Thread by @AutSciPerson

Not sure why I'm thinking about this,

but it's really weird that society, to some extent, tolerates "tomboys" until they hit puberty, and then suddenly are told they need to or will "grow out of it" & will become a completely different person.

I was very blindsided by that one.

A lot of it was by "friends" or hearing other adults talk about that being a "phase" and I'm sure it was part of why I was bullied at school as well.

Even in college one of my "friends" told me that I would grow out of wearing cargo shorts - literally because she did herself.

And when I ever showed interest in any clothing remotely more feminine than what I wore around my friends, all eyes and attention were on me. Made me never want to try anything.

So many promises by my friends throughout my life were broken around me trying new remotely feminine things - be it fingernail polish or just some less baggy pants.

Why is there so much coercion to make AFAB people fit into an "acceptable" societal mold, or to dress them up?

And why have the worst offenders in my life always been cis girls and women who I thought were my "friends"?

I don't think I'll ever understand their view of gender or reasoning to coerce someone or break a promise over femininity.

I didn't know if I could trust my friends to keep their promises, or whether they'd always ask more of me. I remember distinctly when I was younger how my grandma wanted to paint my toenails clear. That was just a sensory sensitivity. My mom asked -so many times-. No. No. No.

I never knew if when we went shopping my mom would ask me to try on a dress "just to see it" on me, we didn't have to buy it! Or try on something in the girl's section that was "close" to what I wanted.. (but of course it never had pockets!).

I used to think I wasn't nice enough or I should've just made other people happy.
Knowing I'm nonbinary made me realize even more just how absurd it all was. And that's from a "good" childhood.

Of course I have a right to my body and my gender expression! Of-bloody-course!

cw restraint

Of course it wasn't okay for my "friends" as a teen to restrain me and break their promise that I was allowed to take off the nail polish I tried immediately.

Of course I shouldn't have had to feel bad for saying "No" so many times when they knew I didn't want that

Of course my preferences should have mattered!

And here I was for years and years thinking "Why do I have to be so difficult? Why can't I just act nice? Why can't I just do what they ask me and let them dress me up like a plastic doll?"

No child should be treated like a doll.

I'm thanking myself for being difficult.

Seriously. Because I could have accepted so much more shit in my life and I just didn't. I could have been so much more unhappy and not knowing myself between this and masking.

Thank god I said No thousand times so I could be myself.