Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story
Jacob Tobia
Top 10 Best Quotes
“But here’s the remarkable thing about self-love: When you start to love yourself for the first time, when you start to truly embrace who you are—flaws and all—your scars start to look a lot more like beauty marks. The words that used to haunt you transform into badges of pride.”
“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 absence of enthusiasm. You feel it in a hesitation or a slight physical tic. You feel it in a pause that goes on for just a moment too long. You feel it in an uncomfortable clearing of the throat. You feel it when, out of nowhere, the air is sucked from the room as if it’s a NASA vacuum chamber. You feel it everywhere, but there is rarely any hard evidence.”
“I’m sharing this with you because I want the world to understand that depriving a child of the ability to express their gender authentically is life threatening. I’m sharing this with you because I want you to understand that gender policing is not some abstract, intellectual concept; it is a pattern of emotional abuse that came from every direction and singularly robbed me of my childhood. I’m sharing this with you because I want you to understand that telling a boy not to wear a dress is an act of spiritual murder.”
“Oh, and it should go without saying, but fuck capitalism.”
“It will likely take the rest of my life to return to a gender that is free of shame. I will spend the rest of my life trying to resurrect who I was when I was four. But perhaps this is what we all do? Or at least, this is what we all should do.”
“I know you are more feminine than the other boys. I know you love dresses and flowers and playing with your grandmother’s jewelry. And I love that about you. There is absolutely nothing wrong with who you are, and I will support you no matter what. But I also want to help you understand the world you’re growing up in. You are growing up in a world where many people—your brother, your father, your classmates, your peers, random strangers on the street, you name it—are going to be hostile toward you because of your femininity. People are going to spend most of your life making you feel less than. Knowing that, I want to help you make an informed decision. Would you rather go as a more socially acceptable costume, like a pumpkin or some equally stupid vegetable, thereby avoiding the torment of your peers? Or are you ready to put on a dress and bravely face the world? Whatever you choose, I will support you and love you and hug you when it feels like too much. Okay?”*”
“I understood intersectionality—the way that white supremacy props up patriarchy props up poverty props up environmental destruction props up white supremacy again—on a gut level, even if I didn’t know to call it “intersectionality” yet. I understood that sex workers are often stigmatized, barred from claiming their full humanity, by sexist culture and feminist movements alike. I understood that the idea of “The Closet” applied to so much more than just queer people, that we are all in a closet of one kind or another. And, contrary to all of my actions since, I understood that high heels and back problems were, in fact, related. What stands out to me most is that, at the age of seventeen, I seem to have understood the full stakes of what I was doing. I understood that by challenging gender norms and conventional masculinity, I was challenging, well, everything. Through challenging the idea of manhood, of being “a good man,” of “manning up,” I was burrowing deep into the core of power, privilege, and hierarchy. On a gut level, I understood that my freedom and liberation were wrapped up with those of so many others who were facing oppression.”
“I know that I’ve already said that God is a trans woman, so I think it’s worth clarifying: when God isn’t busy being a woman, she can also take the form of a gay man, trans dude, or butch lesbian. God’s genderfluid like that, praise be unto Her/Him/Them!”
“I also really liked God, or at least the idea of God as he was presented to me, because God was a little bit of a queen, too.* I mean, think about it: He sits up in heaven on a gold-ass throne with a bunch of baroque naked babies flying around him and demands that you worship him and sing him lots of songs or else he will destroy your entire city and kill all your relatives. Talk about a diva. I mean, like, the Old Testament is pretty much just a litany of all the times God threw a diva tantrum in his dressing room because one of his fans coughed during his performance. He’s like Naomi Campbell constantly throwing his phone at the paparazzi (by the way, I support you, Naomi).”
“God is a woman, by the way. Likely a transgender woman of color, according to contemporary biblical scholars (i.e., me, my friends, and Ariana Grande).”
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Book Keywords:
privilege, toxic-masculinity, gender-norms, intersectionality, white-supremacy, manhood, manning-up, god-is-genderfluid, sassy, god-is-a-woman, hilarious, oppression, jesus-paradox, capitalism, the-closet
