You ever think it's hella fucked up how there's this general societal expectation that boys "should" have kissed or fucked by a certain age?

I had my first kiss with a girl I had met ten minutes previously at a party a friend dragged me to for the express purpose of doing that.

As a trans woman I feel like the entire understanding I had of sexuality, intimacy and romance was poisoned by my upbringing as a boy in the weird low-key machismo of British public schooling.

I feel like it really fucked me up in a genuinely horrible way.

Like, "your first kiss" is something that other boys your age would ask you about in school, and the actual level of intimacy or connection with the person you had it with were vastly less important than how hot they were or whether or not you'd had it at all.

Did that random girl find me attractive? I don't know. Did I find her attractive? I can't remember what she looked like. What was her name, even? I only know that once I'd snogged her I didn't have to suffer the shame of being the ugly rat who'd never kissed a girl anymore.

How fucked up is that, right? Like, that was the first physical intimacy I'd experienced with another human being, and it was with some random person I never ended up meeting again (this was an era before every teenager had a phone).

And I did it to avoid being the odd one out.

I don't believe in puritanical ideas of "saving yourself for marriage" but like... I wish I'd at least saved myself for someone I knew for more than ten minutes.

All to try and meet the expectations of bullies who'd never, ever respect me.

It teaches boys to look at intimacy and romance as a status symbol, an achievement they can brag about having completed. Like, fuck it, we talk about women as a thing that men are taught to want to possess but in this case it's not even them, it's a service they can provide.