Sissy

I decided that night that the only way to move forward in my faith journey was to forgive God for making me gay and finally embrace that the thing that made me different was the thing that made me beautiful.

~Jacob Tobia

I would like to step into the ring with the other millions who are thanking Jacob Tobia for writing this honest and vulnerable account of their experience discovering their gender nonconforming self. (I have to go back and change “his” to “their” almost every time because using pronouns of choice is a new skill for me!)

When I first picked up the book to read for our book group, I admit I felt resistance. Resistance, I suppose, because I didn’t want another thrashing, as a white woman of privilege, from yet another marginalized person. Shame on me. It took just a few pages for Jacob to break down my resistance. They are really good at that, because they are so vulnerable and honest about the journey to understanding their self-hood. While I cannot even pretend to relate to the gender nonconforming experience, I can relate to one of Jacob’s other experiences: not conforming to a spiritual community which I wanted to call home.

Jacob’s is a book of many many layers. But at its core is the struggle for self-hood and self-expression in a world where conformity can be, sometimes quite literally, required for survival. Examples of blatant discrimination, harassment and abuse are, of course, horrible. Those actions are easy for most of us to name as horrible. But most discrimination is of the micro-aggression type, a constant abrasion to the soul. The deepest gift of this book is how Jacob walks us right into the subtle micro-agressions of discrimination that the dominate culture doesn’t see. Like the simple act of dividing a small group for conversation into men and women. And Jacob does it with an emotional intelligence and wry sense of humor that, while not letting anyone off the hook, invites the reader into the story as if we are their close friend.

They reminded me that to truly be myself is the most risky, vulnerable action I can take in my life, and that I need to practice and practice because the bar keeps moving. While they spoke to gender conformity, I believe this is one example of conformity to a larger system whether it be spiritual, intellectual or emotional. The tricky part, as Jacob emphasizes over and over, is the ability for anyone to really know who they are. They encouraged me that it’s a journey. That in all aspects of self, my sense of who I am is fluid and changing, if I am committed to growth and change as a human being. So my expression of that self also shifts and changes. Culture in the form of friends, family, work associates, want us to be conforming, predictable and static. It creates a false sense of safety.

By sharing their own struggle for self-awareness and self-expression, they encouraged me to continue the search for my own.

And that I need to practice using they/their as the correct pronouns. Not necessarily proud of that.