When I was 12 years old, I wore a pink shirt. Right before leaving the house, my stepfather stopped me at the door: “You shouldn’t wear that. It’s for girls and people will think that you’re gay. It’s bad enough if people think that you support them.” His words were a stark lesson in gender expression. If I couldn’t even wear colors associated with girls, how in the world was I supposed to be able to ever tell my family I actually was a girl?
When I was 12 years old, I wore a pink shirt. Right before leaving the house, my stepfather stopped me at the door: “You shouldn’t wear that. It’s for girls and people will think that you’re gay. It’s bad enough if people think that you support them.” His words were a stark lesson in gender expression. If I couldn’t even wear colors associated with girls, how in the world was I supposed to be able to ever tell my family I actually was a girl?
