So, I’m trying to fill in a little bit of how I imagine Ron’s life with stories from my own. My last post talked about being/becoming a tomboy, and especially in relationship to clothes. Those overalls were a pretty good example of the sort of garb I preferred. But as I thought about it, and as I looked through old pictures, I realized how important hats were.
Yes, hats. I think there aren’t that many pictures of me wearing hats because I was often told to take my hat off before any photo was snapped. But I found a couple, both from summer camp (music camp!) when rules about hats were less strictly enforced. In the picture on the left, I’ve got a friend’s hat on and I’m holding that friend’s cat (George!). On the right, I have my own hat on, my very favorite hat in 6th grade, from a truck stop in Maine called Dysart’s.
Hats were a way to cover up; they had a masculinizing effect, helping me tuck back my hair and shade my face a little bit. I look at these two pictures, and I see me as a boy. I don’t think I look particularly feminine. For much of 6, 7, and 8 grade, I was “mistaken” for a boy by people who didn’t know me well (like substitute teachers at school). I can remember being this age and, after some frustration, clamping a hat on my head and staring into a mirror and wondering how on earth anyone could look at me and NOT think I was a boy.
This is one of the hardest aspects of transgender identity for me to explain to other people. It felt so clear, so apparent, so necessary to me as a child that I was actually a boy… and yet no one agreed with me. I look at these pictures and think: what on earth did you think I was, if not a boy? But that’s how insistent we are about the assumption that biological sex determines gender identity. No matter how I dressed or acted or presented, it wouldn’t shift me out of my category of being a girl. And with that, I promise to move on from tomboy identity in my next post.