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1. Alex (hermit@hermitmountain.top)'s status on Sunday, 05-Mar-2023 08:35:19 JST Alex

   • Moon
   • Terry Hendrix II 🏹
   • iced quinnsmas :blobcatsanta:
   • Arcana
   • Ahri Boy 💙💛
   @arcana @icedquinn @Moon @zakiuem @thendrix As a child I was given a general chest full of assorted costumes. Some were female, like pretty princess dresses. I tried them on. It was interesting, but I didn't like it much. I favoured the pirate costume above all.
   
   My best friend really took to the dresses. His dad had a seethe fit over it and threatened my mother.
   
   As a teenager, he came out as gay.
   
   I think experimentation is positive. I'm glad I was presented with that choice, just like I was presented with choices such as playing house with girls (which helped me face the fact that I'd always wanted a wife, even as a very young child) and opportunities to transgress (such as peeking on girls in the bathroom.)
   
   In a non-sexual sphere, I'm glad I also had the opportunity to get into danger. I explored my town a lot. I trespassed on private property and construction sites. I made secret bases. I could have stolen, but decided I didn't want to. I'd rather just see.
   
   Children aren't sterile beings who need to be coddled with carefully curated stimuli.
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   • Alex (hermit@hermitmountain.top)'s status on Sunday, 05-Mar-2023 09:00:35 JST Alex

     in reply to

     • Moon
     • Terry Hendrix II 🏹
     • iced quinnsmas :blobcatsanta:
     • Arcana
     • Ahri Boy 💙💛
     @arcana @icedquinn @Moon @zakiuem @thendrix It's a fine line. The idea that children don't know what they want is ridiculous. Children know without hesitation their favourite colour, their best friend. They always know what they want to do. They refuse to eat foods they dislike. They know what they hate.
     
     But at the same time, they're staggeringly open to influence. The reason I hated teaching them was because they would chameleon to my expectations. It made checking for legitimate understanding almost impossible. I'm convinced that the only way to really do that is to see if they self-initiate in the same sphere (for example, a child who is taught superficial facts about dinosaurs who goes on to check out a book on dinosaurs from the school library and read it hungrily.) So this makes checking for understanding in "necessary but boring" spheres (subjective dependent on the child's preferences) excruciatingly difficult. I don't like subjecting them to sterile exams, but I can't think of a better option.
     
     I agree that it's better to have this kind of open knowledge-sharing relationship with your parents than with random strangers for sure. I'm thankful mine were so open. When I got warned about stranger danger as a very young child, I kept asking "why" in response to presentations of danger, until I was taught about gay rape. THAT definitely made me wary of strange men in bathrooms lol. If my parents had just said "durr because I told you so" I'd have rejected them.
     mental meltdown likes this.
   • Arcana (arcana@pengi-san.moe)'s status on Sunday, 05-Mar-2023 09:00:36 JST Arcana

     in reply to

     • Moon
     • Terry Hendrix II 🏹
     • iced quinnsmas :blobcatsanta:
     • Ahri Boy 💙💛

     @hermit @icedquinn @Moon @zakiuem @thendrix Absolutely. We requested such experimentation from our parents and were denied it. And that pushed us into dark corners of the internet we hope no kid ever has to see. Let kids dress how they want! We just are terrified of people who fetishize kids for embracing femininity. Because that is how we were targeted for abuse. By being denied the right to do anything even remotely girly, let alone wear girls’ clothes, we sought out people who would let us do that online. As long as they did not know our age, we were safe. But eventually we got stupid because we wanted to be a girl, not a woman. And that… That is what we seek to avoid.