by Jacob Tobia
Advance Praise for Sissy
“When the political reality facing this country seems dark, we need shinier, sparklier thinkers in the public eye. With a signature style matched only by their wit, Jacob fits that bill perfectly.”
—Alan Cumming
“Genderqueer and nonbinary voices are too often silenced in mainstream conversations about gender. It’s why we need writers like Jacob Tobia, who offer us a more inclusive vision and provide readers living beyond the binary with reflections of themselves.”
—Janet Mock
“Sensational. Gut-punchingly hilarious and full of heart . . . Sissy is guaranteed to make your mascara run from happy and sad tears alike.”
—Tyler Oakley
“Dear men, please read this book. Whether you’re sensitive, bold, gay, straight, pan, bi, creative, analytical, or don’t even know who the hell you are, this book is a blueprint for healing our gender-based trauma from the inside out. It’s brilliant and important and I couldn’t put it down.”
—Jay Duplass
“In a world full of digital noise, Jacob’s words cut right to the heart. A Mindy Kaling meets Roxane Gay treasure, Sissy proclaims what we all know to be true: gender nonconforming people are a powerful part of the past, present, and future.”
—Tommy Dorfman
“This is a book that every parent should read. We owe it to the next generation to raise children who celebrate gender diversity and are empathetic towards themselves and others; Sissy encourages just that.”
—Judy Shepard
“Jacob is a unique and inspirational voice for living your own truth. I love their personality and message, and I can’t help but creep on their Instagram. ;)”
—Gigi Gorgeous
“Gender nonconforming people like Jacob aren’t just a passing phase or a cool fad, they’re a fundamental part of our human family. Through embracing and empowering nonbinary people, we empower everyone to live a more authentic, glittering life.”
—Dustin Lance Black
“Jacob’s energy, verve, and luminosity of self bring joy to so many, and I’m confident that Sissy will do the same.”
—Miss J Alexander
“It’s not so much that Jacob’s work has ‘rescued’ me—rather it’s taught me that maybe there is something generative about remaining underneath, in the places and spaces and conversations that people avoid. It’s this commitment to honesty—in its most visceral sense—that makes Jacob so exceptional and precious.”
—Alok Vaid-Menon
“Jacob’s style, charisma, humor, wit and truth telling are authentic. . . . The world needs Jacob’s voice, offering us all permission to be our truest selves.”
—Sara Ramirez
“Clad in clip-on earrings and towering heels, Jacob Tobia proves to be the Mary Poppins of gender nonconformity with Sissy, a memoir filled with penetrating insight into what it means to live a life between genders that will also make even the straightest, cissiest reader cackle. What a feat of femme multitasking! Sissy is a book that truly makes the anti-patriarchy, pro-genderqueer medicine go down in the most delightful way.”
—Meredith Talusan
“As someone who came out as gay while playing in the NBA, I can say firsthand that being yourself against all odds takes guts. Through standing up for gender nonconforming people and living their truth for all to see, Jacob is blazing a similar trail. This book is yet another step on Jacob’s courageous road.”
—Jason Collins
“For any young person who’s currently struggling with their gender, Sissy will be a source of strength, power, and much-needed laughs.”
—Jazz Jennings
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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Copyright © 2019 by Jacob Tobia
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Tobia, Jacob, author.
Title: Sissy : a coming-of-gender story / Jacob Tobia.
Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2019]
Identifiers: LCCN 2018041589 | ISBN 9780735218826 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780735218833 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Tobia, Jacob | Gender-nonconforming people—United
States—Biography.
Classification: LCC CT275.T69 A3 2019 | DDC 305.30973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018041589
Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.
Sissy is a work of nonfiction. Some names and identifying details have been changed in order to protect privacy.
Version_1
For all the girls,
who deserve power
instead of cruelty.
For all the boys,
who deserve gentleness
instead of violence.
For all of us in between;
for all of us outside;
for all of us beyond.
And for my grandmother,
whose brooch sparkles on the lapel closest to my heart.
CONTENTS
Advance Praise for Sissy
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
A Quick Manifesto
Part I Kiddo
Chapter 1 The Girls Next Door
Chapter 2 Nerds and Wizards and Jesus, Oh My!
Chapter 3 Inharmonious Hormones
Part II Teenage Dreams
Chapter 4 A Very Dramatic (First) Coming Out
Chapter 5 In My Own Two Shoes, On My Own Two Feet
Part III Big Queen on Campus
Chapter 6 A Gothic Wonderland, a Major Letdown
Chapter 7 Beloved Token
Chapter 8 Sissy, Femme, Queer, and Proud
Chapter 9 Dear Mom and Dad
Epilogue Notes to Self
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Introduction
I never really got to have a childhood. Or perhaps a better way to put it is that, as a feminine boy, my childhood was never really mine. My natural connection to my body, my comfort in my identity, my sense of security and safety were all taken from me before my earliest memories formed. They were pried from my hands, sometimes gently, occasionally violently: coaxed out of me through a combination of punishing isolation, public humiliation, and, when I managed to get things “right,” acidic reward.
For the majority of my life, I assumed that everyone experienced life this way. I thought childhood was just like that, that we were all on the gender tightrope together, spending almost all our energy struggling to balance.
In some ways, that’s true. Everyone struggles with their gender identity. Every boy, no matter how butch, struggles to fit in with the other boys. Every girl, no matter how femme, struggles to feel wom
an enough.
But my pain was different, and for the longest time, I didn’t want to admit that to myself. It’s easier to navigate society when you assume everyone else is hurting in the same ways you are. It’s easier to be at peace with the world when you pretend you haven’t been treated more unfairly than anyone else. Pretending like you haven’t been hurt, like injustice wasn’t done to you, is a viable short-term strategy for reducing your suffering. But at some point, the injury starts to catch up to you.
Gender-based trauma is less like a broken leg and more like a bad back. A broken leg is undeniable. A broken leg makes itself known within seconds. You stop walking on it, you call an ambulance, and you go to the damn hospital. You stop what you’re doing, change the way you relate to your body for a few months, and prioritize recovery because you can’t not. You can’t walk again if you don’t. The need for healing is acute.
A bad back (which I, at the ripe old age of twenty-seven, have) is different. It builds up over decades. It doesn’t come from one traumatic incident, but instead from a lifetime of stress and minuscule damage. A bad back can go unnoticed for years.
But then you’re on a run or lifting weights at the gym or throwing a Frisbee, and kablam—there goes your back. The pain releases. The years of tension break, all in a moment. The damage catches up to you.
The first time the damage of my childhood caught up with me, I was sixteen, sitting in my brother’s old room flipping through TV channels. Watching reruns of a show I hadn’t seen in years, I experienced something new: nostalgia. For the first time, I felt old. Well, perhaps old is a bit dramatic, but I felt like a chapter of my youth had ended.
I thought back to who I was at eight years old, when I’d watched the show for the first time. Even back then, I knew I was different. I just didn’t know how to tell the world. Like that, years of repression dawned on me. For so long I’d been suppressing my identity. But all of a sudden, while channel surfing, the tension of holding my identity in had burst.
I went downstairs on that rainy December night, gathered my parents around the kitchen island, and came out as gay. My father’s rejection was painful, my mother’s fear rubbed me raw, but at least it was done. I thought the tension was gone. I’d had my one great setback and could now move on with my life.
Your first back injury shakes you and throws your confidence, but it often mends quickly. Within a few days, you tell yourself that you’re better, that your back is fine, that it was a freak accident and won’t happen again. You ignore the gnawing pain that lingers when you lay down at night.
And even though you’re in denial about the severity of your problem, you change your behavior ever so slightly. You don’t pick up heavy things, you stop doing sports or physical activities that you used to love. Those are only small sacrifices, right? And you’re not really injured, are you? Going to the doctor is just a hassle, y’know? It’s easier to accept that you can’t do certain things, that certain things simply aren’t for you.
Then one day, you aren’t doing anything strenuous, you’re just bending over to pick up a damn noodle that fell on the kitchen floor or twisting to grab something from the back seat of your fucking car, when wham—your back spasms again. And it’s terrifying. Because it becomes clear to you that your back injury wasn’t a one-time thing. You start to realize that there might be something deeper going on, something structural.
So the conversation changes, because it’s not just that you can’t go on a run or climb a mountain or take that Rihanna dance class you’ve always wanted to take. It’s that you can’t do your laundry, or reach for items in the cupboard, or grab a book from the bottom shelf. Suddenly, you can’t live a regular life, and you have to admit that your injury is serious. That your pain is real. That you need to do something in order to heal.
For the longest time, I didn’t realize the ways in which I was still hurting. After I came out as gay, I thought I was done, that wrestling with my identity was a one-time thing. I’d publicly declared my identity, dealt with some rejection, and could move on.
Then, two years later, when I was a senior in high school and the future loomed ominously on the horizon, my friends and I were hanging out when they posed a simple question:
What’s the first thing you remember?
As my friends shared fond reminiscences of childhood, I sat with the question, perplexed by what was coming to me. My memories all seemed to center around my gender, around feeling out of place, isolated, or disoriented in my boyhood. At the age of eighteen, just as I was entering legal adulthood, I realized that it was not normal for all of my earliest memories to be of pain and confusion. Hearing my friends share happy moments and struggling to find a fond memory of my own, I was overcome with pain. During the course of a normal conversation, my injury was unleashed.
Spasms of residual trauma hit me one after another. I remembered sitting in a tree house with three girls from my preschool class, deciding what to play. We were all avid fans of the TV show Sailor Moon—a Japanese cartoon about five girls in sailor outfits who fought evil—and decided that we should pretend to be characters from the show for the day. My friend went around our group, asking each of us which character we wanted to be. I held my breath, hoping that no one else would want to be Sailor Mercury, my favorite character, who happened to be a girl.
But it didn’t matter. When my friend got to me, she said matter-of-factly, “And Jacob can play Tuxedo Mask since he’s the only boy!”
I remembered my heart sinking. It felt like an indictment, like a verdict. I didn’t want to play a boy character that wasn’t part of the core group of girls. I wanted to be one of the group like everyone else, but as the only boy, I had no choice in the matter. I couldn’t play a girl. Feeling alone at recess, unable to be fully part of any group, is a prevailing theme in many of my earliest memories.
Another spasm hit me, this time as I remembered dress-up time in kindergarten. For most of my classmates, this was a vital space in which to explore identity, fostering creativity, theatricality, emotional development, and empathy. It allowed them the space that they needed to imagine their futures, who they could be, and who they might become.
For me, dress-up time was none of those things. During the course of my childhood, I came to associate dress-up time simply with a sense of longing. I longed to experiment with my gender. I longed to wear pink, to try on frilly garments, to envelop my body in sequins and cover my lips with bright lipstick. I longed to prance in a dress, to dance in a tutu, to flounce about in a tiara, queen for the day.
Instead, I was relegated to trying on oversize blazers, doctor’s jackets, or construction vests. Through social pressure and gentle correction by teachers, I was steered away from anything with the slightest edge of femininity. Eventually, my options became so limited that I gave up dress-up time altogether, choosing instead to sit in a corner drawing quietly on my own, enviously watching girls in my class sport layers of tulle.
Sitting on my best friend’s bed, I realized that I couldn’t even have a regular conversation reminiscing with friends without experiencing pain. I realized that the damage ran deeper than I could’ve ever imagined. It was more extensive, more firmly rooted, than I could fully understand.
Even when we can no longer regularly function because our back is so bad, many of us still don’t seek help. Instead, we lose faith that we will ever lead a healthy life. We leave our bodies unhealed. We relinquish, or are compelled to relinquish, the idea of health.
There are a million reasons why. For some, it’s because we don’t have the insurance/money necessary to see a doctor; for others, it’s because we don’t have the mental health necessary to properly value our body; for many, it’s because we don’t have either. We give up because we live in a world that only allows some access to healthcare. We give up because our bad backs make it harder to get good jobs. We give up because the world blames us for our disabilit
y. We give up because we don’t know anyone else who has overcome their pain. We give up because we feel that, if we were only stronger, we could’ve conquered this. We give up because we internalize our trauma, we believe that it is our fault. We give up because we are alone and have no one to show us what recovery might look like. Without a community to rely on, we spiral further and further into injury.
When I first looked my gender in the face for real, when I first acknowledged my pain, it terrified me. It crushed me. There was just so much of it. It was everywhere. How could I possibly start to heal? My pain consumed me, hanging like a specter over my life, pathways of trauma seared into my neurons, the words sissy and faggot perpetually ringing, revisited again and again.
Instead of working to heal the pain, I became accustomed to it. I accepted that my life was going to be this way: that I was never going to have the kind of life my friends had, that I would never be able to enjoy things without pain droning in the background, that I was damaged beyond repair.
There were a few, precious periods of time when my pain eased. There were queer conferences where I found entire rooms full of people like me. There were tender moments in my dorm at Duke University, putting on lipstick with a friend. There were moments when I was onstage, performing in drag or performing as someone else, when I could sneak away from it. There was the summer I spent in Cape Town living with my gender nonconforming best friend, dressing up and hosting dinner parties.
But those moments felt few and far between. They were anomalies. And they never seemed to last.
So bit by bit, I gave up on living a healthy life. I gave up on having a partner, on having a family, on having a career that I loved. I gave up on enjoying sex. I gave up on having fun at parties. I gave up on the idea that I could ever feel comfortable in my body or look myself in the mirror. I gave up on everything. Floundering in the dark, I gave up on the idea that my life mattered altogether.
Then, after a failed attempt at relocating to Washington, DC, after college, I did the most stereotypical thing possible: I moved to New York. And while paying rent became much more difficult and street harassment became a part of my daily reality, I suddenly found myself surrounded by other people who were damaged in the same way that I was. People who’d endured decades of gender-based trauma but had moved forward anyway. It was mostly about numbers. Sure, I’d known other gender nonconforming people in North Carolina and we did our best to support one another, but I felt like there were never enough of us to comfortably fill a room. In New York I discovered an established community of people who had the same pain I did, who’d been injured as I had been, but refused to stop moving.