Totally crazy!

Was I "trans" because I was a tomboy?  This is "pride week" and I started to wonder?  Would my parents have concluded I was trans-gendered because I preferred playing with boys, didn't play with dolls and refused to wear skirts and dresses?

I was a kid, for gawd's sake.  I knew I was a girl.  I had girlfriends, but I wasn't a "girly-girl" -- in spite of my poor, late mother's valiant and intrepid efforts to put ribbons in my hair and frilly dresses on my corps.  I hated them.  When she did manage to force me into one, I had to squat to play in the sand so as not to soil my frock.  I also insisted my first and only doll be a boy; I refused the girl variety.  My mother later told me she had to search far-and-wide to find one, but she succeeded and I named him "Jimmy".  But in the fifties, no parent would have dreamt of encouraging a child to think he/she was trapped in the wrong body.  At six!!??

I so identified with males that I used to get up with my father every morning to "shave" and dress with him.  I used a spoon and shaving cream -- something he in no way discouraged.  We'd then go down and eat breakfast together, which my mother prepared.  Never occurred to me to identify with her and butter the toast.  I was always upset that he went off to work and I had to stay home.  And instead of dressing up in my mother's clothes to walk around the neighbourhood, I dressed up in my father's -- complete with fedora.  No one worried about any of it. 

Was that why I chose a career that crossed genders?  Was that why I was independent and confident from a young age?  What that why I refused to go along with the fashion of long, straight hair, even when you could practically not set foot on campus without it?  Was that why I never stopped working?  Was that why I decided I would never ask a husband for money (to this day, never have).     

The pity of it is that now the "trans-child" insanity is running amok in elementary schools and it's, well, completely insane!  If my mother had decided to take me to some psycho "expert" to be interviewed and spied upon through two-way mirrors, while I was given all sorts of girl-versus-boy toys, I would most certainly have played with "boy" toys.  And the "expert", having interviewed me ad nauseum into panicked and terminal confusion, would have concluded I was a "trans" child.  The horror of what might have happened gives me chills to this day.

I did everything with the boys -- even trained with them in track and field because I was a faster runner than the girls.  I could go on, but at some point I began to morph into a "girl" -- albeit not the usual kind -- and started becoming attracted to boys.  Had I been convinced I were "trans", I imagine this would have completely confused and bewildered me?!  "I'm supposed to be another type of sex.  Why do I want to be with Tony (my first boyfriend) in that way?  I must be sick."  Suicide anyone?  Can you imagine the damage these psychos are doing to children who might just happen to be tomboys, or prefer dolls or painting.

Watching all the parades and media coverage, I am struck by how many GBLT (is that correct?) there are.  Yes, being gay is biological, but "trans"?  Not in my experience.

If I can grow into loving being a woman with a husband and children, if I can celebrate "hats and heels", if I can embrace dressing up and stepping out, anyone can.

Thank God we didn't have "trans" when I was a kid.