I'm apprehensive about trusting my memories as far as feeling male go. It's a well known fact that our memories are coloured by the present, so I'm afraid of remembering inaccurately.
I am positive that I identified strongly as a female at ages eighteen and nineteen at least.
But I recently remembered something that I am also positive of. When I was an young teenager, I did wonder if I was male. I mean, obviously, I had a female body, but I thought it might also be a male body. I was too embarrassed to ask though, so I kept it to myself. I had no problem with it. It was just embarrassing to talk about that kind of stuff. I later confirmed that my body was acting normally for a female. But I do know for sure that I did think I was also male.
I don't trust any other memories and I don't know what to make of this.
I don't really trust any memories at all. And I was a bit paranoid about that shortly after I found out about transsexualism/transitioning/etc.
Like I know I dressed up as the character Alanna from Tamora Pierce's Lioness Rampant series for Halloween when I was in grade 7. 'Cause there are pictures. (She's a girl who is dressed up as a guy 90% of the time - so I could get away with it.) Did I do that 'cause I thought I should be a girl? Or did I do it 'cause I just thought she was cool and I wasn't thinking about gender at all? If I go back and pull out the memory, is that real? How many times have I pulled up that memory? Each time it's altered and mutated and coloured by what I was thinking at that time. Not to mention altered by what I am thinking now. It is entirely untrustworthy.
I decided it doesn't matter. That how I currently feel overrides everything else. I don't look to my history for justification. If other people want to, cool. But putting together my life to explain something feels too much like assembling a jigsaw. Life is messy and chaotic and confusing. There will be bits that don't fit. S'okay.
QuoteI decided it doesn't matter. That how I currently feel overrides everything else. I don't look to my history for justification. If other people want to, cool. But putting together my life to explain something feels too much like assembling a jigsaw. Life is messy and chaotic and confusing. There will be bits that don't fit. S'okay.
^ Exactly this :)
Its hard to figure out what you were thinking at that age. Some parents are actually bringing their kids up now to be 'gender neutral'. Will be interesting to see how these kids turn out when they are Adults I think. By their Neutrality, they allow their kids to experience what they like from life, not smeared by any walls of male and female bigotry, where they have to dress in a certain way, or play with toys usually associated to that gender, they are supposed to be.
I don't see myself as anything else than a 'woman', but what happened in my childhood is a distant memory, and remains that, 'distant'.
Funny you should mention that. My siblings and I were raised gender neutral. We are all adults now. I'm currently genderfluid (not because of the social stuff because I never learned it). My sister presents as androgynous, as far as I know identifies as female and bisexual, and is physically female. My brother is male (both mentally and physically), straight, and recently dumped his girlfriend for being homophobic.
Although that certainly isn't enough for conclusive evidence, it does seem that being raised gender neutral has little to no effect on gender identity and sexual orientation. However, all three of us are very accepting of differences in gender identity and sexual orientation.