Being Transgender in Elementary School

Welcome to the third installment in a series of windows into my life. For those who are reading this as their first installment, my purpose is to allow people to view some aspects of my life that many people do not experience first hand and for that matter plenty don't even have second hand experience. For background reference, I've already given out some basic tips for coming out from my own experience of coming out as bisexual and I've given a little overview question and answer session regarding being transgender so we can have some basic common ground from which to start on. This installment will cover my earliest memories in regards to my life being transgender. So everyone fasten your seatbelts as we head back in time.

The first few years

It's only in hindsight that I can see anything significant in this period of time. If you would have asked me then I probably wouldn't have thought anything was strange or out of the ordinary. Life just was what it was.

In hindsight though I can tell you it does seem a little strange that I don't recall having any male friends prior to attending elementary school, besides one or two cousins perhaps. Now my memory may be a little faulty, especially when examining memories from this long ago, but I only recalling spending time with a few girls in the neighborhood, a few girls from church, and one or two girls who were family friends. I know it is not uncommon to have friends of the opposite gender as a small child but it does strike me as odd to have such a very small number of friends of the same gender.

Elementary school

I feel I must ask for forgiveness in advance with this particular subtopic. I will attempt to remain calm and objective but I have many bitter memories from this period in my life.

Elementary school is the place and time where things started to go wrong. That probably shouldn't be that shocking either. This is the point in time where boys and girls separate out the most as extremely strong social rules are cemented in place by the artificial structure of the school day. I still got to see and spend time with some of my friends of the family but the rest of my female friends made a quick exit from my life. And I can't blame them; they were simply doing what came naturally. Though that was a very unpleasant set of events, losing so many of my old girl friends was not the worst part of elementary school. No, the worst part was dealing with all the new people.

Those of you who aren't good at predictions are probably thinking "Well of course dealing with new people is hard. What is your point?" It's not that simple. Visualize the consequences of our established scenario: A boy who secretly wishes to be a girl and be openly feminine at an overcrowded under supervised school in the 80's and 90's. The groups and clicks I want to be a part of reject me out of hand because they see me as a boy and the groups that may accept me under normal circumstances not only do I want no part of but largely won't even accept me because I am "too girly." Thus I am isolated, a man (or girl) without a country.

That doesn't mean though that I didn't have to deal with people. Oh, quite the contrary. In the elementary school jungle where status is built on over powering and destroying those around you without being caught and punished by the school authorities, a lone child without the backing of a group is considered easy prey for anyone and everyone who wants to climb the social ladder. This becomes even more the case once it becomes known that no one will back me up and I won't admit the real reason why I am attacked or harassed was because of being transgender or wanting to be a girl. In fact, this almost makes me a safe target. Once we get dragged into the principal's office what am I going to tell them? "He has been harassing me all week and finally when I get fed up and tried to make him stop he decided to fight me. Why? Oh, because if he attacks a regular girl he knows you'll punish him to the extremes but if he fights me you'll just brush it off as boys will be boys, blame me for half of it, and let it go at that."

I know now that if I would have told them that all this was ultimately because I was transgender there is a reasonable chance something would have been done about it. At the same time, when and where I was makes the chances of additional shame and punishment falling on my shoulders an equally likely outcome. Plus, I never would have known that any of this was not par for the course. Transgender issues were simply things no one discussed back then.

Finally, I got fed up. Being myself was getting me no where and I simply couldn't be what I was expected to be so instead I took the only course of action I could think of. I got angry and cold. By the time elementary school was done I was ready to cut out all my feelings and become like a drone. But that is more appropriately saved for the next topic: transgender in middle school and beyond.