did you know? i was once a boy scout, in that childhood i never talk about where everyone insisted i was a boy and i didn’t have the vocabulary or self-knowledge to correct them. twenty years later, as a woman, how do i fit a childhood of incorrectly-gendered experiences into the narrative of my life? for the most part, i don’t. i think of my story as starting in my teens, when i started clumsily and painfully piecing my gender identity together. i’ve gotten good at dodging certain questions. my friend kim (author of drowning) is braver, or maybe more self-aware, than i am. she chose not to dodge the question.
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This game made me feel very emotional. I’ve played several games about trans experiences (thanks to you Anna) but this one in particular really hit home.
As an unrelated aside… “Thank you for not thinking I’m pathetic” reminds me of the earnest sentiment of a tiny NPC in a Mother game.
I like this a lot.
I really, really like this a lot. I like in particular that it’s about the Boy Scouts, which has always been a thing with me even though I had the opposite attitude: I loved being in the Boy Scouts. I actually did and still do like camping and outdoorsy stuff, wanted to join, and felt like this was this fantastic opportunity fate had given me — like I constantly felt that I wasn’t *supposed* to be there, that I was I trespassing in this fundamental way, but that I was getting away with something.
I used to wear my old Boy Scout shirt around a lot, and still do sometimes, but now with a compulsion to pair it with like something really femmey at the same time because it feels now openly dangerous to wear it, whereas before it was this sinister private joke. On a practical level I tell myself people will assume that I got the shirt from a brother or ex-bf or something, even though I don’t pass so it’s not like anyone seriously believes that. But it feels like personally important to me not to be afraid to wear this shirt that signified experiences that are yes gendered, but also ones that I actually did get a lot out of — like I learned to cook, canoe, and start fires from the Boy Scouts, all of which I use at least once or twice a year (some obvs more than others.) The Girl Scouts just seemed like this markedly less interesting organization, one in this clearly and upsettingly subordinate position to the Boy Scouts — at least this is how it seemed to me, terrified, as a kid — and I felt yeah privileged to have dodged it because they didn’t know that I didn’t belong there and I wasn’t going to tell them.
I wish there was something like the Soviet Union Pioneers, which were non-gender-specific, to avoid both sides of this situation, and to not make it like a PROOF OF WHAT PEOPLE TELL YOU YOUR GENDER IS to go camping, which some people like and some hate.
Kim: thank youuuuu for making this! I feel like I have to explain the Boy Scouts thing to people a lot, and I’d never heard any other trans people talk about it ever, and even though our experiences were different this super means a lot to me to know that there were other people like me in that organization, and that this is becoming something that one talks about. THANK YOU.
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I said No even though I think I wanted to say Yes…
being able to write honestly about an experience like this seems like the opposite of being pathetic. i know i can’t.
Yeah, I’m not sure by what metric you can call this pathetic.
L, I’m glad it hit home for you. It always means a lot to me to know there are other people who can identify with my own experiences. As for the Mother comment, those games have been a big influence on me, so they’ve probably all nestled themselves deep within my subconscious, affecting everything I write. :D
Jeanne, thank you for sharing your own experiences. I love reading about the stories of others, especially when we have something about ourselves in common. Once again, thank you.
Imadjinn, I’m actually a little disappointed you didn’t choose Yes if that’s how you felt. When I wrote the game, I knew most everyone who knows me wouldn’t want to choose Yes, even if some part of them did feel that way. People have an aversion to saying those things about people they know. Strangers have less of an aversion, and I know there are plenty of people in the world who would find me pathetic. That’s one of the reasons the choice exists. Even so, thank you for playing my game.
Kim, thanks. I love the game. I’m also a woman who was a Boy Scout, and even an Eagle Scout. Though I didn’t think of myself as being a girl back then, only that I wanted to be one. I had a number of negative experiences like yours, but also a lot of great times too. I’m sorry if that was your take-away. And I don’t think you’re pathetic at all. Getting left behind and having a hard time as a smaller scout is really the fault of the older scouts and leaders, and they really let you down. You know, I think a lot of the controversial policies of the BSA in recent years are kind of ironic considering that for me growing up, the Boy Scouts really wasn’t for the more masculine boys anyway – they all went out for sports. For someone like me, who loves nature, arts and crafts, creative problem solving, and learning obscure knowledge, the Boy Scouts created an avenue for me to find a measure of acceptance and to learn leadership and self-reliance. It probably attracts a lot more feminine and trans-girl boys than they’d like to admit. Though I’m with Jeanne – I wish there was a scouts-like organization that is non-gendered and run by people who aren’t homophobic, religion-pandering asshats.
Whoa, I never made it past the Cub Scouts! Too many beatings and nonconsenually-applied rope burns.
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