How did your gender affect you when you were a child?

I can never remember a time where my gender once afflicted me. Having a younger brother my memories of childhood consist of playing princesses with him but also playing pirates, we played both with Barbie and Action Man, and fought over the best Skaletrix car and once even over my ballet dress.

We had the same dinner, the same bed time, the only thing different about us was our appearance and 2 years, but even then only just. We are both loved the same and were granted the same opportunities growing up.

Even in school this ideology hardly swayed- the boys and girls dressed for PE together in the same place and all played together in the playground. Girls played football and boys went to ballet. All the class were invited to birthday parties and when there didn’t split into specific gender group. Everyone played together, sat together, sang together, learnt together.

Obviously on occasion gender would influence the setting for example getting into a line at mealtimes or for assembly, the Christmas play when boys would act in male roles and girls in the female ones- however at the time this wasn’t deemed an issue more a normality.

As a child I was far too innocent to let the issue of gender come into play. It hardly affected me and I believe that’s exactly how it should be.