Androgyny, a gay classmate, and how I realized that I was dumbass.

I'm surprised at the things I've found looking back on my childhood. The thing that hit me first was the memory of every kid having that one special toy; the one that they  keep with them until they die or that they occasionally reminisce about during their mid-life crisis "Oh yeah! I loved that thing" -- a personal Sheriff Woody. And being on the subject of gender, androgyny, and children, I found it serendipitous that the most prominent memory I have of a childhood toy was that of a doll. It wasn't an action figure, or one of those things you beat up on, which then yell and make sounds; it had a big, round face, frizzy black hair made of yarn; it was stuffed, plush, and cute. It didn't matter: I loved the damn thing. I named it Francis. How I played with him: I was always the doctor, putting frail plastic bandages around his wrists and listening to his heartbeat. I was the care giver, a role typically assigned to females. Oddly enough, I never really outgrew that. I've always been the one to offer help, be it through hand or hug, and I have a drive to see whoever it is do well and be ok. I also never liked playing sports much; I erred away from the pseudo-football games held by my classmates at recess. But I like watching them, and I seldom recall a moment in my younger years when I didn’t have my face in a screen and my hands on a controller. I had a fairly equal mix of gender exposure relative to my peers, and the more I came to realize myself, the more my tolerance grew for others who were “different.”

Up until education, I had no real feeling or ‘boy things’ or ‘girl things’. Only fun existed. It wasn’t until I was introduced to school when the aforementioned prejudice began to grow. Here, boys and girls were clearly separated, going as far as children suggesting “girls vs. boys” as the primary recess activity; I learned to take it for granted. One day, I and two other boys were playing power rangers. We grabbed colored gloves from an activity area and adorned them to emulate our on-screen heroes. When I adorned the yellow gloves, and announced my color -- I was mercilessly laughed at. I felt ostracized. This was the first time that I was made fun of for being “a girl”. After that, I started staying away from girly things, much like the young Alex did when he was taunted about his socks (Padawer 12). Though unlike him, I never had an outright desire to emulate a feminine lifestyle. From then on I was conditioned to be manly and to openly oppose anything that was remotely out of the norm.

 This carried on well into my middle my interests gravitated toward the violence-filled brands of Power Rangers, Dragon Ball Z, and Transformers. All of the punches and kicks and testosterone flying around the under-saturated CRT television prompted me to emulate it. I enrolled in a martial arts academy at the age of five. Upon walking into the school for the first time and joining the ranks of future butt-kickers, I noticed something wrong: a girl was in our midst. Even more disconcerting was when I noticed that she had a yellow belt -- the second rank out of maybe ten -- and I had none. I was immediately vocal: "Girls can't do karate!" I cried, angered and confused by this blatant disregard for the security of boyishness. I was met with a chuckle from my contemporaries and a light but firm chastisement from the instructor. I had learned a lesson that day

 Even though I felt the pressures of my peers to be manly, there were a few feminine tendencies that stuck with me, and sometimes, I put myself down over them. I could cry -- I didn’t feel the need to fight back tears, I didn’t want to play or watch sports, I disliked putting a worm on a hook (didn’t want to hurt it), and I knew flat out that I was not going to be in the military -- draft or no, I was heading straight for the Canadian border – I liked toy guns, I hated killing people. I felt at odds with myself, so I tried to ‘man up’ and extinguish these unnatural desires, lest I be ousted from my coven for blasphemous treason. I made a snide (gay) joke about a boy who had a particularly feminine look and personality. Word got to him in about thirty seconds and he confronted me. I tried to write it off as a misunderstanding, but he was hurt and walked away in disgust. To be perfectly frank, I felt like a real dick. That guy never did anything to me. Several years later, he came out as gay, and in the few encounters we had since then he was happy and nice. Prom came around, I saw him there. He was with a group of girls, and all of them were wearing exceptionally beautiful dresses. To be honest, I had an initial moment of minor shock, but then I really looked at him; he looked good, he was smiling, and he was having the time of his life. I smiled, walked over to him, and complemented him on his attire. This was stark contrast from the situation in Houston where an unsuspecting Ms. Sturgis was “informed that girls had to wear drapes for yearbook portraits” when she opted for a tuxedo (Hoffman 3). If my schools administration had barred him from wearing a dress to prom, I would have been beyond angry. By this time, the idea that people should be who they want to be had sunk in pretty good. It was that final moment that really drove it home, and set my beliefs in stone

 It seems the growing trend -- at least in my social circles – is to break down gender barriers. I am proud to be part of this revolution. In perspective, there was very little preaching of tolerance of gender in my early years of education, something that I believe could have benefited the more disagreeable souls present on the football team; it could have saved a few students I know a lot of grief and sorrow. The funny thing is by and large, especially in my later years, I had never really thought of this as an issue; I was naïve enough to believe that the world was more or less tolerant of people who do not conform to gender roles. I had seen certain events in the news – horrible incidents involving, bullying, suicides, and even murders – and they got me pissed, but I dismissed them as isolated incidents. The fact is that these issues permeate society very frequently and have the potential to lead to those ‘isolated incidents’. By realizing this, I know that I need to take an active role in breaking down gender roles. I’m going to do this like I go about helping out anybody else that goes through trouble; offer them support and treat them with an radiant abundance of kindness.