I suppose growing up male is just as difficult as growing up female, but being of the latter variety I was never too concerned with what boys endured until I entered those formative adolescent years. Throughout the trials of grade school, I always felt on a par with boys. When Johnny stole my black crayon in first grade I stood up and bellowed, "John Vangilder, you give me back that crayon!" When we played "Red Rover, Red Rover," in third grade, I was as likely as any boy to keep the opposing assailant from breaking through my strong arms. And even in fifth grade when Kelly Rhodes said he was going to kiss me, I beat him at tether ball just to show him that he wasn't doing anything to me without my say so. But somehow, about the time that middle school rolled around I found myself not as willing to stand up for myself, not as physically able to constrain unwanted advances and not as equipped to say "no." Somehow I had gotten the message that, in most situations, boys will win and girls will lose.

When I look back, I think my demise actually began when Kelly decided he wanted to kiss me. It was just after Christmas when my victory at tether ball put him off of his vow. But by spring he was refreshed with the idea, and he began to follow me home from school everyday making loud smacking noises. This exercise culminated one afternoon with me locking myself in the bathroom at my house and he and my brothers pounding on the door, swearing, "Today is the day!" Finally they forced the door open and the towel rack I was clinging to came off the wall. I wielded the plastic rod as a weapon and Kelly ran out of the house, but I knew that he (with the help of my brothers) had been only seconds away from getting what he wanted. Even though he did not succeed, I was the outnumbered underdog, struggling to survive. It was the first time in my young life that I wished I had been born a boy.

I was never told by my mother that boys were better than girls. Maybe when my father left us to live a more extravagant lifestyle and our family drifted into poverty, I just deduced that the male species was entitled to better options. Maybe seeing my mother entertain a string of loser boyfriends, who came and went as they pleased, helped me decide that women were long-suffering and men were devil-may-care. Maybe it was just that my mother had three sons and only two daughters that made me feel that boys were preferred. Whatever the reasons or evidence, by the time I was thirteen I assumed boys would in every way be victorious over girls, but I could not find a way to accept it.

It is with shame that I now look back and realize how often I acquiesced to boys because I thought they had more God-given rights than girls did. In sixth grade we moved to a new town and on the first day of school an eighth grade boy grabbed me in the hallway, pushed me against the wall and started grinding his pelvis into me. None of the (at least one hundred) other students that passed by did a thing on my behalf, except a handful of other boys who cheered my attacker on. A teacher finally stopped him by saying, "Jerome, the bell has rung." I felt demoralized and humiliated, but since I seemed to be the only one who was undone by the ordeal, I assumed it was my fault. If even a teacher was undisturbed, it must be because boys had the right to do these things.

When I was in eighth grade we moved again. This time I was in school for a few weeks before an eleventh grade boy took a fancy to me and began to follow me to my classes. He would walk practically on my heels and whisper things like, "You know you want me," and "I'm gonna get it sooner or later," in my ear. I was terrified because he was older and on the football team, but also because I thought he was right. I thought, "Boys always get what they want and there is nothing I can do about it." I just couldn't find a way to beat them.

High school was the beginning of the end for a long time to come. By the end of ninth grade I had learned that the only way to win at all was to try and pretend that boys' ideas were not wholly discarded by me. When I worked in the drugstore after school making sodas, boys would sit on the other side of the counter and make comments about the similarities between me and maraschino cherries. I would respond with things like, "There's one big difference- the cherries are free." What I wanted to say was something like, "Who the hell do you think you are talking to me like that?”, but I knew no one would support me. Even other girls were in on the game.

Occasionally I tried to win. I remember a notable instance when I was about fifteen. A rumor was started by two senior girls that they had seen a hickey on my breast. I have no idea why they started the rumor and to this day I wonder why girls don't rally around each other when there's so much need, but it was the case this day that I learned of the hilarious fact that I had a hickey in this unmentionable place. I learned of it one evening as I was going to the grocery store with my mother. A group of high school boys was standing outside the store (where they often hung out) whistling and calling out obscenities to me. My mother went into the store and I decided to confront the group.

As I approached they got more animated and specific with their indignities. Finally I said, "What exactly is your problem?" One brave soul responded, "Well, we're just hoping to see that hickey on your tit." They all burst into laughter. "Oh, is that all you want," I said, at which point I lifted my shirt and exposed my bare chest (which harbored no hickey, of course). Silence descended like gloom on the crowd. I'm sure it was the last thing they expected. I then pulled my shirt down and went into the store with mixed feelings. I never heard a thing about the hickey again, but the fact that I had stooped to exposing myself to satisfy a lie made my victory short-lived. Was this the only way to come close to winning?

And why don't girls support other girls? I can't tell you how many times in my teenage years that I found myself, (surrounded by girls who were supposedly my friends), attacked in some way by a boy and left out to dry by my same sex. I remember one day I was about seventeen, sitting in a car with four of my friends. Two guys came up to the window and started berating me for not going out with one of their friends. One of them said, "I think it's because you don't know how to please him. You don't know how to please a guy." The two laughed uproariously. They kept this up for a time, during which my "friends" only looked at me expectantly. Accepted protocol would have been to attempt somehow to "put them down" in the same way they were attempting to put me down. Finally one of the guys said, "Don't you have anything to say?" So I said, "I don't play your game." They thought this was hilarious and an astute come-back. I was so disappointed. I had meant to say something true and virtuous, but once again my course was reduced to boy-interpreted status. Even the girls said, delightedly, "Oh, that was good." Aaaaggghhh!

They just always win. Even in my old age, when I've come to understand more sophisticated rationales for boys' superiority, like patriarchal dominance and Christian doctrine, I still don't understand why we, boys and girls alike, buy into it. There was a time in the seventies when Women's Liberation was a good thing. Now, in the nineties, I meet twenty-something’s who equate the Women's Movement with lesbianism. It's a sad state of affairs that boys continue to win. Needing to win creates impossible expectations for boys and divisive conditions for girls. And it all starts in childhood. If! could only go back to fifth grade and feel okay about saying, "Kelly, I think you are a great person, but I don't want to kiss you," or go back to sixth grade and feel supported when I kicked Jerome in the crotch, maybe I would have always wanted to be a girl. As it stands, twenty-five years beyond middle school, history still repeats itself in the adult world. And I still feel my only recourse is to pull up my shirt and scream for my crayon.

Want to comment on this Essays? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Essays and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...