Sissy

by Jacob Tobia

  So even when we’re at our weakest, even if we don’t make it, even when the world gets the best of us, it gets the best of us. We are never really gone. We leave so much glitter in our wake that no one can ever hope to fully clean it up.

  To this day, your divine conviction in your own self-love makes you kinda arrogant and a little bit of an asshole. Right now, as you’re sitting in Cup A Joe in Raleigh finishing up this chapter and listening to “PYNK (ft. Grimes)” by Janelle Monáe, there are three teens who just came in and are being loud and taking up too much space at the table where you’re sitting.

  And because you are an arrogant, millennial asshole writing your book in a coffeehouse, all you can think is, Y’all need to go be annoying somewhere else. Can’t you see that I’m doing the Lord’s work right now? I am literally writing gospel.

  Arrogant, divinely ordained, radical self-love is not always a flattering look, and it certainly doesn’t make your life any easier.

  But goddammit, is it ever fierce.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am acutely aware of the fact that this book is, in many ways, a historical accident. Not so much the fact that the book exists, but the fact that I, of all people, was given the opportunity and support to write it. For generations, gender nonconforming people like me have been compelled to be invisible, to hide, to downplay our identities or put ourselves away. We have been criminalized and thrown in prison. We have been threatened with violence if we let our true colors shine.

  Which is to say that the contributions and brilliance of gender nonconforming people have not always been widely recognized by the world. The fact that my contributions, in specific, are allowed to be printed in these pages feels like an accident, if only because gender nonconforming people like me have always offered so much to the world but have rarely been given credit for our work. This book is the very tip of the iceberg in terms of what gender nonconforming people have already contributed.

  So, first and foremost, I want to thank my own community. It is only because of gender nonconforming and trans people who have struggled on the margins that I’m able to exist as I am today. I want to thank every little boy who rummaged in their grandmother’s jewelry box. I want to thank every little girl who was rebellious enough to reach for the construction helmet during dress-up. I want to thank every gender nonconforming or trans person who has taken a look in the mirror, known that their choice in clothing would result in being mistreated by the world, and made the courageous choice to set foot outside anyway. Your existence supports my existence. Your strength makes me strong.

  I want to thank every gender nonconforming musician and artist and theater performer and costume designer who has used performance and the arts to make the world safer for me. I want to thank every trans person who’s ever mustered the courage to tell people to fuck off, who’s ever mustered the audacity to demand better treatment and rights. I want to thank every gender nonconforming, trans, and queer person who, after being erased or overlooked because of who you are, has continued pushing and creating and building and moving. Your sacrifices and very existence have made my life possible. I hope that, in these pages, I’ve returned the favor; that this book being in print will help make your life feel more possible in turn.

  Sitting down to write this book was a challenge. Typing out and fine-tuning these sentences took more heart and guts and tears than I realized it would. But getting the audacity to start typing in the first place, to believe that my story mattered, that my life mattered in general, was much more difficult than actually writing this. And so I want to thank each of the people in my life who have taken the time to remind me, in myriad, often tearful ways, that my life matters. I didn’t always know that and it has taken practice to get it right. Thank you for being with me, encouraging me to hold on when I wasn’t sure I had any more strength left. You know who you are. And I love you.

  In the interest of helping fellow powerfemmes get ahead in their careers and access much deserved clout, I also want to mention a few people by name. Thank you to my agent Katherine Latshaw for emailing me out of the blue and asking if I had something I wanted to say to the world because did I ever. Thank you to Megan Hogan for stoking this flame when it was only an ember. Thank you to Kerri Kolen and Sally Kim for investing (literally) in my future and for initially taking this project on. Thank you to my editor Helen Richard for taking the ball and running farther than we both imagined (see? I can make sports metaphors!). Thank you to my agent Val Champeau for letting me cry on the phone on a weekly basis (and for sending me ice cream cake with extra sprinkles when assholes harass me in public for being trans). Thank you to Kim Yau, Marissa Fine, Dana Spector, and the whole team at Paradigm for helping me see that this book could turn into anything I wanted it to be. And to Natalie Viscuso, Nick Pepper, Eric Brassard, and Fola Goke-Pariola at Legendary, let’s hope that the whole “turning this book into a TV show” thing works out! Even if it doesn’t work out, y’all are a dream come true.

  I’d be remiss if I didn’t also thank the many independent coffeehouses that have allowed me to post up for hours and hours writing and have tolerated me being “that weird crying girl in the corner” when I was writing the hard parts or “that giggling trans lady who just spit out a little bit of her coffee” when I was writing the funny parts. Thank you to Java Jive in Cary, North Carolina, Cup A Joe in Raleigh, Common Grounds Coffee House in Apex, Stone Creek Coffee in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, H Coffee House in Los Feliz, California, Bricks & Scones in Larchmont, and Vineapple in Brooklyn Heights, New York. I couldn’t have done this without you, your coffee, and your sweet treats.

  Lastly, and most importantly, I’d like to thank every person who has ever looked at a bold print or a sequined garment and thought to themself, “Yeah, I guess I don’t really need to keep that. It’s pretty tacky. Let’s just give it to Goodwill.” It is only through your terrible decision-making, your lapses in sartorial judgment, and your complete inability to appreciate beautiful garments that I have been able to amass such a magnificent wardrobe today. I will be forever grateful that you didn’t keep your great aunt’s sequined dress from the eighties. It has found a happier, less judgmental, more affirming home in my closet.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jacob Tobia (@JacobTobia) is a gender nonconforming writer, producer, and performer based in Los Angeles. A member of both the Forbes "30 Under 30" and the "OUT 100," Jacob's writing and advocacy have been featured by MSNBC, The New York Times, TIME, The Guardian, and Teen Vogue, among others. A Point Foundation Scholar, Truman Scholar, and member of the Biden Foundation's Advisory Council for Advancing LGBTQ Equality, Jacob has worn high heels in the White House twice.

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  * “Transgender Tipping Point,” is a now infamous phrase that was coined by Time magazine on its June 2014 cover, the one with Laverne Cox (which, wow, did she look good. Her portrait on that cover was fire). The phrase signified a monumental shift in the public consciousness about trans people. One moment, trans people were seemingly invisible; outcasts living on the fringes of society. The next moment, we were everywhere and celebrated. It felt like a miracle at the time, but strikes me as kinda sad now, if only because I was naïve about the whole thing. I thought the trans tipping point meant that we were done. I thought the trans tipping point meant that being trans wouldn’t be so difficult anymore. I thought that the trans tipping point meant that trans people would be accepted and affirmed everywhere. The term is powerful, but for me it’s become a bittersweet reminder of my long-lost optimism, an optimism that seriously miscalculated the amount of work that lay ahead.

  * If you don’t know what the word cisgender means by now, that’s probably because you are cisgender, bless y
our heart!

  * You have to buy their books, too (budget permitting). Buying one trans book and calling yourself informed is like buying one bottle of wine and calling yourself a sommelier.

  * When I sent this manuscript to my high school Gay-Straight Alliance advisor, she was quick to note that no one wore helmets in the 1960s or 70s. So I guess this wasn’t as badass as it sounds?

  * Rest in peace, Toys”R”Us. ☹

  * 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).

  * In a more perfect world, that would’ve also been the moment when she’d say, “Look, honey, I know you resonate with the character of Pocahontas, but we already live on stolen land and you are not an indigenous person, so it would be very insensitive for you to wear someone else’s culture as a costume.”

  “Certainly, Mother,” I’d respond. “You’re absolutely correct. My teacher taught us about the land theft and subsequent genocide of Native American nations in kindergarten last week as part of our People’s Herstory class, so I shouldn’t go as Pocahontas. But could I go as another Disney princess instead?”

  * 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!

  * And my best friend Paige may or may not have written some herself in grade school/throughout college.

  * Obviously, this was not the actual title of the book, but I’m not about to pay HarperCollins $10,000 to use the real title. Besides, I think my fictional title is funnier.

  * I wish this were a clever joke, but sadly, it was something I and my friends believed.

  * Shannon and I actually got dinner together recently. She is super proud that I’m writing a book, and is every bit as cool as I remember. She also loves the fact that I’m trans. She’s the best.

  * cisgender + heterosexual = cishetero. It’s an abbreviation that queer/trans folks use instead of having to type out “cisgender, heterosexual” a gazillion times on Twitter.

  * We actually called it “Fat Tuesday,” because “Mardi Gras” felt a bit too scandalous for a suburban Protestant church. It was an attempt to make the event seem more chaste. Lotta good that did . . .

  * Sorry Mom. I know you don’t like this line, but I just couldn’t help myself.

  * If we’re being completely honest, I don’t even think you should have to be “a couple” in the classical sense to get married. I want people to be able to marry as many of their platonic friends as they want. If I’m Phoebe (and I am), why shouldn’t I be able to marry both Monica and Rachel? I mean we all (basically) live together, we’re functionally co-dependent, and we all find Ross obnoxious. Sounds like marriage material to me . . .

  * Still am, apparently.

  * The irony of my disdain here does not escape me. In eighth grade, I thought that flamboyant, sex-positive gay men made “the rest of us” look bad. In the present day, I have become a flamboyant, sex-positive activist who dances in the street, scantily clad, while demanding my rights. Whoops.

  * It’s cute that I used to think that these were two distinct careers.

  * Sorry, Mom and Dad, but I made the less responsible choice on that one. God bless Obamacare and the LGBT Center of Los Angeles’s health clinic. Oh, and it should go without saying, but fuck capitalism.

  * Or, conversely, you get to be the sheepish asshole who just tells everyone at a cocktail party that you went to school “in Boston” and then people have to go on your LinkedIn page when they’re hungover at work the next morning to double check that you were, in fact, one of those sheepish assholes who says “Boston” but means “Harvard.”

  * And if you stick with me for the journey, you might even get to hear about the time I bumped into Bruce Springsteen at a bar on graduation weekend. So there’s that.

  * Isn’t it interesting that you don’t even have to say “Duke Men’s Basketball”? You just say “Duke Basketball,” and everyone assumes you’re talking about the men’s team? As if the women’s team doesn’t exist? Isn’t it interesting that you just say “the NBA” and everyone knows you’re talking about the (Men’s) National Basketball Association? But if you want to talk about women’s professional basketball, you have to say “the WNBA”? Anyway.

  * The one exception to this rule is my best friend Alex from high school. Once in a blue moon, he can convince me to throw around a football or shoot some hoops or watch a game. I suffer through these things, partially because he earnestly wants to show me that not all sports are bad, but mostly because his mom makes the best corn dip in the entire world. I will endure anything—even playing and/or watching organized sports—for access to good corn dip.

  * The trick is that you use one leg of the pants as a sleeve and the other leg as the body of the dress. The resulting look is a very short, one-shoulder dress with trendy Adidas racing stripes on both sides. It’s cute as fuck; the perfect “(sloppy) day to (sloppy) night” look.

  * Not counting the Miss St. Francis pageant in sixth grade.

  * Lady Bunny took a few digs at me in her recent show Trans-Jester, so in the spirit of good fun, I think it’s only fair that I return the favor in my debut book.

  * Okay so obviously it’s a little arrogant to compare myself to Moses and Jesus, but at this point, it’s really more about showing off my ability to cite bible stories than anything else. Can you really blame me for wanting to make my Sunday School teachers proud?

  * Okay, so I know I didn’t actually say that last sentence. I wish I had been that eloquent in the moment, but can you forgive a queen for embellishing the truth a teeny bit to reclaim a shred of her dignity?

  * Too many beans, probably.

  * I like to joke about having a raucous sex life in college. The real joke is that I had basically none.

  * Other than Michelle Obama’s, obviously, but that wasn’t there when I visited the White House in 2012.

  * Endowments are what schools get to have when they are so rich that they don’t have to spend their own money anymore, and instead they get to spend the money that their money makes for them. Endowments are secretly invested all over the place, usually (and often indirectly) in companies that are involved with a lot of nasty shit: labor exploitation, state violence, war, environmental destruction, you name it. These investments are kept secret, so the campus community doesn’t get to know where their money is going. Which means that Duke’s endowment—and all university endowments for that matter, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc.—is sketchy as fuck. I mean, why would you insist on hiding your investments from the public if you weren’t investing in unethical stuff?

  * When I’m home in North Carolina and I run into someone who I haven’t seen in a long time, they’ll often say something like “Oh you work in the entertainment industry now? I always thought you were going to go into politics!” And in my head I’m always just like “Girl what do you think the entertainment industry is?”

  * Have you ever been to the Castro with your parents? In addition to the giant rainbow flag billowing over the street and the endless sea of posters featuring half-naked nineteen-year-olds in kinky puppy outfits, there is a bakery that sells cookies shaped like literal dicks. My dad deserves major kudos for not only keeping his cool there, but financing the excursion.

  * Check out @gnat_glitter_kink on Instagram. I promise you will not be disappointed.

  * Get it?

 

 

 
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