|
Listen in your language by clicking the little world on the player.
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
It was 1967. Mommy was pregnant. This is mommy’s fourth child and girl number three. This time it will be a boy regardless. Mommy played games with big brother Mark. Mark was the only boy and he was the oldest. He was going to turn nine that year. Mommy and Daddy bet Mark a candy bar. If the baby was a boy, he would get a candy bar. If it’s a girl he would get nothing.
Everyone got excited about the baby. It was going to be a boy. Everyone was excited to see the new baby boy. Only… When the baby arrived, it wasn’t a boy at all. Everyone was disappointed. So disappointed that Mommy and Daddy gave Mark the candy bar and decided that little Tina was going to be the boy they never had.
As she was developing, little Tina was given boy toys for birthdays and holidays. For Christmas, she got one doll and the rest cars and other boys’ toys. Little Tina was encouraged to do boy exercises like situps and pull-ups and push-ups and things that build the boy’s muscles.
The family told little Tina that she was a boy and boys did certain things. Little Tina wanted to play with dolls and have tea parties with her dolls or playschool bus with her stuffed animals. She didn’t have many baby dolls but she did have stuffed animals to use as baby dolls.
It didn’t matter that little Tina wanted to do girl stuff all the time. She loved playing with her baby doll. Elizabeth was her name and she was little Tina’s favorite toy.
Little Tina went to school and when the teacher asked if she was a girl or a boy she happily said “I’m a boy”. That was incorrect and the teacher corrected little Tina and the kids teased her. She was confused. The whole family told her she was a boy. They told her she couldn’t do the girl things she liked because she was a boy. Now, everyone at school is saying she’s a girl.
What was going on? Little Tina confronted her mommy and her mommy said she is a boy and Tina argued. Mommy told Tina to go talk to her daddy and Daddy said “You’re not a girl or a boy.
Little Tina asked, “Then what am I?”. Daddy told little Tina that she was a Tomboy. They continued to pressure her into playing with boy toys and doing boy exercises. They even gave her boy clothes to wear. Her parents created gender confusion for little Tina confusing her self Identity.
She lived under double standards. Standards for both boys and girls. Whatever was convenient at the moment. She had to be a little lady in school and church but at home, she was under both rules. The rules for boys like not to hit girls, and rules for girls because she is a girl.
The family couldn’t hold little Tina back from developing her own gender identity as a girl. She was born a girl and identified as a girl but for the first few years of little Tina’s life, she was needlessly confused about gender because of the lies.
How I healed
In 1997, I was about 30 years old, I finally connected with the feminine divine. I met some lesbians and I learned about being a woman from them. By 2002, Brenda mentioned how I had become more feminine. I was finally able to heal that part of me and connect with that feminine energy within.
I don’t do pushups or situps or pull-ups anymore. I have to admit when they had me working out like that, my biceps and other muscles built up and it helped me survive some of the traumas. Such as when I was seven years old and I was dodging a murderer who was trying to kill me. That’s a heads-up that in future stories, it will be about violence. Specifically community violence.
I’m lucky that it wasn’t worse. I don’t think I could have survived worse as a child. The whole gender identity thing doesn’t give me a real insight into what a transgender’s life is like. However, the part about being pressured to be a gender I didn’t identify with is where I make that connection. I was pressured and encouraged to act like a boy when all I wanted was to be myself, a girl. I connect to the abuse part, not the struggle.
The one thing that makes me feel ashamed of myself here is that with all the lies at the beginning of my life, why on earth did I continue to believe them on anything? How we ended up in California, my gender, what else were they going to lie about?
I could go on about it but I will spare us both.
Writing for Healing
I wrote this story a few years ago. I was still trying to make sense of the crazy-making and mostly the lying that affected me growing up. This lie about my gender, I get it.
They wanted a boy and they made such a big deal about it to my brother and other kids that they had to make me a boy. But it hurt me and it’s for this reason that I disagree that children should undergo gender surgery.
If my parents had that option when I was little, I would be a transman right now or worse dead from suicide. They would have had the surgery done regardless of my identity as a cis female.
That choice, in my opinion, should be made after the age of 21. I believe that anyone wanting this surgery should have full disclosure of the adversity they are going to go through. I’m not talking about just the physical part but the part about the rejection from society and even loved ones.
The potential to be abused as a trans person should be addressed and these things can’t be handled by children. These are traumatic adult concepts.
While I was a teenager and older, the boys would sit around talking about girls in front of me. When I would make the point that I was a girl too they would tell me that I wasn’t a real girl. My parents couldn’t make me a real boy but they succeeded at making me a Tomboy.
They thought of me as one of the guys. I was a girl that liked guys. After escaping my first abusive marriage and three kids later, my mother asked me if I was a lesbian. Um NO! I still like men and I’m not a lesbian. Mother, I am not the boy you never had.
The Boy They Never Had
The day she arrived, they were really surprised.
They were hoping for a boy. The girl they had was as small as a toy. A 5-pound ball of joy…. NOT a boy.
Girl Number Three? It just couldn’t be.
They set out to do their best to change her that day. It had to be this way.
They wanted a boy and a boy she will be. When she’s old enough, we will explain she will be our Tom Boy. Not a real girl or even a boy but she will be our pride and joy.
Boy rules, boy toys, boy haircut, boy clothes. She will be that boy we never had. It doesn’t matter if it makes her sad. We will still be glad.
As she grew older she ran with the boys and often punched them in the mouth. It was ok to fight as long as she didn’t hit girls or be a grouch.
Then one day she wanted to make out with her friend on the couch.
Society says it is expected after all her friend is a boy and Girls kissing boys is accepted.
Her gender confusion would swirl. She would get upset when he talked about other girls.
Mixed rules. The double standards. She wore them both. It stunted her inner growth. These mixed messages she was told left her confused until she was old.
If it wasn’t for the lesbians to introduce her to the feminine divine she would never have known she is just fine, there was nothing wrong with her mind.
She was simply straight. She asked questions since she was 8. The only thing wrong was the insanity of her family’s hate. To other girls, she couldn’t even relate.
She couldn’t fit in, right or wrong, she couldn’t win.
She grew up confused. At the hands of her parents, she was used.
They screwed her up; they fucked with her head, even made her wish she was dead. She had been destroyed when all was done and said.
It took her a lifetime to discover that she could reveal what was inside and no longer had to hide. Regardless of her mother, she has finally found her true love.
Being a girl is just fine; being her true self is truly divine. Her family had crossed the line.
It was her family who is bad for trying to make her the boy they never had.
She found herself and for that she is glad.
She loves being a girl and is never sad that she is NOT that boy they wished they had.
At what age does a child develop gender identity?
According to Jason Rafferty, MD, MPH, EdM, FAAP Children become conscious of the difference between girls and boys sometime around the age of two years. Children generally label themselves as a girl or boy before the age of three and by the time the child turns four years old most children have a stable sense of their gender identity.
He goes on to say in his article about gender identity in children that there is a difference between sex and gender. The sex of the child is the assigned sex which is based on male or female genitalia. Gender identity is an internal sense of gender.
Developing a Sense of Self
With this said, when I was developing my sense of self which includes my gender, my concept of male and female was distorted by my caregivers. My parents were calling me a boy and trying to get me to act like a boy. They did that regardless that I was already beginning to identify with my actual gender of female.
As a five-year-old, I believed that boys liked to play with dolls, pretend to be a mommy, throw tea parties with babies, and other girl things. I liked riding a bike and I played with cars because those are the toys my parents bought for me.
I don’t ever recall asking for any type of car or other boy toy but I did ask for every doll on television. Unfortunately for me, I only got one doll for Christmas and the rest were boy toys.
I was expected to play with them. I rarely played with the boy toys although I did try to play with them from time to time out of boredom and a sheer need to find something to do.
I liked playing with the balls. Bouncing them around or against a wall. I ended up liking Jacks as I got older around nine. I believed that my gender was called a boy. I loved doing girl things and because my one baby doll was my favorite toy, I thought boys loved dolls. I had male friends but not at age five.
I was often chased away from each group activity in school. I’m not sure if it’s because I was more advanced in educational things like reading, counting, colors, and basic kindergarten things than the other kids or if it’s because I am white and didn’t know the real definitions of boy and girl or maybe all of them.
I lived in Los Angeles where white people were never accepted in my lifetime. I went to Suva Elementary that year. I didn’t learn how to make friends because the kids saw the teacher and her aids shove me aside so I assume they followed her and did the same.
How this affects me today is in regard to lying. Because I was confused about the difference between girls and boys because I was LIED to by my parents, it put me in the mindset to never lie to my kids and never let anyone lie to them either.
I will correct a lie every time.
Recovery From The Confrontation
My family lies about the dumbest things. From how we ended up in California, to my gender. Even the current lie is that our childhoods were amazing and wonderful.
Also, the lie that my family is upstanding when it’s dragging down a golden gutter of secrets. My gender identity is consistent with my assigned sex but it was never consistent with the lie my parents tried to tell me.
I fully am happy with my identity as a Cis Female today. I now understand what this did to my identity as I was growing up.
Anger and disgust well up inside me as I think about this story. The injustice and how easy it would have been just to let me be the girl I was meant to be.
After that day when I confronted my parents, my parents and my oldest sister Robin would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. When I answered with things like mailman, policeman, or fireman, I was told I can’t be those things because I’m a girl.
It was their way of trying to get me to choose to be a boy. It was a constant argument for a while. Asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up with gender roles that I didn’t understand. They acted like they believed that I could be manipulated into being the gender I never was.
Once I found out the truth that day, it was guaranteed that their plan to make their daughter a boy was over. It failed and was completely done. All they had left was to make me a tomboy.
Feeling on the Healing Path
I feel now that I want to somehow throw it in their face that they failed and that I never became a boy with a sarcastic Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha at the end. I know that is immature but I can’t help how I feel.
I also know that as I heal, my feelings and thoughts on this will change too.
Now that I’m confronting these issues that I call my petty issues, how I feel about them seems to change. As I heal the bigger ones, the little one’s surface.
Making Sense Of It All
As I heal my wounds they are becoming less significant. The small ones that have been addressed only surface as a memory. I’d like for the feelings attached to these memories to fade away and then simply become memories I rarely remember.
I now have a strong sense of self and I no longer question who I am. It was disappointing when I realized that everyone else already knew who they were. Healthy people have a strong sense of self long before they were my age.
One of the ways that abuse is insidious to the life of a child as they develop into adults is that sense of self. The sense of self that so many people take for granted, is made up along the way as a child develops. As the child grows into an adult they will be able to have the self as the center to ground when making decisions or discernments.
There are many challenges that a child will experience along with their own experiences of adversity, trauma, and social struggles. It’s best to let the child be him/herse as he/she develops in her/his own way.
Taking Time for Self Analysis
I’m glad that my parent’s interference with the development of my sense of self and my self Identity didn’t keep me from living my life as a woman. My life was tragic but at least I lived it as a woman who felt like a woman.
I didn’t feel like a feminine woman. I was never really into hair and nails and clothes and I only own about 3 pairs of old shoes that will probably be falling apart by the time I buy a new pair.
I loved my kids, homemaking, crafting, and other girl things though. Even today, I don’t even know how to apply all the different types of makeup and I’m ok with that. I particularly enjoyed being a parent and doing the parent things like organizing fun time as well as my chores.
Being ok with who I am didn’t begin until I started defining who I am. That took a lot of self-reflection and I’ve discovered along the way that I’ve been told a lot of lies about me.
Freedom is living your own life knowing who and what you are even if the world disagrees.
EDIT: 2023: WOW! I found out last year that I am autistic. I also realized that my parents didn’t make me gender confused. Now that I have finished therapy and all that fun stuff, I have remembered enough and can now put stuff together.
My parents weren’t trying to make me a boy. I have now come to realize that I have always had a gender identity disorder and have always blamed my parents for turning me into a boy. Now that I can remember so much more now and I now understand more about things, I have realized that when it comes to my gender identity, my parents had nothing to do with that.
Out of all the traits I have as an Autistic, they never actually abused me or even made fun of me or any of that when it came to my masculine ways. They handled it well. In fact, I had no idea that being a “masculine female” was not part of the norm.
My sister Brenda seemed actually shocked when I was medicated with a medication that is used for both Autism and Gender Identity disorder and my mannerisms changed unconsciously. She asked me when I became feminine. That was the first time in my life that I realized that I was not hiding my masculine identity very well.
hmmm. I am happy being who I am and I am glad now that I am old and that I never had surgeries or changed my body. I love that out of all the bad things they did to me, how they handled my gender identity disorder was pretty freaking amazing considering the tools had to work with.
I forgive them for what I used to believe and now I understand that this is the one thing that my mother handled very well. I have realized that my mother had some wisdom that she managed to pass down to me. I have learned about the people I am from and about the culture and all that. Now I understand so much more.
Anyway, all stuff for a whole new post.
