Help
Sign In
gender issues
June 2008 
On Being Gifted
Posted on Jun 20th, 2007
by 
Quill
Quill
There's this word that has been thrown at me for a long time and which my mother has been using more and more frequently, most notatbly in a recent conversation over breakfast at Denny's in which she outright blamed my "gender situation" on my "gifted" status.
So after running across the word a few more times in some completely unrelated scenarious, I finally decided to look up a few things about "gifted" children. There certainly seems to be quite a lot of information out there.
Sad to say, the word "gifted" in my mind has developed a definite stigma, for there has never been anything good about being "gifted" in my life. It's now come to equivocate with the word "special" as in "You're special; yeah, special-ed."
How terrible is that! It really should be a good thing to be gifted and special, but like so many words in the English language it's become completely the opposite. God forbid we should any of us considered special or indeed gay! *gasp*
Anyway, I don't really feel like reaching back into that cesspool which is my oh-so-recent childhood, but I just want to say for the moment it's not easy and I would, in all honesty, much rather be "normal" than "gifted" even to this day, because all it's done for me (aside from the abuse) is made me arrogant and more often than not act like a bastard because I've had to convince myself I'm better than everyone.
Yeah, well, even gifted people have to work on their personality problems.
Anyway, one last thing did occur to me. My mother says she thinks that the reason (or rather, one of the reasons; she's subscribed to the idea that I was also sexually abused before retained memory kicked in) I want so badly to "be a boy: instead of just getting comfortable in my femaleness is that I'm gifted and always have been and the trauma that comes with that is what messed me up.
Now, curiously a common implication with giftedness is that the gifted child/person in question often has difficulty because their minds work at a higher maturity level than usual; in other words, they think older than their physical age. So, mother dear, can't you consider that it may in fact be possible that I also think as a different gender than my legal/physical one?
Just a thought.
So after running across the word a few more times in some completely unrelated scenarious, I finally decided to look up a few things about "gifted" children. There certainly seems to be quite a lot of information out there.
Sad to say, the word "gifted" in my mind has developed a definite stigma, for there has never been anything good about being "gifted" in my life. It's now come to equivocate with the word "special" as in "You're special; yeah, special-ed."
How terrible is that! It really should be a good thing to be gifted and special, but like so many words in the English language it's become completely the opposite. God forbid we should any of us considered special or indeed gay! *gasp*
Anyway, I don't really feel like reaching back into that cesspool which is my oh-so-recent childhood, but I just want to say for the moment it's not easy and I would, in all honesty, much rather be "normal" than "gifted" even to this day, because all it's done for me (aside from the abuse) is made me arrogant and more often than not act like a bastard because I've had to convince myself I'm better than everyone.
Yeah, well, even gifted people have to work on their personality problems.
Anyway, one last thing did occur to me. My mother says she thinks that the reason (or rather, one of the reasons; she's subscribed to the idea that I was also sexually abused before retained memory kicked in) I want so badly to "be a boy: instead of just getting comfortable in my femaleness is that I'm gifted and always have been and the trauma that comes with that is what messed me up.
Now, curiously a common implication with giftedness is that the gifted child/person in question often has difficulty because their minds work at a higher maturity level than usual; in other words, they think older than their physical age. So, mother dear, can't you consider that it may in fact be possible that I also think as a different gender than my legal/physical one?
Just a thought.
Access: Public
