I once heard a writer state that trans women weren’t raised “as boys” and didn’t have “boyhoods” growing up but rather had the childhood of a trans girl which is it’s own experience. A trans girlhood often involves dysphoria, bullying, learning (often failing) to mask themselves and pretend to be boys/men, and other things. True, they are often treated as males which is different than a cis girlhood. But maybe it’s own type of gendered childhood, and we should talk about it as such. Can someone truly have a boyhood if they were only pretending to be a boy?