Hi,

    I just was reading something Kris wrote about tagging along with his brother and his brother's friends.  I was just wondering if it felt freeing to be with other guys or if it was difficult for those of you who had the opportunity.

    did they treat you like one of the guys?  Or, did they treat you a little differently than another guy?  Stuff like that. 

No reason other than curiosity on my part.



Rebis

I never did.

I think this is addressed to FtM's, but it's always good to know what you've been up to.   

i never look at who it's for - and besides, you so rarely make a post - thought i'd be in on it.

Yes, at least up to a certain age. As a child I had some great guy friends and I loved to hang out with them. None of this friendships really survived puberty, though, because they either became real idiots or we hadn't the opportunity to spend time with each other anymore.

Since then there were one or two singular cases.
Like that guy at the lake my family practically lived during summers--there were two or even three summers we always hanged out together playing that card game Magic (it was really popular with guys then). He was the only guy I knew who played with me and didn't suck completely at the game (like for example my brother, or his)

Or last week at school. We had lunch break and I spend about two hours talking completely senseless trash with two guys I only knew from seeing while some girls from my class just sat there blankly and obviously not really getting this "guy talk".

Quote from: Pica Pica on March 30, 2008, 09:05:53 PM
i never look at who it's for - and besides, you so rarely make a post - thought i'd be in on it.

It's okay, Young One.  I never read who it's for either.

when i was really young it wasn't tough, but once middle school hit i had a hard time hanging out with anyone.

Hehehe, glad to have inspired a topic.

As for myself, my brother was the only guy who didn't actually want my company outside of the house (it was embarrassing for him to have his little 'sister' along); but inside the house, he enjoyed playing cars and wrestling just fine.

From a very young age on, I usually always had guy friends, though I had girl friends, as well. When you're that young, gender-specific games/activities are usually blurred. But as I got older, it became more and more apparent that I was "one of the guys," and that I could never fit in amongst girls. In middle school, I would sit at a lunch table of all guys, and that only changed when I got into my first couple of years of high school, and tried (unsuccessfully) to fit in. By my junior year of high school, I was back to sitting with all guys, and I was definitely treated as "one of the them." I got not-so-lightly punched in the arm upon greetings, was included in the phrase "one of the guys," checked out girls with the guys, engaged in various contests (such as who could belch the loudest), etc. I just believe that I act like a guy so much that guys unthinkingly accept me, once they get to know me.

When I was really little I hung out with the boys quite a bit, although they didn't like the fact that I always beat them at wrestling.    Once I started to school, though, the whole "girls have the cooties", "no, boys have the cooties" thing made friendship between the sexes pretty much impossible, except for a couple of girls who were really good at sports (which I wasn't.)  After high school I played in several rock/blues bands, which were usually all guys, but yeah, I think they did tend to treat me differently than the other guys.

I have always had male friends up until this stage of my life (20) I guess because most males know I am a woman and dont want to give off mixed signals. In Primary school I had a group of males I would mess around with football & whatever having about 1 female friend... high school well I had a best friend who was a gay male all through that and sixth form I was in a group of mixed sexs and I got on better with the males in that group..

I dont think if you are friends with male or females it makes no diffrence yes it does influence you to a certain extent. But thats it most of my close friends now are female..

Doesn't make me any less of a man.. however when I do go out dancing then I normally end up talking to males all night.. probably because they are drunk and see me for what I actually am. Plus women tend to bore me slightly on a night out as they are always looking for men to romance them (well my friends do anyhow) where as I just want to dance!

No. Had guy friends until the inevitable happened in middle school - the girls started in on me, abusing me and the guys thought i was cool but wouldnt be caught dead talking to me. no one would. i was like a leper. guess they were afraid it was catching.then in high school i hung with the guys everyone else hated too.
the nerds and the thugs.

When i was younger i looked like a boy, so all through elementary and middle school all my friends were boys. At recess girls would chase me and kiss me on the cheek like they did with other boys. Usually when i would go places people would call me "young man" and things like that, so i think all my friends always viewed me as a boy and that was just how it was. When I got into high school i didnt look as much like a boy anymore, so it was a little different. I didnt hang out with kids from my school that much because i played basketball all year round and we traveled every weekend. But when i did hang out with my friends from school, my relationship with my guy friends didnt really change much, but i had a lot more girl friends then i did when i was younger. It was weird though because even though the "straight" girls i went to school with obviously knew i was a girl they still hit on me and flirted with me as if i were a bio guy....which was sweet! haha and still today most of my really good friends are guys. I guess i just relate to them more.

In elementary school I played kickball with the guys during recess. I was accepted there, mostly because we were too young to start thinking of the opposite sex as attractive and whatnot, and although the guys did comment that 'hey, you're a girl, shouldn't you be elsewhere at recess?' they didn't seem to really care. I was a good player, so they liked having me on their team. As we grew up and had coed gym classes, it got worse. They ceased to see me as a valuable member of their team when it came to sports. We'd still have coed games in gym sometimes but they stood in groups and talked about the "heshe over there, playing with the boys". It hurt, let me tell you. It hurt to not be able to sway their judgement my way. I could never make them understand that I was really one of them and that I was just as good as any other dude on their team but I just gave up trying. I dropped out in 10th grade anyhow, so I didn't have to deal with that anymore.

It was odd adjusting from being around peers from school who saw me as female, to being around peers who saw me as a bio male and nothing else. I was used to hanging back and not jumping in when they played football and stuff, but now I could be myself. It's still odd around other guys because I am very different compared to most people my age, partially because I grew up a loner and I don't know how to act around my peers, and because I wasn't influenced by them, so I do appear as somewhat of a quiet kid..a good kid they call me..which is something some guys my age don't like. I still don't have any close male friends. Most of my close friends are girls. Oh well though...I guess in time I'll figure out how us guys communicate with one another without being called emo or less of a man for feeling emotion...I think my personality has no gender, which is something people notice when they meet me. I have no female tendencies but I have no emotional personality...I'm just kinda laid back and quiet which isn't like a guy to be, a guy stands up for himself and is roudy..at least most of the guys I knew growing up. Maybe I'm just being paranoid.

It was the same with everyone.
Everyone seemed the same.
I'm not sure I even knew the difference between a Boy and a Girl.

hi Zomb,

     You're not paranoid.  There are all different kinds of men.  Quiet ones and boisterous-as-hell ones and many in between.   If you're a quiet one, they tend to think highly of you, in that they assume you're very smart or something.  Sometimes, they just think you'll make a good target for jokes because they want to get a rise out of you.

     I'm glad you feel you're fitting in now.



Rebis

Lol Rebis....I actually am pretty smart. But that's not why I'm quiet. I just extremely loathe social suitations and have bad anxiety. I'm a target for their jokes sometimes but that's just par for the course...they don't seem to hate me at all...they do seem jealous sometimes and just don't know what to say about me. I'm pretty mysterious in person. I'm sure a few of them suspect I'm different in some way, but they can't put their finger on it. I just hope they never figure it out.

Quote from: Rebis on March 30, 2008, 08:47:29 PM
Hi,

    I just was reading something Kris wrote about tagging along with his brother and his brother's friends.  I was just wondering if it felt freeing to be with other guys or if it was difficult for those of you who had the opportunity.

    did they treat you like one of the guys?  Or, did they treat you a little differently than another guy?  Stuff like that. 

No reason other than curiosity on my part.



Rebis

Quote from: Chris on March 12, 2008, 02:01:04 AM
Never had a problem w/the dudes.  I'm one of them & they know that.  I like girls    but some didnt like me when they found out I was trans.  Thats cool though.  for every person that dont like me, there are 100 that do

Pre-puberty it was fine. After high school, most of my male friends were gay because they weren't apt to turn around and get attracted to me.

Dennis

Never had a problem because people saw me as a tomboy that knew me (because transgender did not exsist in our small town and back when personal computers were VERY rare).  The people that did not know me always called me sir, which was cool.  When my mom was with me she would correct them, but I never did.

I was skateboarding almost every day through high school, and I was really the only one with a female body, so I was always one of the guys so to speak and always treat just the same.  Maybe I was lucky because even after my parents divorced, we lived in neighborhoods that had less then a handfull of females.  My friends from childhood I told were never shocked, they just kinda figured what the heck, I never saw you differently.   Guess it helped I did not date, talk about romance, or anything else that would make me different then them.  But then, they never talked about it either...we just hung out.