Growing Up Gender Nonconforming: A Journey from Tomboy to Womanhood

This insightful piece comes from a recent addition to our coalition. As a gender non-conforming lesbian, her perspective offers a unique and often overlooked viewpoint in our current cultural conversation. We commend her for sharing her experiences with a broader audience, as her insights shed light on the concerns many of us have about the increasing medicalization of young women who need time and space to grow into their bodies and their sexuality.

I was born in October of 1969 in Selma, Alabama, a small Southern town with its own rich history of protest. From the start, my childhood was marked by freedom and adventure. Forever in Toughskins and cowboy boots, I spent my days riding horses, building forts, shooting guns, and launching myself off ramps on my bike like some Evel Knievel wannabe. These were the activities that made sense to me—fun, messy, and full of life. I wore the “tomboy” label with pride, a term that perfectly fit the way I navigated the world: always outside, always getting dirty, and always playing hard.

Things started to change when I was six years old. My mom decided to cut my hair into a pixie cut, and suddenly, people began to ask, "Are you a boy?" That question embarrassed the hell out of me. I never knew how to respond because, to me, it was obvious: I was a girl—just not the frilly, dress-wearing kind. In the South during the 70s, there were plenty of girls like me who hunted, fished, and did all sorts of things considered “for boys.” I didn’t like wearing girly clothes; jeans, a T-shirt, and my trusty boots were my go-to outfit then and, honestly, often still are today.

Photo by Katherine Hanlon on Unsplash

But there was one day that I dreaded more than most—school picture day. My mom insisted that I wear a dress, and I was so embarrassed that I crawled into a trash can and got covered in pencil lead shavings, just trying to hide from the world. That was the last time she made me wear a dress to school. It was clear to everyone that I wasn’t the kind of girl who liked frills or lace. For me, girlhood wasn’t about dresses or dolls; it was about being myself, even if that meant breaking the mold of what people thought a girl should be.

Back then, I had no idea what terms like “gender nonconformity” or “gender dysphoria” even meant. They could have been words from another language for all I knew. I was just living my life the way I wanted, without any labels. My grandfather, Pat, was my biggest cheerleader. He always made sure I knew I could do anything. To him, it was perfectly normal that I wanted to shoot guns, mow lawns, or wield an axe with the best of them. No one in my family ever told me, “You can’t do that because you’re a girl.”

That all changed in fifth grade when I wanted to play peewee football. I went home in tears after finding out girls couldn’t try out, and my dad, trying to comfort me, just said, “Sorry, kiddo, sometimes life isn’t fair.” For the first time, I felt like the world was telling me I was “wrong” for the way I was. I knew I was just as strong—if not stronger—than most of the boys in my class. Before puberty hit, I could outrun, outplay, and outlast many of them. One of my classmates, who later went on to be a starting fullback at Auburn, couldn’t even keep up with me back then.

As I grew older, I started to realize that my feelings toward girls were different, more intense than the usual friendships. By the 10th grade, I confided in a close friend that I was probably gay. Throughout college, I slowly came out to a few more friends, testing the waters and feeling a bit less alone with each conversation. But the moment I knew I had to be out to everyone, not just my closest friends, came in 1992, when I watched Pat Buchanan give his infamous “culture war” speech at the Republican National Convention. It was like a switch flipped inside me, and I knew I couldn’t keep hiding. That night marked the beginning of a process—slowly coming out to everyone, including my family.

Looking back now, I’m grateful no one suggested that I could “become a boy.” At the time, I might have jumped at the chance, eager to chase my football dreams and the girls I was starting to notice. But if I were growing up today, I have no doubt I’d be pushed toward transitioning, potentially cutting off any chance of growing into the adult woman I’ve become. I’ve come to realize that there isn’t just one way to be a girl. It’s perfectly fine to be gender nonconforming. The stereotypes being pushed today can feel just as limiting and sexist as those that kept me off the football field.

I think kids today are being sold a fantasy—the idea that they can truly become the opposite sex. That just isn’t true. You can pass as the opposite sex, but you can’t actually become it. The modern gender debates sometimes seem to drag us back into those same old stereotypes I’ve spent my life trying to dismantle. Defining a woman by makeup, lingerie, and a dress? That’s the ultimate misogyny.

Being gender nonconforming doesn’t mean you have to change who you are to fit someone else’s idea of what a girl or woman should be. My story is just one example of how varied and unique our experiences can be, and how important it is to embrace all the different ways of being a woman without feeling pressured to fit into someone else’s definition.