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This is the personal memory I think of every time Trans Kids come up. Sitting in seventh grade biology learning chromosomes, XX and XY. The teacher talks about, as a curiosity, a throwaway fun fact, that some men have two Y chromosomes, XYY, and that they are disproportionately found on death row, and that it is theorized the extra Y makes them extra aggressive and leads them to a life of violence. And some men are XXY, and correspondingly maybe a little more feminine. I remember feeling, with a deep sense of dread, that I must be XXY. That's why I was such a pussy! That's why I wasn't as good at sports as I wished I was! That's why girls I liked didn't like me! That's why I wasn't as tough as the blue collar farm kids I worked with who threw hay bails all day and never cried, why I couldn't make heads or tails of a small engine, why I liked books and old movies rather than manly things*, why my dad was always yelling at me to harden up and be a man and work harder, it explained everything!
Thank God I didn't have this shit around at the time, I might have said something to someone, and been on the path. Instead I just needed to wait five more years to grow into myself, and learn how broad the definition of Man can be, and reach a time when girls liked things that I was good at rather than things I wasn't and when socialization changed a little. I'd like to say I've grown into a decent man, fairly masculine, still an Iced-Coffee-All-Year bitch but that's hardly grounds to transition. Still, I remember that fear so distinctly, that sense of certainty that this was everything that was wrong with me, and I can't shake the sense that transmodernity can open like a trap door from one moment like that.
*Yeah, that's a long list, my expectations at 13 were basically to be Heinlein's Competent Man. Which is still my goal today, but I have enough achievements under my belt to understand what I can and can't do. A man's got to know his limitations. Which I think is another problem with status concerns for teenagers: they're based on expectations. The Apex Fallacy, looking at only the best and assuming that is normal, is so easy and so tempting. Truth is, I was probably >50th percentile at sports, I just picked the wrong ones back then. I've never been tough and I've never been graceful, so basketball and baseball and football were never for me. Today, I'd gamble I could beat anyone in town at a certain combination of skills, and that's good enough for me to feel good about myself. But I still can't shoot a basketball for shit.
I feel a kinship in this story with you brother.
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