I wish Free to Be You and Me had continued to be taught beyond the 1970s. It deconstructed the idea of gender. There were no boy's clothes or toys. There were no girl's clothes or toys. There were just clothes and just toys. If a boy wanted to play with a doll, that was completely fine. It didn't make the child any less of a boy. If a girl wanted to dress like a boy with pants, t-shirt, and baseball cap, that was completely fine. It didn't make the child any less of a girl.
Stephanie Edmonds wasn't a "gender non-conforming" child. The fact is that the type of toys a child plays with or the clothes they wear doesn't define gender. In fact, it's rather sexist and regressive to say that only girls play with dolls and only wear dresses. Plenty of tomboys exist. They always have. And they've always been girls.
If you think tomboys are "gender non-conforming," then you have too narrow a definition of what it means to be a girl. Rather than continue forward with this narrow definition and force tomboys into the "gender non-conforming" category, you need to expand your definition of what it means to be a girl to accommodate this group that have always been female.
Clothes don't define us. Neither do toys. We shouldn't continue to propagate these regressive ideas.
Stephanie!! This could have been me! We are almost the exact same age, I was born in 1990. I love your story so much. Thank you so much for sharing! I will submit my story to the Calling All Tomboys submission. I went by "Ronald Weasley" in 4th grade and my best girlfriend went by "Harry Potter", because we were OBSESSED with Harry Potter, neither of us wanted to be Hermione lol. It got so extreme that we would literally write Ron and Harry on our home work assignments and our teacher just went with it. God bless 4th grade teachers from the 90s/early 2000s!
Stephanie Mounds' story is excellent and significant. I'd like every therapist seeing girls who decide "I'm trans, I'm really male," to have their patients read this narrative of active, sporty, angular girlhood. I had to chuckle about the dresses. I was fortunate enough to be the 4th girl of 5 in the 1960s and have the choice of wearing old (I'm talking handmade dresses from the 1940s--the women in my mother's generation were savers) hand-me-down dresses, which were washed soft and faded, never too frilly. There's actually a historic family photo of my great-grandmother's generation in which her many children, sons and daughters, were wearing plaid shirts, ties, skirts and vests, depending on the age and sex of the offspring, because she'd obviously bought one bolt of fabric and handsewn or treadle-machine sewn every single outfit. I too ran with the boys, not to the extent of hockey teams. But when I was expected to "dress up" it was the old plaids, the old hand tailored simple frocks, that I chose, with pride and a sense of the past.
Thank you for sharing your story. I hope you ask men-especially gay men to share their stories of being gender nonconforming as children as well. Its important for us to not medicalize normal variations of how children present and express themselves!
Thank you for your story! I can relate to some of it. It's so interesting isn't it, how imminently sensible and supportive it is, for a parent to react to gender nonconformist by reassuring the child that its ok, they are boy/girl (their bio sex) but they can be any kind of boy/girl and that's ok, though it isn't typical. Then you compare that to the current gender-identity led response and you just think "wtf?" ... I don't understand how so many people cannot see it! 😕
So honest and transparent, many thanks, Stephanie. This kind of story needs to be told and discussed by all of us interested in this discussion. Gender confusion has been around forever. We do NOT need a group of ideologues who push confused 12 year olds in one particular direction with a large menu of reversible and irreversible options to "facilitate" the process. Transgender programs are so clearly unscientific and unethical. I favor lawsuits to halt the sincere and misled members of the medical profession who are participating with enthusiasm in this process.
Thank you for sharing your journey Stephanie!
I grew up a tomboy as well and often wonder the same thing you do, what would society have told me when I was in middle school?
I still prefer pants, jeans, to dresses and skirts. I still like science and don’t mind getting dirty. I am a woman.
I wish Free to Be You and Me had continued to be taught beyond the 1970s. It deconstructed the idea of gender. There were no boy's clothes or toys. There were no girl's clothes or toys. There were just clothes and just toys. If a boy wanted to play with a doll, that was completely fine. It didn't make the child any less of a boy. If a girl wanted to dress like a boy with pants, t-shirt, and baseball cap, that was completely fine. It didn't make the child any less of a girl.
Stephanie Edmonds wasn't a "gender non-conforming" child. The fact is that the type of toys a child plays with or the clothes they wear doesn't define gender. In fact, it's rather sexist and regressive to say that only girls play with dolls and only wear dresses. Plenty of tomboys exist. They always have. And they've always been girls.
If you think tomboys are "gender non-conforming," then you have too narrow a definition of what it means to be a girl. Rather than continue forward with this narrow definition and force tomboys into the "gender non-conforming" category, you need to expand your definition of what it means to be a girl to accommodate this group that have always been female.
Clothes don't define us. Neither do toys. We shouldn't continue to propagate these regressive ideas.
Stephanie!! This could have been me! We are almost the exact same age, I was born in 1990. I love your story so much. Thank you so much for sharing! I will submit my story to the Calling All Tomboys submission. I went by "Ronald Weasley" in 4th grade and my best girlfriend went by "Harry Potter", because we were OBSESSED with Harry Potter, neither of us wanted to be Hermione lol. It got so extreme that we would literally write Ron and Harry on our home work assignments and our teacher just went with it. God bless 4th grade teachers from the 90s/early 2000s!
Thank you for your courage in sharing your story, Stephanie!
Stephanie Mounds' story is excellent and significant. I'd like every therapist seeing girls who decide "I'm trans, I'm really male," to have their patients read this narrative of active, sporty, angular girlhood. I had to chuckle about the dresses. I was fortunate enough to be the 4th girl of 5 in the 1960s and have the choice of wearing old (I'm talking handmade dresses from the 1940s--the women in my mother's generation were savers) hand-me-down dresses, which were washed soft and faded, never too frilly. There's actually a historic family photo of my great-grandmother's generation in which her many children, sons and daughters, were wearing plaid shirts, ties, skirts and vests, depending on the age and sex of the offspring, because she'd obviously bought one bolt of fabric and handsewn or treadle-machine sewn every single outfit. I too ran with the boys, not to the extent of hockey teams. But when I was expected to "dress up" it was the old plaids, the old hand tailored simple frocks, that I chose, with pride and a sense of the past.
Thank you for sharing your story. I hope you ask men-especially gay men to share their stories of being gender nonconforming as children as well. Its important for us to not medicalize normal variations of how children present and express themselves!
Thank you for your story! I can relate to some of it. It's so interesting isn't it, how imminently sensible and supportive it is, for a parent to react to gender nonconformist by reassuring the child that its ok, they are boy/girl (their bio sex) but they can be any kind of boy/girl and that's ok, though it isn't typical. Then you compare that to the current gender-identity led response and you just think "wtf?" ... I don't understand how so many people cannot see it! 😕
So honest and transparent, many thanks, Stephanie. This kind of story needs to be told and discussed by all of us interested in this discussion. Gender confusion has been around forever. We do NOT need a group of ideologues who push confused 12 year olds in one particular direction with a large menu of reversible and irreversible options to "facilitate" the process. Transgender programs are so clearly unscientific and unethical. I favor lawsuits to halt the sincere and misled members of the medical profession who are participating with enthusiasm in this process.