Weaponization of Socialization Research

Our understanding of socialization is one that we are continuing to develop. And while we are trying to understand how we as people develop from it, we are already taking what we have as our current working model as a version of absolute fact that we can use as a weapon against other forms of thinking. And this is something I’ve seen done, especially against the transgender community.

There are two sets of thoughts on the topic of socialization. One group tends to work from the assumption that it is a process done to someone while they are developing. The other group suggests that this is an incomplete picture, that people are not simply blank slates to be acted upon. Personally, I am inclined to believe that this second group is on the right track. And the evidence is there to suggest that they may in fact be right.

This first way of thinking is how you weaponize the concept of socialization. By holding fast to the notion that it is something done to someone, it becomes absolute. When it comes to the transgender community, there is the suggestion that transgender women aren’t women because they were socialized as men. But it ignores some glaring counter examples.

In a world where socialization is this rigid thing, where the individual has no capacity to self-identify or filter what they internalize, how do you get feminism? While this definition of socialization can explain how feminism is propagated, it doesn’t explain how it can originate. At some point, a person has to reject the socialization applied to them. They have to be able to filter something as not applicable, or wrong.

Perhaps negative socialization can explain this? Not fully. It could certainly be a factor, but at the same time, it’s created a mechanism to keep people in line. This sort of socialization also gets called enforcement, something that folks looking at gender roles know quite a bit about already. We know that this enforcement does tend to keep some people in line. It doesn’t make them happier people, but it has the intended effect. But not always. And that always is the stickler.

So we are still left with this agency that seems to play a part. The fact that two people will not react to the same socialization in the same way. One person seems to internalize some aspect of socialization and apply it to themselves as relevant. Another person in the same exact situation will reject it, filter it away as irrelevant. And this process isn’t a conscious one.

Now, I’m not going to claim that we aren’t socialized with gender roles. It was pretty clear when I was growing up that things were different, and so were expectations of each other. By how people behaved towards each other, the roles they took in relationships, and yes, how I was expected to behave. But there was never really this sense that what I was being shown about “being male” was me. But like everyone else, I was shown what both roles were supposed to be, while being told which one I should be emulating.

What I am claiming is that by not accounting for the agency that the individual has when it comes to socialization, you are in fact attempting to erase that agency. You put yourself in a position to “know better” how someone behaves or feels than they do. This behavior itself is a form of negative socialization meant to correct us into behaving the way you expect us to behave.

If this sounds familiar, it should. It is the same argument used to ignore or suggest a “fix” to many groups trying to fight marginalization. Instead of trying to include and understand our sisters (and brothers), it becomes yet another way to ignore them.

And so I suggest that perhaps we should not be using the same concepts that are meant to free people from marginalization through understanding how it happens, to turn around then further marginalize our partners and allies in the fight. We shouldn’t be weaponizing it into a means to perpetuate the cycle of marginalization.

Afterword: I do want to call attention to Kat Callahan’s own post discussing a variation of this theme on Jezebel. It is something I ran across while writing this piece. She tackles it in a slightly different way, but in essence, we are looking at very similar behavior.