When did you discover gender

[DonnaT]

A question based on Angie's thread:

I stoppped by the local WalMart to pick up a few things during lunch today. While I was there, I overheard a conversation between a mother and her 4 - 5 year old son. Apparently, he was rather taken with a pair of "Dora the Explorer" flip-flops. His mother quickly reminded him that "Boys don't wear Dora".

Now on the one hand, I completely understand a mother not wanting her son to face possible ridicule for "being different". On the other hand, I have to wonder if her reasoning was less a concern of ridicule and more just a perpetuation of gender stereotypes.

Other's have relayed similar stories about being told "boys don't wear dresses" or "boys don't play with dolls" or "girls don't play with trucks", etc.

For quite a few, this led to their discovery of gender, the differences between boys and girls.

So, when did you first discover 'gender'?

[Virginia]

Donna, Don't know if this counts, but I can remember when I was very young, could have been 4 or 5 and playing in a homemade wading pool with a neighbor's daughter. She had to be about my age! She had red hair, freckles, and braided pigtails. Her name was Pinky (and I will not give her last name as.... who knows). Something happened - I honestly don't remember what, but I went upside her head with a small tin bucket we were playing with. She hit me back so hard I swear my ears rang for a week!! I discovered you don't hit girls as they tend not to like it!
Virginia

[Celia]

I'm not sure whether it was when I first discovered gender, but I remember that when I first heard that girls were made of sugar and spice and that boys were made of snips and snails I was pretty upset.

-Celia

[Jabbela]

Even I try to review the way my daughters (4 and 6.5 yrs old) learned about genders, this is really hard.
Well my kids do not know about my CDing and will not learn about it in the near future. Anyway I have long hair and this does fit both - male and female mode.
So my kids could not distinguish gender by hair length, and also not by clothing in general. But still they mostly get the right guess. I don't know where they catch up that guess.

Beside that, we do not tell our daughters, don't play with trucks. Just my younger one is keen on playing with dolls etc., while the older one prefers to play with "boy" stuff, like cars or Lego, and is interested in astronomy, science and likes fantasies about space travelling (she inherited our StarTrek love) etc.. Of course we let her go on and develop her own interests.

Jabbela

[Loretta Ann]

So, when did you first discover 'gender'?

Answer is I don't know. Do you?

Love Darlene.

[RikkiOfLA]

Well, it used to be universally accepted that "girls don't play with trucks" and "boys don't play with dolls."

But then it became ok for girls to play with trucks. But it's still not ok for boys to play with dolls.

In other words, girls can do anything (or wear anything). Boys, on the other hand, live carefully bounded existences.

When did gender begin to apply only to boys?

DOES THAT MAKE ANY SENSE????

I was a smart li'l kid. My trucks and cars had lives. They had genders, they got married, they had kids. Don't worry, I knew that cars and trucks were man-made machines and couldn't do that. But my toys lived in a world very much like the world of Thomas the Tank Engine.

So to answer your question, maybe I never really discovered gender. I don't think I understand it, even today.

[Beauty]

Hmmm

Ok. I'm a bit dense. When you say discovered gender, what do you mean exactly?

When did I notice I was different or when did I realize boys were supposed to be boys and girls were supposed to be girls?

Sorry for asking a stupid question.

Beauty

[DonnaT]

when did I realize boys were supposed to be boys and girls were supposed to be girls?

When did you realize or were told this. Or even when did you notice girls were different from boys.

Darlene, I've been trying to remember when this occured. Hard for me to even remember last week

So far, its down to noticing a girl in 2nd or 3rd grade. She lived a couple of houses from me. I knew other girls for sure, but payed them no never mind.

What I noticed about her, however, were the dresses she wore and how she sat at her desk. She used to sit with her heels propped up against the desk, toes on the floor. She used to also dress her brother up when they'd play in their basement.

I think I was jealous of his getting to dress in her clothes. When my friends and I played Army, I'd always try to hide near her basement to see if she had dressed her brother up again.

So, although I didn't start dressing until I was around 10~12, I had the inkings at around 7~8.

[Cathy L. Anderson]

I crossdressed for the first time at about age 5. I was fully aware that I was dressing in girls' clothes, and that this was unconventional behavior.

I probably learned about gender at a very young age--and certainly before this. I had an older sister which helped avoid any real confusion. She had dresses and I had cowboy clothes. Seemed fair to me. And cartoons made things clear. Popeye and Bluto were guys. Olive Oyle was a lady. What's to confuse?

At no time would I have asked my mother in a store to buy girly clothes (yet at the same time I wanted them.)

So the anecdote is interesting, because the boy in question sounds confused in a way that I never was. Maybe that's a difference between TS and CD. A TS seeks the female things 'innocently' and without knowing the difference, while CD wants these things, in part, *because* they are considered female.

Or maybe Jerry Falwell was right about the influence of Teletubbies

Cathy

[Carolynn]

By the time I was 4. It was in 1946, March I believe, that I was to have a small day surgery at the Dr.s to make it easier for me to urinate. At the time, I was unable to stand and deliver, as the sheath over the penis was growing closed as well as bending everything down. There were a lot of bladder infections (couldn't clean up well), and this was to cure it. Being 4, I really didn't understand the parental explanation too well, and thought that stuff would be cut off, since they said he would cut away a bit of skin and I thought that's all that was down there. Didn't look much different from my girlfriends, or so I thought. So I thought I would be just like my girl friends and cousin when the Dr. was through, and I was very OK with that. Imagine my confusion to find a circumcised and sore penis the next morning when the anesthetic and sleeping stuff had worn off. Never knew I had one of those, and didn't much care for the way it looked or felt. I still remember the somewhat painful pull of the gauze as I clambered down the stairs of our little house with my short legs to get to the rest room that morning. Yes, I was disappointed. And therein lies the rest of the story? Sorry, Paul Harvey I'm not. If I knew that much at 4, I must have "known" earlier, but not sure how much earlier, and I don't think I paid it much attention until then.

I started out feeling amused at the recollection, now I feel depressed. Go figure!
Carolynn

[Wendy]

I can't help but think parents played a role in defining gender and how a particular gender behaves.

I really can't remember when I learned the distinction between males and females, but being innundated by TV, news, friends, and family you begin to shape your thoughts about how a male behaves and how a female behaves.

I remember friends would question a male's integrity if they saw them in women's clothing. In elementary, I had a classmate people spread rumours about. He was definitely male, but rumours had it that he dressed like a she. There was plenty of gossip behind his back.

I guess in society, there are certain expectation of men and women. Any deviation from the norm is considered 'abnormal'.

[Beauty]

Hi Donna,

Thanks for the clarification and the thread.

I found out about gender when I was in the single digit years. I went over to my God sister's house and they got a big old barbie house and all new Barbies. I never liked Barbie dolls, but this one was so hot! How could I resist holding it? So, I was playing with her hair and I can't remember if it was my mom or my dad, but one of them told me boys don't play with Barbie dolls. Meanwhile inside I'm like, "Hello??? Who's playing with her?" Regardless I had the lines drawn right there.

I was already wearing my mom's hose by then, so I guess I must have also been thinking that if holding a doll was bad then wearing my mom's hose must be really bad.

Beauty

[Kerri]

As a young child I got on better with little girls than with little boys, so I played with the girls. It got me into a lot of trouble at school where I was frequently beaten by my peers.
I noticed the difference very early in school life. The girls got treated better by the teachers. They wore vests and purple knickers to do gym in. They looked really stupid running around in their underwear, I thought, I am glad to be a boy and get to go topless and wear white shorts to do gym in.
I won a competition at age nine for piano lessons, I was forced by teacher to give the prize up to a girl who came second, just because I was a boy and she was a girl. I resented that girl from that day onwards and never forgave the teacher. Maybe that was the start?

Kerri

[Absaroka]

I can't remember not knowing about the differences between boys and girls. A child of the fifties I also thought that boys were better than girls. At the same time I had friends who were girls and it was no big deal.

If I had to say where did envy of girls come from it was from tv and so on-women presented as the irresistable temptress and so on. Very exciting to an 8 year old boy. It didn't seem fair that they had all this power.

Later on I came to realize how different reality is from televsion..........

Andrea

[Violet]

I honestly have no idea (I have lost most of my childhood memories). However, when I was growing up there was a lot of media attention on punks, glam rockers, and heavy metal bands who were redefining what 'masculinity' was. Perhaps that's why I have so much less angst about my love of ladies' clothing than a lot of the older members.