Butch? Bitch? Whatever! Be Who You Are!!

This is my second article for GSCENE and will appear in the JUNE issue.....

Remember back to when you first realised you weren’t like the other kids. Maybe as a boy you identified with the girls [I loved to skip and knit!]. Maybe as a girl you identified more with boys?

Research tells us that if boys are seen as ‘sissies’ by their peers age 8, the vast majority will be gay men 15 years later and a few will identify as Trans. Girls seen as ‘tomboys’ will predominantly identify as straight women, fewer will be lesbian and very much fewer will be Trans Men.

As an LGBT tribe who are, as children, ‘adopted away’ at birth into straight homes we get pretty messed up about our identities as we develop and as our true natures become apparent to us and those around us.

But for most of us we also have the great gift, from a very early stage in life, to be confronted by the BIG question “Do I become who I truly am or do I become what others would prefer me to be?”

It is a gift because the younger you are and the starker the choice between the two options, then the more likely it is that you will choose to take the route to becoming who you truly are. And then this is the first step on the route to allowing your soul to lead your ego.

Whether we are prepared to accept our ‘queerness’ or prefer to disguise it we’ve got ‘a long row to hoe’ because our society with its strict male/female stereotypes still wants its men to be men and its women to be women [except of course for entertainment purposes]. So we are battered and bruised either externally, by a hostile society, for being who we are, or internally, for failing to be true to ourselves.

Quentin Crisp was very influential in my struggles as I was growing up and having to make some difficult decisions at the tender age of 14.

He came into my life firstly in the manifestation of the actor John Hurt playing the role of this unashamedly gay man in the film ‘The Naked Civil Servant’. Subsequently his powerful voice for the victory of the soul over the compromising ego shouted out at me from his autobiography of the same name. His life story has been described as ‘the triumph of the solitary uncompromising voice over the faceless multitude’. Sting famously visited him when Quentin had moved over from London to live in New York after facing over 4 decades of attacks for being who he was from a very homophobic british society.

After hearing his stories of victimisation Sting wrote ‘Englishman in New York’ which includes the lines ‘it takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile, be yourself no matter what they say’

So recognise that you’ve come a long way already! Butch, Bitch, Straight Acting Gay Man, Femme Lesbian, Trans,-Whatever!

And recognise that beneath your ego- accumulated like layers of sediment deposited over the years to defend and protect you and help you feel connected-deep within your very being is your true essence which is immediately accessible to you as the feeling of your own presence in this moment. It is the realisation ‘I AM’ which is prior to ‘I AM THIS’ or I AM THAT’

Enjoy it now-and let it be in charge of your life!