I grew up in a strict religious household. It wasn't the kind of family where you came out and said you were the opposite gender for your sex. My parents didn't push gender norms on me except for the dresses and ribbons every sunday. And the private school of course required a dress.
One way I expressed myself was that I was forever this boy in a never ending play. He could be from tv or a book. I ALWAYS had to be some male character. I insisted I be called by the characters' name. This was the only way I felt comfortable.
I ate dinner as the character, I went to bed as the character. My parents became concerned and asked me why I never came out of character. Why couldn't I just be myself, they asked. I didn't know how to explain it, but it was because I didn't know how to be myself. How could I be N_____ when I had no clue who that was? I was some girl I didn't know.
I didn't know her, let alone how to be her - how to eat and sleep as her.


Share things you did as a child to express yourself.

i lived in my own little world.  i could be katia there. all my friends (the imaginary ones) didn't give a damn about my non-girly parts.

On my 5th Birthday I got a nurses outfit.

Rebecca

I immersed myself in music... playing various instruments, listening to records, reading about it... all the time. Music gave me an outlet to express the inexpressible, it was truly a lifesaver.

y2g

Wore my cousins panties

I had tea parties with pretend friends, but I had the tea set.

I played house with pretend friends and had the dishes and tableware.

When I got older I did artsy-craftsy stuff instead of playing baseball, things like tiny doll houses with furniture.

All that stopped when I was about 10 or 11.  I tried to learn to knit.  My mum bought me a kit but I was not good at it at all.

I read anything that looked like it was interesting.  I read books on science, the entire encyclopedia, story books (I loved them).  I was immersed in my own world as far as the rest of the world would allow me.

Wing Walker

Quote from: Nero on December 01, 2007, 10:33:50 PM
Share things you did as a child to express yourself.

I didn't. There was no one to express

~Kate~

As some of you know, I went to an all boy's school (from elementary to highschool -- not in the US by the way).  Anyway..we used to have a math contest every year during elementary school.  The students who won the contest participated in a dance as boys at the end of each school year; the ones who failed math still got to participate in the same dance, but the "punishment" for failing math was to dance as girls, with a dress and everything else.

I always succeeded in math.  Indeed it was one of my favorite courses in school, but there were a few times when I purposely failed it.  Why?  because I wanted to dance as a girl.  I wanted to dress like one, wear the pink ribbons on my hair and be held by a boy.

My mom would become furious with me, and I would be laughing on the inside, dreaming of who was going to be the lucky boy to dance with me    Believe it or not, I once danced with a boy whom I secretly loved!  *sighs*

tink

I was about 11 and decided I wasn't going to have another haircut. I started wearing girls jeans and tops and by the time I was 13 my hair was quite long and halfway down my back and I used to go to a ladies hairdresser. I used to wear reallly girly platform shoes and wore them to an all boys school and surprisingly didn't get told to change them or sent home. This was the mid 1970's and you could push the envelope a bit futher back then...

Early on I played with the girls on the monkey bars(go made fun of, so I switched to swings), I used also just hang out and "goof off" with a few girls older them me, guess they thought I was cute or something. I also had a few female friends that had "My Little Ponies". I asked for a cabbage patch doll, but got told "No"  I wanted, begged, to grow my hair out but all I got was a little ugly rat tail. I ended up cutting that off. Then in high school I started to grow my hair out, which didn't both people because fell in to the "goth" crowd. I only had a brother, and lived miles away from the nearest town, so I was stuck with hand-me downs from my brother (I hated that so much) and not a whole lot of room to find a way to express my self.

On a side note THANK GOODNESS I no longer live near my parents.

Gender norms weren't really pushed on me too much. I was allowed to play football and soccer on the boys teams. I have (to this day) only had three female RL friends and there were always terrible rumors going around about me since I spent the night at boys' houses, as they were my only friends.
Unfortunately, when I got to 8th grade, all of those rumors suddenly turned out to be true. =(

I was allowed to dress however I wanted, usually. So, I normally dressed very flamboyantly (bright colored tights, two different shoes, bunny ears) because I liked the attention I got.

I caught bugs and lizards when the other girls were afraid of them.

I was suspended in elementary school because I refused to use the girls restroom.

I didn't really think that gender (or physical sex, for that matter, though I became sexually active at 13) was important at all until I was almost all the way through high school. I just didn't understand or get along with girls.

I was growing up in the tail end of the 60s/early 70s, so I grew my hair long and started wearing funky hippie clothes. I looked pretty androgynous then, adults often thought I was a girl, and I tried not to get beat up by the boys...

y2g

Well I sure did the long hair thing in the 70's and pilfered clothes whenever I had a chance to do so.  Not too proud of that, but I saw no other way.  I was sure no one else was like me.  So I would dress up when everyone else was gone, from mom's stuff to other's stuff left around. 

Kristi

One of my earliest memories, and a seminal family story about me is how, at age three, I secretly insisted that my older brother give me a boy's haircut. This forbidden undertaking was undertaken in the closet, in the dark, with hilarious results.

Like Nero, I spent most of my childhood pretending (often only to myself) to be someone else.

My best friend was a boy, until I humiliated him by beating a school-yard bully who was picking on him and he didn't want to be seen with me. When I was friends with him we played in groups, I was really into Jack London as a kid and read novels years before the other kids my age could do it, so I'd tell 'em about the story and we'd all pretend to be wolves and sled-dogs and Yukon gold-rush adventurers. After he broke with me it was just me and the girl that nobody liked. I'd make up weird plays and get her to help me act them out or puppet-stage them with stuffed animals. She usually wanted to make the stuffed animals play 'schoolroom' and I kept changing the narrative of that game by making gryphons crash in through the school roof and stuff like that.

lmao   got in fights w/boys at school & w/my bros.  got black eyes & scratches .  I dont have any sisters so my mom thought I was playing around.  I told her when I was 11 & she was cool w/it.  She calls me her youngest son now. 
whoo hoo

I grew up asking god what he had done to me, after he didnt help me or awnser me i went off the rails dabling with drugs, self harming. Running away. I would do anything to make me forget.

When I was little I did gymnastics.  It was the only physical activity I actually enjoyed.  In kindergarten and elementary school I would play jump rope games and hopskotch and whatnot with the other girls.  One time I got in trouble with the other girls in class because we were trying to cut each other's hair.

I didn't express myself, it wasn't allowed.  I spent a lot of time in my room being punished for saying who I was.  Finally I ended up just freezing anytime anyone would look at me, my mind would go blank and I would just have a blank stare for the next hour.

Sarah L.

I almost always played with my 2 sisters and the other neighborhood girls. We loved to play house, but I usually ended up being the dad.  Got out voted.   Always had friends that were girls but only had one friend that was a guy. He was always being picked on by the other guys and I felt sorry for him.
The guys were  just to rough and mean to hang out with. They didn't seem to like me anyway.
I was just to much of a sissy for them I guess. Never wanted to get my hands and cloths dirty.
Did get lots of grass stains while playing with the girls.
We made lots of bracelets and necklaces out of dandelion stems.
Then I won't wear the pants again because they had grass stains as I remember. Poor mom would used lots of bleach to try to remove the stains. Sometime it worked.
As a teen I used to wear my moms under wear for short periods of time. Only got caught once and that was not pretty.

Jillieann

All the way back to when I was little and into my early teens I was pretty well a loner and an outcast at school and couldn't wait to escape when I got home. I spent a lot  of times playing by myself in the woods. That was where my real friends were, imaginary friends, two girls and a boy.
I always had a good stash of girls clothes that I kept under a wash tub to keep them dry. I would dress up play acted being a princes with my imaginary friends. Well enough of that I think I already told this sorry several times just in different sequence. But most times playing by myself and sometimes with my sis when she was around, I also made friends with a girl named Helen when I was about twelve years old and we budied together for five years. She was also a castaway like me.  These were my favorite memories. Believe it or not I am an still quite avid in the imagination department.

Cindy