Banished from the Boy's locker room

[helenr]

Perhaps the corollary to an earlier post. I wonder sometimes if unacceptance by peers drives some of us towards a transgendered spirit? we all can relate to how mean young teen and pre teen boys can be-teasing others that are different. was this a factor for you?

[Schatten Lupus]

I doubt it lead to my being TS, but I was picked on alot when I was younger. One example was sports, and sport teams. I really didn't like sports as a kid, but tried to watch them to try to fit in in some way, to escape the constant rejection and ridicule. But, I always ended up picking the wrong teams to like, which eventually lead to some of my teachers stepping in and telling the other boys to back off.

[Melissa A.]

Really? You wanna open that door?

No. This is who I am, and not because I was picked on, didnt get enough fatherly love, or because my mom put me in a dress as an infant. I also don't need reparative therapy or a cure, other than the one I'm pursuing. You wanna play right into the hands some who would see the transsexual condition as a curable lifestyle, borne of environmental factors like upbringing? All I can say is be careful.

Hugs,

Melissa:)

[sempervirens]

I was popular in HS, wasn't picked on after my Freshman year (who isn't), still trans. If anything, what I was picked on for-- having long hair and acting too "girly"-- is pretty telling.

[Scotty]

When I was in HS I had small boobs, bald legs while all the guys had hairy legs....save for male anatomy people used to call me a girl as my hair was well down between my shoulder blades..

Bothered me then but looking at a pic from that era, damn I wished I still looked like that....without the small effort of epilating or shaving...LOL

I'm fortunate that I hardly have any body hair but back then - it was not the macho thing to do...I was quick to shower and get dressed and hide...

[Byanca]

No, can't say I was much picked on. After I passed 20, people started find out about my trans issues. So I gradually lost all my friends. The only think I could have done differently was to be open about it. And not secretly found out. And then retreating even more.

In the small community in the country(farming, very masculine) I grew up there was not any girl children(seemed to mostly have skipped a generation). So was not exposed to them until school age. Except my mothers stuff, that I used until she started throwing away shoes and stuff the I used.

3 brothers that also grew up normal, without my condition.

So environment have not played much of a part. Only delayed things I guess.

If you put a child in a cage with monkeys. The child wont turn into a monkey, but for sure will learn to behave like one.

But you are not a monkey, and you recognise this when humans come into thee zoo.

In high school I was kinda popular with some of the girls. They often put me on their lap, or opposite. In the bus I usually sat alone or with a girl chatting. Almost never with the guys.

[Veronica_Jean]

Helen,

For me I was larger than many of the others in my class for a very long time. I was ostracized more for my lack of athletics and brain rather than effeminate appearance.

Then once in High School due to a demonstration put on for a friend's homework assignment, everyone found out I was into martial arts (3 of us that hung together) and refused to even engage in anything remotely physical.

So in my case, it had nothing to do with that at all.

Veronica

[Lorileah]

My earliest memory of even thinking I was a girl was age 4, so, no it wasn't from being ostracized in high school. I wasn't a jock, I wasn't a nerd, I wasn't cool or "bad". I just was. I had a great defense though, I held the camera that would be the recorder of everyone's life in HS. They had to be nice to me. :)
I was the confidant the girls came to when their boyfriends did something wrong (I hated hearing about how everyone else was sexually active while I wasn't though). I was the one the guys came to to get that photo of them making the big play. I wasn't the one who dated cheerleaders or "popular" girls...or girls (what a waste of my teen years...made up for it in my 20's though :)) Funny thing now is I am asked to be friends by the same popular kids in HS on that Faceplate thingy. Everyone wants a free vet :)

[Felicity71]

I remember my HS as being scarey, and traumatic. I was no good at sports but then there were plenty of other boys who were the same, i doubt they transitioned. It was a horrible school.

[Faith_G]

Nope. I had "issues" long before that. I was not athletic at all, had no interest in it. I was a big kid and I lashed out pretty violently the few times I was bothered in gym class so nobody messed with me much.

[sandra-leigh]

Perhaps the corollary to an earlier post. I wonder sometimes if unacceptance by peers drives some of us towards a transgendered spirit?

In my case, I don't think so, but that was a long time ago so I just don't know for sure.

My personal history would be more consistent with people noticing / deciding that I was different somehow and choosing not to associate with me. And I never learned to pretend to be the same as the other boys. If I was "driven" towards anything by the experience, it was towards a strong inner core, towards tolerance, and towards empathy with those younger or weaker.

I would, however, not say that I was especially driven towards transgender; for example, when I played with the girls, it wasn't because I wanted to be a girl, it was because they were okay with me playing with them when none of the guys had time for me. I took my turn, didn't hog the toys, didn't try to tell the girls what to do. I do not recall the girls specifically seeking me out to play with, but they let me tag along.

[Hope]

Not a chance in hell.

I was a transexual WAY before I ever had the misfortune of stepping into a locker room. And I was generally the asshat DOING the teasing, not generally the one getting teased. (Let me apologize up-front to all of you who were teased by some shit head like me, it's not because you were losers, it's because WE were.)

Besides, isn't teasing generally understood as a means of enforcing social norms and encouraging conformity?

[Stephanie Stephens]

I think it's a good question to bring up Helen. We keep trying to put our collective finger on what is is that made us this way. I have tried, and I have had some bad things happen to me in my youth, and I can not do it. The best I come up with is something happened in the womb and there is nothing that I can do about it. Thanks allot Mother Nature! :censor:


Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't. – Margaret Thatcher

Hope; I love that Quote. Did she really say that?

[melissaK]

My trans issues pre-date any locker room experience by a decade.

Getting picked on because I was different was a way of life for me. I had flaming red hair (you get picked on for this - trust me), I was perennially the new kid in town (by junior high you meet every school bully first week at every new school, something I did 4 times in grades 7-11), I was smart enough to be outside of average and to be labelled "arrogant" or "snobbish" because I always knew things others didn't and could correct their logic errors and few could correct mine.

Mixed in that were the trans issues. I was made to stop playing hopscotch and jump rope with the girls and to go play football with the boys in third grade. In fourth grade the school again enforced that rule on me. Examples continued - but by junior high I knew enough to hide those transgender feelings and not disclose them to others.

So, as for adolescent boys locker room cruelty - mine had less to do with gender issues and more to do with being new kid, or seeing if I was really a red head by examining my pubic hair.

But I never got too much grief over such pranks because as the perenial new kid - I learned that you HAD to fight the school bully or he'd taunt you forever, and that when you fought him you'd generally win. By trial and error (fight - don't fight) I figured out that the bullies were really angry outcasts themselves, and at some level they expect to lose, or to have school authorities mad at them again further reinforcing their own belief that they are outcasts. So once you fought them, if you won and the school put you on detention with them, you were in their club. Or if it went the otherway, and you lost and they got detention, you were then labelled as "tough" or at least as someone who "won't take your crap" - and you were left alone . . .

Through all of my life the trans issues have remained. Unmoved, unaffected. I think the most logical explanation has to do with genetics - we are a group in between the most common genetic expressions of gender. I think it likely the early research which is showing we have some female brain cell structures despite male anatomical structures (or vice versa for FTM) will prove the variation in due time. The fact that MTF outnumbers FTM suggests a chromosonal link to an X gene mutation.

But, even if we can establish we are a genetic minority, we still won't gain easy social acceptance.

hugs,
'lissa

[Ze]

I'm not trans because I was made fun of, I was made fun of because I'm trans.

[helenr]

Thanks for all the insight. I can relate to many of the comments-was the last picked for playground team games (back in 1959 the teachers hadn't learned that this isn't how sides should be selected!) ,'justified' being last picked as I was totally unathletic- 50th era father never spent time or money on any sports together.
Physical differences-slightly pudgy, had a bit more nipple and breast tissue-that later got more 'masculine' looking-the pressure to be like everyone else wasn't easy.
I am sure that the crippled Y chromosone that is good only for Testosterone may have been even more defective on me-as others suggest is a factor.
I saw a TV show about a population-somewhere in SE Asia-real unusual name 'fanfanani' or similar-will have to research it again- where a boy is compelled to assume the female role for house work. This is when there aren't any girls among the children. Not everyone, of course, but the imprinting of this role-and appropriate dress leads some to further feminine behavior, including sexual. So it appears that influences outside our bodies do play some sort of role--I know that nature and nurture has been written about by experts, which I clearly am not. Just more observations. hugs, helenr

[sandra-leigh]

I can relate to many of the comments-was the last picked for playground team games (back in 1959 the teachers hadn't learned that this isn't how sides should be selected!) ,'justified' being last picked as I was totally unathletic- 50th era father never spent time or money on any sports together.


I was fairly uncoordinated, not very good at throwing anything, and was thought to be weaker than I actually was (not that I was a strongman.) So everyone assumed I was un-athletic, including the teachers. Who were then pretty surprised when, in Grade 5, completely untrained, I qualified for the school team in long jump, shot put, and came very close in high jump (1/2" inch below the fellow who was generally acknowledged as the best athlete in the school, and I definitely pressed his limits.) I didn't actually go to any 'meet' due to a completely unrelated injury I had near that time... but the coaches continued their assumptions by not bothering to train me before before my injury and not bothering to follow up the following year.

Grade 7, new school, in the spring, we had the Canada Fitness Test. The fittest people in the school? I no longer remember if I was #1, but I was at most #2; #3 was the other nerd who sat at my table (who was also assumed to be hopeless at athletics); and the fastest runner in the school turned out to be the slightly pudgy asthmatic kid who also sat at our table (I was second fastest.) The "known" athletes were bragging about how many chin-ups they'd done; the other nerd and I had done about 20 more than the best of them. Did it make a difference? Of course not: everyone conveniently forgot the matter and the coaches never even bothered to suggest that the other nerd or I should try out for anything.

I don't mean to imply that I would have won any serious competitions if I had been properly trained, but the complete lack of interest in encouraging me and seeing what I could really do, was prejudice. "Everybody knew" I was not an athlete, so why bother to actually try me with a variety of activities and see what I was good at?

[~Emma D~]

cant imagine the locker room having any influence on my life at all

i played football (soccer to the unitiated) - at my school thats all you needed to do to be one of the 'guys' and accepted , not that it particularly bothered me

away from school I had been different for years, I told my sister, I wanted to be like her when I was about 10/11, went out for a walk dressed as girl for the first time at 13
i got my first job at 16 and within weeks was buying clothes and make-up,
by 17 I came out to my parents

so no, the locker room had nothing to do with who i was, that was down to my own feelings and who i knew i was, and cant see how it would make any difference in any case

[Hope]

Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't. – Margaret Thatcher

Hope; I love that Quote. Did she really say that?

I wasn't there to hear her utter the words, but it is a generally accepted quote.