Sissy

by Jacob Tobia

  It also didn’t help that Rachel Maddow was a Rhodes Scholar. I mean, if Rachel did it, I should too, right? She’s so handsome and dapper and cute and smart and I wanted to be like that (and also maybe transition and become a lesbian so I could marry her? Are you into that idea, Rachel? Let’s talk.).

  The mantra that I subconsciously repeated to myself whenever my gender felt vulnerable, whenever I felt overlooked or excluded, was always, “Just get the Rhodes, then no one will ever be able to tell you to take off your skirt or lipstick or nail polish ever again.”

  Obviously this mantra was poison for many reasons. First of all, being a Rhodes Scholar isn’t all that great and is basically irrelevant for making it in the entertainment industry—which is what I’d always really wanted to do but couldn’t admit to myself at the time.* Secondly, Oxford seems kinda cold and dreary and lonely. Third, being gender nonconforming and a Rhodes Scholar would’ve ensured that I continued to be the token gender nonconforming person in my circles for at least another two or three years.

  Fourth, and by far most important, no amount of privilege earns you the right to be gender nonconforming. Gender nonconforming people truly are the object of scorn and reprimand at every socioeconomic level, among every class of people. Economic security might help you pay for therapy or medical transition, and privilege might afford some protection from physical violence, but no amount of money can protect you from emotional damage, from feeling excluded or overlooked, from depression, stigma, and a lifetime of shame.

  And the idea that I could only afford to express my gender if I were a goddamned Rhodes Scholar, that I was obligated to reach such a pinnacle in order to live in my truth, is so psychologically destructive I hardly know where to begin.

  As much as I do not ascribe to that ideology anymore, as much as, today, I have emancipated myself from the idea that I must collect accolades in order to express my gender, that doesn’t change the fact that I deeply held those beliefs during my senior year. It was the only survival strategy I knew.

  That October, I was nominated by Duke for the Rhodes as well as for the slightly-less-prestigious-but-still-fancy Marshall Scholarship. Being nominated by a top-ten school like Duke is an honor in and of itself, because you have to secure an institutional nomination to even apply. I was considered by most everyone on campus to be one of my class’s top contenders: I’d already received one post-graduate scholarship, the Truman Scholarship, and certainly had the grades. I had been to the White House, had served on countless committees, had led too many initiatives to comfortably list on a resume, and had conducted rigorous, unprecedented historical research comparing queer organizing in South Africa to queer organizing in the United States. According to the folks at Duke who’d advised the Rhodes nomination process for over a decade, I was a shoo-in for an interview, at the very least.

  Before I heard back about whether I had a Rhodes interview, I received some exciting news: I was being called to Atlanta to interview for the Marshall Scholarship.

  Forgetting about the Rhodes for the span of two weeks, I underwent rigorous coaching. I went through numerous preparation interviews and hopped on a plane to Atlanta feeling confident in every aspect except one:

  What the fuck am I supposed to wear?

  It was the question that no one in my life really knew how to address. Unlike the advice that I’d gotten from Minh-Thu when I was working at the UN, no one at Duke knew how to be fully honest with me about this. More often than not, when I asked about what I should wear, people would say one of two things:

  “I think it’d be best to go for something a little more conservative, Jacob. This is a big opportunity, and you don’t want to risk it.”

  Which wasn’t helpful because it made me feel deflated and small. But at least it was real, honest advice. Or they’d say, infuriatingly:

  “Just be yourself!”

  Which was far more useless, because which version of myself should I be? And should I really be myself? If I were really myself, I would wear bright pink lipstick, pink nail polish, and a grandma sweater (sans pants), roll in there atop chunky gold disco shoes, tell the panelists that I wanted to be America’s Next Top Model, and then start crying from the pressure, mascara running down my cheeks.

  At this point, I hadn’t been myself in two decades. How in the fuck was I supposed to start now?

  I ended up siding with the first group. I didn’t want my gender presentation “to distract from my intelligence”—as if my gender identity and my intellect aren’t one and the same, as if they could ever be separated—so I opted for a masculine look, wearing my boring suit, flat dress shoes, and a rainbow-striped tie for that “touch of flair.”

  At the time, presenting in this masculine of a fashion didn’t feel like selling out. But that, in and of itself, is part of the problem. Throughout my senior year, when I was faced with obstacles or competitive processes or selection committees, I reverted to masculinity out of fear every time. I feared discrimination at every turn, feared that if I were to truly wear my identity on my sleeve, I would lose everything.

  And that’s not fair.

  I was entering every competition with a psychological penalty already leveled against me. Every room I walked into in order to be judged, from auditioning to be my class’s commencement speaker to interviewing for the Marshall Scholarship, I entered with the weight of a crushing double standard resting on my shoulders. Was I being authentic enough? Was I being too authentic? What was the right balance? Were these people prepared to really see me? Were they prepared to hear me?

  Apparently not. My Marshall Scholarship interview was abysmal. It took place at the British Consulate in downtown Atlanta, in a conference room on the thirty-fourth floor of a skyscraper. When I walked in and saw four old white men and one older white woman on my interview panel, I knew my odds were slim to none. I prayed that maybe one of the dudes was at least gay or something, but didn’t hold out hope. The fact that anyone could set up an interview panel for the southeast region of the United States in a black-as-fuck city like Atlanta, Georgia, and not even put a single black person (or any person of color) on the panel was beyond me. The Marshall Scholarship should be ashamed of themselves.

  My gift and my curse is that I can read a room like a book. I can know, within twenty seconds of walking in, whether someone is going to buy what I’m selling. I am a walking spark of human energy, and it takes no time at all for me to tell whether someone is a conductor or an insulator. If I am in a room full of conductors, the electricity begins flowing immediately, sparks going off, electrons bumping and grinding all over the dance floor. But if I am in a room full of insulators, there’s just nothing I can do: I can emit volt after volt, megawatt after megawatt, my nuclear reactor radiating heat and light and electricity, and it will all be for naught. No matter how electric I am, I simply cannot get insulators on board with the whole “electric current” thing.

  In my electric life, if someone isn’t a conductor, it’s generally because they cannot handle my identity. I’m simply too queer for them, too fabulous, too gorgeously energetic for their balsa wood lives to handle. They don’t know how to appreciate electricity, even if it’s zapping them in the face, because they can’t see through the fact that my wrists hang limply and my hips sway a bit when I walk.

  I spent my Marshall interview trying my best to zap and buzz, to spark and shock, but nothing seemed to work. Trapped in a room of insulators, nothing I did seemed to get the current moving. Eventually, like any electric person does when surrounded by insulation, I just kind of shut down.

  Looking back on that time in my life, I can’t help but wonder if I cast a self-fulfilling prophecy. Did my fear of discrimination put me so on edge that I couldn’t perform? That I couldn’t fully relate to a room or an interview panel? Was it the fear of discrimination and the subsequent anxiety that made me underperform in the first place?

 
But that’s not quite right. That’s not the right way to phrase things. Saying that I made self-fulfilling prophecies makes it feel like it was somehow my fault. Which it wasn’t. If you’re interviewing a person of difference for a job and you don’t share their identity, the onus is on you to go out of your way to make sure they are comfortable with you. The onus is on white people to ensure that people of color are comfortable. The onus is on cishetero folks to ensure that queer and trans folks are comfortable. The onus is on men to ensure that women know they’re supported. In any situation where you have both identitarian and positional power—in which the interviewer is also the person with the dominant identity—it is the responsibility of the interviewer, not the interviewee, to ensure that the interviewee feels supported and encouraged to express themselves. It is also the responsibility of any scholarship organization to put together a selection committee that represents the diversity of the applicant pool it will be interviewing.

  When the Marshall Scholarship put together the Atlanta panel my year, they failed abysmally on both counts. First, by curating a panel that was 100 percent white, 100 percent over fifty, and 80 percent male, they not only failed in their responsibility to create a nurturing environment for diverse candidates, they were complicit in creating a panel that was visibly hostile toward diverse candidates. Even one person of color, one younger person, would’ve made a world of a difference, in my mind.

  But if you are going to have a group that’s 100 percent white and 80 percent male, it is the responsibility of the panel to take that into consideration when conducting interviews. It is important for them to acknowledge that diverse candidates—along literally any spectrum—may perceive the space as hostile toward them and may clam up. That is not the fault of the interviewee; it is the fault of the interview panel and the organization that assembled it. If you want to have an even remotely fair interview process, you cannot remain stoic when you see a diverse candidate shut down. Interviewers have to be empathetic and kind, affirming the interviewee actively as the interview progresses, going out of their way to ensure that the interviewee knows that people like them are welcome. To neglect that duty is to condone racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or worse.

  So no, I do not blame myself for clamming up in that interview. I do not blame myself for retreating into my shell, snail-like, when I felt threatened. I blame a scholarship organization and an interview panel that abundantly failed in its duty to ensure that I would feel welcome.

  Discrimination is notoriously slippery and hard to prove, because most people, however discriminatory, are intelligent enough not to be overt about it.

  Here’s what most people think discrimination looks like:

  INTERVIEWER: What is your proudest accomplishment?

  INTERVIEWEE: Last year, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, a shelter for homeless LGBTQ youth called the Ali Forney Center was flooded and needed to rebuild. As part of their recovery effort, I raised over $11,000 for the center by doing a fund-raiser called Run for Shelter, where I ran across the Brooklyn Bridge in high heels. The project was featured on MSNBC and I was even named New Yorker of the Week by NY1!

  INTERVIEWER: Wow, did I mention that I hate faggots SO MUCH? I’m not giving you this scholarship. Get outta here, you queen!

  Here’s what discrimination actually looks like:

  INTERVIEWER: What is your proudest accomplishment?

  INTERVIEWEE: Last year, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, blah blah blah.. . . . .

  INTERVIEWER: [complete silence, no emotional response, no follow-up question, looks down at papers uncomfortably, completely dismisses you, just nonverbally] So . . . why do you want to study at Oxford?

  And, in case you’re curious, here’s what an ethical, nondiscriminatory interview would’ve looked like:

  INTERVIEWER: What is your proudest accomplishment?

  INTERVIEWEE: Last year, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, blah blah blah.. . . . .

  INTERVIEWER: That’s pretty incredible. What did that project mean to you personally?

  INTERVIEWEE: The project was deeply meaningful to me on a personal level. Not only was it addressing an issue that is very close to my heart—LGBTQ homelessness and economic empowerment—it was also about the way I did the project. I felt, through running across the bridge in high heels, I was publicly demonstrating the strength that gender nonconforming people like me have. I’ve been told all my life that my femininity made me weak, and this project helped me to fight back against that notion.

  INTERVIEWER: I wasn’t aware that homelessness was a significant issue in the LGBTQ community. Can you tell us more about that?

  INTERVIEWEE: Sure. The dual forces of family rejection and structural discrimination—racism, poverty, xenophobia, and others—lead to LGBTQ kids being out on the street with no safe place to turn and no ability to safely navigate the state institutions that are purportedly in place to protect them . . .

  The differences are plain to see. 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.

  A few days later, I was informed that I did not receive the Marshall Scholarship.

  A few days after that, I found out I wasn’t even asked to interview for the Rhodes.

  My dreams and my hopes, however deserved or irrational, however bougie or elitist, were dashed.

  And in the days that followed, what infuriated me more than anything was just how few people were willing to say what they felt. Everyone involved with my nomination was shocked that neither scholarship had panned out. Everyone suspected that this had something to do with the fact that I was not only queer, but wanted to study queer things. Everyone who knew me felt discrimination was at play, but no one would say it for me.

  I was left feeling even more alone than when I’d started out. I thought I might be losing my mind. Was I just paranoid to think that I’d been discriminated against? Was I just being a sore loser? Why was no one else naming it?

  I should also perhaps acknowledge that the dream of a Rhodes Scholarship isn’t the most relatable thing on the planet. It’s a pretty nerdy, niche desire. The point is not that everyone deserves a Rhodes Scholarship or even that the Rhodes should matter to you (I hope it doesn’t). The point is that, oftentimes, our dreams are arbitrary; that our dreaming is highly susceptible to what those around us tell us we should want. Everyone has had their equivalent of what the Rhodes was for me—that thing you yearn for and never quite get.

  The award isn’t the point. The accolade isn’t the point. The thing itself isn’t the point. It’s the yearning and dreaming and wishing and being crushed and not being certain what’s wrong with you that matter.

  In the aftermath, I stopped by the Office of Scholars and Fellows—the office charged with shepherding students through the Rhodes and Marshall processes, among those for other scholarships—for a conversation with Dr. Malouf, the head of the program. Tentatively, furtively, I opened up to her about what I was feeling, how lost and hurt I felt.

  “You know, Jacob,” she said, “I know that this will mean little to you right now, but I need to say it. Going to Oxford to study is not in the universe’s plan for you. It just isn’t. If it were in the plan, it would’ve happened. And while right now all you can feel is devastation, I hope you can one day appreciate this for what it is: This is the universe telling you that you are meant for better things than Oxford.”

  She looked into my eyes knowingly, in a way that was hauntingly perceptive. I
smiled softly through my tears. While my mind was skeptical and wanted to lash out at advice that seemed asinine, somewhere in my heart, I believed her.

  A few weeks later, she asked me to stop by again: She had something she wanted to give me. A parting gift, of sorts. A promise of better things to come.

  On the coat rack in her office hung not one, but two designer gowns—a black Tadashi Shoji number and a vintage velvet Bob Mackie, both handed down to her by her mother. After sitting in her closet unworn for years, she’d decided that the time was right to pass them along to me. She wanted me to know how much she believed in me, in my feminine spirit, in my beauty, in my blossoming identity. She was doing her part to welcome me into a sisterhood; a tradition of women and femmes who’d smacked headfirst into the glass ceiling; a legacy of women and femmes who’d fought for what they deserved, only to be denied because of our gender.

  I whisked off to the bathroom to try them on. By complete luck, they both fit. Like a glove. They were a bit short on me, but they draped beautifully. It was nothing short of alchemy, witchcraft. I floated back to Dr. Malouf’s office to show her, the hallway becoming my runway.

  “Oh, Jacob,” she proclaimed, “you look stunning!”

  For a few minutes, I let her words sink in: momentary respite for an uncalm heart.

  * * *

  —

  The universe hadn’t finished its work. The goddess wasn’t done redirecting me, steering me in a different direction through the power of devastation.