III. TransGirl, Discontinued: How I was forced from my gender.

Reprinted and re-formatted from: https://medium.com/athena-talks/i-girl-begun-why-my-mother-raised-me-as-a-girl-3005132df0b8

I certainly couldn’t appreciate it at the time, but in retrospect I can imagine my father’s consternation upon my arrival in his house at age 14. The ‘son’ he had last seen as hardly more than a toddler must have seemed almost alien: a lithe, diminutive creature* with green eyes and red-blonde hair down her back and a distinctly foreign accent and vocabulary.

For my part, I did not know this man. He must have had very little interest in me when I was small; I had virtually no memory of him. Nor did I understand why my mother had sent me away. That she was leaving Norway, I knew, and also that it had something to do with her break-up with her then-boyfriend (it usually did; whenever we changed countries there was often a man involved). But this time we did not leave together, and this I never understood. Nor ever forgave her for. I felt abandoned, exiled.

Naturally, I assumed it was my fault. And perhaps, in a way, it was — whilst the changes in my body were mercifully late in coming, coming they were, and my insistence on continuing to present myself as female was no doubt causing my mother considerable anxiety. She probably felt guilt at having ‘allowed’ matters to go so far, uncorrected, and probably had no idea how to resolve the coming crisis. With the disruption in her own personal life, it was probably just easier to tell my father it was ‘his turn’, and pass the problem — me — off. As kind as she was to me, in so many ways, my mother was never one to face up to consequences head-on. I doubt she gave my father any warning as to what exactly was arriving on his doorstep. When he first laid eyes on me he must’ve wondered who this girl was. And what on earth to do with her. Him. Whatever.

I arrived only a couple weeks before the start of the school year. He took me to buy school things. And to cut my hair. Which I adamantly refused to allow. He drove me to the barber, but I would not get out of the car. He slapped me, but I would not give in. My hair was all I had left.

---

At my new school ‘physical education’ was a requirement. I was terrified. I had never spent much time around boys, and the gymnasium was nothing but boys. My father had bought me the required ‘gym clothes’, but I ‘forgot’ them the first few days, and got written up for it. The thought of changing clothes in front of dozens of boys was unbearable.

Unable to escape the inevitable, I thought to go early and change before anyone else arrived, but someone saw me enter the locker room, and boys followed me in. I stood petrified, clutching my things.

‘Hey, look who it is.’

I’m not sure how many of them there were, maybe four or five. I had already been teased about my name and my voice and my hair, mocked and shoved around in the hallways. This was going to be worse.

‘What it is, you mean.’

Laughter.

‘What is it?’

‘Hey, let’s find out.’

I was grabbed, hard, many hands; shoved and pinned to the wall. I felt my trousers and underwear being yanked down, my ankles tangled. I was tossed onto the cold concrete floor.

I tried to get up but was shoved down again, someone had hold of my hair and was using it to pull me down, a foot pressed into my chest. Someone kicked me, then brought their foot down in my crotch.

‘Well, now we know, I guess.’

‘Do we?’

Laughter.

Now many feet were kicking, stomping. My hair was released and I curled into a ball. The kicking continued, on my back and buttocks, another final blow aimed between my legs. The laughter receded and I heard the door slam closed.

Silence.

In a few minutes other boys would begin arriving. I recovered myself and fled.

---

I arrived home from school, far too early. My father looked me up and down with what seemed to be mild interest. I must’ve looked a sight.

‘What happened to you?’

‘Boys. Gym class.’

He looked disgusted, maybe amused, I couldn’t tell.

‘Well, what did you expect? Cut your hair.’

But I never would. It was all I had left.