Survey on Childhood Gender Experiences

[Pimmsnlemonade]

This is a survey on childhood gender experiences. They are looking for adults "from a wide range of backgrounds and with different experiences to take part, including people with or without any experience of issues relating to their gender identity."

www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/85JNRFP

Thanks, have filled that in. The second section seems as if they are also testing for autism spectrum behaviours. Interesting, given that the section before has been about gender identity in childhood and adolescence. Good to see in light of ROGD etc.

No shame in posting here my comment left in the free section:

" Just giving you the tomboy experience. I felt constricted by the narrower confines of what was permitted as clothing and activity for a female child in the 1970s. Could already project forward what similar was in store for my future as a adult female if I didn't reject and remake. I wanted to 'broaden the bandwidth' (before that was a term) of what it is to be female rather than identify out into another lane, narrow in its own way. "

I've done it. Takes a while. I made the point (among others) that when I was a kid the concept of gender and gender identity just didn't exist.

However sexism was mahoosive so I often wished I was a boy. It was a response to the serious advantages men had. The Equal Pay Act only came in when I was 20 FFS.

I was a tomboy who climbed trees and led my younger brothers into battle with neighbouring children. I identified as various male heroes, Robin Hood for example, but I didn't hate my body. My DF had always told me girls could do anything and I believed him.

If I were a teen today I'd be protected against thinking I might be a transman by my intense and premature interest in the opposite sex, though I did flirt for some years with the idea that I might be bisexual. Some intense experimentation proved me wrong. Women's bodies are lovely but they don't excite me.

Thanks for linking Lemonade. I've also filled it in although I did leave a couple of questions regarding childhood gender identity blank as didn't know how to answer something I didn't experience. Hopefully the survey will highlight that us GNC people have always existed and we have managed to get through our lives without the need for hormones and surgery.

Interesting survey - and yes, definitely looking at Autistic traits within the middle section.

It's a pity they won't undertake to read the additional comments all the time. I added

As a child I was simply me. I wore comfortable clothes and short hair as they were more practicle when slaying at dragon, racing Formula 1 cars, swashbuckling and adventuring on the high seas. In adolescence I felt much the same, but by then I was aware that those stereotypes were sexist, misogynistic in nature and so I continued in my non conformity. The SEX I was BORN (assigned???) was what I was/am not WHO I am. That I didn't conform to feminine stereotypes made me a tomboy. As an adult that is still true. Heterosexual, married for 30+ years and still not conforming to feminine stereotypes.

It saddens me to think that these days 'gender conformity' is such a restrictive, prescriptive thing. What happend to the splendid androgeny of the 80s? If I were born say 20 years ago I might be offered counselling, drugs, treatment and a multitude of new labels based on society's rather rigid perception of gender stereotypes. Back then I was 'just a tomboy' and very little was thought or said about it!

Someone else showed me a link and the group has done some other interesting stuff including following up the Children of the 90s study - their mums were asked about cross-sex children's games and the group looked at their experiences later.

curious it does rather look as if that's the point of the research - if you are now "female" but were interested in a lot of "masculine" things as a child, and they have the generational differences, they'll be able to see that not all "masculine" girls go on to identify as men.

As a child I occasionally wanted to be a boy but only because I was told girls couldn’t do certain things. I actually wanted to be a girl and do those things.

This came up as a sponsored link on my Facebook timeline earlier.

I will fill it in later. I very much wanted to be a boy when I was younger and would have jumped at the chance of binders/"top surgery" and blockers or testosterone to get rid of womanly body.

I've got two boys with autism and am pretty sure now that I have it too.

I believed I was a boy for quite some time before puberty. I've had a few people say to me "Oh, you just wanted to be able to do boy things because you liked boys in tv shows and such) and maybe in some way that is true. But I absolutely did not think of it that way, I was sure I was a boy, and I tried to convince my mother I was as well.

I did the survey and had a little trouble getting that across. I didn't really hate my body or think it should be different. I didn't really like long hair or girly clothes but I did have a girls short haircut and sometime wore dresses for special occasions and didn't want to kill myself over it. And I had no concept of gender identity, it was 1980, so how could I?

Oh, and I am not on the autism spectrum so it had nothing to do with that.

I answered that but it lacks the subtlety to say that I liked the boy things because of a desire to smash the patriarchy, not because I wanted to be 'trans'. I have ASD so yes, those questions in the 2nd half were very much leading to that.

Yes, I'm not sure I wanted to be a boy because I wanted to do "boy" things but couldn't. Because I did "boy" things! The only things I couldn't do was wear trousers to school and join scouts.

I had short hair, I wore unisex clothes (my brother got my hand me downs) I spent the days out on my bike, building dens, climbing trees. Inside I watched Star Wars, played with Lego, but also played with Care Bears and My Little Pony. I did exactly the same things as my brother, we played together (and fought!) a lot. So it wasn't that I was being denied things because I was a girl. I just really really wanted to be a boy, believed I was a boy.

I guess it might have been a way of fitting in. A lot of the girls I was at school with were quite "girly" girls. And I wasn't. I never quite fitted in anywhere. Which is what makes me think I would have been thrilled to have found a group that would have me, if I were a child/teen now and come out as trans.

I said I never had any desire to be a boy, that I didnt often, if at all, consider my sex or gender, as a child. I just got on with being a child...

Yes, I mostly did all boy things as well.

The only things that my mother was kind of pushy about was for photo day I always had to wear knitted skirt-suits my grandmother had made, and once she bought me a pink snow suit because it was on a really good sale. (Neither of which were bad lessons really.)

I just thought I was a boy person.

It crashed after I told it I was genderfree!

I wanted to be a boy too. Didn’t hate my female body though. . I wasn’t sexually abused and luckily for me, my parents never stopped me having the haircut and clothes I wanted. I suspect if they’d tried to force me into frilly dresses, I might have attached more significance to the clothes I did prefer.

Poops, it asked about hormones and surgery, should have commented that I am very glad they were not options

As a child I occasionally wanted to be a boy but only because I was told girls couldn’t do certain things. I actually wanted to be a girl and do those things.
Yes indeed. I couldn't join the church choir, or go camping with the Brownies, or play football, and I was told "science is for boys".
So despite the "girls must have long hair and wear pink" culture at least some things are better than in the 1970s.

@AnyOldPrion I didn't tell it I was genderfree, I told it I was female/a woman.

I did a lot of pretending to be a boy when I was a child, but it was to do with wanting to be an Indian brave.

A lot of the possible answers made me feel sad for whoever would be clicking them, and realise how comfortable life is for those who had loving parents and siblings and fit in all the right boxes - didn't even notice the boxes! :(

Childhood is easy when 'gender' simply doesn't exist, and nobody cares what you wear or what you do. Children are under a lot more pressure than when I was a child.

Well, that took ages!

Thank goodness there were blank spaces to put in what you really think...hated that everything seemed to be about gender AAB etc until suddenly sex crept in. Tricky.

It makes me sad to think that the child I was, climbing tress, short hair, gender neutral clothes, friends with boys, joined the scouts, went biking in the hills and canoeing down rivers, never wore makeup.. in these days might be influenced by stereotypes to consider that my beautiful soul may have been somehow in the wrong body because I didn't wear dresses or grow my hair.

I did an engineering degree, wore suits and heels at work but was more comfortable drinking in the pub 'as one of the boys' than going clubbing with the girls. I am a hetrosexual female with three children and love the body I was born in (not every day) and my femaleness defines me these days as I am primarily a mother and a Doula for now.

It scares me that if I had been born in this century, there would be a pathway that could lead me to hormone blockers and surgery. I fear for my children's future, think that I was really lucky to have had the opportunities and the real freedom that I did.