The Times- Growing up I wanted to be a boy — I’m glad puberty blockers were not an option
FIRST PERSON
Growing up I wanted to be a boy — I’m glad puberty blockers were not an option
One woman describes how, from the age of 5 to 16, she longed to be male — and could have transitioned. She reflects on what it might have cost her
Anonymous
The Times
“Gender-related distress” is what Dr Hilary Cass calls it. The term, used in her landmark review into gender identity services for children and young people that arrived last week, has resonated. And I can’t think of any better way of describing my feelings growing up. I’m a thirtysomething lesbian and I know in my bones that, if I’d had a chance to pursue transition as a child, I would have gone for it.
I was at primary school in Kent in the 1990s when I realised I was attracted to girls, female teachers, actresses and girl group singers. I’d never really seen two women in a relationship together, though, and figured one way to resolve that conundrum was if I could become a boy.
Plus, I liked what boys liked: Action Men, grisly cartoons, comics, video games and football. Enjoyment of what should be gender-neutral activities is no justification for wanting to be a boy. I know this now. But in recent years, every time I’ve read an article about a young girl transitioning to become a boy, they or their parents will cite these interests as justifications for why, say, young Amelia needed to become Adam. If that’s the criteria, I’d be trans too.
Sometimes these testimonies further detail a child’s dysphoria, and I would still find myself scrolling and nodding, reminiscing over who I was as a child. They’ve got a new haircut, tick. They’ve chosen a new name, tick. They’ve expressed a desire for different genitals, tick. I remember, with lucidity, positioning a yellow Stickle Brick on my crotch as I pretended to do a wee into the fireplace at home. I so desperately wanted a willy. Surely, any trans activist would say, this is ultimate proof of a child simply not being the sex they were “assigned at birth” as the parlance goes.
A child who rejects their own genitals is a child born in the wrong body, right? But I think it was more what it symbolised than what it was: boys were given freedoms I wasn’t, they could also stand up to wee, show off with their effluent. They had something that stuck out, that made them special. And I wanted that too.
Later, at secondary school, I’d see penises scrawled on walls, desks, exercise books and lockers and think: it just gets so much attention, doesn’t it? For all the right reasons, too, idolised as this ultimate power tool. Meanwhile, when even the most timid growth of girls’ secondary sex characteristics was pored over, remarked upon and ogled at — by lascivious boys and judgy girls alike — I was repulsed, I couldn’t bear the thought of any bits of mine jutting out into that arena of speculation. And yet they did.
More than a few boys were at best clumsy and at worst aggressive with me. From the age of 13 I was sexually assaulted on several occasions, sometimes in ways that are easy to recognise as nonconsensual, sometimes in more subtle ways, because I didn’t know me giving my go-ahead could ever be part of the deal. These boys’ clawing and grasping at alcopop-soaked house parties, which happened more times than I care to remember, were far more experimental play times for them than anything I had any say in. I don’t think I even had the worst of it. And the vicious reactions they displayed when I, with some strength, refused to comply showed that they held all the cards. At least, that’s how it felt. If girlhood, and impending womanhood, had done this to me, why wouldn’t I want to escape from it?
It wasn’t just that I couldn’t abide by what femininity had in store for me in real life, but in perceptions shaped by the media too. Lesbians were barely seen and young women in the public eye were barely dressed. Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera both sold sex with wide-mouthed allure, which has perhaps harmed them more than anyone else. Eminem was always on hand to insult any woman too big for her boots and created, in Stan, a No 1 song that chronicled domestic homicide.
I loathed and felt utterly disconnected from the body that, society told me, had invited boys’ jabs and insistences, and promised me no better for the future. I didn’t want to be part of a club full of hazing rituals, so I had tactics for
detaching. I went on to online chatrooms adopting the persona of a boy so I could play out with other girls my fantasy of a happy relationship. I restricted my eating until I was left with a flat silhouette, a cheaper alternative to breast-binding that left me with irregular periods and stretch marks, rather than the inhibited breathing that young girls experience today while binding. I wore baggy clothes, I cut my own hair, I scratched my arms until they bled.
My parents weren’t always sure of how to deal with it. When I was younger they played along with me pretending to be a boy, but set boundaries: not at school, and this saved me from some early years bullying, I’m sure. Later I was too closed off about the boys, the assaults, the self-harm to divulge my feelings, and I felt so ashamed of my secret adoration of women. My dad had a theory I was atrophying, retreating into a childlike state, and he wasn’t wrong. My mum, mostly worried about my eating, took me to a child psychologist. I came out to him, and he asked if this made me feel lonely — yes — and then proceeded to interrogate me about chatrooms, as that was perhaps the safeguarding issue du jour. By not helping me to discuss issues around my sexuality, by not guiding me to other support services, by not recognising that predators thrive as much in a student population as they do online, he let me down.
And I worry for the children who have potentially been let down by gender identity services, not only those who wait for years for treatment, but those whose treatment is so narrowly defined to gender issues. Because, as trans people are happy to point out, gender is so much more than our sex. No wonder the Cass review notes that children presenting with gender dysphoria have comorbidities such as autism, eating disorders, and other mood and anxiety disorders.
My parents trust doctors, like most people, so if that psychologist had recommended a gender clinic, it wouldn’t have been impossible for me to have ended up there. They also feared my turmoil; if I’d known about being able to transition, that route out of the iron maiden of womanhood, and begged them for it, I don’t know if they’d have had the heart to turn me down.
It wasn’t until my twenties that I met women who were actually excited by us both being female. And that helped me to begin to understand that it’s OK to be me. More than a decade later and I’m not a womanly woman, whatever that means. But I know I’m a woman, most keenly in the fact that, in my thirties, I have a decision to make about children. If I’d gone on puberty blockers, which, one Mayo Clinic study says, can wither reproductive glands, the decision could have been set in motion when I was only a child myself. As it happens, my partner and I have not yet decided on having kids, and I like that the choice is still, just about, there.
I’ve moved to a big city and I know lots of LGBT people. Many have transitioned, are on their way to transitioning or identify as non-binary. They have my sympathies and solidarity — they are up against people who can’t bear any straying from gender norms, whose intolerance is vengeful, violent and vindictive. They face inappropriate questioning, abuse and threats of violence out in public and febrile debate over who they are.
However, trans people do not have the monopoly on having felt distressed about their gender. While I question the motives of a for-profit industry that has benefited from altering fully functional and healthy bodies, I don’t mind what trans adults do with their bodies, as I trust them to be steady-minded, with the intelligence and competence to make irreversible decisions. Children are not capable of making the same decisions, though.
When I look back at myself, a vulnerable and isolated young girl whose strong will had been so dented by a world that said boys were simply tougher, more fun, smarter, better, I wonder what she would have done today to not only escape femininity but to pick the winning team. I understand why girls do it today — in 2021 adolescent girls represented two thirds of the intake at gender identity clinics. There’s been progress, but the ubiquity of online porn, the increasing casualness about and cheapening of cosmetic surgeries, and the nefarious beauty standards of TikTok and Instagram all rain down on the psyche of young girls today. They rarely see lesbians in the public eye who aren’t primed and pretty-pretty, reassuringly attractive to men.
No wonder so many young girls want to just log off from such a restrictive, inhibiting view of pending womanhood. I want them to know that it’s OK to not be the woman that society wants you to be, that things can and will get better.
Some identifying details have been changed
Some identifying details have been changed
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