https://twitter.com/iHateCogsci/status/1249424943596605440

I saw a tweet abt this which said "masculinity is not traumatizing for boys". There's a name for this: gender essentialism.

You have to believe that there is some pre-social masculinity inherent in boys that conforms to the male social role

But also... what the hell has everyone been talking about wrt "toxic masculinity" if you don't think gender socialization is traumatic for boys.

By the time you're 10, showing affection to your male friends will have you tormented for being "gay", apparently the worst thing you could be. Boys participate in ritualistic sexual humiliation, and victims must become perpetrators to reassert masculinity.

By adulthood, men have no grasp of their own emotions--that's not that they "aren't allowed to express" them, but that they're foreign, dissociated. They can't carry on normal conversations except by responding in attempts to one up their interlocutors

Their sense of self is tied to the sexual degradation of women. At the same time, they pine for genuine connection with men and women, but which their own conduct makes impossible. Paradoxically, this leads them to resent women even more.

It should go without saying that the foregoing creates horrible circumstances for women, and it should go without saying that feminism is about the liberation of women; but gender is relational, and you don't get rid of women's oppression without also getting rid of the foregoing

If you think male socialization is "self-actualizing" for boys, and not that it's artificial and that it takes perfectly good non-violent human beings and trains antisocial, violent, misogynistic conduct, well good luck with your feminist politics.

Obvs I don't think men should be centred wrt gender & trauma, and I hope the extent to which I tweet about violence against women excuses my talking abt men on this occasion -- but the reality is that gender socialization is traumatic for all human beings https://twitter.com/iHateCogsci/status/1249425057119711235