Apparently someone in some of the Discourse said "Cis males don't have a traumatic relation to male socialization." & to be honest? I'm screaming at the top of my lungs because that is the WORST. FUCKING. TAKE. OF. ALL. TIME. & it makes me so angry I can't process it

Absolutely ANYBODY that looks at the way little boys are treated in our society & comes away with "this is perfectly fine and only traumatic/bad if accidentally applied to a trans girl or nb kid" is a fucking MONSTER

How old are little boys when they start getting punished for displaying tears? How are little boys emotional needs treated? You think cis males aren't fucked up bc of this? You think they don't suffer?

How are little boys taught to treat each other? How old are they when adults around them start to police their friendships and interactions for 'inappropriate' intimacy or touching or affection?

How are boys (ESP working class/poor) taught to think of themselves & their worth? You either break your body doing hard labor for decades until you can't bc that's what 'being a man/husband/father' is or you throw yourself into risk of death & loss of soul via the military

How are boys & later men taught to seek affection? Ask for help? Let others know when they're in pain? Look at the suicide rates. Men and boys fucking killing themselves all over all ages.

What happens when boys or men are sexually abused or raped? Are they taught that's okay to talk about? Do they come forward? Are they taken seriously? Do adults treat what happens to them as they should or like its a joke/the kid got lucky?

Boy culture is damn near IMPOSSIBLE to disentangle from Bullying culture in large part thanks to the ways adult men AND ADULT WOMEN encourage/allow boys to treat each other & REWARD them for it

I don't know a single fucking cis guy who hasn't suffered GREATLY as a direct result of how they were taught to Be A Boy. Not a ONE. Fraught, frozen emotional relations with fathers/others, emotional dysfunction. Hidden sexual abuse. Child abuse only seen as such as an adult.

I get going through the "fuck all men" phase. I did it too. Part of putting on the They Live glasses. But if you arrest yourself in that phase & make it a personality, you become a toxic trashpile & probably ripe for getting recruited by terfs.

Not to have to be That Annoying Bitch, but boys matter, their lives and their pain matters, and so do men. the existence of trans women & their suffering doesn't fucking erase that, it INFORMS on it. Some of the scariest shit i learned about how boys are treated came from-

A close friend, a trans woman, talking about her childhood & how it fucked her up but also fucked up all the boys around her. She Knew already she was a girl but she kept her mouth shut (if she hadn't she prob would have been killed)

She told me about the ways men treat boys & how they let boys treat each other changed when they were in a place with no women/girls. She told me how they were taught about double standards at church but told with a smile not to rock the boat they got the good end of the stick!

She told me about how at less than 10 years old, some boys had already changed from the boys she'd known into quieter, meaner versions of themselves. How ordinary activities could suddenly be coded as Not Male Enough & one could find themselves suddenly in danger from grown men.

She was acutely aware of this stuff, being a girl but knowing it had to be a secret. And it still affected her, and it also affected everyone else she knew. Masculinity touched and poisoned everyone and everything & permeated every institution & space & person.

She was hypervigilant, her queer male friends were hypervigilant, and many of her male friends who weren't queer in any way (far as she knew) were hypervigilant. My experiences were different (not a tw) but i saw this in my male peers, too, and i STILL do.

So this idea that men and boys do not have a traumatic relation to male socialization? Throw it in the fucking trash where it belongs. It is INHERENTLY anti-feminist, it's terf Cult nonsense. The fucking POINT is that this shit hurts all of us, & it doesn't have to!!!

But here take it from somebody who is definitely more qualified than me and way smarter