Negative formative experiences do tend to make each of us into something other than we’d have become without it. That much is true. But you? Without having had those, you’ll be unfettered in ways that many of us yearn for. I’m comfortable admitting to that yearning; some people are not, and I think that contributes towards why some people act shitty towards trans folk. That’s their stuff to process, and it’s not their business to make it yours.
For what it’s worth, I hear a similar story from my male clients again and again: the extreme unpleasantness of locker room culture. Gentle-spirited boys, solitary boys, thoughtful and intelligent boys who see the dynamic and have no time for it, were nonetheless subjected to that rule: either you’re loud, brash, aggressive, treat others with contempt, and are physically big, or you’re fodder to be dominated.
I wasn’t even raised with that, and I want less of it in my life. I can’t imagine what it’s like having that in your history.
Oh, I could tell you stories.
Oh Jesus, I bet you could!
Well, story time then.
So far, I said:
Indeed. Though in my case, when it comes to what I went through in elementary school (age 7-14), I wouldn’t even put it as locker room culture; that makes it seem more sophisticated than what I think it actually was: namely, a pure drive for domination, and enjoyment from inflicting suffering on those who are weaker than you or your group. It was a bit like sharks smelling blood and descending to tear the target apart.
But otherwise yeah, you’re very much right.
Let me describe a typical school day of mine from around 5th grade onwards. Here’s what it would look like:
You approach the school’s main entrance.
Sometimes, the boys are standing there. The group of 4 or 5 of them. It would start then, the insults, and sometimes a few punches or kicks.
If they’re not there, then you’re going to meet them anyway in a few seconds, because they’re in the class cloakroom, where you leave your outdoor clothes (it’s the only place you can, as you’re not allowed to bring them into classrooms).
You enter to leave your jacket on a wall hanger. The boys use their legs to trip you, two or three times. You somehow manage to put your jacket on the hanger, then leave the cloakroom.
But then, fairly often, one of those boys takes your jacket, comes outside the cloakroom, and taunts you with it. You try to catch him and take back your jacket or umbrella; but it’s no use. Even if you do manage to catch that boy, the others are nearby, ready to catch your stuff when he throws it to them. And they all run around you and taunt you, laughing like hyenas.
And that was just the beginning of what it was like for me.
Also, that didn’t only happen when I would enter the school building. At various parts during the day, the boys would sometimes steal my other things and do the pass-around between each other. There wasn't much that I could do about it, other than chase them and try to get my things back. I needed my things.
The harassment became increasingly physical over time.
During the rest periods in between classes, I found myself hiding. Especially in the later years of elementary school.
Why? Because, for one, that gang of boys made my life hell.
But try as I might, there was no way to avoid facing the abuse much of the time. One of my most dreaded moments became the one when I had to exit the school and walk home. You see, my abusers began a habit of waiting for me outside; they could do that, because I was slow when it came to packing my stuff while they were among the fastest, so they'd arrive there earlier. I tried becoming quicker, but I never seemed to quite manage it. I was almost never faster than they were.
Then, when I went outside, it would be a round of insults, the assholes’ hands holding me in place, maybe some punches and perhaps an attempt at taking something from me. They'd often not be satisfied with just the ambush, and would chase me part of the way home.
Many kids would go to the school kitchen, get the food which the school cooks prepared, and eat there. I did that during my first grade, but then had to change to the alternative option: bring your food from home, and eat it elsewhere.
The reason for the change? I kept being harassed in the kitchen by the other kids from my class to a level that had become intolerable, so I decided to ask my mom to make me something each day. As a result, she’d make me a sandwich and buy me a juice, and that’s what I would eat and drink during the longest rest period of the day.
After 5th grade began, the kids who brought food from home would normally eat it in our cloakroom near the school entrance.
But surely you remember what I told you earlier about the cloakroom.
For me, just putting my jacket in there and getting it back before going home was a dreaded everyday mission. And that just meant a few seconds in that room.
Now imagine what 15 minutes of being in there looked like.
Yes, it was impossible. So I had to eat somewhere outside in the “great hall”, or even in the school yard.
But, there was a problem even then. You see, the boys from my class would sometimes get bored and go looking for some… excitement. Guess what that meant.
Sometime in 5th grade, our class psycho really noticed me, and figured I was an ideal target. He was far worse than even the other boys.
He was a boy who had trained judo and had decent muscles, unlike me.
Whereas the others would hit only sometimes, and in a fairly random way, this guy had a favorite move which he had mastered: he would hit his target's calf (upper leg) with his knee. Powerfully.
It hurt like hell. So much that I genuinely feared that my legs, especially the bones, could suffer permanent damage.
He would often follow that up with grappling me, pulling me to the floor, and putting himself on top of me for a while, in a move that was explicitly designed for maximum humiliation. It made for a real picture of complete domination.
And sometime during fifth grade, I became his primary target — Every. Single. Day. For the next couple of years.
It was almost impossible to avoid him. He would often seek me out specifically, and inevitably, he would find me.
And then… savage grin, knee to my upper leg, grapple, topple and stay on top. Again and again.
My rest periods in school were spent with my primary preoccupation being to stay out of that sadistic boy’s line of sight, very literally. My first order of business was to keep him in my sight or at least know where he is at every single moment, but without him noticing me.
When he'd be in my line of sight, I would hide — ideally behind a corner, and if that's unavailable, then behind a pillar. As he pursues some other target, I would adjust my position so that the pillar remained between me and him.
And this was actually necessary.
See, the line of sight had to be able to be broken at a moment’s notice. Because if he saw me, the result was always the same. Even if he was harassing someone else — as he often was — I was his favorite target. If he saw me, he made a beeline for me. And at that point, it was a foregone conclusion: I could not escape. He had more endurance, he was faster, and he was absolutely dedicated to the bullying. There was no way out.
Oh, by the way, those other assholes whom I had mentioned? They were still there and had never let me go.
Also…
My physical education classes were a nightmare. Especially changing clothes before and after them. It meant going into the cloakrooms next to the gym. I couldn’t use my own class’s cloakroom because even just entering it meant absolute hell. I was forced to go into one of the empty ones, and change clothes there, alone.
If I was lucky, the assholes wouldn’t notice me and follow me inside… after which they’d often take and hide my school backpack or the clothes that I had to leave there.
So, since the method of just changing alone in a different room wasn’t working well enough, I upgraded the method. At some point I began to first dress alone in an empty cloakroom, then wait until my classmates left for the gym room, after which I’d transfer my backpack and clothes into my class’s cloakroom.
It was safer that way, as in, there my things were just part of the mass of stuff and wouldn’t stand out the way they did alone in an empty cloakroom. But then, after the physical ed class was over, I had to wait until my class’s cloakroom emptied of the assholes before I could pick up my stuff. Because the bastards never missed an opportunity to torment me in there.
All of that time, as I was waiting, I had to do my best to stay out of sight, while being aware of the assholes’ current location. There was a lot of quick looks around the corner involved.
Yep… for me, merely changing clothes before or after the gym class had been an entire tactical operation. For years. Twice per week. And I dreaded it every. Single. Time.
The worst came towards the end of 7th grade.
Until then, my being bullied had pretty much been confined to being done by people from my class.
But others eventually noticed.
There were five classes in our year: A, B, C, D and E. I was in E class.
Over the years, class C had formed a particular sort of dynamic, particularly the boys in it (boys made up about 3/4 of that class).
They had turned into something resembling a mafia. They had a sort of hierarchy. And at one point, they even hounded one of their own boys horribly for weeks. To this day, I don’t know why.
Well, guess whom they settled on as their new main target as I was beginning 8th grade? Someone who was alone, vulnerable and whom it was popular to treat like garbage? A most convenient and easy target? That’s right. Me.
I had wondered a number of times why this sort of thing kept happening to me.
I sometimes wondered why they chose me, and why they wouldn't leave me alone for years upon years.
Did I do anything wrong to anyone? I wondered about that, and the scary thing is… I came up with nothing. It really wasn't anything I did.
As far as I can tell, it was very simple: I was a good target. Weak, alone and unable to effectively fight back.
More than a few of my classmates — and not only my classmates — were like sharks. And when they smelled blood in the water, they descended and tore the target apart.
There was no solidarity and no empathy. Only power, and the satisfaction of using it on someone who couldn’t fight back.
Children can be quite the monsters. Many of them relish having power over others.
And get this… a couple of my harassers used to be my friends, before they suddenly and inexplicably turned on me. It came as a surprise to me; I thought we were friends!
For one of them, who wasn’t from my class, I could see no reason why he’d do that except him maybe seeing that I was bottom of the barrel in the school hierarchy, and that it was “cool” to pick on me. And deciding that he’d rather be one of the top dogs than hang out with the misfit and loser.
The other boy… he did it a lot earlier. Already in second grade.
In first grade, we were buddies. Back then, we sat together, by choice. We had fun talks about games. I liked his company.
But then, sometime in second grade, he started treating me differently. People were starting to realize that I couldn’t handle pain or humiliation all that well, and that I failed to fight back.
Then he took the initiative in exploiting that. And he wouldn’t stop for almost the whole rest of our elementary schooling — that is, until the last semester of eighth grade.
Do you remember what I said first, about the gang of four or five boys (depending on time period) who would harass me — hitting me, insulting me and stealing my things?
Their leader was none other than this very boy. My former buddy from first grade, whom I used to sit together with.
And yes, I did think: was it something I said or did to him?
Again, the sad truth is: it wasn’t. He just turned out sadistic, and I was an easy target. He had soon assembled his gang, and they had power over me. It really was that simple.
In a way, I think it would have been easier to bear if I had actually somehow deserved it, or at least given them some sort of provocation.
So yeah… that was my school life back then. And I haven’t even told you about everything that was going on there.
Maybe you see why I said it wasn’t really “locker room culture”. It was something pervasive in the whole school environment, something that determined my life within and around those walls. There was no escape, no opting out, no “being yourself”.
You cannot “be yourself”, “resist” or “ignore” it, not when it comes in the form of fists, kicks, stealing, constant unending humiliation, in addition to not having basically any friends (and definitely none who protect you), and having zero effective support from the teachers who are supposedly in charge of things.
It’s not merely a “culture”. There, it was a hegemony, a complete and utter domination that asks no questions, merely breaks your will at every opportunity.
It’s an unspoken system of pure will to power, where strong rule the weak, totally and unrelentingly. And if you’re at the bottom, you are nothing but trash and a punching bag. Day in and day out, year after year.
So, how’s that for an image of what it’s like to be a boy who isn’t one of the tough ones, and who isn’t a bully?