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I was web surfing and happened across an article entitled "National Let Your Boy Be a Girl Day" An interesting idea. I definitely could have used such a day when I was growing up. My family tried to toughen me up (see my "Silence is Golden")but it didn't work. I only hid my femininity (not entirely successfully) until after I was married and had a child.
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I would have liked that too,
I would have liked that too, but I would have to do it for more than a day. My older brother was the one who tried to toughen me up, throw out my few dolls. My mother sort of gave me mixed signals, she didn't mind it except when others noticed it. I was supposed to be a girl in her prayers. I was her second child after 21 years, when she had my older brother.
your story moved me
It had a lot of parallels to my own.
Love the idea....
...But it would not work. It would just 'out' people.
There is nothing that would make a macho jock participate in this. Nor would it be acceptable to force it. A cultural change is required. I cannot see that happening unless the whole of society becomes more gender fluid. Say, a reversible day procedure that does the deed.
While laws might change I do not think that the attitudes of many people will change that much. I think that transgender phobia is part of being cis gender (that some overcome).
It would only work
if everybody did it, otherwise it would out those who wanted to do it and possibly subject them to years of teasing. It would also give the gainsayers a chance to 'prove' it was harmful. At age 10/11 I took part in a mock beauty contest along with half the boys in the class which was obviously responsible for changing my gender years later. Dunno if anyone else did (nor actually care).
Angharad
age 10/11 (or perhaps 8/9)
You wrote: "At age 10/11 I took part in a mock beauty contest along with half the boys in the class which was obviously responsible for changing my gender years later."
I discovered some old panties and a swimsuit of my sister's at age 8/9 stored in boxes and then proceeded to explore her closets and that was responsible for my feminine nature all these years later... I think not. The very fact that I tried on the panties and swimsuit didn't cause my feminine nature, it simply revealed it.
Once it was revealed, there was no way to put the genie back in the bottle. My feminine nature continued to flourish to spite my attempts to bury it; deny it; even destroy it with masculine pursuits. As much as I wanted it to go away and felt sure I would out grow it, it was always there... growing, gaining strength.
By the time I was thirty, I had realized that it wasn't going a way and a few short years later, I began accepting it by wearing women's panties daily. It took over 20 years to get my wife to accept it. And today, I wear the clothes that express my femininity daily with her approval, to the point of going grocery shopping in our local Safeway and Bi-Mart. She has finally accepted that she has a feminine husband and offers fashion advice when I'm going out and we even borrow each others clothes.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
My Mummy Would Have Loved That !
She wanted a baby girl! Back in those days all babies were dressed the same, in tiny dresses, with nappies and a pair of panties over the nappy, and with soft white knitted socks on tiny feet and, in cold weather, tiny knitted mittens on hands, and head covered in cold weather with a bonnet, all in white, or yellow, or blue or pink. Blues and pinks were supposed to indicate what the gender of the baby was, but white and yellow were used on either gender. Since in those days clothes were never thrown away, I could tell when my baby sister was born that I had sometimes worn pink. You could not tell what sex a baby was without changing its nappy.
I remember being taken to the factory where Mummy had worked before I was born, and all the young ladies that worked there were told I was her Daughter. They all cooed and tickled my toes, and used the girl name Mummy called me by.
I never saw any baby boy clothes, not until my own babies came along, and they were both girls, real girls. By then, at least as soon as the babies started to crawl or shuffle about on their bottoms, the boy babies started to get dressed in 2-piece, wee romper suits.
This was in Britain, and I was only 2 when WW2 started. Later on, when we were living in a country district, some baby boys were not "breached", that is, taken out of baby dresses and put in trousers, until they were 7. (Women only started wearing trousers when the War required of young women to join the Forces or work on the land as Land-Girls.) Since schools took children in at 5 or even 4, and there were nursery schools that took children in at 2 or 3, once they were potty-trained, so that Mums could go work in the factories making the shells and bullets etc for the War Effort, there must have been some confusion about the gender of children between 5 and 7, but I do not recall anyone making a fuss about such things. I guess that when you could be blown to bits by a bomb at any time, folks really had more pressing problems to think about. Kids were just kids back then, they were not so aware as they are made to be today, of coming in two different flavours, not until they got to 11 and went to the Senior Schools.
Briar
Rural practices
I read in a book about the 'olden days' in Lincolnshire (my parents lived there for a while) that a lot of the agricultural families were sufficiently poor that hand-me-downs meant you got whatever your next older sibling had grown out of.
This meant that if you were a boy following a girl you got dresses, and if you were a girl following a boy you got pants. There was even a photograph of a group of village children to illustrate this, with a complete mixture of genders and clothing. The only way you could tell was by the haircuts.
Presumably these children attended school dressed this way, since I can't imagine any of them being rich enough to afford some kind of uniform, assuming the school used one. Like most rural practices I suspect the war put an end to it. Afterwards the 1944 Education Act and the Welfare State meant that most families could at least clothe their children more appropriately; I think clothing rationing during the war would have helped as well.
Penny