The Story of an Oppressed Gay Child Who Abolished Their Feminine for Over 40 Years

Nascent sexuality and its ‘correction’….

When I was a child I hung out a lot with my sister. I liked the company of girls. Boys were strange aggressive creatures who obsessed over cars and football. Together with my sister and her friends I found men to be mysteriously attractive. 

The boys no doubt saw me as a lisping sissy who played with the girls, cried easily, danced, skipped, skated, couldn't kick a football and threw like a girl!

In primary school all the boys wore shorts and one day a sexually precocious girl taught us how to play a secret game called ‘nervous’ which started with the girls touching the boys on the inside of the knee and then slowly inching it up their inner thighs asking all the time ‘Are you nervous yet?’ The boldest among us would allow the finger to pass under the hem of our shorts, pass inside our underpants, move onto our scrotum and then finally allow a whole hand to grasp our little prepubescent willies. It felt amaaazing! I quickly adapted the game so I could play it with my classmate Michael, under the desk during maths lessons, and with my friend Benny, in the shallow end of the swimming pool.

My dad was a Scout leader and this meant, as a family, we’d go on camping holidays with scores of horny adolescent lads. I remember, at the tender age of 9 being adopted by Kestrel patrol - a gang of 7 teenagers who, upon realising I didn't actually know the answer to the question ‘Do you know how you were born?’ took it upon themselves to educate me into all the elaborate ins and outs of sex as they understood it. This included stories of boys wanking behind their desk at the back of the classroom and being able to ejaculate ‘spunk’ more than six desks in front of them. Someone they knew had been born as a result of ruptured Durex or ‘Johnny Bag’ which was known as ‘Being born on a bursted Johnny’. There was also talk of ‘Homos’ and ‘Lesbos’ and a clear message that none of this was acceptable. Nevertheless all this talk from man-boys with deep voices, prominent Adams apples, hairy armpits and athletic physiques firmly cemented my erotic curiosity in the direction of male secondary sexual characteristics and made it all a deliciously irresistible forbidden bowl of fruit.

As I hit my teens the boys in secondary school started to violently police the behaviour of the boys they identified as different. This involved constant name calling, pushing, shoving, kicking and shaming. Making sure they knew they had been clocked and excluded from the possibility of any sort of social connection.

Once this started my preservation instinct kicked in and I rapidly learned to perform the correct code of conduct. Not backing down from a fight instigated by the accusation of being 'a puff’ saved me from closer scrutiny. Then, to further develop my laddish credentials I would hang out with the smokers by the bike sheds pretending to be interested in their sex talk of  fondling, fingering and shagging. I even started dating girls with the sole purpose of making conquests I could subsequently brag about. 

There were some boys who were very gentle and softly spoken. They seemed unwilling or unable to behave in acceptably masculine ways. They were mercilessly punished on a daily basis. I didn't bully them myself but watched on as it happened, fearing that defending them would blow my cover and I'd end up having to suffer the same fate.

Nascent gender performativity and its ‘correction’…

In 1960, the working class world I was born into knew nothing beyond a very strictly policed gender binary. I had a penis so I was a boy-simples! But I was a girly boy. I wished I could be a mother and become a housewife. It made me sad that this option wasn’t open to me. I envied girls and their ability to attract sexy men. I wanted to wear makeup and once dusted my face with some foundation powder from a discarded compact of my mothers. My dad noticed immediately “Wash that muck off your face!’ A few months later I patted a bit of talcum powder on my cheeks then forgot about it. Again my dad spotted it and with disgust said ‘What have you done to your face? Wash it off and don’t let me ever see you do that kind of thing again!”

So I was efficiently detected as a potential gender transgressor and rapidly knocked back into line. I quickly learned that some of my speech patterns, mannerisms and gestures could be identified by others as ‘girly’ and were therefore potentially dangerous signifiers of differentness. I felt this girlishness was somehow related to my secret attraction towards men and so for the sake of my social survival it needed to be eradicated from how I presented myself to the world.

Thus began the extended performance of a macho-ish false self. The voice had to be lower and gruff with no squeals or screeches. Hands had to be anchored in pockets. The walk became a cocky lolling swagger with a man-spreading gait suggestive of a need to avoid scissoring an imaginary pair of big balls between upper thighs. I was pretty convincing to the point that I almost believed it myself! Even beyond the age of 20 when I came out as gay, the straight-acting-ness was firmly ingrained and would remain so until met the Faeries.

Then, at the age of 49 I put on a wig, a dress and some make-up. It was such a transformation that no-one seemed to recognise me. A part of me that had been frozen began to thaw out. This presentation of me wasn’t seen by the Faeries as disgusting but was celebrated and appreciated. What a relief it was to no longer be policing myself, to be allowing free reign to any whim or style of being without fear of reprimand.

But then it got complicated, some of the presentations of my repressed femininity could seem like a caricature or a parody of womanly behaviour and thus I noticed a potential to cause offence to female and trans faeries. The enjoyment I experienced in allowing my cis-male programmed behaviours to recede led me to wonder about my gender identity. Sadly when I dared to consider that I might be trans*, the young trans Faeries shook their heads seeing me as too cis-seeming. 

So, now at the grand old age of 60 I know I’m not a conventional gay-cis-male. Within a cis/trans spectrum I tend to get pushed away from the trans end. And within a Gay/Bi/Straight spectrum I’m experientially fairly gay even though in my youth I did engage in faux-straight sexual activities.

There’s certainly something odd about my gender so I tend to describe it as ‘cissish’ and when it comes to pronouns, I do tend to be referred to as ‘he’ but generally I prefer to be seen in all my plurality as ‘they’! 

I reckon that the oppressive policing of my gender and sexuality has wounded me pretty deeply. I've had to work hard to find at least a degree of healing from all of this. 

I’m wondering if, for some who have experienced a similar kind of wounding, when it doesn't, for whatever reason, get fully processed can it kind of manifest itself as an ‘identification with the aggressor’ and does it then present itself as misogyny and transphobia?

I know that whenever I detect misogyny or transphobia directed towards others it presses on the memory of my own oppression and I feel a twinge of pain from those suffocating 40 years of self policing

Down with Pride! Up with Passion!

I feel Pride bursting my heart as I inhale
I feel shame twist my insides as I exhale 

If Gay Pride marches started as a defiant gesture towards our emotionally abusive nurturing networks, as a refusal to allow a minority socio-biologically determined feature to mark us out as pariahs, then maybe we need to explore the impact of historical societal unpleasantness on the stymieing of the spirit of joy and playfulness in our Faerie natures. 

For most of us we’ve had to brazen out the discomfort of a constant backdrop of presumed social approbation. My own response was to pull away from family and frien-emies . I had to numb my sensitivities; to seem like I didn’t give a shit. I anaesthetized my intuition and creative instincts. I stifled my feminine-sissy nature. She had already been battered and bruised over the years by the invalidation of others’ embarrassment, disapproval, and ridicule. 

Distancing myself also meant ripping myself away from the wonderfully assuring imagery, stories and understandings of a stabilising yet homophobic religious community, who had provided a basic framework around which my early spiritual growth had been flourishing. 

As I came out to a more accepting chosen family, I sensed that my male-loving masculine gender was nicely privileged. However my male-loving feminine nature was shunned. My first gay community, had not only unknowingly internalised its own homophobia but was also largely unaware of its patriarchally imposed misogyny. For lots of understandable reasons it was a spiritual wilderness too. 

As I identified a lack of spirit in my life I began to search for an accepting spiritual home. Wherever I seemed to look there would always seem to be a problem with queerness. I concluded ultimately that I would need to become the spiritual home I was searching for. I started to read daily from the book “The Essential Gay Mystics” by Andrew Harvey and slowly but gradually began the work (and play) of constructing a truly personal spiritual life where my soul would be free to dance, laugh and sing! 

In this new life I am encouraged to pursue my sexual desires and to satisfy my sexual appetites as a truly spiritual practice. My masculine-ness is honoured -as is my feminineness in a beautifully androgynous balance! By cultivating my spiritual/ sexual nature I am able to honour the 'wholeness of me' in the context of the cosmos. I can attune to the unassailable forces of inevitability. 

Rather than allowing ‘shame aversion’ to guide my actions I can now allow myself to be wholeheartedly ethically shameless following instead the discernment arising from a respect for my nature, the love of others and a joy for life. The Faeries like this! 

In Faerie community my wholeness is honoured and enjoyed. I am invited to explore my response to acceptance in social space. Do I choose to be selfish or am I generous and self-sacrificial? I learn that I am allowed to take the love I need and that I am happy to allow others to feed on the love I have to give. 

I have said goodbye to the Gay Pride/Shame binary. 
I’ve left it behind in exchange for Queer Sacred Passion. 
It’s a much more sustaining paradigm!

Men of Brighton: 6 Good Reasons to Wear a Sexy Dress for Pride

1 If you’ve never done it before, there’s no better excuse than a Pride Parade to slip into something slinky. ‘But being gay doesn’t mean I’m a woman’ I hear you say. That’s fine! Wearing a frock won’t change your gender but it could just get you in touch with the feminine side of your nature.

2 As gay men we have programmed ourselves away from anything, which on top of our wayward sexuality, might attract disapproval. Consequently, although our limp wristed, camp comedians are tolerated by society at large (if they are funny enough to be really laughed at!), the gender portrayal that we seem most comfortable with is that of the Straight Acting Male. What? You’re gay? You would never have guessed! So straight acting! Well done you! At the other end of the spectrum we have the screaming queen who seems to have no shame at the blatant portrayal of a feminine-like sexuality without so much as the slightest attempt to tone it down. Those who, over the years have been able to get away with it, have repressed and concealed any clue as to their true sexuality- often taking their macho caricature to an almost ludicrous and camp extreme. Those who don’t pass, often aggressively camp it up; attack being the best form of defence for them. But what are we scared about? Put something frilly on and celebrate that Anything Goes in 2012!

3 Wearing a dress can face us up to our internalised homophobia. Slip on those nylons and feel the discomfort. What’s wrong? What nasty taboo are you breaking? You are allowing yourself into a domain reserved for women and you’re boldly going where you as a man have not been before! You were told from an early age by parents, teachers and peers that any hint that a man might behave in a feminine way [like for instance fancying the pants off the boy sitting at the next desk] must be jumped on and annihilated at all costs.

4 And if we’re uncomfortable with being perceived as feminine-acting what’s so bad about that? How about facing yourself up to your internalized misogyny. We exist in a patriarchal society. We have subliminally incorporated our sense of superior male entitlement right into the core of our personalities to the extent that we are hardly aware of it. We might even deny its existence until we catch a glimpse of a high riding hemline in the mirror and we are horrified. You are flying in the face of all your programming by blatantly disregarding the eleventh commandment: ‘Thou shalt not behave like a sissy’. Enjoy the subversion. Stand in solidarity with yo’ sistas and become an Effeminist!

5 ‘But what if people get the wrong idea and think I’m a tranny?’ Good! Let them think you have trans issues and enjoy their squirming disapproval. Feel the depth of your own internalised (or overt) transphobia and learn to love your inner girlie persona. Feel the danger of creating an ambiguous gender portrayal in the presence of people who might erupt into violence when faced with anything other than a simple gender binary. Buy some daring red lippy from Boots and get a girlfriend to do your nails in a nice sparkly pink shade.

6 ‘But I don’t look any good in a dress!’ Get over yourself. You clearly haven’t looked hard enough to find THAT dress. When you find it you will be transformed into the Belle of the Ball! And always remember the three golden rules for looking absolutely fabulous: Accessorize! Accessorize! and Accessorize!

18 Gay Youth. Is there anyone out there?

For some reason I’ve started to balk against the concept of ‘giving advice to the gay youth of today’ I’m finding that there’s negativity sweeping into my attitude. Like I’ve stopped feeling philanthropic and the misanthrope is getting the better of me!

What’s the point of trying to help those who don’t want help? Are they beyond help? Am I beyond being able to help?

Then yesterday I had a shaft of enlightenment during which I became aware of my disdain towards a younger friend who was monopolising attention with his youthful charm. The penny then dropped for me that this sourness I’m feeling is a kind of internalized homophobia but not quite! Maybe a dash of internalized homophobia mixed with a dislike of characteristics that were very pronounced in me when I was in my own youth. On reflection I was highly narcissistic and that was my defence from feeling bad, wrong dirty, unacceptable and invalidated-stripped of my spiritual foundations and desperate for acceptance by at least someone, somewhere.

In a community idealizing youthful good looks I could happily nestle myself into an appreciative coterie and avoid those older and wiser who maybe could see through the defences covering my insecurities.

I gorged myself on the appreciative-ness of others, which, was intoxicatingly addictive. I wouldn’t however have been capable of responding to someone feeling older, or less attractive, or ready for some validation in another sphere or along a different axis.

I was simply overpowered by the seductive influence of my charm and its capacity to satisfy my bulimic appetite for being appreciated physically and sexually. And of course there was the power of testosterone fuelling the process so that the supremacy of sexual satisfaction over friendship, over a desire for mentorship, over more substantial and sustained relationships, ensured that once the testosterone had declined and once the damage of the past had had been healed so I didn’t feel quite so bad or so wrong or so dirty or so unacceptable or so invalidated, I can now survey my social arena and understand why there is now an arid scrubland with only one or two substantial friendships having been able to survive the harsh and inhospitable conditions of my capacity to sustain them.

So maybe there are swathes of gay youth being propelled through their existence wounded by society’s homophobia but insightful enough to their defences that they are prepared to put down their armour and risk exploring what’s going on for the sake of a more enriched and substantial life experience. But then again-maybe there aren’t!