A WORD ON IDENTITY
Growing up, I was a "tomboy". Now, before you correct me let me share that this was in the late 80s, early 90s when there was little to no representation of the LGBTQ community anywhere that I could see. Not in my small rural mountain town in the South, not on television, not in the books I read but I apparently liked doing "boy" things so that was the label I was given. The truth was I liked playing with lego sets, video games, sports (especially football because I had a killer long throw) as much as I liked playing with dolls, make believe house, art, etc. For me, as with everything else about me, I didn't feel compelled to choose - we are complex beings in a multiverse might I remind you - except when everyone else around me starting reminded me that I needed to. So, I started looking around to all the women in my life and as much as I could see some things didn't make sense to me, the programming as insidious and tricky as it is, slipped in anyway to cope with the initiation of childhood. Most of the women around me were Black single mothers that seemed to have a inferiority complex with men and a love-hate relationship about being a woman so I was getting very mixed cues about which
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