I don’t remember the year these events occurred. I just have thought about them alot over the years. They probably followed my work. All day long I ask patients questions and naturally ask myself the same questions. Having worked with transexuals for many years one of the issues that arises is whether they had any childhood experiences with cross dressing or playing with toys that were deemed cross gender, eg boys playing with dolls.
The interesting thing is that normal development is associated with varying degrees of confusion so it’s not really an ‘indication’ for a sex change. The homo phobias and trans phobias of parents aren’t at issue. 90% of children revert to their biological determined gender before adulthood. There’s just some tourist activity in young children. The politics have however entered here with a tremendous ‘recruitment’ push to have children ‘join’ the ranks of the various minorities. As adults I truly support this but as for children I consider this trend 1984. It’s fraught with all manner of future pain and cost. The scientific data simply says it’s high risk and not to be entered lightly yet there are idealogues among doctor, psychologists, and psychiatrists who believe in that perfidious notion of ‘constructionism’. Intellectually the ideas of memes is good but to jump to the idea that a meme is a gene is arty at best.
The memory that came to mind for me was my teddy bear. I don’t know where or when I got it. A cute little guy. What my mom did though was to make the teddy bear pyjamas. I always thought my mom would have liked a girl. She physically couldn’t have children after my brother and I were born so that wasn’t an option. Things would have been very different in my life if I’d had a sister. I feel I put girls on a pedestal and associated them with my really very wonderful mother, whereas my friends who had sisters knew them for less than perfect beings. Despite divorces today I tend to put women on a pedestal at times seeing them as having the capacity for the ‘virgin mother’. God approached Mary first not Joseph. It’s also a latin thing. Mi madre. The perfect woman. This for men translates into the ‘Madonna-Whore” and the incapacity of man to consider his mother romping in the bed and hence the Oedipal Condition not uncommon in men whereas the equivalent is rare in women. Women have no problem thinking of their mother and father rutting in general. Women especially after they become mothers’ themselves are much more ‘down to earth’ compared to men. They are into their bodies more even than men in this way.
Now when I was somewhere 7 to 9 there was a little girl a few blocks away. We’d play together in her basement with her dolls. We liked each other in school and the mothers thought some play time together would be good. So for a few visits I was quite happy to be at her house playing with her Ken and Barbie dolls. I brought my teddy bear and I think Mom even made another outfit. Well, this caused some concern with the fathers. I remember Dad telling Mom that I wasn’t a girl and that he didn’t think it was good that she was having me play with dolls. “But it’s just a teddy bear.” I remember my mom answering.
Anyway that was the end of my playing with my teddy bear and my friends Ken and Barbie dolls. As boys we’d play in girls games but frankly they weren’t nearly as much fun as what we as boys did. I even ended up eating mud pies when the girls on my street made them in their make believe ovens and gave these to me. As boys and girls we lived in parallel worlds. Even Kirk who had older sisters had no desire to hang out with them except when they were putting on plays in the summer and coopted us.
Somewhere in the storage locker I have my teddy bear, I believe. He may well have been chewed up by one of the dogs. I dress the dogs up in sweaters and coats so perhaps that came as a result of my exposure to girls and ‘dress up’ games. I always liked new boys clothes as a kid. I put that down to wearing mostly second hand, hand me down clothing from my brother. But I did like ‘natty’ clothes and I liked having my picture taken, not being shy, and liking positive attention. Mom dressed us up for church or at least encouraged us to look our best and I definitely liked being told by the older ladies. “Aren’t you looking nice today Billy’. So it was no surprise later when disco struck I was into that Staying Alive attire. But again I put that down to the years of acting and the enjoyment of character and costume.
The teddy bear, however, in his satin pyjamas, looking a little like a furry Hugh Hefner, still holds a special place in the memory.
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