you asked for a pony and got a truck?



A bit of Christmas fun... but what was it that you wanted when you were little but were denied because you had been assigned the wrong gender?

An interesting question.  I find it mildly triggering in an amnesiac kind of way.  Somehow, I have a feeling that something like this might have happened to me, asking for "girl toys' and getting 'boy toys'.  But I have no memory of it.

I do recall, when I was 5, my mother apologizing to me because, when she was shopping for underwear for me, she could only find girls' underwear.  And I remember thinking, "What's the problem?"  Kind of the reverse situation.

I didn't get denied stuff asked for on basis of gender, but I did get a few things I never asked for that were typical girl's stuff from grandmothers and peripheral relatives. It was nice of them, but it usually sat unused somewhere. Particularly if it was a doll. I found them genuinely creepy. You can double the scare factor if it was a clown doll.

I liked animal dolls though. My youngest uncle gave me my first ever toy, which was a bean filled frog. Maybe it was just human dolls that disturbed me. I didn't understand why young girls wanted to fill their rooms with those closing hollow-eyed human baby dolls. Used to imagine they were watching me.

The only thing I got I didn't ask for and always hated getting for Christmas was boys clothes but what kid ever really wanted clothes for Christmas anyway, right?

I don't remember ever really wanting something I didn't get because it was for the wrong gender and that's one of the things I don't really understand about my life when I was little?

I've posted this picture before and it's handy so let me use it as an example:



I have always known, felt myself to be and understood myself as a girl. I have no knowledge or recollection of ever thinking something different but what I don't get is how that was perceived, understood and acknowledged by my family? Was it just so evident that I wasn't a boy in nature and spirit? Was I that demanding and insistent? Was I just a spoiled rotten only child who's peculiarities were indulged? I have no clues. Maybe it was all of that?

I'm guessing this picture is from 1959 or 1960? What parents of the era would let their son get dolls from Santa or tea party sets for playing house? When I got older I got Barbies and Barbie stuff for a couple of years. One year I asked for and got an Easy Bake Oven even though I could make real cakes and spent a lot of time in the kitchen cooking and baking with my mom and grandma. One year when I was in junior high, I got my own set of wooden hoops and a bunch of stuff for needlepoint and cross stitch from my grandmother because we did a lot of that together and she knew what I would like. This goes against every imaginable social of the convention of the times. How or why did this happen? I have some ideas but this was so long ago I'm not sure if my memories have been reconstructed to fit the pieces together with how the rest of my life turned out or what? It's one of those things I'll never be sure of. There's no one around to ask or give me a different perspective other than that from my point of view.

I've said in other threads when talking about my childhood that I was certainly encouraged to be like other boys and to try and fit in but that was simply not in my nature and something that couldn't be forced so it never was. Other than how I looked that I didn't have enough agency to have any say in until after the 2nd grade and demanded to have long hair, I was treated like a girl and was allowed to have and do many typical "girl" things. From an outside perspective, one could say the girl me was not only accepted but nurtured as well and while I'm eternally grateful for it, I still don't understand it. Were my folks that intuitive and understanding into and of my personality and nature to go against everything that seemed right or normal or was it something so obvious and irrepressible that it couldn't be denied? Did they just feel sorry for me and tried to do what made me happy? When I say I just grew up to be a girl, I'm not sure many of you get it or can relate or understand how this could even be possible. I don't even understand it either, it just was. I wasn't encouraged to be this way but I wasn't dissuaded either and all I can think as to the why of this was is that I couldn't be? I've never really thought much about this until the last few years of my life. It just all seemed natural at the time.

Without knowing anything about being trans or even words to talk about it, when I told my folks at 15 that I couldn't keep living as a boy that no one ever saw me as anyway, this was something they had seen coming my whole life and not the least bit surprising or unexpected. In a way, I'm kind of fodder for the nature vs. nurture debate enthusiasts. The way I see it though, whatever "nurture" I received was simply in alignment with my nature and by some miracle, karmic fate or unconditional love, my folks and family just got that. The way I was treated and the freedom I had to just be me didn't make me a girl but were that way because I always have been. Seems plausible, right?

It wasn't really until I was 16/17 and started getting things too girly to wear to school that I stopped minding getting clothes for Christmas! By then, all my clothes came from the girl's department anyway but they had to be marginally passable for boys or unisex because I was supposed to be a boy for school so getting stuff I couldn't wear to school or jewelry or makeup made my last couple Christmases at home the best. I was no longer living with my folks then but the Christmas after I got out of high school and went "full time" when I was 18, I was showered with nothing but clothes from my folks and that year, I got a necklace  from my mom I still wear to this day. In fact, just last week I wore it and told my man friend about its sentimental value because I'd had it for 46 years and was a gift from my long deceased mother. There's a lot of stuff I can talk about from my childhood and adolescence that's pretty normal without revealing the trans part of my history like the kind of things I got for Christmas as just one example.

I'm sorry for those of you that wanted a pony and got a toy truck. I don't think I ever have had a toy truck?

Sorry to ramble yet again. The holidays stir up a lot of emotions and memories. Things were so different for me than most folks here and that is strange sometimes.
___________________________

Haha! @Kylo, I just read what you posted while I was writing. I'm sorry,  but I loved my baby dolls and as amazing as it is, I still have the one in the picture above stashed away in a box somewhere. I had other ones before that too when I was even younger but apparently I wasn't very gentle and they didn't survive? (see strangulation below!) Coincidentally taken at Christmastime, that's boy me on the right just being one of the girls with my two favorite cousins. Damn I was a weird child! Explains a lot though, doesn't it?

There was always the dreaded soft package, which meant socks. 

Quote from: Lisa_K on December 13, 2018, 02:41:44 AM
Haha! @Kylo, I just read what you posted while I was writing. I'm sorry,  but I loved my baby dolls and as amazing as it is, I still have the one in the picture above stashed away in a box somewhere. I had other ones before that too when I was even younger but apparently I wasn't very gentle and they didn't survive? (see strangulation below!) Coincidentally taken at Christmastime, that's boy me on the right just being one of the girls with my two favorite cousins. Damn I was a weird child! Explains a lot though, doesn't it?

Ironically I understand people's love of dolls a lot more these days, although I still think it's a little weird when someone has an enormous stash of them. Since I became a sculptor I've made a few of them for people before now, and it sounds odd to describe but when you make a human-like effigy or doll, of all things you can make they feel the most like they have character and almost as if you're creating a living being or that they are "almost alive". Obviously you're not and it's not alive, but there's a sense of life to them and I think people pick up on that. I never experienced it before actually making one, but once I had it was right there.

I know people who love and collect all kinds of dolls and maybe it's because of that sort of connection with them. So it doesn't seem weird to me now that you still have one. People can get almost mystically attached to dolls.

(As a kid though, they practically terrified me.) 

Quote from: Devlyn on December 13, 2018, 03:09:33 AM
There was always the dreaded soft package, which meant socks. 

...and /or tee shirts and tighty whities.  Ugh

Quote from: Kylo on December 13, 2018, 08:23:13 AM
...Since I became a sculptor I've made a few of them for people before now, and it sounds odd to describe but when you make a human-like effigy or doll, of all things you can make they feel the most like they have character and almost as if you're creating a living being or that they are "almost alive".

...like CHUCKY!!  And Bride of Chucky...and Seed of Chucky!  Ahhhhhhh!!!

I never had a hankering for girls toys when I was young, but I had sisters so they were always around.  I remember my son wanting a Cabbage Patch Doll when he was young.  My mother had to search far and wide and she bought him one.  They were a "hot item" at the time and sold out fast.  He carried and played with that doll (a little girl) for a very long time.  We never thought much about it being wrong for him because he was happy. 

I remember at age 6 wanting to do Ballet. I was just so scared inside I chickened out and asked for a toy train instead. I really wish I had gone with option 1. I have always wanted to be a dancer and regret not trying.

Lisa

My parents actually DID give me a horse for Christmas once even though I never expressed any equine interest whatsoever.  It was an outlandish expense that my working class parents couldn't afford and was the most extravagant gift any of us kids ever got.   I soon lost interest in it and my parents ending up selling it for a loss.  Looking back it was just another in a long line of examples of my parents futilely trying to get me to participate in masculine activities.

I remember riding my sister's bike as a hand me down. It of course, was a girl's bike. I loved it and had fun riding it until the kids in the neighborhood teased me about riding a girl's bike. My parents bought me a boy's bike that next year for Christmas but I still have fond memories of the bike that I rode that was pink with a banana seat. Love and faith.

Gabrielle

I wasn't brave enough to ask for really girlie stuff so I can't say that I've been denied anything I asked for because I didn't ask, but I got a lot of stuffed toys anyway so it was mostly good.

One more recent memory about a Christmas is after I came out to my parents. They thought that buying me more manly gifts, including clothing will somehow make the trans issue go away. That looked a little strange as I was presenting as female at home from that point on, including that Christmas...
I did not feel that they really wanted to understand me.

I remember when I was young I received a bunch of GI Joes. I made the best of it and washed them after each time I played with them. I pretended they were dolls. I use to hide to play with them. Looking back this was so silly. No one would have known, but I was paranoid.

Probably the worse was when my parents bought a bunch of boys polo shirts. I cried for so long and was angry for a very long time. Not only were they totally boy clothes, but in my neighborhood, I would have been beaten up daily! I was rude and angry for so long I ended up getting a spanking.

I am sure that my parents knew that I was not binary.

Quote from: Alice (nym) on December 12, 2018, 07:12:46 PM

A bit of Christmas fun... but what was it that you wanted when you were little but were denied because you had been assigned the wrong gender?

A teaset I wanted but never received but I still indulged in playing teaset with the girls.

Much more openly I loved skipping with a skipping rope and strangely enough mum never objected to that!

Hugs

Pamela

Just waiting to see if I get any girl stuff this year

I cannot remember much about Christmas when I was young apart from one year asking for and getting a clarinet and having a small teddy that I would dress up

I brought up my children to be what they want. My eldest daughter loved mechano and Lego and read mech engineering at university. Now she has a boy and he gets what he wants, his favourites are a toy kitchen books and a iggy piggy that goes everywhere with hi (he is 2)

Quote from: BrianaJ on December 13, 2018, 08:38:45 AM
...like CHUCKY!!  And Bride of Chucky...and Seed of Chucky!  Ahhhhhhh!!!

Yes, my dad was good enough to show me that film aged 11 and then play a joke on me with a clown doll the same evening.

Quote from: davina61 on December 15, 2018, 07:36:33 AM
Just waiting to see if I get any girl stuff this year

I came out recently and certainty dont expect any girly studf for Christmas although I desperately need hand bag to carry my stuff around! I am so over my briefcase. I can't carry extra shoes and clothes in my brief case. I also would like a clutch and hand purse. I dont think santa is up to speed yet ... at least I haven't told him I came out TG Hugs zoey

When I was eleven, I wanted a Spirograph, but I ended up getting a Barbie.  That summer, I took her outside along with my magnifying glass, melted her arms and legs and gave her a mohawk. 

That was the last time I got a doll from my Mom. 

Ryuichi