Susan's Place Transgender Resources

I am interested in how many have or are into cross-gender toys. I myself live with someone with a very large collection of Barbie dolls. I like being around them now. I had played with a few as a child. Now seeing the beautiful expensive collectors ones, I like them also. I also have a pink furry feminine pig (cute).

We even have small barbie room layouts with miniature stuff in.

Also interested if F-to-M play with action figures or toy trucks and stuff.

I don't now, but when I was a kid my favourite toys were my hot wheels racing cars. I wanted a GI Joe, but got Barbie. So she wound up being Commando Barbie. I set up zip lines all over and tied her to a sock hanger and had her parachute into hazardous situations. I never played with dolls, and I recall having a few, so someone probably gave them to me. My parents were pretty cool about buying gender-appropriate (ie: male) toys for me, other than not seeing the difference between GI Joe and Barbie.

I liked craft kits too. Woodburning, glass cutting, and resin-casting. Had a really cool electric circuit-board that I could pop resistors and capacitors into and see what happened to the current.

I used to make go-carts and race them down hills and play on my skateboard as well. I lived in a rural area, so a lot of what we did was outdoors - building forts, playing marbles and stuff like that.

Dennis

I was always brought the proper male toys, guns and plastic soldiers, construction sets, but my most favorite of all was my teddy bear called teddy.  "She" was with me where ever I went.  I had her for the longest time, but I'm afraid that I don't remember what happened to her, along with the rest of my childhood  :(

Chat later,

Steph

                         i was always given male toys and did play with them during the times i played with boys. i played mostly with girls with their toys though. my sister is so much older that her toys were gone when i was young. i loved to use her mirror and hair brush etc. i played dress up with my mom's clothes constantly and i was never discouraged by her, i dont remember if my dad ever saw.

                         i constantly played with my children and played with barbies etc with my daughters, feed their dolls with bottles and things, they really got a kick out of their "dad" playing with them. when my oldest daughter was 16 or so she was feeling grown up and was giving her dolls to goodwill. i looked in the box and saw a doll i loved because it was so cute and it was always my favorite, so i took it and said i'm keeping her. i was about 40 then and i kept the doll on my bed, slept with her, took her with me on trips etc. and i still have norma jean today.

beth

I never had any dolls while growing up and rarely played with them when available, I was always punished for such behavior if caught doing so.  I never played with toy soldiers either or many other toys.  I got more into tinker toys and erector sets and spent time alone either reading books or building things.  I even got into building structures out of ice cream sticks, which I collected for that purpose, some of these projects taking a month or more.

As an adult, I have collected dolls, and music boxes, but of the collector type, and not expensive ones.  I never played with any of these as my attraction to them is for thier beauty, detail and special meanings to me, I simply love to have them around me, as they have a calming effect. 

I have only one doll that is special to me in an intimate way, the most recent addition.  She does not sleep with me and I do not play with her, or touch her other then to occassionally move her closer to where I am, then back.   She has a special place of her own and I often go sit with her and she always knows my mood and my mind and talks with me in my mind, about things I can talk to no one else about, but she does not always agree with me and is hard on me at times, but she keeps me on track and always makes me feel better when I sit with her.  I have found dolls can be very special as a way of communicating your own feelings and best interest back to you when things are confusing.  Perhaps a little crazy I know, but if it's positive, it's good, as long as you realize it is just a doll with your own memories and experience echoing back at you.

Terri

when I was younger, yes. playing with Barbie dolls was fun.

I remember a stuffed male doll I use to play with till I was about 7 or 8, then one day it disapeared, I think my dad may have had something to do with it. Gosh I'm 55 now and thats the first time I thought of that doll in 45 years

Bernice   

I think I've said this before elsewere but I'll say it again here. Asked for a Barbie, got a GI Joe.
Asked for an Easy Bake oven, got a Vacu Form. I always had to go to my girlfriend's houses and play with their dolls. I did take the GI Joe doll with me and dressed him up in Barbie clothes. Too bad I don't have any pictures. lol  ;D Ultimately GI Joe was burnt to a puddle in an unfortunate mishap when his space capsule inexplicably caught fire on the launching pad.
Hmmmm, now how did that happen?  >:D


Cassie

I have to ask for clarification.

  If a person says they have always felt they were female wouldn't playing with playing with boy toys be considered cross gender behavior?

I had the vacuform, but my sister got the Easy Bake oven.  Being older, I "helped" her a lot with the oven!

Chaunte

Quotewouldn't playing with playing with boy toys be considered cross gender behavior?

I'm not sure I get the question. Do you mean a person who identifies as female playing with say a GI Joe as being crossgender male activity? Or, are you saying that playing at playing with boy toys is crossgender?

Cassie

 

QuoteI'm not sure I get the question. Do you mean a person who identifies as female playing with say a GI Joe as being crossgender male activity? Or, are you saying that playing at playing with boy toys is crossgender?

Yes


If a woman wears any clothing sold for men she could be considered a cd by definition.

My favourite toys as a kid were my model cars. I must have about 100 - 150, and I had this thing which was like a model tiny city, and I would spend ages playing with that. I also have a Scalextix (sp?), but that broke ages ago. :(

I got given quite a few barbie dolls as well, but their fate was having a lot of their hair cut off, being sat in one of the larger (and non-valuable) cars and being sent hurtling down the staris... happy days. :)

I love remote control cars...

Jaycie got me a remote control Jeep last year for christmas... OMG I have so much fun with that thing hahaha....

ah... memories...  :)...as a kid i played baby-karate (my own invention) with my doll, very violent, threw it against the ceiling & stuff, didn't know what to do w/ the cradle ... broke the one barbie doll i owned... played w/ my dad's old toys (fake guns & stuff), pretend games after tv series, Dick Turpin, Battlestar Galactica, Robin Hood...

(just in case people are getting scared as they read this: i did become more gentle as i grew up... )

DICK TURPIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's been ages since I head that name.  :)

Steph

I was always at home and comfortable with stuffed animals. Crazy Cow was my best friend. I would dress him up in night gowns, old shirts and take him everywhere. Even sleep with him. I loved playing with dolls with my other girl friends when I was about 7-8, just at the time when I started realizing things. I was always doing girl things with them and I was happy doing them! I was always envious of the girls who got clothes and jewelry.

Cassandra you crack me up!! 

QuoteI did take the GI Joe doll with me and dressed him up in Barbie clothes. Too bad I don't have any pictures. lol   Ultimately GI Joe was burnt to a puddle in an unfortunate mishap when his space capsule inexplicably caught fire on the launching pad.

I have to admit that I mostly played with boys stuff when I was kid, although I never felt 'one of the boys' when I played with boys, more like a 'different kind of kid playing with boys'.

I am sure I played with girls from time to time, but cant remember any specifics.

However, I was heavily into 'Action Man' (UK equivalent of GI Joe), so much so that I think it annoyed my father, and I can clearly remember one instance of him giving me a hard time over 'playing with dolls' about it.


Hehe, unconnected with the thread, but just had a cute memory pop into my head of playing 'Buses' with my sisters. The stairs were the bus, and I was always the driver (my dad had been a bus driver, but wasn't at the time).

Reaffirms my belief that my TGism must be related to something in my teens, when my social interaction with the world changed.

I always got gender appropiate toys, but what I really wanted is Barbie dolls.  I always liked playing house, baking, cleaning and stuff like that.  I would play with the girl next door all the time as I was always more comfortable around girls than boys.

For a great many years, all I ever asked for for Christmas was a doll. I never got one so I "expropriated" one of my sister's. Being the older has some advantages  :o ::)

Now, long after transion, I play with boy's toys a lot - I collect and restore antique machinery  ;D All the boys envy my collection.

Of course I have a huge colection of stuffed animals to!

Life is GREAT - as a girl you can play with BOTH!

I was always an outdooors kid who spent a lot of time escaping into my own world. Toys were never really abig part of my life.

Shelley

toys were not a big factor, if at all. I had a sort of toy snare drum, or a very very cheap one; i always used the pots and pans etc to make a kit of drums, eventually was provided with a real one around 10 years of age. Then i got a guitar.

Toys were a luxury, something I didn't get very often and when I did, it was something my parents wanted me to have, not something I wanted.

Sarah L.

we have a courtyard in front of the house so..most often play(ed)-still have moments<blush> with pets(prefer cats)...and with other kids: hunting(one-trapper..others-animals), cowboys&Indians (used arch&arrow), puzzels, chemistry games(ruined all my better shirts), Barbie dolls with friends yeah..I was man doll Ken..and had plenty of girlfriends..those were days LOL ...
also marbles...lego...I loved to play with flame and shadows..create animals by hands...also loved to make different stuffs from paper....draw...paint..mask...act..

my favorite game is still TinkerBell and Peter Pan  ;D

Well I had my matchbox cars and trainsets plastic model cars too. But I also played with my sisters barbie doll's when she wasnt around. I loved to dress her up in different outfits.


Owen
love being female

We have two girls living in this house, one is 10 and the other 7. You couldn't get the 10 year old to touch a barbie doll ever since she was a baby. It was all bugs, and dirt and she is about as girly as the boy next door. The seven year old loves clothes, and shoes, and pantyhose, getting her hair curled and being a girl. She loves her ear rings and her ears are pierced. If you tried to pierce the 10 year olds ears, she would need psychotherapy. She will wear a skirt now and then and her hair is long, but that is about all she does for being girly.

I suppose there is a huge difference in TG's as well on how girly some are and some are not. I'm a jeans and blouse gal. Or capris....skorts, shorts. They have such cute jeans out now anyhow.

Quote from: LoriI suppose there is a huge difference in TG's as well on how girly some are and some are not. I'm a jeans and blouse gal. Or capris....skorts, shorts. They have such cute jeans out now anyhow.

:) Don't forget that there is a big difference in TG's that some are male and some are female and some are both... :)

Steph

Hmmm, let's see... I had "stuffedy" animals (i.e. plush toys, but you'd never have caught me referring to them as toys - nope, to me they were real animals, LOL), Glo Friends (anyone else remember those?), Smurfs, Mr. Potato Head, Hot Wheels, various board games, but probably what I spent the most time playing with were Lego blocks (especially the outer space series) and those Radio Shack electronic experimenter kits with the spring terminals. Yep, I was a science buff from an early age. ;D

Boys that I knew had their Transformers and GI Joe and basketball and to me that was all just yeah whatever. :D "Different kind of kid" wow that's exactly how I felt around boys! Around girls I just sorta felt like I fit in.

Quote from: umop ap!sdn on March 07, 2006, 12:09:39 PM
and those Radio Shack electronic experimenter kits with the spring terminals. Yep, I was a science buff from an early age. ;D

I had 2 of those. I started when I was 8.  My teenage years were very focused on electronics and I built and invented a number of projects including small telephones sytem, an alarm system, and a programmable robotic arm that I designed.  I've always been a tech girl.  In fact I recently threw together a better alarm system (using a PIC chip, LCD display and keypad) and a digital counter that could be reset with a password.  That's something I'll probably play around with again once I get a better handle on my GID.

Melissa

Wow you did a lot more than I ever could! But I think my ambitions were too high. Wanted to build a whole computer and a six legged automaton. Not sure if the biggest obstacle would have been getting a darkroom set up or programing the UVEPROM.  :D

That's what's great about PIC chips.  They are cheap and easy to program. No dark room required. They contain a processor ram and an eeprom all in one package.  I built a programmer for them that attaches to my computer from a design I found on the internet.

As for building a computer from scratch, well, that may be a bit too ambitious.  It would probably be cheaper overall to just go out and buy one.

However, the six-legged automaton might be a fun project.

Melissa

Quote from: Melissa on March 07, 2006, 03:14:20 PM
That's what's great about PIC chips.  They are cheap and easy to program. No dark room required. They contain a processor ram and an eeprom all in one package.  I built a programmer for them that attaches to my computer from a design I found on the internet.
...

^{*ears twitch*}
Really? Last I looked into such things the programmer things were multiple thousands of dollars.

Interesting!

I still want to make a custom countdown timer but I find electronics are like automobiles for me, I can be told a thousand times and I'll still have to ask again. ^*sigh*

I think the parts for my programmer altogether were maybe $50 and the software was free.  I'm a little surprised that you find electronics difficult Kimberly, seeing how you are a programmer like myself.

Anyhow, here's the link to the design:
http://www.bobblick.com/techref/projects/picprog/picprog.html (http://www.bobblick.com/techref/projects/picprog/picprog.html)

And a link to the free software:
http://people.freenet.de/dl4yhf/winpicpr.html (http://people.freenet.de/dl4yhf/winpicpr.html)

In case the admins delete these links, both of these can be found by googling "classic pic programmer" and "winpic" and clicking on the first result.

Melissa

most of my play mates were girls when I was small.... so I did play with dolls a fair bit....  my folks bought me boy toys.. but I never did like playing with guns or cowboys an indians... i liked light bright and spirograph

Quote from: Lyn-Jean on October 18, 2005, 05:32:17 AM
However, I was heavily into 'Action Man' (UK equivalent of GI Joe), so much so that I think it annoyed my father, and I can clearly remember one instance of him giving me a hard time over 'playing with dolls' about it...

LOL, ah the memories... I had a huge collection of "Action Jackson" dolls (I believe that was the name - wonder if it's the same?). Sort of a petite, smaller, metrosexual GI Joe. Far less oriented around killing anything that moved, and more into rescues and firefighting and exploring. I loved creating "homes" for him out of boxes and cases, and arranging all his "stuff" around it to make it comfy and cozy. His buddies were always visiting.

And yes, I had the insane stuffed animal collection. I had so many I'd make a pile in just flop into them. Snakes, bears, rabbits, tigers, monkeys... I held on to them as long as I could until mother started hiding them on me. I'll never forgive her for taking away my comfort blanket.

TONS of army men. I loved those little guys. I'd spend days arranging them. Oddly, they never fought any battles. I just loved setting them up, deciding who belonged to which groups, where to put them, who liked who, and so on.

The rest of the years were filled with model building, tinker toys, then legos. I never thought of these as "girlish," but curiously, I recently read an article were somone suggested that model building is the closest TSs (m2f) can get to the "doting" behaviour girls show their dolls.

No actual girlie dolls or EasyBakes though. I've always enjoyed my male toys, though I seem to fit them into a feminine context. Even now I love playing Halo (shoot 'em up video game), but I feel GUILTY killing anyone, lol. I watch the score and make sure no one is losing by too much, try to help people doing bad, and so on.

I have younger sisters so we always played together, they wanted to play house a lot and it gave me an excuse to play with other girls and not get in trouble.

I always received stuff like action figures, legos, castles, forts, toy soldiers, etc. My father would actually join in and play with me. That's one of my favorite memories and I cherish it, because I have no chance of acceptance from him. Oh, and he built me this fantastic race track for my hot wheels.
But I also received dolls. Sometimes I even asked for them in the hope that I could convince the girls to play with me. This did not work. I got a baby doll for Christmas one year and went over to where the girls had set up "house" complete with cribs and strollers. I held up my doll, and asked if I could play. I had a doll now too, how could they refuse me? No, a doll was not enough for admission to the girls' club. You had to have something else, something all girls have, some inborn knowledge they possess, some secret code. I was never able to decipher this mysterious code, this ancient language of women. Girls wouldn't let me get close enough to figure it out. :(

Nero

To my shame a memory surfaced.  I think that the civilized part of my brain had buried it :(

There was an instance of my playing with cross gender toys - if you could call it that, and its not an indication of some dark impulses?

Once a friend and I, used his sisters dolls as enemy soldiers, lined them up in rows, and then massacred them with our slug guns :(

"Die Japanese, North Korean, German soldiers, your human wave tactics will prove useless to you now, That will teach you for daring to mess with the Australian army"

I think, and hope that my friends sister had that many dolls that she did not miss the dozen or so we used
actually I feel a bit bad about this.  Young boys have the capacity to be evil little rats :(

Rana

A local gun club had a "Barbie Shoot" night to attract female gun enthusiasts - they were invited to bring their old Barbie dolls and use them for target practice at the gun club's range!  >:D

I guess that's one way to protest the unrealistic body image that Barbie dolls promote!

helen

I remember my parents taking me to a carnival when I was very young. I won at one the games, and was given the chance to pick my prize from a collection of toys and things on the counter. Hiding amoungst the cars and army men was a beautifully colored girl's hair clip. I couldn't help myself, it was just so pretty, and I picked it up, hoping maybe somehow it'd magically give me the hair to wear it too.

Before I could even look at it, the guy running the booth and my mother were both saying, "no, no... that's not for you..." and pulling it from my hands. Even now I remember how embarassed they were, and how ashamed I felt for not realizing it was so "wrong" to do.

That just reminded me of something I had forgotten about Kate.  When I was in third grade grade, we were given a choice of toys to pick out of a box as a reward for being good.  I remember getting the bracelets.

I also remember one year at Christmas, my sister got a little female type action figure for my brother as a joke.  He didn't want it because it was too girly.  I gladly accepted it when he gave it to me.

Melissa

Quote from: Melissa on June 21, 2006, 12:48:38 PM
That just reminded me of something I had forgotten about Kate.  When I was in third grade grade, we were given a choice of toys to pick out of a box as a reward for being good.  I remember getting the bracelets.

I also remember one year at Christmas, my sister got a little female type action figure for my brother as a joke.  He didn't want it because it was too girly.  I gladly accepted it when he gave it to me.

Your parents were fairly accepting of you playing with girly stuff? Or were you... discreet?

They didn't seem to care one way or the other.

Melissa

Here is my favorite girl thing now. Its my cute pink pig. I luv it. She is always sitting at my desk, or in my arms while I watch tv.

(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.geocities.com%2Fwickham_kendra%2Fth_2006_0625Image0110.JPG&hash=6d11f1c5cf901594203874d2b2f9089989c9216c)

I've had a few crossgender toys in my life.  I remeber when I was in about 4th grade, all the girls had these braceltet things that you slapped against a wrist and they curled up and I also remember having a heartshaped pink bubble necklace that girls had.  It was basically a pink glass hearthshaped bottle with a bubble solution inside and a pink string to hang it around your neck.  I remember having a cabbage patch doll, etc.  The thing is, I never really thought of them being girls toys.  I just knew I wanted them because I thought they were cool and got them.  I had actually forgotten about those until just now.

Melissa

Since my parents just thought I was a "tomboy" and would "grow out of it", I pretty much had the standard boys childhood. I played with army men and gi joes (i still have them all!). I had lots of hot wheels and remote control trucks. I remember when my grandma bought me my first pair of boxing gloves when I was 5... I have now gone on to own many pairs and they're not just toys anymore.

Although there were the attempts of my parents giving me barbies and my little pony... until they unfortunately found their way to the microwave... a few times  :icon_evil_laugh:

  tino

no

Well sometimes

Yes sometimes.
I always have to play with some when the little kids in my family come over.