Kinda galling talking to my brother and realising he's already written his own son off due to his gender.
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Kinda galling talking to my brother and realising he's already written his own son off due to his gender.
"Yeah, he's just destructive, he can't help it. That's just how boys are. You know, because of the testosterone."
"He's four years old. His body hasn't started producing testosterone yet."
"No, I'm pretty sure boys always have testosterone, throughout childhood. You can see it in the way they act."
@Tattie I'm imagining a four year old with a Ron Burgundy stache and sounding like Barry White.
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I do not miss the random erections!
As a dude, my sexual desire was imminently bound up in my gender dysphoria and my self-hatred for what my body represented. I didn't like it even though it felt amazing and gave me emotional connections to people I loved. My wife—who is still with me, by the way—thought maybe I was secretly gay.
Now I get this low-level simmering feeling like the embers at the bottom of a fire just waiting for someone to ram a poker in there and stir it back up.
I used to think it was a panic attack coming on because it feels very similar to that. But panic attacks don't have this luscious undercurrent in every single breath.
When I lived as a dude, my horniness was very blatant and focused when it happened. This is much different. Instead of it being centered around a specific "appendage" begging for attention, it's a full body hum.
As a dude I still had very strong emotional needs that were completely separate from horniness. That aspect has not changed.
Desire, aggression, empathy, all of our human behaviors are far more than responses to hormones. We are unique, complicated individuals among a diverse population. What's true for one person—what's true for a dozen or a thousand—isn't necessarily true for everybody. It's why gender essentialism is dumb.
Pre estrogen, I wasn't into anyone. I just masturbated to make the random erections go away (if the situation permitted) and/or fall asleep.
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Kinda galling talking to my brother and realising he's already written his own son off due to his gender.
"Yeah, he's just destructive, he can't help it. That's just how boys are. You know, because of the testosterone."
"He's four years old. His body hasn't started producing testosterone yet."
"No, I'm pretty sure boys always have testosterone, throughout childhood. You can see it in the way they act."
@Tattie
poor kid
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And fuck the demonisation of a sex hormone anyway!
I've said it before: testosterone might make you hairy, horny, hungry, and hot, but it does not make you violent. It does not make you destructive. It does not make you anti-empathetic. Those are choices; gender behavioural norms that boys and then men are encouraged by social pressure to conform to, and may reject if they have the strength and the support to do so.
@Tattie as a testosterone haver, with the hairline to prove it, 100% this.
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@Tattie And it doesn't even "make" everyone all of THOSE things. I still have no appetite. And I remember hearing two trans guys bemoaning that they were always cold and they hoped T would change this and it hasn't for either of them.
@bright_helpings true, bodies are complicated and everyone's is different
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Pre estrogen, I wasn't into anyone. I just masturbated to make the random erections go away (if the situation permitted) and/or fall asleep.
@burnoutqueen @jrdepriest @Tattie
honestly even on my body's default "male" hormones I rarely got "random" erections. and seem only to get horny right before or after sleeping. aimless and directionless. (unless im in a relationship, thanks Demisexuality)
but also i was never destructive or violent. and the few times i was i was nurtured away from it so "well" that i morphed into having nearly entirely freeze reactions (i doubt this is actually healthy, just nonviolent)
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@Tattie I often think of how angry one can get as a child when adults won't listen. I see how animals get angry when the expected things don't happen. And...I have wanted to smash open an unopenable jar a few times.
It seems like aggression is often a result of this lack of skill, knowledge, experience or access and little boys often get rewarded quicker for being aggressive.
Which, I think I'm agreeing with you, reinforces inarticulate ways of communicating needs and that becomes gendered.
@clarablackink ok, let's focus on your last comment— the frustration of not being able to communicate what you want.
Now what you said after that: that boys get rewarded for being aggressive, or at least their aggression is more tolerated, less addressed by their caregivers.
Think of what girls get instead— including what I got growing up, being read as "girly"— a lecture on proper behaviour, how they need to be a Good Girl. We model the behaviour we expect to see from them: either talking out our anger, or repressing it.
Now have the bravery to throw away your initial "testosterone affects communication" hypothesis. There's simply no biological basis to imagine such a mechanism, and as you see it's simply not needed. Socialisation is a powerful force, and society raises boys and girls as it expects them to act as men and women.
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@Tattie I would say it's dehumanizing towards young boys
@leguinian_utopia it is dehumanising, absolutely.
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Kinda galling talking to my brother and realising he's already written his own son off due to his gender.
"Yeah, he's just destructive, he can't help it. That's just how boys are. You know, because of the testosterone."
"He's four years old. His body hasn't started producing testosterone yet."
"No, I'm pretty sure boys always have testosterone, throughout childhood. You can see it in the way they act."
@Tattie good thing that kid has a caring aunt to counter this BS.
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@Tattie what upsets me about this as a person who's both autistic and testosterone dominant, is that no ones considering how kids smashing things up is likely a self regulatory behavior. No one is asking this child what's so overwhelming that they need to break something about it, no one is redirecting that behavior into something safer and no one is teaching that child how to communicate or set boundaries. These children will be perpetually punished for doing the things that get them into a more stable mindset then be taught no alternative. Im sure as one develops, it is then easier to internalize the message that their biology is bad, they were born bad and are now entitled to being bad. Anyone with any alternative in how they communicate or regulate become something to resist, bolstering their entitlement. And this is how you get incels and misogynists and transphobes etc.
(Side note: respectfully, as if your brother is mansplaining to you how hormones work, as if you havent undergone an entire hormonal transition. Miss me with that.)
@damonology I remember thinking as he was explaining testosterone to me "has he, uh, just forgotten that I went thru an androgenic puberty just a year or two after him?" There's an edge of ewphoria there.
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People seem to really want to believe this right now, and in a large part I think this is part of a pushback on trans rights. People are clinging to biological essentialism because the presence of people blithely switching from one sex to another Makes Them Uncomfy. They want to keep their boys and girls in very definite boxes, so said kids don't get ideas.
The other part is of course the antifeminism sweeping society. Presented with the evidence of all the shit that men are responsible for, we seem to have just given up on the entire gender. "Boys will be boys"— testosterone fates half the world to just Being Bad People so we just have to accept that.
Of course, these are not independent factors. They're very much linked.
@Tattie The antifeminism isn't new. "Boys will be boys" has been around for a long time. But I think it has less to do with trans people than it does to do with women trying to process the trauma of what men have done to them and men trying to justify it.
But, yeah, the transphobia doesn't help matters.
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Kinda galling talking to my brother and realising he's already written his own son off due to his gender.
"Yeah, he's just destructive, he can't help it. That's just how boys are. You know, because of the testosterone."
"He's four years old. His body hasn't started producing testosterone yet."
"No, I'm pretty sure boys always have testosterone, throughout childhood. You can see it in the way they act."
@Tattie As a parent I see soooo much of this from other parents. It’s infuriating and depressing.
Assuming boys and girls have the same distribution of behaviour innately (an assumption, sure, but no worse than assuming it’s markedly different), then you’d expect some percentage of both groups to play to type for expectations, reinforcing biases and those that fall out of expectations being seen as exceptions.
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And fuck the demonisation of a sex hormone anyway!
I've said it before: testosterone might make you hairy, horny, hungry, and hot, but it does not make you violent. It does not make you destructive. It does not make you anti-empathetic. Those are choices; gender behavioural norms that boys and then men are encouraged by social pressure to conform to, and may reject if they have the strength and the support to do so.
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@Tattie The antifeminism isn't new. "Boys will be boys" has been around for a long time. But I think it has less to do with trans people than it does to do with women trying to process the trauma of what men have done to them and men trying to justify it.
But, yeah, the transphobia doesn't help matters.
@faithisleaping I think you have hit on the root of it, which explains why the transphobia. A large chunk of both cis men and cis women have accepted a biological explanation for male violence, to lessen accountability, and for this theory to work trans women have to share in cis male awfulness. The fact that, rather inconveniently, we're actually rather lovely, only infuriates them.
But I do think that to some degree their consequent frustrations at us are being projected onto kids.
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@Tattie As a parent I see soooo much of this from other parents. It’s infuriating and depressing.
Assuming boys and girls have the same distribution of behaviour innately (an assumption, sure, but no worse than assuming it’s markedly different), then you’d expect some percentage of both groups to play to type for expectations, reinforcing biases and those that fall out of expectations being seen as exceptions.
@what yes, the confirmation bias is huge
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Kinda galling talking to my brother and realising he's already written his own son off due to his gender.
"Yeah, he's just destructive, he can't help it. That's just how boys are. You know, because of the testosterone."
"He's four years old. His body hasn't started producing testosterone yet."
"No, I'm pretty sure boys always have testosterone, throughout childhood. You can see it in the way they act."
@Tattie Oh THAT book. There's a companion one that's just as bad.
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@Tattie@eldritch.cafe This is the viscous cycle of bioessentialism. they expect 4 yrs boys to be destructive and rude, so they accept and encourage it. When they grow into men who are destructive and rude it's just the same boys will be boys shtick.
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@Tattie Oh THAT book. There's a companion one that's just as bad.
@Ailbhe I've not read either, but it really does seem like we can't help but keep reinventing Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, huh?
