(Trans)Woman In Progress: Childhood Confessions
At work recently, we had a mother and daughter in the store, with the mother looking through color samples while the kid kept everyone preoccupied.
She was hyperactive, probably ADHD, but with the kind of charming warmth that you don't really mind and she didn't really drive us crazy. We have a kids' center, and at one point, she was pulling out a toy loader / dump truck, with the mother telling her to put it back -- although the mother didn't seem to object to any of the other toys. The child was asking us questions about color, wanting to see the tint machine and how it worked, wanted to know where we kept the coffee for the coffee pot and asked the girls on staff if they were sisters.
And then the conversation with her mother took a bit of a different turn, when it was nearly time for them to go. They had to get ready for some kind of function (a birthday party for someone? I didn't hear that part):
Girl: "I'm not going to have to wear a dress, am I?"
Mother: "Don't be silly. Of course, you're going to wear a dress."
Girl: "But I don't like dresses. Girls wear dresses."
Mother: "And you're a girl."
Girl: "But I don't want to be."
The protest was actually somewhat longer than that -- I can't remember it word for word. But it was obvious that neither mother nor child were happy about each others' thoughts on the situation. I had to excuse myself and lock myself in the office so I could bawl for awhile. It was just like that, as plain and matter-of-fact as kids are. The poor kid really has no idea the hell in store for him.
We always know. We always know. But then we're taught that the idea is silly, that we're wrong. Later, we begin to think something's wrong with us, to feel the way we do. We bury it. We try to live the way we're told that we're supposed to. We do everything conceivable to hide it, always conscious of anything that we might do that might seem effeminate or masculine. And sometimes we mask ourselves so completely that we start to believe it for awhile... until everything comes crashing down around us.
One of the hardest things for the people we care about and who we come out to to understand is how we can have known all of our lives, and yet given little or no indication to them for so many years. This usually leads to a wall of disbelief and doubt that persists for awhile, until the person realizes that this isn't just a momentary flip decision we've made.
But that's how it starts. In the beginning, we're told "Don't be silly. Don't be ridiculous." Probably, the mothers and fathers and aunts and teachers and everyone else telling us this are so convinced that what we're doing is "just a phase" that it barely registers in their memory, but the constant repetition of this mantra eventually makes it pretty clear to us that what we're feeling isn't socially acceptable. Later, it turns from casual chiding into teasing and scorn, until we learn to hide it well enough.
I remember looking at my baby pictures when I was very young, and asking why I was wearing blue dresses, pink dresses, etc., and being told that it was a common practice. This changed a belief that I'd had that I should have been a girl into more of a conviction that I HAD been one, and something was being hidden from me. And although my parents still tell me that this never happened, I'm still quite sure that I remember having in the keepsakes box that my mother had made both a pink and a blue baby bracelet, and being told that the hospital had simply made a mistake. I remember thinking that it was the blue bracelet which was a mistake. Sometime around when I was 8, the pink bracelet disappeared. I suppose it could have been a dream, but it still seems so real to me.
Growing up, early birthdays and Christmases found me unwrapping a football or a skateboard or a Tonka tractor, to which I had to feign delight, not wanting my parents to feel disappointed. But what I really preferred to play with was a little Thumbelina doll that no one really remembered where it came from. It was a tiny big-headed princess that I related to and was both confidante and proxy for all the little fantasies I had racing around my brain. At some time around when I turned 6, the little Thumbelina disappeared, and while I tried not to let anyone see me do it (knowing it was "wrong" to grieve over this particular toy, which I wasn't supposed to be attached to), I cried for days. Child or not, I was still apt enough to figure out that my parents had done something with it, because they'd felt I was too attached to it. I think this is what most strongly told me that I would have to hide what I was feeling.
My mother likes to laugh and tell everyone how I came home one day crying because one of the neighborhood boys had called me a "twinkletoes." I don't remember the start of the incident, but I remember that I was trying very hard to be a boy and be what was expected of me. And the accusation hurt most because it meant that I'd failed. Every time someone insinuated otherwise, it was very hurtful. And it was insinuated often, long into high school. Although I wasn't (to my knowledge) visibly the kind of person that would trip the gaydar so to speak, people did consider me effeminate and strange. I never dated in High School. I had one girl ask me to a dance once, which completely shocked me. But I remember realizing even then that there was a lot about me that I would have to hide from her, and feeling that at some point I would be incompatible and probably freak her out.
I was about 11 when I first heard the word "transvestite." It doesn't accurately describe me (it's not about clothes), but at that time I didn't know it. The word was spoken on television in a context that I was actually able to figure out what it meant. I pretended to be ambivalent to the program, exited the room and went upstairs to my bedroom where I cried all night.
I realized that if there actually was a word for it in the English language, then I wasn't the only one. Until then, I'd felt alone in my freakishness -- that in all of creation, I must have been the only kid out there to be so f---ed up. This was only compounded by my religious beliefs, with this constant cycle of shame and begging forgiveness and inevitably feeling drawn back into the feminine world only to once again become filled with shame that made me so desperate to earn some form of redemption and deliverance from God. A deliverance which never came.
Now, even though for me gender change isn't about wearing frilly things, in the earliest days I didn't really know that. I was still figuring things out, and tried it just because I was curious about all the things that women do. I tried it when I was about 9 or so, and I got caught. Nearly. It turned out to be a terrifying, humiliating experience as my mother made issue of it. I finally managed to keep hidden under the bed covers and get her to leave me alone, but I'm certain she knew that it was a pair of her underwear pilfered from her dresser that I had on. I was so traumatized by that, that I never dared to try again.
A couple days later, while she was putting her makeup on, she offered to show me how, like it was a snide joke.
When I got a little older, my toys gravitated toward Star Wars action figures, and then later G.I.Joes. For me, they were dolls, just on a smaller scale. Princess Leia would be my protagonist, for whom everyone would lust and love and try to possess. Later, it was Scarlett, and then (because I liked the figure's hair more) The Baroness. I didn't care that I couldn't dress or undress her. In the Baroness, I had a proxy by which I could live out a myriad of weird and wonderful adventures.
My sister was also growing out of diapers by then, and was playing with Strawberry Shortcakes and the like. This was a godsend, because not only could I play dolls within a socially-acceptable situation (my parents didn't panic, because I was entertaining my sister), I also had a playmate to enjoy the time with. But I felt that the clock was ticking -- that I could only do that for so long before someone started catching on.
I played with my G.I.Joes for far longer than was healthy, when it came right down to it. Until age 18 or 19, they were still a guilty pleasure. They were my escape. The real world was a place where classmates called you sissy and humiliated you constantly. The real world was a place where you had to take on a meaningless part-time job at the Dairy Queen and later as a janitor, to eke out a miserable living in hopes of one day being able to move out and support yourself. The real world was a place where you had to do everything possible to try to "pass" as a man, in order to be accepted. Escapism was my only real opportunity to explore the life I felt I needed to live. Even if only with a pathetic proxy.
I've always tried to "pass" as a man. I had to train myself to have a deeper voice, as it barely deepened naturally. I also tried practicing walking to try to mimic my dad, but I could never convince kids at school that I was big or tough enough to pull off that kind of a look. Then I tried to mimic Steve Austin (The Six Million Dollar Man). Then it was the Fonz. Then, it was (don't laugh) George Jefferson. Yeah, yeah, hey, I was a kid. Whatever. By my teens, my acting had improved somewhat -- especially with my discovery of the knuckle-dragging principle -- and it was about then that I discovered the stage persona of (don't laugh) Andrew Dice Clay. Fortunately, by that time, I was more selective. I didn't care for the arrogance or overdone posturing, but did like the smooth motion, the casual, careless, slangy abandon. With sometimes hours of daily practice, I became more convincing.
The feeling of alienation and freakishness is in everything. The self-consciousness of being certain that people are snickering behind your back, the feeling of defeatism when you look at your goals and realize that they're not going to fulfill you even if you attempt to complete them, the unearthly sensation when you are holding your lover and touching her that you're in fact on the wrong side of the equation... your whole self-image goes completely down the drain, because you believe that this is all the result of a character flaw -- that it's your fault, something is wrong with you, and that you're to blame, because you can't fix or walk away from it.
If I have found anything in my transition, it is the ability to look in the mirror and to see someone who I feel comfortable to be, someone truer to what I feel, someone I can finally admire and respect, someone who now has the opportunity to live some of the life I felt I was supposed to have.
Which is something that I always knew I needed, but always felt I had to run away from.
She was hyperactive, probably ADHD, but with the kind of charming warmth that you don't really mind and she didn't really drive us crazy. We have a kids' center, and at one point, she was pulling out a toy loader / dump truck, with the mother telling her to put it back -- although the mother didn't seem to object to any of the other toys. The child was asking us questions about color, wanting to see the tint machine and how it worked, wanted to know where we kept the coffee for the coffee pot and asked the girls on staff if they were sisters.
And then the conversation with her mother took a bit of a different turn, when it was nearly time for them to go. They had to get ready for some kind of function (a birthday party for someone? I didn't hear that part):
Girl: "I'm not going to have to wear a dress, am I?"
Mother: "Don't be silly. Of course, you're going to wear a dress."
Girl: "But I don't like dresses. Girls wear dresses."
Mother: "And you're a girl."
Girl: "But I don't want to be."
The protest was actually somewhat longer than that -- I can't remember it word for word. But it was obvious that neither mother nor child were happy about each others' thoughts on the situation. I had to excuse myself and lock myself in the office so I could bawl for awhile. It was just like that, as plain and matter-of-fact as kids are. The poor kid really has no idea the hell in store for him.
We always know. We always know. But then we're taught that the idea is silly, that we're wrong. Later, we begin to think something's wrong with us, to feel the way we do. We bury it. We try to live the way we're told that we're supposed to. We do everything conceivable to hide it, always conscious of anything that we might do that might seem effeminate or masculine. And sometimes we mask ourselves so completely that we start to believe it for awhile... until everything comes crashing down around us.
One of the hardest things for the people we care about and who we come out to to understand is how we can have known all of our lives, and yet given little or no indication to them for so many years. This usually leads to a wall of disbelief and doubt that persists for awhile, until the person realizes that this isn't just a momentary flip decision we've made.
But that's how it starts. In the beginning, we're told "Don't be silly. Don't be ridiculous." Probably, the mothers and fathers and aunts and teachers and everyone else telling us this are so convinced that what we're doing is "just a phase" that it barely registers in their memory, but the constant repetition of this mantra eventually makes it pretty clear to us that what we're feeling isn't socially acceptable. Later, it turns from casual chiding into teasing and scorn, until we learn to hide it well enough.
I remember looking at my baby pictures when I was very young, and asking why I was wearing blue dresses, pink dresses, etc., and being told that it was a common practice. This changed a belief that I'd had that I should have been a girl into more of a conviction that I HAD been one, and something was being hidden from me. And although my parents still tell me that this never happened, I'm still quite sure that I remember having in the keepsakes box that my mother had made both a pink and a blue baby bracelet, and being told that the hospital had simply made a mistake. I remember thinking that it was the blue bracelet which was a mistake. Sometime around when I was 8, the pink bracelet disappeared. I suppose it could have been a dream, but it still seems so real to me.
Growing up, early birthdays and Christmases found me unwrapping a football or a skateboard or a Tonka tractor, to which I had to feign delight, not wanting my parents to feel disappointed. But what I really preferred to play with was a little Thumbelina doll that no one really remembered where it came from. It was a tiny big-headed princess that I related to and was both confidante and proxy for all the little fantasies I had racing around my brain. At some time around when I turned 6, the little Thumbelina disappeared, and while I tried not to let anyone see me do it (knowing it was "wrong" to grieve over this particular toy, which I wasn't supposed to be attached to), I cried for days. Child or not, I was still apt enough to figure out that my parents had done something with it, because they'd felt I was too attached to it. I think this is what most strongly told me that I would have to hide what I was feeling.
My mother likes to laugh and tell everyone how I came home one day crying because one of the neighborhood boys had called me a "twinkletoes." I don't remember the start of the incident, but I remember that I was trying very hard to be a boy and be what was expected of me. And the accusation hurt most because it meant that I'd failed. Every time someone insinuated otherwise, it was very hurtful. And it was insinuated often, long into high school. Although I wasn't (to my knowledge) visibly the kind of person that would trip the gaydar so to speak, people did consider me effeminate and strange. I never dated in High School. I had one girl ask me to a dance once, which completely shocked me. But I remember realizing even then that there was a lot about me that I would have to hide from her, and feeling that at some point I would be incompatible and probably freak her out.
I was about 11 when I first heard the word "transvestite." It doesn't accurately describe me (it's not about clothes), but at that time I didn't know it. The word was spoken on television in a context that I was actually able to figure out what it meant. I pretended to be ambivalent to the program, exited the room and went upstairs to my bedroom where I cried all night.
I realized that if there actually was a word for it in the English language, then I wasn't the only one. Until then, I'd felt alone in my freakishness -- that in all of creation, I must have been the only kid out there to be so f---ed up. This was only compounded by my religious beliefs, with this constant cycle of shame and begging forgiveness and inevitably feeling drawn back into the feminine world only to once again become filled with shame that made me so desperate to earn some form of redemption and deliverance from God. A deliverance which never came.
Now, even though for me gender change isn't about wearing frilly things, in the earliest days I didn't really know that. I was still figuring things out, and tried it just because I was curious about all the things that women do. I tried it when I was about 9 or so, and I got caught. Nearly. It turned out to be a terrifying, humiliating experience as my mother made issue of it. I finally managed to keep hidden under the bed covers and get her to leave me alone, but I'm certain she knew that it was a pair of her underwear pilfered from her dresser that I had on. I was so traumatized by that, that I never dared to try again.
A couple days later, while she was putting her makeup on, she offered to show me how, like it was a snide joke.
When I got a little older, my toys gravitated toward Star Wars action figures, and then later G.I.Joes. For me, they were dolls, just on a smaller scale. Princess Leia would be my protagonist, for whom everyone would lust and love and try to possess. Later, it was Scarlett, and then (because I liked the figure's hair more) The Baroness. I didn't care that I couldn't dress or undress her. In the Baroness, I had a proxy by which I could live out a myriad of weird and wonderful adventures.
My sister was also growing out of diapers by then, and was playing with Strawberry Shortcakes and the like. This was a godsend, because not only could I play dolls within a socially-acceptable situation (my parents didn't panic, because I was entertaining my sister), I also had a playmate to enjoy the time with. But I felt that the clock was ticking -- that I could only do that for so long before someone started catching on.
I played with my G.I.Joes for far longer than was healthy, when it came right down to it. Until age 18 or 19, they were still a guilty pleasure. They were my escape. The real world was a place where classmates called you sissy and humiliated you constantly. The real world was a place where you had to take on a meaningless part-time job at the Dairy Queen and later as a janitor, to eke out a miserable living in hopes of one day being able to move out and support yourself. The real world was a place where you had to do everything possible to try to "pass" as a man, in order to be accepted. Escapism was my only real opportunity to explore the life I felt I needed to live. Even if only with a pathetic proxy.
I've always tried to "pass" as a man. I had to train myself to have a deeper voice, as it barely deepened naturally. I also tried practicing walking to try to mimic my dad, but I could never convince kids at school that I was big or tough enough to pull off that kind of a look. Then I tried to mimic Steve Austin (The Six Million Dollar Man). Then it was the Fonz. Then, it was (don't laugh) George Jefferson. Yeah, yeah, hey, I was a kid. Whatever. By my teens, my acting had improved somewhat -- especially with my discovery of the knuckle-dragging principle -- and it was about then that I discovered the stage persona of (don't laugh) Andrew Dice Clay. Fortunately, by that time, I was more selective. I didn't care for the arrogance or overdone posturing, but did like the smooth motion, the casual, careless, slangy abandon. With sometimes hours of daily practice, I became more convincing.
The feeling of alienation and freakishness is in everything. The self-consciousness of being certain that people are snickering behind your back, the feeling of defeatism when you look at your goals and realize that they're not going to fulfill you even if you attempt to complete them, the unearthly sensation when you are holding your lover and touching her that you're in fact on the wrong side of the equation... your whole self-image goes completely down the drain, because you believe that this is all the result of a character flaw -- that it's your fault, something is wrong with you, and that you're to blame, because you can't fix or walk away from it.
If I have found anything in my transition, it is the ability to look in the mirror and to see someone who I feel comfortable to be, someone truer to what I feel, someone I can finally admire and respect, someone who now has the opportunity to live some of the life I felt I was supposed to have.
Which is something that I always knew I needed, but always felt I had to run away from.
posted by Mercedes Allen at 3:56 AM
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