Georgia Dean's repsonse..

In my initial years of childhood I was the little sister by 2 years and followed in her footsteps. If she liked Barbie’s, I liked Barbie’s. If she wore a cute, pink floral sundress, I had a matching one. We shared a bedroom for the first eight years of my life and did everything together. I would say that her interests undoubtedly subconsciously affected mine. It wasn’t until later when my younger brother arrived that I can truly remember knowingly noticing gender differences within my household. My sister started to become more of a tomboy and I grew closer to my brother as I enjoyed playing Thomas the Tank Engine and watching Postman Pat on television with him.

My one vivid memory of my parents role in shaping my gender occured one early morning when my brother and I sat in front of the television watching the popular-at-the-time television show Teletubbies. My Dad walked into the family room and told us to immediately change the channel and articulated to me he did not want my brother watching that show. I later found out that there had be controversy regarding the sex of the characters in the show and possible homosexual connotations being expressed. Being a closet homophobe, my Dad did not want my young brother to take on the roles of what could be described as gender neutral or ambiguous characters.

When school age came around, my parents placed my sister and I in an all girl private school, in my hometown at the time, Perth, Australia. In my first few years there I was immersed in single sex sports, toys to play with, and classrooms settings. I had only female teachers and friends. I learnt “how to be a girl” and learned to enjoy female company. In hindsight, looking back on those days I sometimes beg the question whether my gender might have been affected had I remained in Australia and at a single sex school. I moved to Vancouver, Canada at the age of 9 and have since been educated in a co-ed environment.