School sports

I would really recommend "The Gendered Brain" by Gina Rippon which lays out the history of scientific research into male and female brains since the dawn of scientific endeavour. It's really worthwhile and honestly it gave me a better understanding of the concept of gender, which I previously would have said is entirely fictional but I do now think it has some element of "reality" albeit being entirely independent of sex and in no way creating a qualification to opt in or out of one's biological sex where opportunities or resources are sex-based. Gender is the real effect of sexism on the brain. The brain is highly plastic (changing according to what is experienced) but does not respond to the pressures of sexism in a uniform and predictable way.

If society was not endemically sexist then there would be no gender and no trans because everyone would be able to live authentically as themselves without strictures based on expectations of behavior or preference due to biological sex.

Speaking of a "failure" of socialisation can only come from a place of believing that sexist socialisation is a good and desirable thing. It is not. All feminists are a "failure" of such socialisation from that point of view but as that kind of socialisation is oppressive and restrictive a better word would be "liberated" - but if your opting out of male socialisation comes into the form of wanting to opt in to female socialisation then that's not liberation.

Exactly.

if ‘Gendered Socialisation’ was a reliable phenomenon then we’d all be sitting quietly with our knees pinched together and our hands folded in our laps. We wouldn’t be repeatedly telling male people to get their male bodies out of our single sex spaces, sports and services.

If ‘be subservient, don’t argue, put the needs of men before your own’ worked on all little girls there would be no such thing as a terf (and lesbians would all be permanently closeted).

Trans Activists hate Terves because Terves are uppity bitches who won’t kowtow to gendered socialisation (and those of us who look ladylike but still say no, fuck off, eg Posie P, seem to drive them just as bonkers as those who are GNC in aesthetic and attitude, eg Kathleen Stock).

I don’t know if anyone on this thread saw the Barbie film but there is a bit that is a parody of the Matrix, only instead of offering a blue pill or a red pill Weird Barbie offers Stereotypical Barbie a high heeled court shoe or a Birkenstock.

if old fashioned female socialisation worked 100% the Birkenstock would never have been invented at all, as it is, the whole cinema laughed out loud in wry recognition that what women like and what women are supposed to like (according to old fashioned sex stereotypes) are often at complete odds with each other.

(I actually hate Birkenstocks and would prefer a Croc, an athletic trainer or a cowboy boot, but none of those would be as cinematically dramatic/amusing!)

I would really like to know this too.

The chess 'default' is mixed sex tournaments. Woman are somewhat competitive against men - a woman has sometimes been ranked in the top 100 players in the world, something that'd obviously never be possible in sprinting or weightlifting. But participation rates are so low that there aren't, as of October 2023, any women in the top 100.

e.g. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIDE_rankings

In the light of the above it is more than reasonable for women to have their own, occasional, lower stakes and status tournament without men muscling in.

What happened in the chess club when you tried a female name? It sounds like a really useful experiment to show boys, to teach about sexism.

So now. Why do YOU think "gendered socialisation" sometimes fails? (hint: because it's made up)

And in this particular instance it was wildly successful.

Someone who disregards women's consent and boundaries, is sexist, ignorant of women in general, and feels entitled to enter their spaces no matter what, is absolutely socialised male.

Brilliant, incisive, compassionate summary.

Will be entirely wasted on OP, but excellent for the lurkers.

blimey, what happened?

I do disagree with the recent decision to exclude trans women from women's chess though - surely upper body strength etc is not a factor there?

No body strength is not the issue, male socialism is. Chess clubs at school are dominated by boys. Often taught by male teachers. Local chess clubs again dominated by men with male coaches. Chess tournaments are male dominated. Even the audience is mainly men!

Lile you, my teenaged son doesn't see it, because he's male. So I did an experiment with him and we set up an online chess account with a girls name. That was an eye opener for him.

As you can see it was established back in the 90s that 1/5 of Girls are Sporty.

Sorry @AlphaTransWoman, I quoted the wrong post there. I meant to quote your 21:26 from yesterday about trans women having lady brains.

As for your follow up question about why gendered socialisation sometimes "fails" and produces people who were born in the wrong body, I think that's the wrong question.

The question is, why do we have gendered socialisation at all?

I think it's very obvious that girls are socialised to put others first and be kind and nurturing because they are the childbearing sex. Before reliable contraception and abortion, girls could expect to spend much of their adult lives pregnant and postpartum, meaning they could not easily occupy other roles in society.

In 2023 I think we should be able to recognise the fact that although it will always be women who get pregnant and give birth, once the baby has been born and particularly after the first few months, it is entirely possible for the baby's other parent to play an equal role in its upbringing. And that women are now more likely to have one or two children, or none at all, than ten or twelve.

With this in mind we should be growing up as a society and recognising that the reasons for gendered socialisation no longer apply to the extent that they once did, and that all children, male or female, should be encouraged to pursue any activities and nurture any talents or interests they like, and NOT be subject to gender stereotyping in this way.

If we lose the stereotypes, children can't "fail" to conform to them. They will be too busy realising their potential in other ways.

OP I'm sorry you had such a shit time at school. But don't you think by going on to define yourself by a set of tired old tropes and living a life rigidly ruled by reductive stereotypes that you're aligning yourself with the bullies and proving them right?

It's like telling a kid who's being picked on for wearing glasses that "actually, the bullies have a point! You are a speccy nerd and literally the only career options available to you are IT Guy or librarian!"

how about you work it out for yourself. Over several (tedious) threads now you have been told again and again that gender is a made-up social construct. It has been used as a way to opress the members of the sex-class known as women for millennia.

Feminists say: there is no such thing as gender. If a woman likes martial arts, horror films and rare steak that doesn't make her a man. Even though idiots people who believe in gender would say those are male characteristics. If a man likes fluffy kittens, nail varnish, long hair and silky dresses that makes him a man who likes those things. Not a woman, even though the gender woo idiots some people think those attributes are only for women.

So now. Why do YOU think "gendered socialisation" sometimes fails? (hint: because it's made up)

I don't think you have a female brain in a male body.

I think you have a male brain in a male body, and a mental health condition which causes you great distress and manifests itself as a belief that you should have been born in a female body.

I believe, but obviously can't prove, that if it were possible to wave a magic wand over you while you sleep tonight and have you wake up in a female body, you would still have dysphoria. I don't know whether it would manifest itself as you believing you should be in a male body, or in some other way, but it would still be there. Because gender dysphoria is a condition which only exists in the mind. Prior to hormones or surgery, your body is utterly unremarkable and no different to that of anyone else of your sex. So why would changing your body fix the problem?

The things you say, and the ideas you express, do not say to me, "This person is a woman." Although I do not believe there is any such thing as a "female brain", per se, I think that broadly speaking there is a shared understanding between female people about what it is like to be female. We can either acknowledge or deny it, but we all understand it on some level. I do not think that someone who had lived their life in a female body would say the things you say about womanhood.

This is important, because even people expressing the same point of view about gender, i.e. trans women, trans men and "trans allies", even as they express these ideas about gender identity and male and female brains and being in the wrong body, they express them differently. The males still come across as male and the females still come across as female.

When trans women express why they feel that they are women, or why they want to be women, they still seem to come across in a very male way. When trans men express why they feel that they are men, or why they want to be men, they still seem to come across in a very female way. Not, I think, because of their brains, but as a result of the fact that they have lived their lives in a particular body and, at least as children, been treated by society as a member of their own sex, and that leaves an indelible mark on them, however much they might want to erase it. And when "trans allies" who identify as "cisgender" express these ideas about gender identity, the men seem to approach it in terms of "trans women should be entitled to whatever they want" whereas the women seem to approach it in terms of "we should all be kind".

It's almost impossible to escape that socialisation. And just look at how women in particular are treated when they try to shed that social obligation to "be kind" and say, "actually, no, what you want is not more important than what we want". They get absolutely vilified.

Ultimately, what it comes down to is that although I feel for people suffering from gender dysphoria, a male person with gender dysphoria has nothing in common with a female person without gender dysphoria. Even if these two things were identities, which I dispute, they would not be the same identity. Would they?

the signal to noise ratio is catastrophic too

oh be flippin' told won't you?

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A LADY BRAIN. Except the lady brain that resides in the body of an adult human female.

I have to admit that I don't know a lot about chess but I assume the decision to have separate categories for men and women has nothing to do with body strength and everything to do with other factors relating to "gender".

The majority of chess players are male. Chess is a strategy game where the goal is to eliminate members of your opponent's army until their king is fatally exposed and forced to surrender. It involves symbolic killing, which was long regarded as inappropriate for girls, and logical thinking, which girls and women were deemed incapable of. It's the same reasoning which resulted in little boys being given toy soldiers to play with and little girls being given toy dolls.

Of course, there is no prohibition on girls playing chess today, but the perception that chess is a boys' game remains. Men who were taught to play chess by their fathers and grandfathers are more likely to teach it to their sons than their daughters. Women are less likely to have been taught to play chess by their parents or grandparents, and more likely to have been taught to sew or bake instead.

So where do trans people fit in?

Well, somebody who was born male was not socialised as a girl from a young age. If anything, their father might have said, "Trevor, put those dolls down and come and learn to play chess."

For what it's worth, I think the concept of there being "boys' toys" and "girls' toys" is completely wrong, and if there was no stigma attached to little boys playing with dolls, and little girls were given equal opportunities to play chess, there would probably be fewer people with early onset gender dysphoria. I would very much like to see a world where toys are just toys, in which there would be no need for boys' and girls' chess categories, because girls would be just as likely as boys to have been taught to play chess at a young age.

But that is not the world we live in, which is why girls still need specific encouragement to play chess and study STEM subjects and, yes, compete in sports.

And although this is no criticism of you and individual trans people, who I think are victims of gender as much as anyone, I fear that this latest incarnation of gender identity theory is causing society to go backwards, not forwards, in this respect.

A hundred years ago, it was "Dolls are for girls and toy soldiers are for boys, everyone stay in your box." And clearly, girls were being "trained" to be mothers and boys were being "trained" to go to war.

In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s feminists were saying, "No, there is no such thing as girls' toys and boys' toys. Let children play with whatever they like. Boys who play with dolls might be fathers one day and we want them to bond with their kids better than their male ancestors did. Girls might grow up and join the army. Hopefully none of them will be needed on the battlefield. So let children be children and let toys be toys."

And now, in 2023, it's, "If you were assigned male at birth but you like dolls, you may actually be a girl. If you are actually a girl it is vitally important that you get access to drugs to stop your healthy puberty and then as soon as you're a legal adult you can have your penis chopped off."

WTF. How on earth is this progressive?

I'm not even exaggerating, that is literally what happened to Jackie Green.

I think you should be able to show you are exercising outside school.

I hated PE but I went to Ju-Jitsu twice a week (3 hours total) and swimming afterwards. There should be a way of a sport / martial arts instructor to sign off on exercise.

My one 'fun' moment though was when the PE teacher told us to do 10 sit up. A couple of mins later she asked me why I'd stopped, I said I'd finished so she told me to do 10 more, so I did.

As part of a Ju-Jitsu warm up we regularly did 20-30 sit ups.

As for why some people believe things that are patently untrue, I don’t have a scooby doo.

But obviously people are prone to believing in made up stuff or we wouldn’t have religions.

I’m a gender atheist - I feel the same way about men with imaginary lady-brains as I do about people who believe that the earth is flat or that some bloke managed to get two of every animal on a home made wooden boat.

I didn’t say that at all.

I said I HAVE a female brain, in my female skull, attached to my female body.

Sex is made up of chromosomes, gonads, genitals and gametes.

My brain has the same female chromosomes as my female heart has.

Female brains exist, because female bodies exist.

But having a female brain and a female body doesn’t mean you don’t want to play rugby, it just means you play rugby with and against other female people to ensure safety and preserve fairness.

Female brains ONLY exist in female bodies and having a female brain doesn’t mean you automatically like pink frilly crap.

People get all sorts of wrong ideas about themselves. Look at the glass delusion, or anorexia. An anorexic is in no way fat, they're dangerously underweight, there is no grain of truth in their self-image. They don't have a fat brain, they have a mistaken brain, they've got a wrong idea stuck in their heads in such a way it feels like a deep truth and it's incredibly hard to get rid of. And obviously nobody ever actually had a body made from glass, or even a glass brain.

Is it a failure of male socialisation even? Sometimes it seems /very/ male socialisation. Trying to mansplain what being a woman is, to women. Treading all over women's boundaries and never stopping to think how that will affect others. And very much a male gaze idea of what a woman is.

Then my idea of being a woman is just getting on with being a person while inhabiting a female body. The less concessions you make to female socialisation the better really, it tends to be oppressive.

I am really not sure you can get more offensive.

You have a male brain in your male body. Unless you can produce the evidence that you have a female brain, I would stop repeating this pseudoscience. Even physiologically your brain is male and that doesn’t change. It is shaped differently to fit a male skull and it has more robust brain fibres.

And you don’t have any of the genetic coding that female brains have that then control hormone flow throughout the body etc.

Wizards?

I think you were made to feel that you weren't 'good enough' at being male, that you couldn't meet the stereotypes and that this has caused a disconnect between you and your body, men are good at /enjoy rugby, I am not/ don't therefore I'm not a man. I want to make daisy chains but that's what girls do so I must be girl.
I think we need to stop forcing stereo types onto children and acknowledge that their sex is their sex regardless of their likes and dislikes.
I certainly don't think that when an embryo is created by a sperm meeting an egg that some extra force reaches into a box of brains and pops one into said embryo but that sometimes this mystical purveyor of brains gets it wrong and pops a girl brain into a boy embryo or vice versa because that is not how the process works the body and the brain develop together from the same two cells so they can't not match.