Stillettos and Sneakers - Changing At Nine

“…..and how long have you known you were Transgender?”

“Well….how long have you known you were not?”

It’s really the same thing. There’s a lot about what I am that confuses me, but there’s one thing I know for a fact, it’s not a choice. It’s not something I decided to do because there was nothing on TV that night.

I’ve known it. I’ve always known it. It was never something I pondered or considered or truly questioned. It was a fact of my life.

I may have tried to live a lie for the people in my life in order to make them more comfortable, but it was never, ever in question. How can it be? How really questions whether they’re a boy or a girl? You may question your taste. You may question your memory, but rarely do most people have to think whether or not you’re a boy or a girl. That’s usually something that’s pretty much set in stone.

It was the same thing for me. The exact same thing.

In Philadelphia, there’s a 9 year old whose parents have allowed him to begin his transition.

“The Haverford School District consulted experts on transgender children, then sent letters to parents advising them that the guidance counselor would meet with the school's 100 third-grade students to explain why their classmate would now wear girls' clothes and be called by a girl's name.

Some parents objected. Eight called the principal to ask that their child not attend the session, and some posted angry messages on the Haverford Township blog."Why is the school introducing this subject to 8- and 9-year-olds?" wrote the parent who started the blog thread, which had been viewed more than 3,000 times as of yesterday. "Why were we not notified sooner. We received the letter today, the discussion at school is tomorrow."

Other parents thought the school should not have called attention to an already delicate situation."I did not think that the letter needed to go out," said Valerie Huff, whose daughter is friends with the transgender student. "The kids don't make any big deal about it at all."

I’m not really sure why there was a letter sent out in the first place, but it makes sense to me why some parents are outraged. There’s so much fear and mystery surrounding what I am. People tend to get a bit frightened of things they don’t understand. If it doesn’t make sense, it’s to be avoided. So…let’s not talk about it.

I always gravitated toward the girls when I was 8 or 9. The boys didn’t make much sense to me. I didn’t understand them much at all. What they wanted, how they reacted, and certainly the games they played. Why they wanted to run around the playground chasing each other with a oblong ball in their arms tackling each other and getting far too dirty was a mystery to me. And to be honest….it still is.

When my teacher caught me playing ball, or dolls near the jungle-jim with a gaggle of my girlfriends, she called my mother. I had many stern conversations about why I needed more male friends.“You need to be with more boys. You’re a boy and you don’t need to be with other girls” my mother said to me.

But I wasn’t. I wasn’t a boy and I didn’t have the language to be able to tell her that. Besides, at that time, there was no such thing as Transgender.

There was Milton Berle and Flip Wilson. That’s what there was. We were a punch line. Plain and simple.

My mother even went as far as to write a huge note and pin it to my shirt that said:“Please do not allow Scott to play with the girls”….in big red letters. I know she was trying to help. To have the kids accept me. To stop the bullying, the fighting, the name calling, and this was a woman from the 50’s. Donna Reed never had anything like this to deal with. Ever.
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