Girls? YUCK!

[Frédérique]

[SIZE="2"]I was thinking the other day that I never went through a “Girls? Yuck!” period when I was a boy, and could this have possibly paved the way for the eventual emergence of my crossdressing? I was very fortunate to have, ever since day one, a female cousin almost the same age as I was, and we played together every chance we got – as such, I just naturally became comfortable with girls at an early age, and I never did the usual things boys do with other boys, with the attendant group repulsion towards all things feminine. I researched this playground separatism a little, so bear with me...[/SIZE]

“My boys want to rough house, tackle each other, and roll in the dirt. The girls prefer playing school, jumping rope, or just walking arm in arm talking,” says veteran second-grade teacher, Margie Allen of Covington, Louisiana. “Once in a while there’s a boy who’ll cross the playground to get in on the rope jumping and there’s always that one little powerhouse girl who’s right in there with the boys but these are the exception definitely not the rule.”

[SIZE="2"]Ms. Allen fails to recognize boys like me, who stand at the edge of the playground and don’t take sides (according to gender specificity). I am definitely the exception to the rule, a solitary player who either wants to be all things, or none at all. My cousin was a bit of a tomboy, but she recently told me: “I could play the tomboy, but I could be the pretty girl as well.” I grew up confused, but in a really GOOD way...[/SIZE]

Eleanor E. Maccoby Professor Emeritus of the Department of Psychology at Stanford University and author of The Two Sexes, Growing Up Apart and Coming Together: “Boys are rougher and play in larger groups usually with a leader. Girls play in smaller, more personal groups. Boys get together with a clear agenda like to play ball or build something. Girls on the other hand come together to enjoy each other’s company and mostly spend time talking and learning about each other’s families. Girls, for instance, are much more likely to know the names of their friend’s siblings. Boys are contemptuous of girls who they think cry too easily. Girls think boys are rude, uncouth, and too loud.”

[SIZE="2"]I think this is generalizing on a grand scale, but I’m beginning to see that these differences are cultivated by nearly everyone for convenience – after all, we can’t have a bunch of free-thinkers roaming the planet, can we? I think WE girls get together here to enjoy each other’s company, learning about each other in the process. In other words, we are modifying our male behavior in subtle ways, filling in the gender gap we unwittingly bought into (or created) as children. I must say I was never contemptuous of girls, which may explain why I dress with ZERO guilt...[/SIZE]

According to Dr. Maccoby school-age kids play in same sex groups about 80% of the time. The tendency to seek out playmates of the same sex begins around age 3 for girls, a little later for boys, but by age 6 boys become more exclusionary than girls. Boys may even engage in teasing to keep girls at a distance or ridicule another boy for joining in play with the girls or acting in a way they consider effeminate. Girls are much more likely to be interested in “boy games” than boys are to be interested in theirs. But make no mistake. Little girls can make boys feel just as unwelcome and unwanted as the other way around.

[SIZE="2"]Yeah, this happened yesterday, on this very site, but if you blinked you probably missed it. Again, I never excluded girls when I was young, and I have successfully extended that blessed state to the present day – it’s odd how this cross-gaming is examined and thought of as “healthy,” while crossdressing is generally seen as a perversion, or a problem requiring correction. Why not see it also as “joining in play with the girls?” A LOT of well-meaning people (even on this site) have a major problem with the word effeminacy, and that may have its roots in this alleged, yet accepted repulsion of girls at an early age...[/SIZE]

Different play styles may not be the only reason school-age boys and girls avoid each other according to Daniel Koenigsberg, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Yale Medical School. Their repulsion may actually stem from feelings of attraction. “Even at this age there’s an attraction that occurs naturally between the sexes. To kids this age these feelings can be confusing, even scary. They don’t know what to do with what they’re feeling so it’s easier to circle the wagons and simply ignore the opposite sex.”

[SIZE="2"]So, why not dress as a girl and end the confusion? I know, it may very well ADD to the “normal” confusion, but in whose mind? Why not cross over to the other side, or meet somewhere in the middle, and DO something with these non-understandable feelings? “Circling the wagons” implies conflict, or an enemy (in this case effeminacy), and ignoring the opposite sex is tantamount to ignorance. I must say I hate this “opposite sex” idea, but everyone goes to great lengths to pry the genders apart and maintain the chasm – this may explain why crossdressing gets no respect, since boys cannot, will not, or shall not be girls. Time to cry, I think...[/SIZE]

“Children need to identify with buddies of the same sex to develop a healthy sense of who they are as male or female,” says Dr. Henry J. Gault professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Illinois. “Boys need friendships with boys and girls with girls to understand themselves through understanding their friends.”

[SIZE="2"]I was indeed fortunate to have a female buddy (my cousin) when I was young, although this made my mother, and her mother, very nervous at times! I think my adolescent friendship with a girl was extremely rewarding, and when our lives eventually diverged it created an unmistakable void, impossible to fill with male friends or gender-specific activities. Rather than engage in repulsion of all things female, I embraced the natural human similarities boys and girls share. Sounds heavy, but “they” want us to see, feel, and act upon these cultivated, yet spurious, differences...[/SIZE]

So while your son might think playing with a female classmate is the grossest idea imaginable or your daughter dreams of a world without any boys at all, remember this stage won’t last forever. In just a few years those barriers will break down and the opposite sex may be all they can think or talk about for a time. All too soon you might find yourself wishing these years of icky girls and yucky boys were back again.

[SIZE="2"]That last bit was written by Mimi G. Knight, a ReineD-type discussion forum personage, albeit of the “faith, beliefs & spirituality” ilk. Imagine cobbling together all of this insightful information, only to reinforce the need for gender separation in youth AND adulthood. People create these barriers, and some intrepid souls, guided only by a dream, attempt to break them down, only to have new barriers, barricades, and obstructions to meaningful progress reconstructed in their stead. Personally, I think this is a terrible miscarriage of justice, but NOBODY cares. “Icky” girls? I don’t think so...
[/SIZE]

[SIZE="2"]Here’s the punch line – did you, an eventual MtF crossdresser, ever go through that “expected” phase of being repulsed by girls, or femininity, or effeminacy? If so, what happened?[/SIZE]

[kimdl93]

Actually, yes, I experienced exactly that. But it was a fraud. By the time I was in 6th grade, I had learned to hide / deny any desire to do things that girls liked. Occassionally during my grade school years, the desire would leak through and I'd get teased incessantly. I developed a hypersensitivity to teasing. So, when I started liking girls, my fear was that someone would notice and tease me about that too. I had a terrible crush on a classmate, and went to ridiculous extremes to avoid appearing to have a crush on her....which of course made it all the more obvious.

[SusanMarie]

NO!
Have always thought and still do, that the female of our species are much more interesting.

[TGMarla]

Yup. Girls were yucky. They had girl cooties. (I must have gotten some on me.....!) There was, in fact, a center line drawn on the paved playground we had in grade school. One side was for boys, and the other for girls. It was even enforced! So we had a clear separation of the sexes when we were in our formative years. Naturally, this changed when we reached the fourth grade. We then went to a different school, and it had a large grass playground. But by that time, we had all been conditioned to keep to our own, and still the girls tended to play girl things together, while the boys together strove for supremecy on the swings and the monkey bars. Inevitably, though, we started to mingle, especially as we grew into fifth and sixth grade.

7th grade? Fuhgetaboutit! It was on by then, and I started crossdressing at that time, too.

[Proteus]

Very interesting. I never had the typical aversion to girls, and later in adolescence I had very little sexual interest, though I've always considered myself heterosexual.

I can recall two short but distinct phases of having feminine feelings, first at 3 and then at 6, but I didn't start dressing until I was in my 20s. It never occurred to me to make the connection.

[CynthiaD]

I never went through that period, but I pretended I did to be like "the other boys." I used to do a lot of things for that reason. I used to have a hard time figuring out how the other boys knew how to act like boys. Of course it's obvious now, but it was quite puzzling to me at the time.

[josee]

In elementary school I almost always ended up playing with the girls more than the boys. Hop Scotch, playing house where sometimes I'd be the dad and sometimes i'd be the mom. Always felt more comfortable with the girls. I don't remember a "girls are icky" phase. My best friend was a girl who lived across the street.

[StevieTV]

I remember saying that...I was 13

[TommyII]

Wow alot of introspection here. I always liked girls and boys. I used to get beat up by a particular boy, but had a boy protector also. Never had a problem talking or being with either boys or girls. This whole thing never changed with me. When I was older it was always a hard choice to keep a female friend or give in to her sexual aspects and lose a friend. Maybe just someday I will find that person that can be both a friend and ????

[marlaNYC]

i never did. and, thinking back, i can't figure out how. probably to do with all the women and girls in my life growing up, that girls were fun and pretty. football (soccer) was reserved for the boys, but never thought girls were icky at all. probably why i was dating 2 or 3 years before the other boys. and, being an athlete and competing against women, i gained more respect for them as i grew through those awkward years

[Debglam]

[SIZE="2"]Here’s the punch line – did you, an eventual MtF crossdresser, ever go through that “expected” phase of being repulsed by girls, or femininity, or effeminacy? If so, what happened?[/SIZE][/FONT]

Hi Freddy!

I grew up in a neighborhood with a lot of kids. Most of the kids nearby were girls however and we spent a lot of time playing together. A lot of "pretend," board games, and even Barbies, but I was always Ken. Never had a real "girls, yuck" phase, but at school where the gender roles were rigidly enforced, I towed the line.

I played the game until I actually became attracted to girls and then it was "OK" again.

Debby

[Jennifer529]

Great question!
I never had a Yuck Girls phase,I always liked them,not to mention their pretty clothes.
I played "dress-up" with a girl friend when I was about 7/8 yrs old.

[drushin703]

I dont remember a yuck period but I do recall a lull in my thinking where I didnt much care, one way or the other, about the existence of any female other
than my mother.Then a seminal moment occured, an event that influenced the development of future events, the lights temporarily went out at the jr
high school dance.And out of nowhere Sheryl (you remember Sheryl, shy, bookworm, hair braided) kissed me and touched her tongue with mine. I dont
remember too much after that or even how I got home but any and all antagonism towards girls was to disappear.

Then high school came and girls became duplicitous, anti hero's, capable of the mose vile sentiments. It is also a time when I began to inpersonate
their mannerisms and their character. Satin paneled girdles became my providence and pantyhose that warm kiss in the dark. Thanks for asking......dana

[Risque_Christine]

Good heavens! A post that has the literary merit of Balzac (mentioned largely because of its prominence in "The Music Man" and its rough setting proximity to Kansas). I agree with your observation, Frédérique, that people drew gender lines early on in school and that crossing that line had and has terrible social consequences. I suspect you grew up, as I did, with most of your friends in elementary school being girls. That was Ok until maybe 7 or 8, but if your friends remained girls after that point, you were placed under tremendous pressure to choose new friends. I did not, probably because my father died when I was three, and my mother raised me alone, so girls seemed normal to me. You may very well have had a similar experience, as your post suggests. Being a conformist at heart, I did try but never was able to really have close male friends-- I have always felt more comfortable in the presence of women. You realized this far earlier than I did and define yourself accordingly in a place that just can't be accepting on the whole of who you are (there are always exceptions and they gladden your heart). It has at least given you some time to accept and adjust to that reality. Love women, and be a girl, if that is who you are.
Christine

[LeaP]

"did you, an eventual MtF crossdresser, ever go through that “expected” phase of being repulsed by girls, or femininity, or effeminacy? If so, what happened?"

No. I had girls as friends growing up as well as boys. It's funny, but I was about to write that I always experienced the same-sex self-segregation described in your cites, then suddenly realized that I was the exception! That is, it never occurred to me until now that I didn't feel anything akin to a gender wall when hanging around with a group of girls. Put another way, I was thinking that while I was in groups of kids, it was always all girls or all boys - but in reality, that when with girls, I didn't feel like a boy and was just one of the group. Obviously I have no idea how they experienced my presence, but I felt fully accepted. I gravitated to solitary friends rather than groups most of the time, though. And yes, female friends made my mother distinctly uncomfortable, to the point of banning them when she knew and could.

Lea

[Veronica27]

Until I was about 10, I was somewhat indifferent toward girls. I wouldn't call it a "yuck" stage, but the activities that appealed to me were all boy's (and later men's) activities, and it has remained that way for over 70 years. My friends were all boys (although there were times when a mixed group would get together to play hide and seek or some such game) and I didn't notice much about the girls other than not being interested in their activities. I grew up with both an older brother and sister, so there was no unfamiliarity with girlish activities.

At about 10 years of age, (junior high, or middles school years), we had Friday night dances, and the artificial playground barriers no longer existed. I became more conscious of the girls that I was attracted to, and gradually became more observant of them and their ways. My curiosity about various aspects of their appearance led me to the start of my crossdressing as a voyage of discovery. What did it feel like to wear this or that unusual female garment? As one who was never obsessed about my appearance (and am still not), I found the girls' increasing consciousness of their appearance to be both puzzling and intriguing. What strange force made them want to wear makeup, and adorn themselves with jewelry etc.? Why were clothes and fashions so important to them? As the youngest in the family, with an older brother, my childhood was mostly hand-me-downs in both clothing and toys. Even well into my teenage years, I simply wore what was handed to me and never worried about what it looked like. I think that a part of my continuing enjoyment of crossdressing was the novelty of such a variety of styles and types of clothing and items that bore no resemblance whatsoever to anything boys or men wore.

I still do not enjoy the more feminine type adult activities that appeal to women. Shopping for clothing is a necessity and a chore, not a recreational pursuit. The conversations that many women indulge in when in large groups I find to be boring. And yet, in a small intimate group where the conversation can be more philosophical, or political etc. I often prefer female to male companions. But yuck? Absolutely not.

[Debra Russell]

Don't remember a yuck period and always found girls a bit mesmerizing and somewhat inapprochable and very facinating, although I do remember something about girls having cooties -- I think I wanted some ...............Debra

[StarrOfDelite]

[FONT="Book Antiqua"][SIZE="2"][COLOR="black"]I was thinking the other day that I never went through a “Girls? Yuck!” period when I was a boy, and could this have possibly paved the way for the eventual emergence of my crossdressing? I was very fortunate to have, ever since day one, a female cousin almost the same age as I was, and we played together every chance we got – as such, I just naturally became comfortable with girls at an early age, and I never did the usual things boys do with other boys, with the
[SIZE="2"]

Here’s the punch line – did you, an eventual MtF crossdresser, ever go through that “expected” phase of being repulsed by girls, or femininity, or effeminacy? If so, what happened?[/SIZE]

Looking back on life from the perspective of several decades is hard to do, but on the whole I'd have to say that I didn't go through a Girls are Yuck phase.

For most of my childhood I lived in a small neighborhood where there was only one classroom of 25-30 students for each elementary school grade. The same people were together with each other for six or seven hours a day, nine months a year, and although we tended to form shifting cliques they weren't sex-based. My core group had four or five girls and about the same number of boys, and although the boys would go off and do boy things (baseball and football in season) and the girls would do girl things (I still wonder about that), we all spent as much time together at various homes, rear porches, or tree houses as we did in same gender activities. By the time we got to the much larger junior high school, puberty was kicking in, interest in the opposite sex was increasing, and girls were not Yuck to boys or vice versa.

If you're talking about activities only, then there was some separation. The boys obviously weren't going to play with dolls, but a couple of the girls were fairly good softball players, and were among the fastest runners in games of flashlight tag, e.g. One of them was even a kicka** good fighter. On the playground we all played dodge ball and Red Rover together, and would play checkers and board games ad nauseum in the summer time.

When I was very young, under age 7, I played dolls and dressup with my female cousin and her best friend, who were each 3 years older, and we exposed ourselves to each other and played doctor, too. They were very interested in male genitalia, but I remember being somewhat disappointed in the female. I had no idea the good parts were on the inside. :-) My mom and my aunt discovered those activities and put the kibosh on it asap.

[LilSissyStevie]

I was always intensely envious of girls. They were able (expected actually) to be how I felt inside. I didn't play with the other boys because I despised them and their ways. The girls wouldn't let me join in their games since I wasn't one of them. I was angry about that but not repulsed. I wanted to be sugar and spice and everything nice but I wasn't allowed to express it. I was a loner, sissy, crybaby, punching bag for the bullies. Sometimes I would have a friend that was another misfit, outcast, or weirdo like me. Other than being freaks, we had little in common. Every minute of every day of school was torture to me.

[Longing2be-Trisha]

No I always hung around the girls playing their games and hanging around the boys playing their games. In high school I went to 4 junior proms and 4 senior proms. I took girls that wanted to go but were not popular and made them feel like a queen.

Hugs

[minalost]

My earliest memories of girls are 1) having girls as best freinds, and 2) wishing I WAS one... Never went through a "hating girls" phase.

[Katelyn B]

I don't think I ever went through that phase internally, though I do remember at school hanging around as a group of boys which seemed to exclude girls on purpose. Desperate to fit in I just went along with it.

I spent most of my time at home playing with my sister and her Cindy dolls (they had a great time, and I got to actually "be" a girl when we played as we always took one or two dolls each and acted out there lives), something I would never have told anyone at school.

Later on I was far too geeky (and ostracized because of it) to be able to hang around with girls, but at no point was that ever a choice, I would love to have had proper female friends from a young age.

[Dana7]

I was a loner most of my childhood. But I had a few close friends that I would visit with and share thoughts and ideas. They were always girls. I also had a best friend in my high school/college years, a girl who lived nearby. I'd go to Karen's house to talk and just hang out. Her mom was really friendly and seemed to encourage our friendship. It never became sexual, and I never really considered it before, but it was more like we were girlfriends hanging out together. I began crossdressing very young. I did experience a time though, when I thought girls were sissies and lesser beings, so to speak...LOL. But as I got older I spent more time learning about girl things and eventually grew to appreciate things feminine. Around middle school was the first time I ever wore a dress.

I guess that throughout my life my best friends were always girls. And my girlfriends were always my best friends. The only time I ever got close to a deep friendship with a guy was in college and he passed away from leukemia after I only knew him for a few months.

In my later years is when I really began to have a fondness for feminine things. I was a retail salesman for women's shoes in college and learned a lot about fashion. I also studied about what makes up feminine beauty online when I began to dress more.

So I guess that I had an "icky" phase, but not much of one. And when I began finding close friends, they were all girls.

[lady di]

boys yuck is more like it girls let me be the sissy I am

[DonnaT]

I remember the Girls, yuck period, and did everything I could to avoid them.