Being Eight
I've been blogging since 2014 so I do occasionally return to the same subject matter. Tonight I'm again writing about being a third grader, an eight year old, although I've already done one blog post about that.
The main reason it's blogworthy is that that's the first time I can recall feeling like I was fundamentally different from others, and it stuck with me permanently, so this is when my sense of identity, the one I write about here, originally started.
The Boys' Team
It's kind of weird that the first step towards feeling quite separate from the boys involved feeling like I was representing them as their champion. But right around this time, I became irritated by the attitude or expectation that the girls were always going to be better behaved. A teacher would occasionally say something like "I need to go down to the principal's office. Would one of you girls take notice of anyone who misbehaves while I am gone?" Some of the girls my age stepped into that role readily enough, prim and officiously proper and oh so sure that boys were inferior specimens who could only be expected to misbehave.
It wasn't just behavior, but also the associated notion that girls were more acutely sensitive to things like recognizing the beauty in music or art, or caring about someone and what they were experiencing and being sympathetic and supportive. As if boys were inherently more coarse and oblivious.
And there was classroom achievement. The girls, by and large, were the ones with the better grades. They'd win the spelling bees, they'd have the answers when called upon, they were smart. There were some smart boys who got good grades, but the girls seemed to have the edge.
So I was up for competing with the girls on all these levels, because I was as good as any of them were, in all of these different ways. And I wasn't going to tolerate the attitudes, the condescension, the expectations that since I was a boy everyone should expect less of me.
But the odd thing was that the rest of the boys weren't cheering me on. They mocked me instead, and implied that I was in some fashion beaten down into being this way and that it somehow meant I was weak, and that if I were doing what I wanted, I would be like them. Oh please, give me a break. It was difficult to care at all what they thought about anything. Meanwhile, I respected my competitors. Even if some of them were snobby about girls being superior to boys, I could at least see what they were striving for and they made sense to me.
Mrs. G and the School Hallway
I don't remember being particularly upset about being picked on by boys that year, but it was certainly happening and I guess it was visible from the outside. Meanwhile, since at least some of the girls weren't very social towards any boy, and only had girls for friends, I didn't have a whole lot of friends, although I certainly had some. My teacher saw that I was reading ahead independently and decided to insulate me from the behaviors of my classmates by letting me move my desk out into the hall during part of the day so I could be by myself.
This put me out of range of the mean-spirited bored boys but it helped to isolate me as well. I didn't mind at the time. I had my Nancy Drew books to read when I was all caught up with my homework.
Karen
I had someone to talk to during all this: Karen. She was quick to agree that most of those boys were horrible creatures, and their behavior was not to be tolerated. She said I was different. She liked being with me. We talked about other things too, of course. We were best friends. We also liked to hold hands, and I'd put my arm around her shoulders and it felt sweet and wonderful to be close like that. We'd pass each other notes sometimes when I was inside the classroom, and we went out to recess together.
I thought of her as my girlfriend. Having a girlfriend or boyfriend at that age wasn't a totally alien notion, I mean, we had that label to put on it easily enough. But it also wasn't like how it is when you're sixteen and everyone is assumed to want to have that kind of relationship. In third grade, it was something that people would make fun of, like any self-respecting boy would be ashamed of having a girlfriend. Girls would get teased about it too, although I don't think quite as much. Anyway, overall, we did get teased about it, and we talked about that too, and it felt like we were bonding, you and me against the hostile world, that sort of thing.
At the time, the option of being with Karen like this, of having this in my life, felt like the polar opposite of joining with the boys and being like them and valuing what they valued.
Culmination: That Sense-of-Self Thing
So at some point late in my third grade year, I had a rather vivid inspirational moment where all the parts kind of clicked into place and gave me a sense of purpose and identity. I was different, in a wonderfully positive and fortunate way, and I was going to hold onto that as the most important thing. I didn't really put a name to it. Didn't have to, it wasn't something I felt a need to tell anyone else about. Just a great self-awareness, a sense that I get to choose and this is my choice. You can't make me be like the boys. I am the way they should be. I pay attention to the way things should be and that is why I understand things that they don't. It's all right there if you look for it.
The most externally recognizable change was that I went totally nonviolent. It was a way to distinguish me from the boys. Boys that age don't really do much damage when they hit, and the hitting game is almost ridiculously formalized with rules about how boys are supposed to behave when they fight. You don't bite, you don't pull hair, and you aren't really supposed to drag someone down to the ground. You stand up and hit with your fists. So I found it pretty easy to just refuse to engage. The boys trying to lure me into a fight would call me names, would dare me, taunt me, then throw some punches. I'd just keep walking, let them punch me but then I'd be past them and they'd be behind me, frustrated, yelling things at my back. I didn't fight. It felt powerful. It made them juvenile, bratty little children who didn't count, and I was on my way to becoming an adult, a mature self-disciplined and socially responsible person and definitely on par with any of the girls.
-----
My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback. eBook version and hardback versions to follow, stay tuned for details.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for GenderQueer now and for Guy in Women's Studies once they come out.
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts
The main reason it's blogworthy is that that's the first time I can recall feeling like I was fundamentally different from others, and it stuck with me permanently, so this is when my sense of identity, the one I write about here, originally started.
The Boys' Team
It's kind of weird that the first step towards feeling quite separate from the boys involved feeling like I was representing them as their champion. But right around this time, I became irritated by the attitude or expectation that the girls were always going to be better behaved. A teacher would occasionally say something like "I need to go down to the principal's office. Would one of you girls take notice of anyone who misbehaves while I am gone?" Some of the girls my age stepped into that role readily enough, prim and officiously proper and oh so sure that boys were inferior specimens who could only be expected to misbehave.
It wasn't just behavior, but also the associated notion that girls were more acutely sensitive to things like recognizing the beauty in music or art, or caring about someone and what they were experiencing and being sympathetic and supportive. As if boys were inherently more coarse and oblivious.
And there was classroom achievement. The girls, by and large, were the ones with the better grades. They'd win the spelling bees, they'd have the answers when called upon, they were smart. There were some smart boys who got good grades, but the girls seemed to have the edge.
So I was up for competing with the girls on all these levels, because I was as good as any of them were, in all of these different ways. And I wasn't going to tolerate the attitudes, the condescension, the expectations that since I was a boy everyone should expect less of me.
But the odd thing was that the rest of the boys weren't cheering me on. They mocked me instead, and implied that I was in some fashion beaten down into being this way and that it somehow meant I was weak, and that if I were doing what I wanted, I would be like them. Oh please, give me a break. It was difficult to care at all what they thought about anything. Meanwhile, I respected my competitors. Even if some of them were snobby about girls being superior to boys, I could at least see what they were striving for and they made sense to me.
Mrs. G and the School Hallway
I don't remember being particularly upset about being picked on by boys that year, but it was certainly happening and I guess it was visible from the outside. Meanwhile, since at least some of the girls weren't very social towards any boy, and only had girls for friends, I didn't have a whole lot of friends, although I certainly had some. My teacher saw that I was reading ahead independently and decided to insulate me from the behaviors of my classmates by letting me move my desk out into the hall during part of the day so I could be by myself.
This put me out of range of the mean-spirited bored boys but it helped to isolate me as well. I didn't mind at the time. I had my Nancy Drew books to read when I was all caught up with my homework.
Karen
I had someone to talk to during all this: Karen. She was quick to agree that most of those boys were horrible creatures, and their behavior was not to be tolerated. She said I was different. She liked being with me. We talked about other things too, of course. We were best friends. We also liked to hold hands, and I'd put my arm around her shoulders and it felt sweet and wonderful to be close like that. We'd pass each other notes sometimes when I was inside the classroom, and we went out to recess together.
I thought of her as my girlfriend. Having a girlfriend or boyfriend at that age wasn't a totally alien notion, I mean, we had that label to put on it easily enough. But it also wasn't like how it is when you're sixteen and everyone is assumed to want to have that kind of relationship. In third grade, it was something that people would make fun of, like any self-respecting boy would be ashamed of having a girlfriend. Girls would get teased about it too, although I don't think quite as much. Anyway, overall, we did get teased about it, and we talked about that too, and it felt like we were bonding, you and me against the hostile world, that sort of thing.
At the time, the option of being with Karen like this, of having this in my life, felt like the polar opposite of joining with the boys and being like them and valuing what they valued.
Culmination: That Sense-of-Self Thing
So at some point late in my third grade year, I had a rather vivid inspirational moment where all the parts kind of clicked into place and gave me a sense of purpose and identity. I was different, in a wonderfully positive and fortunate way, and I was going to hold onto that as the most important thing. I didn't really put a name to it. Didn't have to, it wasn't something I felt a need to tell anyone else about. Just a great self-awareness, a sense that I get to choose and this is my choice. You can't make me be like the boys. I am the way they should be. I pay attention to the way things should be and that is why I understand things that they don't. It's all right there if you look for it.
The most externally recognizable change was that I went totally nonviolent. It was a way to distinguish me from the boys. Boys that age don't really do much damage when they hit, and the hitting game is almost ridiculously formalized with rules about how boys are supposed to behave when they fight. You don't bite, you don't pull hair, and you aren't really supposed to drag someone down to the ground. You stand up and hit with your fists. So I found it pretty easy to just refuse to engage. The boys trying to lure me into a fight would call me names, would dare me, taunt me, then throw some punches. I'd just keep walking, let them punch me but then I'd be past them and they'd be behind me, frustrated, yelling things at my back. I didn't fight. It felt powerful. It made them juvenile, bratty little children who didn't count, and I was on my way to becoming an adult, a mature self-disciplined and socially responsible person and definitely on par with any of the girls.
-----
My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback. eBook version and hardback versions to follow, stay tuned for details.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for GenderQueer now and for Guy in Women's Studies once they come out.
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts