fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2471 ]

[ SECRET POST #2471 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2471 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 034 secrets from Secret Submission Post #353.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The Shiloh Jolie-Pitt secret from Sunday brought out a lot of feelings in me, particularly when people were all "she's 7! She doesn't HAVE a gender identity!" or "she's too young to be thinking about things like that!"

But a guarantee that when I was 7 and being mercilessly mocked by classmates for wearing boys' Captain Planet sneakers, We were thinking about it. And I felt super confused trying to reconcile myself with all the other girls I knew. And a very few years later when I had short hair and kids I didn't even know would walk up to me all "Are you a boy or a girl?" we all knew that "boys did this and girls did that," (we just didn't know it was a fallacy).

So, when did gender become something you thought about?

Probably 7 or so.

I don't really think about it all that much, though.

When boys didn't want to play because I was a girl, somewhere in elementary school.

Physically, not until puberty, but when it hit, I felt like my body was rebelling against me.

It never really did for me. Seriously, even today unless someone else brings it up I don't think about it, and even then 9 of 10 times my response is to basically shrug, say "Whatever makes them happy" and go back to what I was thinking about before that.

The 1 of 10 is usually me rolling my eyes in disgust and telling the person to screw off for bashing someone else.

Never?

Like as a kid it wasn't something I ever really considered. I mean I got some things were stereotypically for girls/boys but it never really was something I took to heart or let inform my identity.

Outsider privilege.

Yeah...most of the people bashing that secret were bashing the creepy way OP was invested in a child's identity, not that a child HAS an identity.

I was concerned about color preferences for a while when I was six, but stopped paying attention to expectations for a while after that.

Like...puberty, when I started noticing boys. My dad never made a big deal out of me being a girl. I was expected to clean the house and mow the lawn just like my other siblings (4 girls and 1 boy). I was a tom boy so I hung out in a fairly mixed group of boys and girls.

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

(Anonymous) - 2013-10-08 23:28 (UTC) - Expand

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

kaijinscendre - 2013-10-08 23:29 (UTC) - Expand

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

(Anonymous) - 2013-10-08 23:45 (UTC) - Expand

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

kaijinscendre - 2013-10-08 23:55 (UTC) - Expand

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

(Anonymous) - 2013-10-08 23:59 (UTC) - Expand

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

kaijinscendre - 2013-10-09 00:04 (UTC) - Expand

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

(Anonymous) - 2013-10-09 00:38 (UTC) - Expand

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

kaijinscendre - 2013-10-09 00:46 (UTC) - Expand

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

diet_poison - 2013-10-09 02:33 (UTC) - Expand

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

(Anonymous) - 2013-10-09 03:28 (UTC) - Expand

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

diet_poison - 2013-10-09 14:28 (UTC) - Expand

Oh your so enlightened

insanenoodlyguy - 2013-10-09 00:59 (UTC) - Expand

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

diet_poison - 2013-10-09 02:30 (UTC) - Expand

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

kaijinscendre - 2013-10-09 02:45 (UTC) - Expand

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

(Anonymous) - 2013-10-09 03:19 (UTC) - Expand

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

(Anonymous) - 2013-10-09 04:31 (UTC) - Expand

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

(Anonymous) - 2013-10-09 04:50 (UTC) - Expand

I don't remember there ever being a time when I definitely didn't think about it. But my earliest memory of something specific was when I was three. I was camping with a group of families from my church, and I was poking around in the mud with some boys, and an older girl came up to us and asked us if we wanted to come join "the girls" and pointed to a group of girls doing something else a few yards away.

And I was so upset and mortified because what I got out of her saying that was "she doesn't think I'm one of the girls, so she thinks I'm a boy, HOW DARE SHE." I remember saying nothing, but holding up my braid so she could see it as proof that I was a girl.

Never, still isn't beyond: I am female, I like being a female, don't have any need to be male or anything inbetween.

Well I'm a cis woman, but actually I don't remember gender not being a thing for me. I mean I always kind of knew that boys were supposed to do and wear certain things and girls weren't, and that I was a girl and supposed to behave accordingly. it wasn't until I was in my teens that I started realizing how ridiculous that was.

(I'm older than most people here and grew up in the '70s. I wonder if that makes any difference? Not that I would say the whole idea of gender roles is gone, far from it of course.)

Still waiting. :P

Man, I want to know where all of you live who have never been confronted with gender as a thing from without or within. Must be a magical place.

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

starphotographs - 2013-10-09 00:15 (UTC) - Expand

OP

(Anonymous) - 2013-10-09 00:42 (UTC) - Expand

Re: OP

starphotographs - 2013-10-09 00:49 (UTC) - Expand

It's always been a thing for me. I don't think I could have labelled it at a young age, but it's always been there. I've always been frustrated by being a "girl" and having different rules than the boys.

I grew up in a really traditional household, so gender was always kinda THERE. I also kept being told from an early age that I wasn't 'acting' enough like a girl, or that certain things I did were not okay solely because it was a girl who was doing them (eg. aggressive play). I remember my mother having a sadfit at me because I stopped wearing skirts for a while - she went on about feminine grace sometimes. :/ So I had it instilled that I was female, but really bad at being female.

Never, actually. I mean, I've always had more stereotypically boyish interests since I was a kid, but I know I'm a girl. My current group of friends doesn't care about gender at all beyond joking about it, and since I hang out in both male- and female- dominated spaces online, I've been taken for both before and it doesn't really matter to me.

Seriously, my answer to anyone asking for gender pronouns is "use whatever you want, I don't really care." And if anyone bugs me about gender identity, my default answer is just "I'm a cat. Meow."

How strange it seems like 7 tends to be an influential age for girls.

It was for me. I got snubbed by one of my boy cousins (he didn't want to hang out with me, he wanted to hang out with my older brother), and I remember thinking very clearly at that time that I was going to try to behave more like a boy so that I would never get dismissed by anyone again.

So yeah, even by 7 I could recognize social gender roles, and which one got taken "more seriously". I grew up in a small, rural village, so gender stereotypes are really really strongly reinforced in general, so I could see it happening all around me.

Thankfully, I was never put down for being more boyish, or having boyish interests. It was thought of as a positive thing, to have a girl who didn't care about her clothes getting dirty, getting in danger, and didn't mind the boy's rough language. I had a lot of guy friends in high school.

I guess it became even more of a "thing" when I decided I wanted to join the military, in my early 20s. I was well accepted by the other male recruits because I didn't act like "a girl" (i.e. giggling, flipping hair, rolling eyes, talking on the cellphone). So yeah, I find that blurring gender boundaries has always been advantageous for me.

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

diet_poison - 2013-10-09 02:37 (UTC) - Expand

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

khronos_keeper - 2013-10-09 02:49 (UTC) - Expand

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

diet_poison - 2013-10-09 14:29 (UTC) - Expand

Gender has never been a thing I thought about. I thought that was fairly normal until a few years ago (and I'm in my mid-30s). The whole "gender identity" idea seems utterly bizarre to me - I consider myself female because I was born with female parts, but if not for those parts? I dunno. I just don't really care - if I had to have a double mastectomy or something, I'd be cool with that and maybe try living as a dude for awhile just out of curiosity. It wouldn't mess up my mental image of myself. (Heck, I'm 5'3" and scrawny and female, and my mental self-image is akin to the Terminator. XD)

The thing that first made me realize this was apparently odd was talking to a trans friend about how that sort of thing even works, and admitting I didn't really get it - I did "male" things and got mistaken for male and such and that just made me all the more certain that I wouldn't want to cater to stereotypes by saying I was really not female, because it would be like saying females couldn't be that way too... and my very patient friend said maybe I didn't get it because I'm agendered and have no strong attachment to a gender identity. Which makes rather a lot of sense.

I seem to remember getting gender-checked singing songs by female artists back in preschool.

when I started hearing people talk about it being a social construct, so within the past year or two. I've always been very comfortable being a girl, even though I've never felt like I fit in with certain female expectations (for lack of a better way to put it).

When I hit puberty. It was really hard on me and to be honest I haven't been comfortable with my own body since.

I was so very happy being a total tomboy (and unaware that I was one) during my early years. I went to kinder and 1st grade at a mixed-genders school and clearly remember I had a male best friend and a female best friend and the three of us played house. We'd take turns being the husband, the wife, and the cat of the family. (And yes, sometimes I was the husband, or the cat; and the same was for my female best friend; and my male best friend was sometimes the wife or the cat too). We just didn't give any fucks at all about it.

It was only when I was on 2nd grade, when I got transferred to an all-girls Catholic school run by nuns that I was suddenly aware of "how a lady was supposed to behave". I don't like much talking about it. Just let's say the homeroom teacher believed in corporal punishment (yes, this was in year 1995) and was very quick with the wooden ruler. She used to berate me for not being lady-like and other stuff unrelated to this thread.

Back to topic, the only thing she accomplished (besides trauma, not getting believed by the nuns of the school, a change of school, and my first visit to a psychologist ever); was that I absolutely loathed to be associated with anything "femme" until not so long ago.

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

diet_poison - 2013-10-09 02:40 (UTC) - Expand

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

lynx - 2013-10-09 02:52 (UTC) - Expand

Re: When did gender become a thing for you?

diet_poison - 2013-10-09 14:30 (UTC) - Expand

I've never really thought about it, either. I think I was aware that gender seemed to matter to other people, but it was never something I assigned to myself, and it never bothered me. I was happy being myself, and I had all the odd-ball loner friends, both boys and girls, at school anyway, so there was no pressure to be more 'girly'. I was just me.

It wasn't something I actually thought about in a deliberate kind of way until my early 20s, actually, when I was dithering about whether I was trans* or genderqueer. That's really the only time my gender was ever a Thing for me. It's not something that normally bothers me.

12. The kids at middle school asked me all the time, 'Are you a boy or a girl?' and 'Are you a lesbian (you can tell me the truth).' It was stupid at the time but I started wondering, 'What am I doing wrong about being a girl?' It didn't help that my first sexual feelings were about women and I was scared that, god forbid, it was true.

Then I got into Velvet Goldmine and all the glitter rock stuff and I was like, 'Huh, so this is okay? It's alright if I'm like this?'

Since I was a kid. My dad would also watch a lot of documentaries on CBC, so I was introduced to trans* identities and concepts that resonated with me from an early age. I was also scolded for not wanting to "dress as a girl", and I particularly remember my dad angrily telling my mom while we were at a mall that they should essentially pants me in order to make sure I had "the right parts".

There was also the praying that maybe, just maybe, I was intersex. Not sure how common that sort of hoping is among kids less than 10-years old, but yeah.