Mine was simply ignored, or sometimes there was a gentle nudge toward masculinity.

Having been born in 1958, and even with the kindest, most loving mother, life was torture. I thank God for my survival and eventual transition.

My father died in 1966. I was 8. He was, brutally, physically abused by his father. He renounced corporal punishment for his own children, seeing how the cycle was perpetuated, but I shudder to think how he would have gone about “making a man out of” me, which he, according to my mother, vowed to do, as soon as he retired from the Army.

😍😘😇