From a Guy in the Girl World

When I was a kid, I wanted to hang out with the boys. At the time, I was under the impression that I was a girl. I was wrong, but that came later. Then, all I knew was that hanging out with the boys was fun. There was something that the boys and I shared in common. It made hanging out with the boys—being one of the boys—easier than hanging out with the girls. The boys wanted to rough house, shout, and be loud. I wanted to rough house, shout, and be loud.

As we all know, boys and girls aren’t allowed to be in proximity of each other at the age of seven, otherwise they’re dating. If you’re thinking, ‘That’s stupid,’ you’re right, but children are as their parents think. The boys hang out with the boys, the girls hang out with the girls, they only meet in the middle when they’re dating. Unless you’re me, and you don’t understand what these people are talking about because your mother has been single since you were two, and you’ve always played with the boys. Always. I had older brothers I would make play with me. I had a guy best friend in pre-school. I had a guy best friend for the first few years of primary school. Then, I moved to a new school and, shockingly to no one, I had a guy best friend.

We would always hang out. It was really great for a while, but some of the other boys started to tease us about dating. No matter how many times we said we were just friends, it never sank in for them. We would hang out and play games together, but the other boys were too awkward around me to be friendly. I just wanted to hang out like they did, but they treated me like an outsider. Something about those years just before puberty kicks in really messes kids up. They start to understand the appeal of dating, maybe even become interested in doing it, but they haven’t figured out why people date. So, naturally, they assume that my friend and I want to date each other even if the idea hadn’t crossed our minds at that point. Or, I guess I don’t actually know if he thought about it, we never talked about it. I never considered it.

So, you can imagine how confused I was when my friend got angry at me one day, demanded that I leave him alone, and told me to go play with the girls because I was not his girlfriend. He wouldn’t speak to me again. He hated me now, and I didn’t understand why. I just knew I had to get new friends, and that the boys wouldn’t talk to me.

Now I had to enter the world of girls. It’s a hell of an adjustment, even at age seven. I found that there was a lot of performance to being a girl. You can’t make certain noises because they’re gross. You can’t wear certain things because they don’t look good. You can’t sit a certain way because you have to wear different clothes. You can’t eat certain things because you can’t gain weight because you have to wear different clothes. You have to be clean, orderly, and precise all the time, lest you catch the ire of the lead girl. She’s usually pretty although in self-loathing circles she can’t be too pretty, otherwise no one would believe her self-loathing. She’s usually nice, but never really nice, just sort of sweet on the surface like a sherbet lolly except the sherbet is social isolation. Listen, we all saw Mean Girls. You know what I’m talking about, just imagine it with a seven-year-old.

I went through being isolated about four times in the first two years at the new school. Thankfully, it never lasted very long. One talent I was born with was the ability to pick out someone that I can be friendly with and use them to weasel my way into any social group. I would be isolated from the popular girls, so I would go be nice to the weird girls. The weird girls would think I wasn’t weird enough (which, I guess, is a compliment?) and I would hang out with the quiet girls. They would think I was too loud and I would hang out with the not-popular-but-not-unpopular girls. The girls who weren’t cool enough to be in the popular group, but weren’t uncool enough to get bullied.

It took a long time to learn how to walk like a girl, talk like a girl, and act like a girl. When I tried to tell my mother this, she didn’t understand what I meant. Everyone assumed I was a girl, so I should be able to just be myself. That’s when I realised that what I had with the boys, the girls had with each other. So, I faked it until it was real enough to be believable.

A lot of feminists will acknowledge the performance of being a woman, the alienation that comes with it, and the way that it starts at a young age, but it always felt like they were missing something when I read about it. For me, they were missing the part about not even wanting to be a girl. They always say that it’s a lot of work so women should just be themselves and stop caring about how society sees them. Stop acting like you’re not like other girls and start recognising that other girls also don’t enjoy the performance. They’re right about that, but it still didn’t click for me. It wasn’t that I wasn’t ‘like other girls’ because I found over time (although I’ll admit a lapse at around age 14) that I was a lot like other girls, except for the girl part.

Now that I’m an adult, I have to deal with the fact that I look, act, and sound exactly like one of the girls even though I’m not one. I’ve lost the experience of hanging out with the boys, and now I can’t find my footing with them anymore. My friend groups now consist of men and women— like any adult’s friend group should—but I still feel a disconnect between myself and the guys. It’s a strange sense of seeing myself in them, but not being able to access it anymore after spending so many years pretending to see it in women. I am utterly out of my element now.