[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...
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[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]