This, from a lesbian:
I grew up when there weren't choices for kids. What was on your plate was what was for supper. What time you were told was time for bed was when you went to bed. You wore what was affordable from the Army and Navy. You did your homework and you never ever caused problems at school that meant your parents would get dragged in to deal with the teachers about you. You toed the line and you kept your nose clean.
That went for between kids, too. The kids I was at school with kept other kids in line, in the ways that parents didn't know about. If you looked different or had weird shit in your lunch (me on both counts), the other kids would make fun of you and put you in your place. You always knew where you stood in the kid hierarchy. Sure, you could ignore them all you want, like I did, but that didn't stop them from pulling crap on you. They'd smile when the grown-ups were around then smash your face in the mud on the long walk home.
Parents back then didn't have big honking SUVs to drive you to school and pick you up. They also didn't have the time. You were expected to walk to school and home because your parents, at least mine, worked, goddamn it, and you had a job, too: to get yourself to school, be at school, then get yourself home. Don't dawdle and don't take short cuts through the fields because bad men lurked there for the sole purpose of capturing wayward kids. It wasn't made explicit what those bad men would do with wayward kids, but you could tell it wasn't good.
I am old enough that when I was a girl the only choice was not whether you would get married and have kids but whether you would be a secretary or teacher or a nurse before you got married. It was implied that an attractive, successful woman would not need a "career" before she got married, that becoming a secretary or whatever was a make-do option for those of us who were funny-looking or didn't get knocked up before we graduated from high school.
I didn't like boys, but I didn't know what that meant. I somehow did not consider that liking girls would conflict with getting married and having children. It was just so imprinted in us that that was the way it was that there was no question. I thought I would end up married, but in a vague way. Like, it would just happen to me. It wasn't something I felt any urge to chase.
I was funny-looking enough that I was one of those "career" women. No boy wanted to date me. I was not offended. I didn't want to date any of the boys. I wanted to learn things. I decided I would rather be alone and independent and have more choices than being one of the three things women were allowed to do (four, if you count being married), even if it meant I didn't fit in. I had never fitted in, so it didn't seem like a change from the status quo for me.
If "lesbian" was not said out loud when I was a kid, you can bet "transgender" wasn't, either. While there was teasing about effeminate boys and tomboy girls, no one ever got teased about being transgendered. Maybe there wasn't a bad word for it to use, like there was for gay or lesbian. Kids aren't always imaginative in their hate; they usually bring it from home. If transgender had existed when I was a kid, would I have thought it was a choice? That is one of those questions I find ridiculous, one of those hypotheticals that seem a waste of time, but one of the young'uns, as I call anyone more than ten years younger than me, asked me that, so I gave it some thought. I thought a few things in response. I thought that when I was a young'un myself, I never would have had the nerve, the impertinence!, to ask an elder such a personal thing. I thought that why was this young'un wasting time asking me what I might have done, in an imaginary time of imaginary choices. I thought that this young'un was less interested in my answer than in looking for help figuring this question out for herself.
I thought about what to say.
I said that I was always happy to be myself, even if I didn't always know what that meant. I said I had never spent time wondering what that meant, who I was, "finding myself." I said that I mostly thought about what interested me and followed that path, without wondering what box that put me in. I said that I knew other people like to have boxes with labels set out for them to choose from, but for me that never was appealing, and I didn't see the point, because there are never as many boxes as there are people, and why waste time in a box that isn't yours.
I don't think that is the answer she was looking for, but I hope somehow I told her that she can be herself without doing anything more than being herself, without it sounding like I was serving up a big fat platitude. I wanted her to know she doesn't need to change anything, she doesn't need anyone's permission, she doesn't need to be like anyone else.
It seems to me the more "choices" we are given, the less we are being ourselves.
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