I worry about the sissy-boys of the Earth.
Call us whatever you like (gender non-conforming, non-binary...), it used to be that sissy-boys got shit from bullies, and from those who, when the world outside doesn't match the world inside their heads, respond with hate.
We still do, of course. But now, I fear, sissy-boys face yet another—if different—kind of violence.
I was a sissy-boy. I liked dolls and dress-up and imagining. I wanted to be a dancer. My friends were mostly girls. If you had asked me, Would you rather be a boy or a girl, I could easily have told you.
Goddess bless them, my family (mostly) let me be me. It was only outside the home that I learned that it was wrong to be who I was. Believe me, sissy-boys get shit from pretty much everyone, adults included.
That kind of opprobrium is in itself a motivator.
Now I worry that sissy-boys are facing a new kind of social pressure: not the pressure to conform, but the pressure to transition.
If, as a child, they had offered me hormones and the prospect of surgery, I would probably have taken them. Goddess help me, I would probably have taken them; and that decision would have ruined my life.
Why in the world does anyone care so much? Why are they so insistent that we change our bodies, or our souls, to meet their stupid expectations? We're part of the natural variability of things. Why can't they just let us be as we are?
The world is cruel to sissy-boys. Many of us don't survive.
But let me tell you something about sissy-boys, and what I tell you is true: those of us that do, somehow, manage to survive the hatred, the bullying, and the well-meaning but ill-considered attempts to “fix” us, are some of the strongest people that you will ever meet, anywhere.
We are, because we have to be.
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Sissy-boys, Asian-Americans, Pagans, etcetera if people want to be heard they have to put out the art, music and stories that say
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The day is coming when technology will allow people to be physically genderless. Some will chose this path in life and how will we
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Thanks Katie. It took me a long time to figure out that there's not just one way to be a man. To this day, in the pagan community
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Beautifully written. It expresses so much that I’ve thought, over the years. Similarly, I worry that strong, independent girls, o