Hi everyone,
I borrowed the title for this thread from another thread (the title of which has already left me

, but I wanted to speak to this a minute. Someone said, Jac I think, that sexualizing children can be done without touching and that it's very damaging. My parents sent very strange signals to me somewhere around my 6th or 7th grade year. I don't remember how the "signals" were sent nor am I sure about why, but I remember being so very embarrassed at the development of my body, especially around my father, and I remember praying, REALLY PRAYING, that my body wouldn't develop. I guess I wanted to be asexual. I felt so dirty in becoming a woman. My dad had never been close to me but when I began to develop he seemed to become really annoyed with me---and it definitely wasn't o.k. that I was a female. My mom and I had gotten along (gosh, it's hard to remember her and I ever getting along, but when I think really hard, it's true, we did) pretty good until I turned about 15 or 16 and all of a sudden she changed. She became very distrustful of me and cold and suspicious. It seemed like her interest in me completely left and I was left to be my only friend and ally. It's amazing, when you think of it, how parents can convey all of that without saying many words. I remember once when a friend walked in our back door and asked where I was (I could hear this from my bedroom) and my dad said in a very disgusted voice, "She's in her room
primping"----his tone stunned me. I remember it clearly to this day, where I was sitting in my room, the sights, the sounds, it's all frozen in time----I guess he had passed my bedroom early and had seen me putting on make-up (minimal amount, I assure you).
Mom used to tell me, when no one was around, that I was supposed to have been a boy. How deeply this ran through my dad I"m not sure. She said he was disappointed when I was born, that I was a girl. Maybe until puberty, he could "pretend" I was a boy. I used to have to help him cut grass, haul fire wood, help projects, etc,,,, not that girls can't do that but I was raised to be a boy kinda. When I turned 15 my mom did fix me up a girly bedroom as a surprise---so that was a mixed signal.
Maybe my mom became distant from me when I matured because (as I've found out all these years later) she was sexually active at a young age and ended up pregnant and having to put up a child for adoption when she was 16 (this was way back in 1949)---so maybe my age brought back bad memories for her??? Or she thought I'd be like her???
I don't know, but I do know that the things they said and did and the signals they sent made me feel very uncomfortable in my female skin for most of my life. I remember a few years ago my oldest child saying, "Mom, why do you dress so much like a guy" and it made me mad but she was right. I never dressed femininely. Thank goodness that has changed and I let myself enjoy being a female now.

Just my .02. Y'all feel free to jump in.
Adrift