-- By Tom Phillips
 |
| Portrait of Thoreau attributed to his sister |
Most men, wrote Henry David Thoreau, "lead lives of quiet desperation." I read these words as a teenager, and immediately resolved not to be one of those men. I was desperate, haunted, frustrated, insecure, confused, irrational and contradictory. But quiet? Not while I could draw a breath. The world soon began to hear my complaints against injustices large and small, personal and political, real and imagined.
There was just one subject that cowed me: sex and gender. I participated gingerly in what was called the sexual revolution, but couldn't bring myself to speak out for sexual freedom. Quickly and prematurely, I slid into a lifestyle of a heterosexual, cis-gendered, homophobic husband and father. I opposed same-sex marriage on linguistic grounds, telling my children that you couldn't just change the meaning of a word that goes back to biblical times. But of course, you can.
All this had a history. When I was about twelve years old, my father warned me that if I turned out to be a "fairy," he would disown me. This threat was repeated more than once, with grim emphasis.
My father saw something in me that he feared, and he was determined to squelch it. He succeeded. My crack-up came at about age 12, one day as I was walking across a across a ballfield with a school buddy of mine, our arms slung casually over each other's shoulders. The scene felt idyllic, like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
Suddenly, I was struck by a thought -- someone might think we were fairies! It was as if I'd been spotted in an open field and shot dead by a sniper. I dropped my arm and crept away from my buddy, Our friendship was never the same, and such a scene was never repeated with any other boy or man. I was miserable, a prisoner of my own fears. In this one area, for decades I lived a life of quiet desperation.
I suspected I was gay, even though I was much more attracted to girls. Was I repressing my homosexual desires? This fear haunted me through two marriages, and six children. Finally, in my fifties, I began to explore it with a female therapist. After a long time she said something like this:
-- Listen Tom, I know many people who are gay, and they are not like you. I have racked my brain trying to find some evidence of homosexuality, but I can't find anything. Are you sure there's something to look for?
Well, I said, not really. It's more of an assumption than a feeling.
-- Then forget it, she said. I breathed a long sigh of relief, and stopped torturing myself with the idea of a hidden gay self.
Still there was something that set me apart from most men. I loved women, but not in the same way they did. During my dating years between marriages, I surprised a couple of women with some odd, off-the-cuff remarks.
One of these dates was walking down the street with me and started to wax enthusiastic about what it would feel like to be a man. She looked at me for an example, and I felt miscast in the role.
-- Actually, I said, I feel like more of a woman.
Another time I was out with a feminist writer who insisted, in print and in person, that all men were rapists at heart. Once again I demurred, saying I didn't think I was capable of rape. I meant it. At the time I was a student of psychology, and was shocked to read Dr. Freud's description of sex as "an act of aggression." I didn't l think or act that way.
Once at work in a TV newsroom, a fellow worker was amazed to hear that I was married, with children. "You fuck?" he said.
That stung, but I stayed cool. -- Occasionally, I said. ___________________
Something was different about me, but I had no idea what it was. I began to think about it again last year when my one of my four daughters -- a happily married Presbyterian minister in her thirties --- came out as Bisexual. This was accepted by her husband, and applauded by her friends and her congregation in California, which includes many same-sex couples. Later she told me she didn't care for the label of Bisexual, because it was too binary. She decided to be a "demi-girl" -- which she described as "gender indifferent -- female enough, but not strongly identified with it."
Talitha's bold admission and its positive reception seemed to open up possibilities for me. I too was something other than the plain vanilla father-figure that was my official identity in the world. But if you're going to come out in America, you have to come out as something. Talitha had labeled herself B on the LGBTQIA spectrum. I didn't know what I was.
An answer began to emerge last summer, during a week's vacation in a beach house. I was the only man in a vacation party reduced by pandemic fears to my wife Debra, two of her sisters and a niece in her twenties. I was having a fine time, socializing with the ladies, talking up a storm with young Simone, who was interested in Freud and Jung and their theories of sexuality and personality. I told her about the ego and the id -- and she related what she knew about Jung's theory of the anima -- something like a moon-self that reflects the underside of our psyche.
As the week went on I became more and more relaxed by day, and more and more restless at night -- stalking the house, the decks, and the surrounding streets. I felt something inside me wanted out, but was terrified of what it might be. At last I concluded it was a demon, the kind Jesus and his disciples used to cast out. The pressure mounted until I had no choice -- it must be cast out. And so one night, near the end of the vacation, I let her rip.
It was a woman, and what a woman! She was outrageous, mincing down the hallway, vamping like Marilyn Monroe, lounging in doorways like a French whore. Oh my God, I thought, this is my true self. I really am... what?
A couple of weeks later I told the whole story above to a wise old woman at my church, and she interpreted it. In brief, she said this was no demon, but a part of myself -- cut off since I was twelve, isolated from the world, unacknowledged, appearing only in disguised forms. No need to be ashamed of her, said the old woman. Just talk to her. Get her to trust you.
And so begins the story of my little sister, my Inner Girl.
-----------------------------------------------
I never had a sister. I wanted one. When I was three years old and my mother was pregnant, I remember feeling her belly and the life squirming inside. My parents had chosen names: Angus if it was a boy, after my father’s older brother. Deborah if it was a girl.
“I think it’s Deborah,” I said. “I think it’s Angus,” said my mom. And she was right.
Deborah was one of those children who was never conceived, never born. But she didn’t die as an idea in my mind, a desire in my heart.
Strange coincidence: When I met my second wife, my partner now of 41 years, I knew her as Debra but I didn't know her last name. After a few dances, I asked her for a date. She accepted, and we exchanged full names and phone numbers.
I walked up the street staring at her name on a scrap of paper. Debra Given. Was this a gift?
After much to-do over three years, we got married. It was a family affair. Her three sisters were the bridesmaids. (She never had a brother, though her father had badly wanted a son.) My children Jenny, Luke and Django stood with me. On the cover of the church bulletin was a verse from a love song by Bob Dylan, which Debra and I liked to sing together in harmony:
“O Sister, am I not a brother to you,
And one deserving of affection --
And is our purpose not the same on this earth,
To love and follow his direction..”
That seemed to be the essence of our relationship. She was an unrealized part of me – a Presbyterian minister-to-be, someone who could travel with me in the spirit. And I was an unrealized part of her – an adventurous mind in search of experience and truth. Our lives would be tied together as if they had been from the beginning.
So in a way, Deborah became Debra, and that’s part of our mystery to this day. But it didn’t completely solve the mystery of my own self.
Debra was just one of many women I reached out to, in search of something I couldn’t name. And though I developed many brotherly friendships with women and girls – and adored them devotedly -- these connections still left me yearning.
My little sister, my anima, was not to be found out in the world. She lives within me, she is part of me. I first remember encountering her image in Anne Frank’s diary, which I read at age 12 – roughly the same age as the girl who wrote it – each of us in hiding, living in fear. I was fascinated with the way she adapted – living a rich interior life, growing up within. She was a model for the girl-child hidden in me. My anima is quiet and bookish, sensitive and self-sufficient, an intellectual all-in-all.
But she’s also a dancer, flamboyant and fluid. I exercise her every morning, getting out of bed with some flourish inspired by Balanchine or Isadora Duncan. And while cooking in the kitchen I have tried out some new moves -- shaking my formerly unshakeable bootie to the rhythms of Puerto Rican Plena and Bomba music.
It's something to celebrate. My generous and understanding wife helped me mark my recent 79th birthday with a “gender reveal” cake. These are usually baked by pregnant women to let friends and family know what they’re expecting. Cut the cake and the reveal comes in pink or blue. My reveal was subtle -- just a thin spread of lavender between the two layers. And my letter in the LBGTQIA lineup was Q, at least for starters.
My issue was not sexual orientation but gender identity. A profound thanks to the feminist and gay rights movements for making clear the distinction between sex and gender. I’m not gay, but gender-queer, gender-fluid, nonconforming -- a man who is comfortable in a man’s body but who often feels more like a woman inside, who loves women but maybe in the way women love women, not as something alien or other -- but as people like myself.
I am not "gender indifferent." I like being a man --- tall and strong, able to stand up to bullies. But I also like being quiet and bookish, sensitive, perceptive, helpful to others – beautiful like my Inner Girl.
And I’m still a happily married man in every way.
However, I’d like to add a new term to the LBGTQ lineup. I am not just cis-gendered but SIS-gendered -- a man with a sister inside. She’s been there all along; I haven’t really hidden her, just never acknowledged her fully. And I hope by writing this to say to every reader that it’s OK to be whoever and whatever you are, and not to be ashamed.
Most of you probably know that better than I do. I just needed to say it for myself.
--------------------------------------
Epilogue
I sent the above story to my immediate family in January of 2021, and got many positive responses. They made me feel it was worthwhile to put it out there -- not just for myself, but for others who might need encouragement. Telling the truth had a healing effect; I felt more comfortable with who I am, and free to express it.
However, my idea of myself and my sexuality has proved to be more fluid than I can keep up with. My daughter Cassie pointed out that the adjectives I used for my "inner girl" -- quiet and bookish, intellectual, sensitive, perceptive, helpful to others, beautiful -- can all be male qualities too. At that point the concept of an inner girl started to lose its meaning. I'm not two persons, but one. My inner girl went through several name changes. but now she's just part of me.
I have no plans to change my lifestyle, divorce my wife, take hormones, undergo surgery, or buy a new wardrobe. All I have done by "coming out" as gender-fluid is to rid myself of a curse. I no longer care if someone thinks I'm one of them.
I am one of them! I'm even joining the LGBTQ Concerns group at my church, St,. Michael's Episcopal in Manhattan. I want to hear what's on their minds.
I have two fathers in heaven -- my biological father, and the creator of the universe, They're together now, and I think they understand. God created humans in God's image: "male and female he created them," says the Book of Genesis. It doesn't say "male or female." but "male and female." That's me. And you?
-- Copyright 2021 by Tom Phillips
Most men, wrote Henry David Thoreau, "lead lives of quiet desperation." I read these words as a teenager, and immediately resolved not to be one of those men. I was desperate, haunted, frustrated, insecure, confused, irrational and contradictory. But quiet? Not while I could draw a breath. The world soon began to hear my complaints against injustices large and small, personal and political, real and imagined.
There was just one subject that cowed me: sex and gender. I participated gingerly in what was called the sexual revolution, but couldn't bring myself to speak out for sexual freedom. Quickly and prematurely, I slid into a lifestyle of a heterosexual, cis-gendered, homophobic husband and father. I opposed same-sex marriage on linguistic grounds, telling my children that you couldn't just change the meaning of a word that goes back to biblical times. But of course, you can.
All this had a history. When I was about twelve years old, my father warned me that if I turned out to be a "fairy," he would disown me. This threat was repeated more than once, with grim emphasis.
My father saw something in me that he feared, and he was determined to squelch it. He succeeded. My crack-up came at about age 12, one day as I was walking across a across a ballfield with a school buddy of mine, our arms slung casually over each other's shoulders. The scene felt idyllic, like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
Suddenly, I was struck by a thought -- someone might think we were fairies! It was as if I'd been spotted in an open field and shot dead by a sniper. I dropped my arm and crept away from my buddy, Our friendship was never the same, and such a scene was never repeated with any other boy or man. I was miserable, a prisoner of my own fears. In this one area, for decades I lived a life of quiet desperation.
I suspected I was gay, even though I was much more attracted to girls. Was I repressing my homosexual desires? This fear haunted me through two marriages, and six children. Finally, in my fifties, I began to explore it with a female therapist. After a long time she said something like this:
-- Listen Tom, I know many people who are gay, and they are not like you. I have racked my brain trying to find some evidence of homosexuality, but I can't find anything. Are you sure there's something to look for?
Well, I said, not really. It's more of an assumption than a feeling.
-- Then forget it, she said. I breathed a long sigh of relief, and stopped torturing myself with the idea of a hidden gay self.
Still there was something that set me apart from most men. I loved women, but not in the same way they did. During my dating years between marriages, I surprised a couple of women with some odd, off-the-cuff remarks.
One of these dates was walking down the street with me and started to wax enthusiastic about what it would feel like to be a man. She looked at me for an example, and I felt miscast in the role.
-- Actually, I said, I feel like more of a woman.
Another time I was out with a feminist writer who insisted, in print and in person, that all men were rapists at heart. Once again I demurred, saying I didn't think I was capable of rape. I meant it. At the time I was a student of psychology, and was shocked to read Dr. Freud's description of sex as "an act of aggression." I didn't l think or act that way.
Once at work in a TV newsroom, a fellow worker was amazed to hear that I was married, with children. "You fuck?" he said.
That stung, but I stayed cool. -- Occasionally, I said. ___________________
Something was different about me, but I had no idea what it was. I began to think about it again last year when my one of my four daughters -- a happily married Presbyterian minister in her thirties --- came out as Bisexual. This was accepted by her husband, and applauded by her friends and her congregation in California, which includes many same-sex couples. Later she told me she didn't care for the label of Bisexual, because it was too binary. She decided to be a "demi-girl" -- which she described as "gender indifferent -- female enough, but not strongly identified with it."
Talitha's bold admission and its positive reception seemed to open up possibilities for me. I too was something other than the plain vanilla father-figure that was my official identity in the world. But if you're going to come out in America, you have to come out as something. Talitha had labeled herself B on the LGBTQIA spectrum. I didn't know what I was.
An answer began to emerge last summer, during a week's vacation in a beach house. I was the only man in a vacation party reduced by pandemic fears to my wife Debra, two of her sisters and a niece in her twenties. I was having a fine time, socializing with the ladies, talking up a storm with young Simone, who was interested in Freud and Jung and their theories of sexuality and personality. I told her about the ego and the id -- and she related what she knew about Jung's theory of the anima -- something like a moon-self that reflects the underside of our psyche.
As the week went on I became more and more relaxed by day, and more and more restless at night -- stalking the house, the decks, and the surrounding streets. I felt something inside me wanted out, but was terrified of what it might be. At last I concluded it was a demon, the kind Jesus and his disciples used to cast out. The pressure mounted until I had no choice -- it must be cast out. And so one night, near the end of the vacation, I let her rip.
It was a woman, and what a woman! She was outrageous, mincing down the hallway, vamping like Marilyn Monroe, lounging in doorways like a French whore. Oh my God, I thought, this is my true self. I really am... what?
A couple of weeks later I told the whole story above to a wise old woman at my church, and she interpreted it. In brief, she said this was no demon, but a part of myself -- cut off since I was twelve, isolated from the world, unacknowledged, appearing only in disguised forms. No need to be ashamed of her, said the old woman. Just talk to her. Get her to trust you.
And so begins the story of my little sister, my Inner Girl.
-----------------------------------------------
I never had a sister. I wanted one. When I was three years old and my mother was pregnant, I remember feeling her belly and the life squirming inside. My parents had chosen names: Angus if it was a boy, after my father’s older brother. Deborah if it was a girl.
“I think it’s Deborah,” I said. “I think it’s Angus,” said my mom. And she was right.
Deborah was one of those children who was never conceived, never born. But she didn’t die as an idea in my mind, a desire in my heart.
Strange coincidence: When I met my second wife, my partner now of 41 years, I knew her as Debra but I didn't know her last name. After a few dances, I asked her for a date. She accepted, and we exchanged full names and phone numbers.
I walked up the street staring at her name on a scrap of paper. Debra Given. Was this a gift?
After much to-do over three years, we got married. It was a family affair. Her three sisters were the bridesmaids. (She never had a brother, though her father had badly wanted a son.) My children Jenny, Luke and Django stood with me. On the cover of the church bulletin was a verse from a love song by Bob Dylan, which Debra and I liked to sing together in harmony:
“O Sister, am I not a brother to you,
And one deserving of affection --
And is our purpose not the same on this earth,
To love and follow his direction..”
That seemed to be the essence of our relationship. She was an unrealized part of me – a Presbyterian minister-to-be, someone who could travel with me in the spirit. And I was an unrealized part of her – an adventurous mind in search of experience and truth. Our lives would be tied together as if they had been from the beginning.
So in a way, Deborah became Debra, and that’s part of our mystery to this day. But it didn’t completely solve the mystery of my own self.
Debra was just one of many women I reached out to, in search of something I couldn’t name. And though I developed many brotherly friendships with women and girls – and adored them devotedly -- these connections still left me yearning.
My little sister, my anima, was not to be found out in the world. She lives within me, she is part of me. I first remember encountering her image in Anne Frank’s diary, which I read at age 12 – roughly the same age as the girl who wrote it – each of us in hiding, living in fear. I was fascinated with the way she adapted – living a rich interior life, growing up within. She was a model for the girl-child hidden in me. My anima is quiet and bookish, sensitive and self-sufficient, an intellectual all-in-all.
But she’s also a dancer, flamboyant and fluid. I exercise her every morning, getting out of bed with some flourish inspired by Balanchine or Isadora Duncan. And while cooking in the kitchen I have tried out some new moves -- shaking my formerly unshakeable bootie to the rhythms of Puerto Rican Plena and Bomba music.
It's something to celebrate. My generous and understanding wife helped me mark my recent 79th birthday with a “gender reveal” cake. These are usually baked by pregnant women to let friends and family know what they’re expecting. Cut the cake and the reveal comes in pink or blue. My reveal was subtle -- just a thin spread of lavender between the two layers. And my letter in the LBGTQIA lineup was Q, at least for starters.
My issue was not sexual orientation but gender identity. A profound thanks to the feminist and gay rights movements for making clear the distinction between sex and gender. I’m not gay, but gender-queer, gender-fluid, nonconforming -- a man who is comfortable in a man’s body but who often feels more like a woman inside, who loves women but maybe in the way women love women, not as something alien or other -- but as people like myself.
I am not "gender indifferent." I like being a man --- tall and strong, able to stand up to bullies. But I also like being quiet and bookish, sensitive, perceptive, helpful to others – beautiful like my Inner Girl.
And I’m still a happily married man in every way.
However, I’d like to add a new term to the LBGTQ lineup. I am not just cis-gendered but SIS-gendered -- a man with a sister inside. She’s been there all along; I haven’t really hidden her, just never acknowledged her fully. And I hope by writing this to say to every reader that it’s OK to be whoever and whatever you are, and not to be ashamed.
Most of you probably know that better than I do. I just needed to say it for myself.
--------------------------------------
Epilogue
I sent the above story to my immediate family in January of 2021, and got many positive responses. They made me feel it was worthwhile to put it out there -- not just for myself, but for others who might need encouragement. Telling the truth had a healing effect; I felt more comfortable with who I am, and free to express it.
However, my idea of myself and my sexuality has proved to be more fluid than I can keep up with. My daughter Cassie pointed out that the adjectives I used for my "inner girl" -- quiet and bookish, intellectual, sensitive, perceptive, helpful to others, beautiful -- can all be male qualities too. At that point the concept of an inner girl started to lose its meaning. I'm not two persons, but one. My inner girl went through several name changes. but now she's just part of me.
I have no plans to change my lifestyle, divorce my wife, take hormones, undergo surgery, or buy a new wardrobe. All I have done by "coming out" as gender-fluid is to rid myself of a curse. I no longer care if someone thinks I'm one of them.
I am one of them! I'm even joining the LGBTQ Concerns group at my church, St,. Michael's Episcopal in Manhattan. I want to hear what's on their minds.
I have two fathers in heaven -- my biological father, and the creator of the universe, They're together now, and I think they understand. God created humans in God's image: "male and female he created them," says the Book of Genesis. It doesn't say "male or female." but "male and female." That's me. And you?
-- Copyright 2021 by Tom Phillips
A most interesting story, Mr. Tom. To be yourself with no baggage, no chains, no shadows or curses, must be truly liberating.
ReplyDeleteThank you Josh. I'd say it's just one more piece of baggage to drop off. Liberation is not within our earthly power. As the gospel song has it -- "I'm jes' inchin' along like a po' inchworm -- Jesus gonna come by and by."
DeleteThis is all quite beautiful, Tom. Thanks so much for sharing this very intimate information about yourself with all of us who know and love you. Cynthia
ReplyDelete