She said

When I was growing up, my mother often fretted that I wasn’t “more ladylike”. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to wear more lipstick and eyeliner – to be, as she called it, “as pretty as I could be” – or why I dressed in the first two items of clothing I picked up off my bedroom floor. To her, my ambivalence toward dolling myself up indicated a lack of self-respect. When really, it just wasn’t something I cared about. I found fancy “girls’” clothes hobbling. You couldn’t run in tight jeans. You couldn’t swim in makeup.

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He said

When I was growing up, I wore brown and tan two-tone corduroy shorts, collared alligator shirts buttoned to the top, Adidas sweat suits like Run DMC. Flip flops. Or Stan Smiths and Levi’s 501 shrink-to-fit jeans when it was cold. When I swam, I wore just bottoms, trunks mostly, but sometimes bikinis when that’s all my mother would buy me. I refused to wear the tops though. Water and sun feels so good across a bare chest, and boys didn’t wear tops to swim, so I didn’t either. Until one day, during a 6th grade birthday party at the local university’s Olympic-sized pool, when I overheard some kids making fun of me being topless, showing off my “boobs” (even though there wasn’t anything to show off). I never swam topless again.

She said

By the time I reached high school, I realised that for girls, wardrobe choices were only the tip of the confinement iceberg. As a female, I was expected to play by the rules, speak softly, wait my turn, and be grateful for any and all attention that came my way, whether I wanted said attention or not. “You catch more flies with honey,” my mother would counsel. “But, flies, mom,” I’d counter, while she shook her head disapprovingly. My male friends didn’t have to alter their personalities, or subsume their wants and needs. No one was chiding them to be sweet enough to catch flies.

He said

By the time I reached high school, I devised a manner of dress and behaviour that threaded the needle between what I wanted and what everybody else thought I should want. As somebody designated “girl” at birth, and raised as such, it was clear I needed to have long hair, to smile, and to wear garments that “showed off my figure”. I (somehow, unhappily) managed the former two, but there was no way I was going to attempt the latter. I didn’t wear makeup, shave my legs, or do anything explicitly to attract boys’ attention. I lived most of my days outdoors, swimming, riding motorcycles and skateboarding with my male friends. Some of them wanted to date me, and sure, I liked their company – but just not that way.

She said

The older I grew, the more I rejected the girly container I’d been put into. I chose to be outspoken. To be funny. To have sex. I styled my hair the way I felt in the moment, not the way magazines said I should. I played sports. I wrote poems. I did what I desired, just as my boyfriends and boy friends always did. They believed they could be anything, experience everything – that they deserved the full platter of life. Their hunger inspired my own. The rules were so different for them. I can’t remember anyone in my youth ever shaming a boy for how he looked. (Unless he looked like a girl.)

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He said

The older I grew, the more I figured out who and what I really was. That is, not a girl at all, but rather a boy who never really got the opportunity to be a boy, but who nevertheless still had a chance to become the man I knew I could be. I dated women, bought boxer briefs and tight, binding athletic binders for my chest. Eventually I began taking testosterone, had surgery. You don’t know privilege until the first time a stranger moves out of your way on the street and calls you “Sir.”

She said

My mother always wanted me to be a traditional girl.

He said

Mine too.

She said

But I never was.

He said

Me neither.

We said

Now that we are grown and have two teenage daughters of our own, we tell them every day that they are loved, that their voices matter, that they should use them. We avoid putting them in any category. If they want to wear slinky dresses and false eyelashes, great. If they want to shave their heads and don combat boots, that’s fine too. Hopefully, they’ll try both. Because the truth is, identity is never simply one thing. We are all more than the boxes we check on the government forms. No one is just “female” or “male” or “black” or “white” or “Asian,” or “educated” or “divorced” or “a homeowner” or “the breadwinner”. We all contain multitudes.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: The Guardian

And so we tell our children. When they worry about fitting in, about being judged, about who they are meant to be. We remind them that underneath, we are all “other”. So tick that box. Tick it every time.

Allison Glock-Cooper and T Cooper Changers, Book One: Drew is available from the Guardian bookshop. Read the first chapter here.

Live Twitter chat 28 January 2016 7-8pm

Allison Glock-Cooper @AllisonGlock and T Cooper @RealTCooper aim to join our first Twitter chat of the year on @GdnChildrensBks. We are going to be discussing all things trans on Thursday 28 January from 7-8pm #Gdnteentrans, along with Lisa Williamson, author of our current teen book club read The Art of Being Normal @lisa_letters, transgender author Juno (ex James) Dawson @junodawson, Robin Talley @robin_talley author of Lies We Tell Ourselves and hopefully @razielreid author much talked about debut When Everything Feels like the Movies. More on that later @GdnChildrensBks.

One more thing: LGBT lit fest

We wanted to tell you about a fab LGBT lit and history festival going on at the Museum of London on Sunday 7 February 2017 run by Schools Out UK! They’ll be loads for teens and families with guests including Juno Dawson (formerly known as James), Stuart Milk, Ros Asquith and Bonnie Greer. Find out more here. The event is free and families/teenagers welcome but you need to pre-book.