Molly's Gender Biography

When I was a young girl, my parents exposed me to as many different activities as possible. I danced, took art classes, did gymnastics, played t-ball, indoor soccer, and basketball. My mom let me pick out my outfits for myself, but she always put a bow in my hair to keep it out of my face. I put up with this until kindergarten, when one day I came home and told her that I no longer wanted to wear bows. It was also in kindergarten when I started to narrow down my activities to just sports. Soon I was playing soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter, and on an all boys baseball team in the spring. At recess I only played with the boys, and when I got home I loved playing catch in the backyard with my dad. While my friends were dressing up as princesses or witches or cats for Halloween, I dressed up as Ken Griffey Jr. one year and Gary Payton the next. We had to wear a uniform at my elementary school, and I threw a fit whenever I was forced to wear the jumper or the skirt, because it wasn’t practical for recess. When I got to middle school, I began to grow self conscious of my boyish dress and started dressing in a more feminine way, but I continued the sports. I stopped playing baseball with the boys when I got to 7th grade (and the boys started to grow), but I played both basketball and soccer (and added lacrosse) all the way through high school.