The Boy Name and The Girl Name.

Growing up in the Seventies.

Imagine. The time is the nineteen seventies. I am a girl who looks like a boy. I am a girl who lives in this space most of the time. My parents and pretty much all my family, and friends called me the boy name, the name I felt close to. Not the girl name.  It made me so happy when I was called this boy name. I recoiled when called what I refer to as the girl name. On some level, I was treated differently when called these names.

The girl name was always used when we went out somewhere and I had to be the daughter. This was not fun for me as I had a dress that went along with that. But I did it. I had to do it. Because of the gender stereotypes they have thrown at us forever. Why couldn’t I wear the pants and the t-shirt to church? Why the dress to all the family functions? Everyone knew me by the boy name. No one felt uncomfortable because I was a young person doing what young people do, they look for themselves in all kinds of places. 

My childhood was not horrible, in fact, my childhood was pretty awesome. Maybe because in the seventies there was free love and weed! Maybe because people were trying to make the world a better place and a girl who wore boy clothes was really no big deal. I remember all my girlfriends dressed like boys too. We had so much fun acting like boys. I was pretty tough and was always in fights. Of course, I was! That’s my spirit. Fighting to be me. I have done it since I can remember.

Was I a “trans kid” or was I just a kid living life? Experimenting. Looking at things from different eyes than other girls. Who knows. What I do know is I did not suffer. I say this because there is this idea going around that a kid who wants to bend the gender stereotype is automatically trans. I disagree.

I played with lots of tomboys back in the day who grew up to live in their biology, some gay some straight, some with husbands some with girlfriends. I recently asked my parents if they would have given me a drug called puberty blockers and they were mortified at the thought. Yes, they actually struggled a bit with me, my Dad more than my Mom, But I believe that is always going to be the case with parents when their child isn’t the norm.  I wonder what my life would have been like. Would that have stopped the teasing? Would that have stopped my parents from struggling? 

I do not feel like I struggled in those days. Those drugs might have made me struggle. I eventually grew to be a young woman and a butch one at that. Lived a full life that way. Have the most amazing beautiful memories because of this. 

The struggle was my sexuality in high school. Not understanding why I liked women and not men. Being a female athlete and a pretty good one, I was often thrown into the category of “lesbian” because I was a masculine woman. That was hard in high school. But I made it through to the other side. I had sexual experiences with other women. Secret. Keep the secret they told me. We did not want to get caught. The roles we played in sex were man and woman. This made me happy. I had no idea I was a transsexual and did not even think about it. It was not on anyone’s lips. 

Today’s Trans climate has me thinking a lot as a sixty-year-old who has lived so many lives. I started this Susbstack to write down my feelings. Maybe there is a young person or even an older person struggling with some identity stuff who can be helped by reading about my experiences.

This is not anything other than the story of my life up until now. A life I value very much. A life I do not take for granted. This is a place where you will read some of my story of how I transitioned from living female to living male.

Love, Buck