After reading “Throwing like girl’ and listening to everyone’s stories about how they grew up being treated as less than a girl or too much like a girl by their male peers had me thinking about my experiences when I was a kid and how I was treated just because I had different interests from other girls and had the same interests as some boys.
I remember in elementary school all the girls would play and talk about boys under the playground, but me I was that one girl on the basketball court or the football field trying to show out and out play the boys. Now this came with a lot of difficulties for me because at some points the boys would go easy on me and be like “well you’re a girl and I don’t want to hurt you”. But on the other hand they would undermine my skills in the sport after I beat them by saying “I went easy on you so I don’t hurt your feelings” now both of these sayings would hurt my feelings pretty bad and would make me feel like I truly couldn’t be apart of their little sports groups so it would push me away a little bit to try and hang out with the girls thinking that it would be different but come to find out I was very wrong about that.
As I gravitated under the playground so I could talk with the girls, it very quickly showed me just how uninterested I was in what they were talking about. All of the conversations consisted of them talking about how good the boys looked playing basketball or what new dress their mom bought them that week . And little old me would just sit there and listen and soon after all the girls started realizing that I wasn’t speaking in any of their conversations so they started to catch on and tried to single me out just as much as the boys. It got worse for me when we played this “girls vs boys” which was any game but with girls on one side and boys on the other, I would try and join the girls team when we would do this and the first thing I would hear was “you’re not a girl” and they would force me to be on the boys team completely altering the way I thought and I would try to change myself and act like I liked boys to please them.
Honestly as time went on the playing with boys part left after middle school and I was able to play sports freely in high school but the way that girls felt about me never fully changed because once I entered 10th grade I started becoming more masculine as I found myself so if anything it got worse. Girls wouldn’t let me say the word bitch, some girls didn’t want to change in front of me, I couldn’t be feminine, I couldn’t talk about periods because they “forgot” I got them and definitely couldn’t wear anything remotely feminine or I would get weird looks. They basically looked at me as a man and put me into a box but let me try and switch it up and be feminine it was always a problem so in the end I could never win. But as I got older I stopped caring what people had to say and it let me be as expressive as I want to be and happy in my body, masculinity and femininity.
Unruly Bodies 
Reading your story really hit home for me in ways I didn’t expect. I can feel the weight of your experiences through your words, and I relate so much to that feeling of never quite fitting in of being seen as “too much” or “not enough,” depending on who you’re around. It’s hard when the things you love and the way you express yourself don’t seem to match what others think you should be. I can imagine how lonely and frustrating that must have been, wanting to belong and be accepted but being pushed away by both the boys and the girls just for being yourself. The way you described being treated on the sports field by the boys and then being shut out by the girls it’s so relatable, and it breaks my heart because no one should have to go through that. It’s like no matter what you did, you couldn’t win, and I’ve felt that in my own way too. I can also really feel how much pressure there was to change yourself just to fit their expectations, and I know how hard that is to carry as a kid. That moment where they told you “you’re not a girl” when you tried to play with them must have been such a painful and confusing message to hear. But the way you’ve grown from those experiences and embraced who you are is so inspiring. I love how you’ve claimed both your masculinity and femininity and found peace in expressing yourself fully. It gives me hope that we can all break free from what others expect of us. Your strength, in just being yourself, is incredible. Thank you for sharing this