Kinda galling talking to my brother and realising he's already written his own son off due to his gender.

@datarama @Tattie @abucci One of my children was CONSTANTLY being presumed male because of behaviour as a toddler. The one who is a cis girl. NEITHER of the others were ever presumed male.

@Ailbhe @Tattie @abucci When I was a little boy, I was generally careful, bookish and almost comically gentle (though not "quiet" - I was quite talkative). I had to be *taught* what competition meant.

I've known other boys like that too, and I've known girls who were complete chaos goblins. I don't *know* if there are any such gender differences, but if there are, they're at most "overlapping curves" and not "essentialism".

@clarablackink Do you have any sources at all that testosterone "affects modes of communication"? Because it doesn't.

There's absolutely nothing either that supports four year old boys "communicating physically through aggression" any more than any other four year old humans.

Four year old boys in some parts of the world are not taught that aggression and violence are not acceptable forms communication. That's very sad and has bad consequences for both the boys and everyone they try to communicate with.

@Tattie

@Tattie *facepalm*

@Tattie If you are not a parent, your opinions on the difference between boys and girls is uninformed and will almost undoubtedly sound childishly naive to parents, especially cis parents.

(On top of that, you’re wrong: all humans of all ages produce and have testosterone.)

I know the differences are not hormonal but honestly you’re missing the forest for the trees here.

Cis people have education school level understanding of gender. “Boys and girls act differently so it’s testosterone!” is dumb but you are pedantically missing the point being made : boys and girls act differently. To any parent this is observable fact and just saying “your reason is wrong haha!” is not contributing to any form of helpful conversation. It’s just pedantic squabbling.

Again, especially when if they do a basic google search they will see your point is easy to dismiss as factually incorrect.

@Tattie *headdesk* at your brother and that book's author both.

> a complete load of balls
Ovary nice.

@Bel_tamtu @Tattie My extended human acquaintances include a set of fraternal twins. Sweet and mild, since the day they were born. And then, when they went to a daytime pre-school child-care facility, so the parents could return to working full time, the boy instantly acquired worrying behavioral problems at home. From the other boys thrown together in the toddler pits.

The parents, of course, rationalized it away, because the alternative was to pull an entire income, which they could not.

@Colman @Tattie My parents raised me and my siblings pretty gender neutrally. I think there's a decent chance they would have done that even if I hadn't been nonbinary. I'm not even sure how much of that was because I was nonbinary. It doesn't help that nonbinary wasn't a concept any of us had then.

@Tattie Somehow two of my children (one of each gender) managed to pick up on the "boys are more aggressive than girls" by that age even though neither went to preschool. It's annoying, really.

@valentine pondering this, I remember how transition unlocked my extroversion and my empathy— my desire to communicate— but due to being stuck on a waitlist for HRT, this shift truly began pre-estrogen.

Estrogen then enhanced this, made it feel more permanent and effortless, but I credit this to a growing comfort with my body and emotions.

Because yeah, I definitely I felt some emotional effects of E— the fabled ease of crying most obvious amongst those— but then the interpretation and outcome of those emotions seemed to pass inevitably into the realm of socially constructed reality. "Aw, she's having a lot of feelings, and would benefit from talking about them", etc.

What sort of changes did you notice specifically, if you don't mind saying?

unrelated to you asking @Tattie but having felt important to weigh in on the discussion, socialization for me came when i'd already atrophied from a very christian and insular neighborhood. that being said, after taking the hormone for some years, and getting on blockers a little later--blockers tended to give me a fixation on listening to other people rather than just the small voice in my head telling me how to feel about the external world. i'm not sure whether i'm constructing the idea of empathy, but there is some externality that comes with blockers?? i guess? part of it might have been related to the social atrophy, and that expulsion and consistent admonishment from nearly an entire neighborhood gave me a lot of social anxiety, which is why i think me reaching out to listen to people other than myself is an anomaly with my own interpersonal conflict. i attribute that to going on blockers because around the time that their affects began to impact my body was around the time i quieted myself to more or less take in more of the rest of the world, rather than the world i grew up in.

@ginny you seem to be just wanting to pick a fight here, with a concern-trolling tone and some really silly arguments— "no kids no opinion" and "technically everyone has testosterone therefore haha gotcha. Google will indeed help bring up the actual scientific facts, which is that testosterone is at the same extremely low level for male and female kids until the onset of puberty, at which point male bodies will increasingly begin to produce the hormone in significant amounts. Did you try that yourself, or just boldly assume your correctness?

Anyway, not actually interested in your answer, because arguing on the internet with contrarians is a really dull, time-wasting, and stressful pastime which I have long given up, sorry.

@pauamma

@log it's such a tough one, isn't it? Because as well as the realities of child-rearing, kids do need to start socialising with their peers at some point. There's no easy answers to societal problems.
@Bel_tamtu

@BernieDoesIt observing my niblings, it's amazing what little social sponges they are. At that age it's like the full weight of human brainpower is going into analysing social norms, behaviours, allegiances, communications, and relationalities, and finding their place within them.

The book I just finished asserted that the primary drive of the infant is to communicate, to connect to the human social context, and that seems on point.

@bedhead fascinating! I see in this how hormonal changes can be a powerful anchor for personal transformation. Your experience of society growing up left you with a constant anxiety about social interaction, and when your emotional landscape changed due to blockers you were able to leave this anxiety in the past and step into a new way of being. Have I understood that correctly?
@valentine

you understood correct! i even swapped cities and felt very isolated, but after being on blockers, i decided to reach out to a coworker who became my best friend in the whole world, i went out to places by myself to engage with the idea of feeling the agency to go out without anybody else (take yourself out on dates whatnot), i went to my best friend's apartment all the time to hang out. later on i went to parties and actually felt free to be myself while also limiting my expressivity (listening more than speaking).

expressivity* of speech rather than expressivity of gender. i tended to hang around other women, and that brought with it the comfort to express myself in form rather than just in intellectual acknowledgement that i was feminine (also hormones tend to reshape your hips more when blockers take effect so it wound up making it easier to express myself in fashion too). me and my bestie would regularly go thrifting because i had to rid myself of all the boymoding clothes in my closet loll

@bedhead I am so happy for you! ️ My own transition has similarly felt like stepping into a new me, and it has been so joyful, so transformational.
@valentine

eleven years later, and i'm still learning new things about myself in both practice and in form: curvature i didn't have, new habits granted from regular affirmation of my transness. i've recently begun to actually dig into being in a larger trans community locally, and that's brought tons of solace and grace and comraderie too. the individualist sociocultural dynamic of living more north in the US left its trans spaces a little clique-oriented, and as a socially-atrophied trans lady, fitting into those spaces of trans people that have lived their entire lives in society was difficult but altogether okay. but moving to the south has taught me that trans people here collectivize and have a shared understanding of interconnectedness that is pretty amazing.

i guess some of this is a ramble about my surroundings (been on a weird kick of wanting to feel more grounded to the world under my feet than the one in my head), but i guess it also is an observation that environment has tons to do with how you respond to your hormonal treatment, and that no one roadmap is the only path on that route to transness.