The Story of My Gender IdentityMy family allowed me to be a girlish tomboy (as long as I was still a girl). The Dad I was scared of took me fishing almost every weekend. He pitched to me so I could practice my swing, and taught me the importance of batting left-handed in a world of righthanded pitchers. We bonded silently through fishing and sports without any emotions or feelings; talking was unnecessary. My father never treated me like a daughter or a son. I was someone to be trained into the ways of manhood, but a silent manhood, where talking isn't necessary. But I was still a girl, even though deep down I felt like his son, not his daughter. Men were scary. They hit little girls and their brothers. Why would I want to do that?
I remember the time I taped my developing B-cup breasts with masking tape, age thirteen or fourteen. My parents were gone, and I walked around the house with my breasts taped flat under my shirt, admiring how I looked with a boy's chest. The tape hurt like hell when I pulled it off my nipples. I never did that again, but sometimes I thought about it. Later, when my breasts grew much larger, I wished they could go back to that B-cup size, where tape made them go away.