Me/gender history

This page discusses a subject that was once considered something about which one didn't talk openly, and some individuals (especially those of earlier generations) may find it awkward or embarrassing.

This is the story of my life as relates to gender, especially with regard to gender dysphoria. It talks rather a lot about naughty bits, and also feelings (which everyone knows are unfortunate and not something of which one admits in public to being in possession).

It is heavily based on a self-introduction I wrote for my first transition therapist but never presented.

Preface

I've often wondered why I found it so impossible, for the first 35 years of my life, to consider the idea that I might be, or would like to be (depending on how you define things), female – even before I knew that girls and boys are physically different, when I might easily have thought that the designation was arbitrary, or based on behavior. Maybe that was when my mother explained that "boys have penises and girls have vaginas", and I just accepted that without really understanding what a vagina was, or that it was visually different from a penis. I often wonder if I ever asked "are you sure I'm not a girl?"; this could have happened, but I don't remember it.

After the Great Regenderation of 2000, I found it somewhat distressing that so many other transfemale people remember believing "I am a girl" from a very early age and yet I didn't – despite the many clues, despite the high likelihood that I would have latched onto this idea and clung to it like a rabid dog if it had ever gotten as far as to become a fully conscious thought.

At some point, I realized that I had basically gotten the idea that this was in fact logically impossible; the conceptual framework I had been given for thinking about gender made it a contradiction in terms. So I literally couldn't conceive that this was the truth, no matter how much I (inexplicably) wanted it to be.

1968ish - early memory age 3-4

This is the earliest clue I can think of. I must have been about 3 or 4, because my younger sister had not yet been born. We were visiting friends of my parents, who had two boys (Chuckie and Neal) somewhere around my age. It was bedtime, and one of them said (in the mildly taunting sort of way that kids about that age often do) "we're going to see a willie!", referring to the fact that it was my turn to take off my pants and get into pajamas.

I remember wanting to say that I didn't have a willie to show -- and, for about half a second, thinking that this was true -- but then realizing that actually, yes, if I undressed completely they would in fact see my willie, because (as with them) there was one attached to me. Apparently unlike them, however, I wasn't interested in displaying it; I dealt with the issue by leaving my underwear on.

Now... it's entirely possible that I'm retroactively embellishing some of this story. Maybe I just felt resentment that something involuntarily attached to me could be used as a way of teasing me. Maybe leaving my underwear on was already an established habit by this time -- but even that seems a bit unusual; boys are not typically shy about showing their willies. I'm pretty sure I remember feeling somewhat negative about willies in general, prior to this. I remember being annoyed that I couldn't prove them wrong by somehow disowning it or removing it, since I had absolutely no emotional attachment to it.

It's kind of a small clue, and perhaps I'm making more out of it than is actually there -- but it's the earliest such incident I remember well enough to narrate.

I also remember, around this age, trying to figure out what the thing was even good for, aside from the obvious convenience of standing up to pee. It just didn't seem right; it seemed like something that wasn't quite part of me, an afterthought.

1969ish - what girls have

It happened that when I was 4, I was in the room when a girl-baby was having her diaper changed, saw a vagina for the first time, and realized that not everyone has a willie – that girls, in fact, had something completely different, and that's how it's decided that they are girls. (I'm sure I must have been told this at some earlier point, but the reality of it apparently hadn't sunk in.)

I remember immediately thinking that what girls had was much nicer, and wanting to have something all neat and compact like that instead of what I did have. This is a thought which would recur many times, though I only remember a few specific instances.

One of them: much later, in grade school (it could have been anywhere from 2nd to 9th grade; I can't seem to place any context around it), I came across some sort of fantasy story or maybe just a premise (I have no idea where; the concept seems much too racy for a children's book, or even a sex education text) where a boy wakes up one day with his penis changed into a vagina, and he has to work out how he's going to deal with other boys seeing him naked in the locker room. I don't even remember anything beyond that except that I found the premise very appealing, and spent some time trying to imagine how I would react in that situation.

It would actually never have been a problem for me; I always found it embarrassing to be naked around boys, and always hung up a towel to change behind or wrapped a towel around my waist and changed under that (this was not typical behavior, and I felt weird for doing it, but being seen felt like it would have been worse) – so there isn't any way anyone could have noticed, really.

1969-71 - preschool

Preschool, which started no later than 1969 (age 4), brought another set of clues:

• I strongly preferred playing with girls.
  • It seemed obvious to me that they were smarter than boys. They used words to communicate, and were more interested in cooperation than in fighting.
  • They were definitely nicer and gentler, or most of them were.
• Boys tended to be too violent and hostile for me.
  • What may be my earliest memory of that preschool -- possibly the first day -- was being pushed over by a boy, for no apparent reason.
  • I liked to build things, but the boys were typically more interested in knocking things down. I found it completely shocking the first time this happened to something I had built. I couldn't understand why someone would do that.

I hated it when we had competitive sports where the teams were defined by gender. I wanted the girls to win because I liked them better, but I was (of course) put on the boys' team. (I'm not sure if this happened first in preschool or later; it does seem like more of a DA kind of thing to do.)

I remember thinking that there was just something essentially different about the way girls looked, even leaving aside differences in clothing or hair-length, but the only way I could characterize it was that boys were sort of "dry" and "dusty" (I don't really know what I mean by that), while girls were more alive somehow.

There were also things which, in hindsight, threw me off the trail:

• I didn't like playing with dolls.
• I didn't like playing "house".
• I would often play "house" with the girls because that's what they wanted to play, but I felt out of place in most of the roles.
• I didn't like dresses; I preferred it when girls wore pants, because dresses limited the kinds of activities you could do.
• I didn't like high-heels or lipstick (even in pretend).
• I did like playing with some of the types of toys generally considered "boys'" toys: building blocks, Legos, electrical things

I have this memory of going down the slide in the preschool playground and thinking "there's something different about me, and it has to do with boys and girls". (I clearly had a space set aside in my head for the word "gender", but I don't think I came across it until approximately middle school.)

Another important bit: I remember thinking that if that's how boys are (violent and obnoxious), and if I'm a boy, then that violence and obnoxiousness just hadn't come out yet for some reason -- it must be lurking somewhere inside me, ready to surface at any time -- and then I'll be unfit company for girls, and they won't want to play with me anymore. It didn't help that my dad would constantly make comments about how boys were basically just little savages, and girls were sweet and civilized (...which is ironic, considering that most of his views on gender, especially later, seemed to be rather misogynistic).

That preschool-era worry that somewhere inside me was this hidden male nature that I couldn't control and which might one day emerge and take over (perhaps temporarily, perhaps permanently) seems to have become part of my identity -- as I still (as I'm writing this) find myself wanting/needing to prove, somehow, that I'm "worthy" of being female. I'm not even sure how that would work; I can't quite picture it as being like a ritual or test, and I'm not sure whether it's more important that it be convincing to other people or that it be convincing to me. (Both of those seem important, though.)

I do feel strongly that having fewer specifically male physical attributes (as few as possible), and becoming physically more feminine, would help. If I could look at myself in the mirror, or in a photograph, and (without forcing it) see someone female, that would be... amazing, and huge... (added later: so it may be that the "test" I imagine myself passing is just self-evaluation: I want to feel like I come across as unambiguously female.)

But anyway... I was at that same school, with mostly the same kids, same patterns, for 1st grade (1970-71). Then my parents sent me to a much more formal school (Durham Academy) for second grade.

(Added later: one more thing I remember -- not so much a clue about gender, but a suggestion that I felt something wasn't right. I have a vivid memory, on my 6th birthday (1971), that I didn't feel I was ready to turn six. At the party, I initially refused to participate in the ritual of candle-blowing; I remember starting to leave the dining room where the party was and heading upstairs towards my bedroom. I was eventually cajoled back down. I don't know exactly what I was thinking, but I'm pretty sure it was along the lines of believing that other six-year-olds were much more capable than I was, and I wasn't ready to take on that level of functionality yet.)