Overview: I've had issues with gender since I realized it existed. Basically I've tried a whole lot of options that I was able to try: trying to ignore it, trying to live just in my own imaginative world, trying to please others, acknowledging the issues but not doing anything about them and being a transgender or transsexual person. I have never tried to conform though, because I got told oh so often that one should (be allowed to) be just oneself, so that is what I did. Not that I would've been able to be something I'm not in the first place.

---

What is it with gender, really?

an entry for This is life Writing contest

I was my parents' first child. I don't remember anything from early childhood and what my parents have told me is embarrassing. As a kid I had fairly gender-neutral toys, like legos, board games, stuffed animals and toy cars. There was the occasional gun or doll, but if I remember correctly, I wasn't really interested in them.
In kindergarten and school I was the weird kid. I got teased, but apparently much less than the kids who were bullied for "real". Maybe that was mostly because I both ran away (figuratively) very quickly and was both smart and physically fairly intimidating. Nevertheless, I lived in constant fear. This was when the first gender issues arose, though I couldn't tell, young as I was. I didn't really like the stuff the kids with similar genitals tried to push on me and the kids with other kind of genitals either ignored me or were mean – and I was shy. So I suffered. As an afterthought, the social issues I had then were partly but not wholly caused by gender issues.
Puberty made things much worse. It ruined my perfect genderless body. At that time I just accepted it and suffered mostly because of what the other kids did to me apparently out of jealousy. Maybe it was better that I didn't know that things could have gone differently, but nowadays I'm ever so bitter that puberty had to happen to me. German lessons made me believe that there is two genders, but they didn't make me believe that neutrality doesn't exist. Before that I'd never really thought about gender. I thought (misleadingly) that sex only creates some dividing difference in underpants and toilets, but that there is no mental or social gender. The German teacher once corrected the neutral pronouns of my genderless critter (I'd made comics about it for years and only during that lesson I realized that it didn't have a gender) into masculine ones. I didn't fight it, though I didn't like it.
I then came up with the concept of "genderlessness" as I define it. I created genderless characters and realized I was genderless. Since that day, though I have thought the issues over and over with profoundly changed patterns of thinking and understanding and with more knowledge, I have always thought of myself as genderless.
This revelation came when I was approximately 12. I was going to junior high, and that was hell. At this time I tried to counter my physical gender with clothes and being less like the kids that had similar genitals. I was trying to nonconform, but didn't do it in a way that would have been untrue to myself – I never did anything I found repulsive unless forced to.
In high school I tried pleasing the kids who had similar genitals by trying to dress a little bit like they did. I didn't like that way of dressing, and gradually shifted back. I'm happy that the people in high school were fairly smart and nice, for they did not tease me. During the last years of high school my manners, patterns and depths of thinking changed drastically. I now understood much more than I did before. In fact my understanding grew logarithmically when I was about 14–20. I did research and found out about transgenderism and transsexualism. I fairly soon realized that I can be categorized under the term transgender, and that is where I'm still at, in the subcategory of genderless or agender. I first thought I wouldn't need any treatment, that I was okay with my body as it is. That changed, and since the science nowadays provides the means of that, I don't see a reason why I shouldn't do it and be happier than I am now. I've been in fairly small surgery twice (that's my opinion, the doctors said that the other was a tiny routine thing and the other a major thing) and have no negative experience. I don't want anything I deem "major" or alternatively "superficial" to be done to my body.
I was physically genderless as a kid and wish to be that in the eyes of others. I like being on the internet where people can't see physical gender. I'm not conforming to accepted roles; I'm rather trying to get as far from them as I can. However, I'm not doing it just because of others; while I don't feel estranged from my body, it's not like I'd like it to be, it doesn't behave like I want it to and some things just generally bother me – while there are some things I can influence, there are things that I can't, so medical intervention is welcomed.

---

---

The following is not a part of the contest entry. I just felt like writing it.

Some lucky people get it right in puberty. I didn't.

I didn't talk about sexual preference. In fact, I think that the only thing gender/sex has to do with sexual preference is this: sexual preference is the most common and most accepted way of sex/gender-based discriminating.

In many languages, people are referred to as madam, lady, mister, sir, ma'am and what not. I think it's gross to refer to people by the appearance of their external genitals and sexual characteristics.

There isn't really anything wrong with me; I don't really have "issues". I am myself and am not harming anyone by doing that. It's the other people who have "issues" and are in need of therapy for not accepting or even just tolerating me or letting me be what I am. I resent that I had to go through so much trouble to find out about any of the gender issues when it could be as open as "the differences between boys and girls". I'd have liked this all to be taught in school. I'd have liked to see it all in everyday life.

No really, I just LIKE to write about myself. © by V. E. "Veltzeh" Lehkonen. All rights reserved.