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# 2023-08-25 - Sissy by Jacob Tobia | |
A friend mentioned this book to me. I checked it out from the local | |
library and binge-read it over a couple of days. I like the | |
biographical format. It felt like i was meeting a real and | |
interesting person. The snarky parts pleased my inner contrarian. | |
I found many scenes emotionally moving and touching. | |
I liked the chapter on coming out. After the author came out, their | |
father rejected them. The author turned the tables by telling their | |
father that they will accept him unconditionally. | |
I did not like the chapter written to their parents. For one thing, | |
it goes too far over the private/public divide for my tastes. For | |
another thing, the author proceeds to reveal to their father what | |
their father was feeling, thinking, etc. This felt undignified, as | |
though their father were a caricature in a puppet show. | |
If someone tries to inform me what i am, was, or will be feeling and | |
thinking; whether i am, was, or will be authentic, then they must be | |
psychic and there's nothing i need to add to that conversation. | |
Below are interesting excerpts from the book. | |
# Introduction | |
Eventually, the line between healing your injury and healing the | |
world begins to blur. Your healing becomes uncontainable. It | |
expands in every direction, radiating out of you and into the world. | |
It unfurls to touch everyone you love, everyone who crosses your | |
path. It becomes unstoppable, and ultimately, it transcends the | |
world. | |
That's what impelled me to write this. Through the power of honest, | |
sometimes snarky, often silly storytelling, I want to let my internal | |
healing ripple throughout the world around me. | |
And this healing isn't only for gender nonconforming people. This | |
healing is for everyone. | |
# A Quick Manifesto | |
As people, our identities change over our lifetimes. This applies to | |
transgender and cisgender people alike. Everyone has a gender that | |
evolves. Even if you identify as a woman, what it means to be a | |
woman is never the same from day to day. Or, if you identify as a | |
man, the way your manhood manifests will be different throughout your | |
life. | |
Gender is not serious, or at least, it shouldn't be. Taking our own | |
gender or the gender of others too seriously results in a world where | |
gender must be rigid, must adhere to consistent rules and | |
regulations. This is detrimental to basically everyone... | |
# Chapter 1: The Girls Next Door | |
When I enrolled in preschool, things got worse. While my parents | |
policed my gender gently, my peers at school were ruthless. | |
In elementary school, children take the task of gender policing upon | |
themselves. In an environment of increasing independence, first and | |
second graders use gender as a primary tool of establishing social | |
power and position. | |
Sissy was the first gender identity I ever really had. | |
The moment this label was placed on me, it burned. My brother along | |
with the rest of the kids in my neighborhood, my teachers, my | |
preschool classmates, and my parents began bullying me for my | |
femininity. | |
When I was a kid, I didn't know how to handle all the anger I felt | |
toward the world. Whenever I got really angry, when my emotions got | |
intense enough, I didn't punch somebody or take it out on other kids. | |
Instead, I directed my anger inward. I destroyed things I loved, | |
things I'd made. ... I had nowhere to turn my anger, so I turned my | |
anger on myself. Self-destruction was the only coping strategy I | |
knew, the only one that didn't seem to get me into trouble. | |
# Chapter 2: Nerds and Wizards and Jesus, Oh My! | |
[The author writes about nerdly topics. I laughed at the part about | |
Dragon Ball Z. That show's homo-eroticism was not lost on me when i | |
watched it. I figured it was some background unconscious level that | |
most people overlook. Gandalf's homo-eroticism never occurred to me | |
though i did notice that the _fellow_ship of the ring was almost all | |
fellers.] | |
Church was my refuge, one of the few places where my sensitivity, my | |
creativity, my penchant for bigger questions and larger feelings were | |
embraced. | |
While my classmates were busy being sleepy and bored, convinced that | |
Sunday school was a premonition of hell itself, I was perky, | |
energized, and hungry for biblical knowledge that I could use to | |
prove I was better than everyone else and gain favor with my parents. | |
[Been there.] | |
By third grade, that was pretty much it in terms of spaces where I | |
could safely queen out: I had Sunday school, choir, and handbells. | |
That comprised the entire domain of my queenly reign. Pretty much | |
everywhere else was hostile to my femininity. | |
Part of the love that I shared with my grandmother was based in the | |
fact that she adored my sweetness, my kindness, my compassion, and my | |
gentle manner. I don't know what exactly it was that enabled her to | |
be so kind, affirming, and unrelenting in her support of my | |
femininity, but I think it might have had something to do with being | |
old enough not to give a fuck. | |
# Chapter 3: Inharmonious Hormones | |
Many feminine-of-center boys are bullied consistently throughout | |
their entire adolescence, but for me, the bullying stopped as soon as | |
I had body hair. | |
[Same here.] | |
No matter how strange it may seem, for thousands of years of human | |
history, the color blue was never paid any attention to: It isn't | |
mentioned once in The Odyssey, in the entirety of the ancient Greek | |
canon, or in thousands of other ancient texts. Homer was famous for | |
writing not about the deep blue sea but about the wine-dark sea. | |
Without a word for "blue," the color of wine was the closest Homer | |
could describe the brooding, tumultuous ocean. | |
When I look back on my early childhood and adolescence, I feel like a | |
Greek poet: staring at the sky, marveling at the Mediterranean Sea, | |
gazing deeply into a piece of lapis lazuli, confounded. Blue was | |
right in front of me. Blue was everywhere. It was searing into my | |
eyes from all directions, informing everything I saw, but its name | |
evaded me. | |
The Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough | |
# Chapter 4: A Very Dramatic (First) Coming Out | |
When you think about it, us queers are a lot like garden snails | |
anyways. We love flowers. We have beautiful, curly shells. We are | |
slimy and understand the power of proper lubrication. We leave a | |
shiny, glittering trail wherever we go. And did you know that most | |
snails are gender-neutral and play both "male" and "female" roles in | |
procreation? That many snails change gender multiple times | |
throughout the course of their lives? | |
More importantly, when you fuck with a snail, when you make it feel | |
like it's in danger, it'll go right back into its shell. It'll | |
protect itself. You'll no longer be able to see its gorgeous, | |
glistening, alien-like body--only a hard shell of its former self. | |
When queer people hide our identities, it's not because we are | |
cowardly or lying or deviant or withholding, it's because the world | |
and the people around us felt predatory; because someone scared | |
us--intentionally or unintentionally--and we were trying to protect | |
ourselves. | |
The full answer, the one I wish I could give to my sixteen-year-old | |
self, is that I will never be done coming out to my parents, because | |
I will never be done coming out to anyone. The reality about gender | |
is that we are all morphing all the time. We are all growing and | |
evolving, excavating and renovating. I will be discovering new | |
facets of my gender until my last breath. And so my coming out is | |
never complete. | |
For me, coming out is less like a closet and more like a software | |
update. I will always be tweaking my OS. | |
[Wonderful analogy.] | |
# Chapter 5: In My Own Shoes, On My Own Two Feet | |
> Tonight, I invite you to take whatever it is that you hate about | |
> yourself, whatever you think it is that God could never love, | |
> whatever it is you think is disgusting or wrong or ugly, and give | |
> it to God. I invite you to know that you are fearfully and | |
> wonderfully made, that you are a child of God, and consequently | |
> every single part of you is perfect in his eyes. You are created | |
> by God and you are beautiful. | |
# Chapter 6: A Gothic Wonderland, a Major Letdown | |
My college experience... began with a twelve-day romp through the | |
Appalachian Mountains. The program, called Project WILD, was one of | |
the most popular among Duke's pre-orientation offerings. | |
What pleased me the most was that, in nature, our normal approach to | |
gender melted away. It melted so effortlessly that most people | |
hardly noticed. Like an ice cube on a summer sidewalk, suddenly, | |
it's gone. | |
It's hard to say exactly why this happens, but it's a fairly | |
universal phenomenon in outdoor programs. Part of it has to do with | |
the radical change in architecture. Without rigid physical barriers, | |
without corners or walls, without doors or locks, structures that are | |
designed to keep us all separate, the metaphorical structures between | |
us tend to disappear as well. | |
And it's baked into the psychology of backpacking. Backpacking | |
demands a profound kind of acceptance. If it is raining, it is | |
raining. If you stink, you stink. If your boots are wet, they will | |
simply be wet. No matter how tired you are of going uphill, the | |
topography of the mountains can only ever be what it is [within your | |
lifetime]. | |
Overnight, gender-as-division is gone, replaced only by the | |
imperative to be good to one another, care for one another, and treat | |
one another with dignity. For those two weeks my gender could not | |
have mattered less. When you're alone in the woods in a group of | |
nine people, no one is disposable. You help one another, you respect | |
one another, and you value one another, because you can't afford not | |
to. | |
[The author describes profound freedom and light-heartedness with | |
others in nature.] | |
# Chapter 7: Beloved Token | |
Plainly put, the imperative to "be professional" is the imperative to | |
be whiter, straighter, wealthier, and more masculine. A wolf in | |
sheep's clothing masquerading as a neutral term, professionalism | |
hangs over the head of anyone who's different, who deviates from the | |
hegemony of white men. | |
Like the fabled emperor, I was running around town naked, convinced | |
my new gender nonconforming outfit made me special. Everyone told me | |
so. But when it came down to it, I wasn't clothed at all; I was | |
buck-naked, vulnerable, and unprotected. I was about to strut all | |
over town wearing nothing. Minh-Thu simply had the courage to tell | |
me that I was, in fact, naked; that the world wasn't going to protect | |
me by default. That discrimination was going to be part of my | |
reality, and I'd be better off if I could plan for it and make my own | |
decision about how to maneuver. | |
# Chapter 8: Sissy Femme, Queer and Proud | |
Ninety-eight percent of discrimination is not overt. Ninety-eight | |
percent of discrimination is infuriatingly subtle. You feel it in | |
the lack of eye contact a person makes with you. You feel it in a | |
noted lack of enthusiasm. You feel it in hesitation or a slight | |
physical tic. You feel it in a pause that goes on for just a minute | |
too long. You feel it in an uncomfortable clearing of the throat. | |
You feel it everywhere, but there is rarely any hard evidence. | |
"You know, Jacob," she [Dr. Malouf] said, "I know this will mean | |
little to you right now, but I need to say it. Going to Oxford to | |
study is not the universe's plan for you. It just isn't. If it were | |
the plan, it would've happened. And while right now all you can feel | |
is devastation, I hope you can one day appreciate this for what it | |
is: This is the universe telling you that you are meant for better | |
things than Oxford." | |
author: Tobia, Jacob, 1991- | |
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Sissy:A_Coming-of-Gender_Story | |
LOC: CT275.T69 A3 | |
tags: book,biography,gender,non-fiction,queer | |
title: Sissy | |
book | |
biography | |
gender | |
non-fiction | |
queer |