As a young boy, I enjoyed doing activities that were heavily associated with my gender such as shooting toy guns, participating in contact type sports with my friends for fun and playing with fire. However, I've always had, and still do have a very soft, flamboyant side to me. I've gotten used to showing it more and more as I got older, and I have accepted it now as part of my personality.

     Thinking back to my past, I have several memories of my parents saying things to me to try to make me turn out more masculine. My mom to this day still tries to persuade me to not wear or purchase pink colored articles of clothing because she doesn't "want people to get the wrong impression," referring to my sexual orientation.

      The most vivid memory that I have from my childhood about gender stereotyping was when my dad said to me, "You better not let your friends from baseball know that you like cats or they'll think you're a pansy." I was five years old when he said this to me and I still remember the exact wording of that sentence today. At the time, it really confused me because I did not see anything wrong with preferring cats to dogs. I thought that cats were sweet and lovable and that dogs were aggressive and gross and smelled bad.