I knew from an early age that I had some sort of problem around gender. I knew I wasn't the way boys were supposed to be, and if I ever forgot, the people around me made sure to remind me. I didn't get any grief on that score within my family, but at school, in church, at camp, etc., I was called "queer" or "sissy" or "weirdo" and was an outcast, and the grown-ups always acted like there was something wrong with me and frequently told me.
I remember when I was quite young thinking it was really stupid the way so many things were "only for girls" or "only for boys," and when I encountered feminism, my reaction to each thing I learned about it was, "well, isn't that obvious?" I've also always identified with girls and women more than boys or men.
Now it seems obvious to think that maybe I should have been a girl, but back in those days, being seen as girly or "sissy" earned you all kinds of abuse from both children and adults, and I was getting too much of that already. Imagining myself as a girl would have been just too dangerous.
As for public speaking and performances: I have a pretty good idea why I wasn't any good at them. For most of my childhood, my parents and other adults in my life constantly did things that almost (?) seemed intended to kill any self-confidence. Basically, anything I thought or said or did was not only wrong, but something I should have known better than to do. To the extent I had any self-confidence at all, it was in areas in my life which I could keep more or less secret from everyone else. Music was good, but only if no one could hear me. Math was good, because I could figure out all by myself whether I was doing it right.
