Summary

"What I Knew At Five" is a reflective essay by Emma Holiday on the author's early gender awareness and societal expectations of gender roles during the 1950s and '60s, which contrasted with their personal gender identity.

Abstract

The essay "What I Knew At Five" delves into the author's childhood memories, particularly at the age of five, when they began to recognize the incongruence between their gender identity and the rigid gender norms imposed by society. Growing up in the 1950s and '60s, the author recalls a time when gender roles were strictly defined, with boys and girls expected to adhere to specific behaviors and interests. The author, assigned male at birth, recounts their innocent childhood happiness, unaware of gender until societal pressures began to dictate what was acceptable for boys. The narrative reveals the author's early fascination with traditionally feminine items, such as their mother's lipstick and nylons, and the subsequent realization that such interests were deemed inappropriate for their assigned gender. This led to a lifelong struggle with gender dysphoria, which the author kept secret for decades until it surfaced during therapy. The essay underscores the pain of living with a suppressed gender identity and the liberation that comes from acknowledging and embracing one's true self.

Opinions

The author expresses that as a child, they were blissfully unaware of gender until societal expectations began to influence their behavior.
The essay reflects on the strict gender roles of the 1950s and '60s, which dictated that boys should engage in masculine activities and show interest only in 'boyish' things.
The author shares their personal experience with gender dysphoria, highlighting the profound impact it had on their life, including their interactions with family and peers.
There is a clear contrast between the author's internal sense of identity and the external pressures to conform to gender norms.
The author's secret wish to be a girl, which began at the age of five, is presented as a defining aspect of their identity that persisted throughout their life.
The act of sharing their secret wish in therapy is depicted as a transformative moment that brought a sense of freedom and authenticity to the author's life.
The essay advocates for understanding and acceptance of transgender individuals, emphasizing that they seek to be treated as 'normal people.'
The author's writing serves therapeutic purposes, providing a means to process their experiences and facilitate self-understanding and acceptance.
The author aims to connect with other transgender individuals through their writing, offering solidarity and reducing the sense of isolation that can accompany a gender transition.

What I Knew At Five

“Boys don’t play with Mommy’s lipstick. Boys don’t wear Mommy’s shoes. Boys don’t wear Mommy’s nylons… Why don’t you go play with your trucks?”

When I was four years old, I was happy. I had loving parents, an annoying brother/playmate, the usual scatterings of family personality types and neighborhood kids, both warm and cold. My youth had a child’s simplicity.

I look back on it now and realize gender was never a part of my consciousness. The 1950s and ‘60s wanted it simple. Boys were boys, girls were girls. Dad went to work and Mom took care of the house and us.

Every day was defined by my mother. She woke me up and made me wash. She selected my clothes, made my breakfast, decided what I was going to do that day, made our dinner, and put me to bed.

My world operated on auto-pilot. Simple, defined, and warmly predictable.

I was an American male baby-boomer. The stars had arranged a life of privilege for me and I was totally oblivious. I didn’t care; I was happy. I was innocent.

I was a mischievous child in a “Dennis the Menace” kind of way (Google him if you don’t recognize the character. I am a baby boomer after all). To everyone, I was the classic boy.

But to me, I was simply me.

It wasn’t complicated. The world didn’t expect much from me. I had a penis, and so did my brother. I thought everyone had one. I never checked. It wasn’t important.

Turning five seemed to change everything.

I wasn’t limited to sitting in a carriage anymore. I got to play with others. I didn’t identify girls from boys clearly. I got to know them as someone’s brother or sister. Playmates were separated by age, not gender. When I started kindergarten, my best friends turned out to be girls. The boys seemed dumb. Banging the wood blocks off of each other’s heads seemed like a stupid game to play. I had an older brother who seemed to like those types of games and I was usually on the receiving end. I have the stitches to prove it.

Because I was one of the youngest kids on the block, it seemed natural that I wound up playing with the only other kid my age, a girl who lived three houses down from us. She had great clothes and I traded one of my trucks for a pair of her tights. To me it seemed like a fair trade, and she liked the truck because she didn’t have any. But by dinner time, the fathers had sorted it out pretty quickly. I got back my truck and she got back her tights. The parents all laughed it off but she and I never played together ever again.

So started my binary sex education. It created strict rules that I was to live by for the rest of my life.

And I learned those rules amazingly fast as I bumped into each one of them in my ignorance. “Boys don’t play with Mommy’s lipstick.” “Boys don’t wear Mommy’s shoes.” “Boys don’t wear Mommy’s nylons. Why don’t you take out your trucks and play with them?”

You get the picture.

I don’t know why I was so fixed on my mother’s things but I was. I just naturally wanted to do it. I became very aware that it was wrong. I started to hide my interest. I focused on making my parents happy and fitting in with the boys on my street. Everyone was happy.

But I also started to secretly daydream and wish I would magically wake up a girl. Those thoughts started when I was five. I know that sounds hard to believe but my memories are absolutely vivid from that age. My wish never disappeared. It survived puberty, marriage, children and middle age.

The wish never went away.

It just became more sophisticated as I got older, and it would feel like any fantasy daydream, like walking on the moon or winning the Super Bowl in a “Walter Mitty” kind of way (again look up my Boomer reference). It continued as my deepest secret and one of my few entirely selfish private indulgences. I have never shared my secret wish with anyone until it surprising slipped out in therapy three years ago.

Sharing it finally set me free. I felt like I was able to finally breathe and no longer hold anything back in that tiny little jail cell in my heart. It unleashed a joy that I never knew I was missing.

My dream had a reality, and it was demanding my attention. It made me connect the dots of my suppressed gender until, in my minds eye, I could see a little girl who just wanted to play. I can almost hear her happy laughter as the five-year-old is finally allowed to go out and play.

It’s about time.

She has waited a long time.

Emma Holiday

Writers note: If you have read any of my writings on Medium you will have noticed a definite theme: the incredible pain of gender dysphoria and all the difficult aspects of just being transgender.

My writing has three specific goals:

1. It is my therapy. I have a very limited outlet for my thoughts, so I write to find a way to process the most profound experience in my life. I need to understand and accept myself in order to move forward.

2. Being transgender, for me, is a very lonely existence, and if I can share some of the things that I feel and think as I go through the process of transitioning with others who are transgender and, in some way, lessen their pain and sense of loneliness, then all of this public exposure of my personal thoughts is not a waste.

3. I write to help cisgender people understand that all trans people want is to be simply understood, accepted and treated as normal people. We are.

Thank you for reading my work.