might have been useful when the term was first popular. But it's kind of lost its luster now. And I wish there were an easier way of saying there is a difference without putting MAAB people on the defensive for something they have nothing to do with, didn't ask for, and in the case of trans women would willingly trade.

This ^, especially the part of how unfair it is.  Because it is.  One person's situation or hardships growing up is not more or less valid than another's.  But it is so very different and trying to claim that you know exactly what it's like because of this other very different experience is exceptionally dismissive.  There are many things that without being, or going through it, you really can't relate to all that much.  This is the reason it is often hard for cis people to grasp how hard it is to be trans, they've never had to experience the dysphoria we do, and don't have the requisite experience to accurately fathom what it is like. 

Saying that an experience is unique and unknowable to those who haven't experienced it is not dismissing those who haven't experienced it.  But saying that no, it's the same as this experience and therefore I know, when the experiences aren't similar, does dismiss the experience from those who have. 

Different doesn't mean more or less valid, just different.  I think that is something the world at large needs to start recognizing. 

[ErinM]

In all honesty I think it needs to be discussed. You have brought this forward in what I have felt was as tactful as you could be. You have every right to bring up something that is an issue to you.

It is unfortunate that some subjects will be touchy to say the least. Regardless of the topic and who might feel defensive, I think it's important to become aware of why they would feel defensive.

Emotional intelligence is perhaps one of my most valuable tools since I started transition.

[Shantel]

In all honesty I think it needs to be discussed. You have brought this forward in what I have felt was as tactful as you could be. You have every right to bring up something that is an issue to you.

It is unfortunate that some subjects will be touchy to say the least. Regardless of the topic and who might feel defensive, I think it's important to become aware of why they would feel defensive.

Emotional intelligence is perhaps one of my most valuable tools since I started transition.

I had never heard of TERF, shows how out of it I am, so had to google it and was shocked at how inhuman, cruel, hateful and dark minded those people are! Sorry for interrupting the thread....~Shan~

[eli77]

The other thing that always makes me feel bad talking about this kind of thing is the fear that somehow I'll make MAAB people feel bad or sound like I'm accusing them or belittling their experience or something. And a lot of you are my close friends. So I hate that this is such a loaded thing and that some rad fems have turned this around to attack trans women. When really, I just need to talk about things that are eating me up inside, that really bother me. If I'm ever to heal some of the most insidious hang ups I have - very toxic things that are crippling. I'm not sure, but I strongly suspect they're rooted in both trans and female issues. Toxic messages and programming. So, yeah that's where I'm at with this. If I get kinda ranty, I guess it's cause this stuff is really bugging me.

I think the important part to acknowledge is that, regardless of how the trans woman grew up (and folks are starting to transition young enough that they are going to have mixed programming), the experiences they had are still the experiences of a woman. I.e. you are talking about females who grew up being perceived as male and treated as male.

Also the discussion of privilege frequently falls into strange territory, because, as a sociological tool, it was never really intended to describe an individual's experience. It's for analyzing groups within society. I.e., you aren't suggesting that one person's experience is worse or more difficult than another's, you are suggesting that all other things held equal, one particular trait is more valued than another. In this case, male over female.

A reason why some trans feminists in particular get their back up over this topic is that there is a tendency to obscure trans women's experiences post-transition in favour of their experiences pre-transition. And, while it is true that trans women have the advantage of being percieved as "cis male" for a period of time, being perceived as "trans female" post-transition is, well, very bad.

There is also a bit of a tendency as well to universalize "raised female," when that looks extremely different depending on class, country and culture. For example, a straight woman with muscular dystrophy being raised in Australia is going to have a very different experience of being a woman than an able-bodied Palestinian lesbian raised in the West Bank. It tends to be more reasonable to explain a trans woman's childhood of being raised as male as being a particular variety of a woman's childhood, rather than something entirely "other."

Anyway, ya... it's a touchy subject, because, as you said, it has a tendency to get weaponized in transmysogynistic ways. And I think you are doing pretty well at keeping that from happening.

That said, trans communities, due to the laser focus on gender dichotomy, have a tendency to be a breeding ground for sexism. And that leaves us frequently with really awkward things like victim blaming, shaming, denial of gender inequalities, threads about "female privilege," and the occasional really inappropriate PM in my inbox. The sexism also isn't entirely limited to the trans women's part of the forums, of course.

I tend to just ignore a lot of that stuff these days in self-defense. It's so constant it's kind of overwhelming.


As to your actual topic: I think there are some slightly odd effects that can be produced from being trans while growing up. Like if you learn as a kid that "girls are meant to be quiet," and you perceive yourself as a girl... do you end up becoming more quiet? Or if you perceive yourself as a boy... do you fight against the programming? I think it creates some unusual dynamics and internal conflicts that cis folks don't experience. A lot of trans folks growing up are super stressed out for a reason, nah?

I wonder where exactly I fit into that stuff myself. The feedback I got when perceived as a boy was that I was "too quiet." Shy, self-effacing, never spoke enough. Now I'm told that I'm very assertive and not afraid to speak up for myself. Did I change or is it just that my actions are being filtered through a differently gendered lens. It seems just about impossible, from my perspective, to really unravel where all my programming came from, or how I ended up the way I am.

What is the programming that you ended up with that you are struggling with? Do you want to talk about it?

[eli77]

Seriously.  Most women wear pants most of the time.  (I practically live in skinny jeans).  And aren't all that flashy.  It seems like maybe a lot of trans women's expressions of what is described as femininity come from drag culture, which is very flashy . . . But it's a parody of femininity rather than an authentic expression of femininity.  A lot can be said about how MAAB don't learn these things growing up, so they don't have any other place to go.  But that's not entirely true.  Women are all over the place.  Go hang out with them.  Really listen.  You'd learn a lot.

This stuff all makes me feel super awkward. I mean, it's another dichotomy, right? The people who dress as flashy femme, and the people who dress with an "authentic expression of femininity." Blah.

There is nothing authentic about clothing. They are articles of decoration with social and cultural norms attached. Moreover, why the assumption that we all want to be "authentic" . . . or even feminine? Or blend in? Or blend in with the very specific version of straight, white, urban, middle-class society which you are taking as your baseline.

On the other hand, I find the focus on and obsession with a certain idealized form of femininity to be really alienating and frequently sexist. The built in assumptions that ALL trans women want to dress a certain way, or should dress a certain way, or should want to wear makeup, or should love having long nails or... The endless rows of those threads sometimes make it really hard to justify to myself how or why I am a part of trans anything.

So like, a pox on both your houses.

I mean, not literally. And I totally support everyone in whatever they want to wear. I just wish everyone would stop making assumptions about everyone else. Because it invariably means me, and folks like me, get left out of it.

I will go on wearing my jeans and dress shirts and asymetrical short hair. And looking like the tomboy dyke that I am.

[sad panda]

@Sarah thank you for bringing up a topic that I have wondered about a lot ( but I usually prefer to just bite my tongue in these conversations because I don't want to unintentionally invalidate anyone) and sorry if this is off topic as well D: just to clarify thus has nothing to do with misogyny and the wrongness of it.

But honestly, how much does your core personality affect how your socialization affects you? And how it even happens in the first place.

Like personally, I experienced a lot of the negative aspects of male socialization that went right over my head because for whatever reason I just never compared myself to other boys or felt the need to be masculine. I was called (sorry for repeating these) ->-bleeped-<-, pussy, pansy, queer almost dailt for a while, but those weren't insults to me bc they implied things about my character that weren't invalidating to me. I had nothing to prove. I didn't care about being short because I didn't need to feel like I was tall and powerful like other men. I didn't care about my attractiveness to women because I didn't want to date women. I mean it hurt that people were being mean to me, but it didn't feel personal. The attacks that felt personal to me and seriously scarred me were ugly, fat, gross, no friends. Because I wanted to be pretty. I wanted to be skinny. I wanted to be lovely and have lots of friends. So I got eating disorders, self-hatred and selfbharm, panic attacks and a lacking sense of myself and my social boundaries. Not compensatory heterosexuality, not compensatory narcissism, not extreme competitiveness, not excessive bodybuilding or a desire to prove myself. And that meant from a very young age I gravitated away from people or environments where these things were valued and the type of people who would expect those things of me. I never experienced much pressure to be masculine bc I had created my own little bubble where those things weren't relevant. Even with family. I spent more time with my mom than my dad. Relationships atrophied with family members who would always tell me to start being interested in girls or gain weight or cut my hair and any number of other silly things, and not just be willing to accept who I am.

So I definitely don't know the answer or what any of this means but I do think it's at least partially how we respond to how we are socialized that shapes who we are too.

(And I am not acting like pressure to do or be something for just the sake of other people liking you or inherited values isn't a thing, just again I think the ones that really stick and really motivate who you are are the ones that threaten your core self and threaten your identity.)

[Ev]

For me, I would rather look like an "ugly" woman than be a mediocre male.  (And I currently am a mediocre "male".)  Average is SOOOOO boring.  Makes it that much easier to go as a witch every Halloween.  Maybe get a job at a circus or carnie as the crazy old fortune-teller lady?  Work in radio?  I have a face for radio...

[Nero]

@Sarah thank you for bringing up a topic that I have wondered about a lot ( but I usually prefer to just bite my tongue in these conversations because I don't want to unintentionally invalidate anyone) and sorry if this is off topic as well D: just to clarify thus has nothing to do with misogyny and the wrongness of it.

But honestly, how much does your core personality affect how your socialization affects you? And how it even happens in the first place.

Like personally, I experienced a lot of the negative aspects of male socialization that went right over my head because for whatever reason I just never compared myself to other boys or felt the need to be masculine. I was called (sorry for repeating these) ->-bleeped-<-, pussy, pansy, queer almost dailt for a while, but those weren't insults to me bc they implied things about my character that weren't invalidating to me. I had nothing to prove. I didn't care about being short because I didn't need to feel like I was tall and powerful like other men. I didn't care about my attractiveness to women because I didn't want to date women. I mean it hurt that people were being mean to me, but it didn't feel personal. The attacks that felt personal to me and seriously scarred me were ugly, fat, gross, no friends. Because I wanted to be pretty. I wanted to be skinny. I wanted to be lovely and have lots of friends. So I got eating disorders, self-hatred and selfbharm, panic attacks and a lacking sense of myself and my social boundaries. Not compensatory heterosexuality, not compensatory narcissism, not extreme competitiveness, not excessive bodybuilding or a desire to prove myself. And that meant from a very young age I gravitated away from people or environments where these things were valued and the type of people who would expect those things of me. I never experienced much pressure to be masculine bc I had created my own little bubble where those things weren't relevant. Even with family. I spent more time with my mom than my dad. Relationships atrophied with family members who would always tell me to start being interested in girls or gain weight or cut my hair and any number of other silly things, and not just be willing to accept who I am.

So I definitely don't know the answer or what any of this means but I do think it's at least partially how we respond to how we are socialized that shapes who we are too.

(And I am not acting like pressure to do or be something for just the sake of other people liking you or inherited values isn't a thing, just again I think the ones that really stick and really motivate who you are are the ones that threaten your core self and threaten your identity.)

Well, it does. But the kind of thing I'm talking about is stuff that's pretty universal for women, though some may experience it differently. Like,  with me, I really didn't have it that bad as a woman. There are a ton of women who experienced way more sexism, abuse, etc.

[FTMDiaries]

What an interesting thread! Thanks FA.

My experiences mirror Arch's almost exactly, probably because we're of the same generation. I had several additional problems, such as being forced into stereotypically 'female' subjects at school (e.g. cooking, typing, sewing & knitting) without any option to drop them or choose alternatives, because that's what the government mandated at the time. Good ol' Apartheid South Africa was all about putting people into very specific boxes in more ways than one, and gender roles were very strictly enforced at all levels of society.

When my elder brother graduated High School with distinction, our parents proudly paid for him to study at one of the country's most prestigious universities so that he could have a good career and support his family. Three years later, when I also graduated High School with distinction, my parents refused to pay for me to attend any university or college at all, because like Arch I was expected to get an 'easy' job to tide me over until I could marry Mr Right. My brother's advantage here is undeniable, because he got an excellent tertiary education - at our parents' expense - before settling down and having kids... whereas all of the tertiary qualifications I've earned have been at my own expense and whilst working full-time as my family's main breadwinner. If I'd been MAAB, I would've had the same encouragement and support as my brother and my life would've been very different. Perhaps that's a generational thing? My folks were born just after WWII, and were quite old-fashioned in some of their views.

Granted, if my brother had been trans* and had wanted to express femininity, I don't doubt for a second he would've faced the full wrath of society for doing so; probably moreso than I did for expressing my masculinity. But knowing my family, he still would've been offered the advantages I was denied, because our folks would've believed that he was 'really a boy' and they would've pushed him to succeed accordingly. But for me, whilst I was allowed to be a tomboy for a brief period, my folks were pretty darn convinced that I was 'really a girl' and they certainly treated me accordingly, i.e. like a second-class citizen whose sole purpose was to look pretty so that I could snag a man who would support me. My upbringing as someone presumed to be female demanded that I learn to be submissive, be scared, be defensive, not put my head above the parapet... and that I didn't deserve a good education or a career, because my husband would be expected to provide everything for me. People who are MAAB generally don't get those same lessons growing up. And those lessons can be quite a handicap, if you take them to heart.

I spent the first 20-odd years of my career struggling to be taken seriously as a 'female' professional, because no matter how masculine I felt inside, everyone else saw me as being less than the male equivalent precisely because they perceived me as female. When my male colleagues were assertive they were considered dynamic, effective leaders, but whenever I behaved in the same way I was ridiculed for being 'shrill', 'hysterical', or a 'b*tch'. It was almost impossible to be taken seriously, and it certainly wasn't possible for me to earn as much as my male colleagues doing the same job.

I'm still working to overcome all this.

[Arch]

I had several additional problems, such as being forced into stereotypically 'female' subjects at school (e.g. cooking, typing, sewing & knitting) without any option to drop them or choose alternatives, because that's what the government mandated at the time.

Ah, yes. Gender-specific "electives." At my school, I was forced to choose between cooking and sewing even though Title IX was then in effect and the school had no right to limit me in that way. I wanted to take wood shop. I was denied. I should have pressed the point, but I didn't know about the law. I was lucky that I needed to take only one--my foreign language elective saved me from taking two.

And, of course, the boys could not take cooking or sewing, but I never heard of a boy who requested one of those classes. It would have been social suicide. Sucky double standard for all.

[LordKAT]

My senior year was the first year that my school went co ed on many things. i was the only 'female' in shop classes, (and I took all of them) and one guy took all the home ec classes. We both signed up for the Navy that year, too.

[Edge]

I never did. I never thought about any of this feminist stuff until now - years after transition.
But I do think being born into the 'lesser half' of humanity and all that means affects women growing up. How could it not?

Same with me. I didn't occur to me that some people were treating me the way they did because they saw me as female. I thought there was either something wrong with me or that people were like that to everyone. Maybe that's still the case. It doesn't seem like it so far though.
I still have hang ups against attractiveness, would be glad if I never had to have sex again, have issues with feelings and relationships up the wazoo, etc.
Although come to think of it... has anyone else had the same problems I have? Or is it just me?

But honestly, how much does your core personality affect how your socialization affects you? And how it even happens in the first place.

That's a subject I am very interested in.

So I definitely don't know the answer or what any of this means but I do think it's at least partially how we respond to how we are socialized that shapes who we are too.

Oh definitely. Different people react to similar experiences differently.

[Arch]

FTMDiaries, I didn't know that you and I were about the same age. My parents were born around 1930, though, and my mother is particularly conservative. It's funny; I was allowed to do the tomboy thing, but my mother seemed to start worrying at a certain point. She started pushing girly things on me. I think she was worried that I was gay. Well, I am, but not in the way she was thinking!

I was lucky in that I resocialized myself in my head quite a bit. I had boyhoods in my head. But none of that "training" could undo the early girly indoctrination. My imagination was more of a way of expressing my resentment and giving me an outlet for my male identity to really shine through.

I was also lucky to be interested in men, and I was always in relationships with men. So I took advantage of quite a bit of adult male socialization. I think that's one reason I blend in so well now. That and the lives I led in my head.

[FTMDiaries]

FTMDiaries, I didn't know that you and I were about the same age.

Yeah, if my memory serves, you & I aren't a million miles apart in age. We're probably within about 10 or so years of each other.

It's funny; I was allowed to do the tomboy thing, but my mother seemed to start worrying at a certain point. She started pushing girly things on me. I think she was worried that I was gay. Well, I am, but not in the way she was thinking!

This is something that I think ought to be better understood: some people might think that FtMs have an easier time in childhood because some of us get to be tomboys - and this is true to a certain extent - but our parents presume our tomboyishness will be a quick fad and that we'll outgrow it within a year or so, like any other fad. If we don't, we then face enormous societal pressure because we've exposed ourselves as being gender-incongruent and the authority figures in our lives grow tired of tolerating our 'tomboyishness' and crack down on us. So it's not always the easy ride that some might imagine.

When I first came out to my Mum at age 5, she told me that she knew exactly what was 'wrong' with me. She said I was a tomboy and that it was just a phase I was going through. She said that when I became a teenager I'd be happy about seeing my body change into that of a woman, and I wouldn't feel like I wanted to be a boy any more. I already felt horrible about myself in ways I couldn't yet describe, so when she said it was just a phase I was really relieved. I spent years looking forward to puberty so that I could finally feel 'normal' again. Of course, the exact opposite happened... I hated my body even though I was apparently very attractive (if the female form is to your taste, I suppose; it isn't to mine!). But my Mum only tolerated my tomboyishness briefly, and she made some strict rules about forcing me to wear dresses. It was soul-destroying for me.

So the acceptability of 'tomboyishness' was used as a weapon to invalidate me, and that sort of thing still happens today. I wonder who's more likely to get referred to gender therapy these days: a MAAB child expressing feminine tendencies in a society that has no natural outlet for such things, or an FAAB child expressing masculine tendencies in a society where tomboys are accepted and common? Could the prevalence of tomboys be preventing or delaying treatment in FAAB transkids?

[FTMDiaries]

Ah, yes. Gender-specific "electives." At my school, I was forced to choose between cooking and sewing even though Title IX was then in effect and the school had no right to limit me in that way. I wanted to take wood shop. I was denied. I should have pressed the point, but I didn't know about the law. I was lucky that I needed to take only one--my foreign language elective saved me from taking two.

We didn't get any choice: only the boys got a choice, between woodwork & metalwork. The girls had no choice but to learn how to be good little housewives in a course called 'Home Economics', which was basically cooking, knitting, sewing and learning how to budget for your family's groceries. It was literally a course on how to become a Stepford Wife.

My brother elected to do woodwork and his end-of-year piece was a side table. I was ridiculously jealous: it was so cool that he got to make something useful, whereas I learned to crochet one of those toilet roll covers that was like a doll in an elaborate Victorian dress. Urgh.

Edited to add: of course, some of those MAAB kids might have been just as dismayed about having to choose between two stereotypically masculine subjects without the option of studying Home Economics, as I was at being forced to do a stereotypically feminine subject with no option to do Woodwork.

[Arch]

We didn't get any choice: only the boys got a choice, between woodwork & metalwork.

Very few girls got a choice, actually. The vast majority took cooking one term and sewing the next. I got a choice because anyone who took a foreign language was required to take only one home ec class.

When I was signing up for seventh grade (this was junior high--seventh, eighth, and ninth)--I distinctly remember being told that my foreign language spared me the necessity of taking ANY gender-specific electives. I was jubilant. Then, when I was signing up for eighth-grade courses, my counselor told me that I had to take one and why hadn't I done it in seventh grade the way I was supposed to? She put it all on me. I still don't see how a year-long language class absolved me from only one semester of the home ec stuff.

She also didn't tell me that I had to take a one-semester science class in seventh grade, so I wound up taking that during the summer. I apparently wasn't allowed to take it as an eighth-grader because it was seventh-grade science, so I had to take home ec in eighth grade (with a bunch of seventh-graders) AND find another useless one-semester class to plug in the gap.

My high-school counselor was just about as helpful...

[ErinM]

Edited to add: of course, some of those MAAB kids might have been just as dismayed about having to choose between two stereotypically masculine subjects without the option of studying Home Economics, as I was at being forced to do a stereotypically feminine subject with no option to do Woodwork.

That's where I'm grateful that having been born in western Canada during the 1980's. My my Jr High (Middle) School required everybody to take both shop and home economics. The class was separated in two (but still kept co-ed) and we would take one in one half of the year and then switch.

By high school we finally did start having electives. There was never any school enforced restrictions based on electives, but the social stigmas were still there. A boy could take Cosmetology if he so chose, but would never hear the end of it from his peers.

[Nero]

If you're internally female but assigned male, you escape this status no matter how horrible your life is. That's all I'm trying to point it. That it's different.

Young trans girls often internalize female limitations and pressures because they see themselves as the target of those messages.  I can only speak from my experience, and this is what I experienced.

Do not generalize how children perceive the world, or how they think the world perceives them.  There may be a difference in physical consequences of not adhering to pressures between AFAB and AMAB, but it's often not enough to dissuade a child's internal worldview and self-view.  There's no universal experience of boyhood and girlhood.

Well, I'm not trying to generalize. At least not in that way. I think a large part of the confusion here is people interpreting what I'm saying as AFAB people having a cookie cutter experience. And that's not what I'm talking about. There are commonalities to growing up female as well as commonalities to growing male.

For instance, if I said something about boys growing up with the messages of it being bad to show emotion, cry, or be girly - that holds true whether there are individual boys who didn't experience that pressure as much. Or don't remember experiencing or whatever. (note: the rest isn't in response to your post alone, but just the kind of attitudes that frequently crop in these discussions)

Obviously, there are boys who suffered horribly under those messages and boys who didn't. And this is based on a lot of things - environment, personality (maybe the boy was stronger in his individuality, maybe it just hadn't been beaten into him like it was other boys, or whatever). And I think sometimes there's some unconscious blame on these boards towards people who 'just weren't strong enough' to overcome whatever. Well, I think there's a big difference between a kid growing up in a strict household to where he was beaten for so much as opening his mouth, let alone daring to voice a feminine identity and a kid who didn't grow up in that kind of environment.

But a few outliers - boys who didn't experience these pressures as much or were strong enough for it not to matter or whatever - these are anomalies. If a hundred girls grow up oppressed and there's one girl who had a great experience and 'didn't let it get her down' or whatever, that just proves the point. Of course there are a few girls who 'overcame' or whatever. But it's like that one girl out of how many proves nothing. It's like acting like poverty can't be that big a deal cause there's one homeless guy who ended up a millionaire.

[Nero]

What is the programming that you ended up with that you are struggling with? Do you want to talk about it?

Honestly, I wish I felt comfortable. But every time I try to talk about anything like this I feel judged and like most just want to argue with everything I say. That would be fine if this were a debate. But I honestly didn't realize the fact girls grow up differently in a sexist world was a debate. I mean, I suppose I could go on about the guy I know who had superior inner strength and never felt any pressure to hold back his emotions and 'rose above' it all, nearly untouched by male socialization. But he doesn't exist. Honestly. And if he did, going on about this anomaly would do nothing to help trans women who may be dealing with these harmful effects. And what business would I have of going on about it anyway - about my experience as a trans boy kid (who no matter his experience did not grow up as a male child) or my friend's experience (where he was supposedly untouched and/or much more mentally strong than anyone who god forbid was affected by a male upbringing).