FEMBOY

by David Mielke

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear

You’ve got to be taught from year to year

It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear

You’ve got to be carefully taught.

From Rodgers & Hammerstein’s ‘South Pacific’

I haven’t always liked circles – especially being in the middle of one. There was a time when I associated circles with taunting and bullying, with being surrounded and ganged up on – but I’ve learned the place of wounding often makes the best place for healing, so I’m glad we’re in a circle today. Maybe we can all speak our names.

Before I talk today about a subject that can make us seem different from one another, it’s important to take a moment to remember the things that make us all the same: we all have hopes, we all have fears, we all know joy, and we all know pain. We’re all born and we all die and in between we all want to love and be loved for who we really are. We all breathe the same air, so in the spirit of celebrating our sameness I’d like to invite you all to take a breath with me - a big collective open-hearted breath of our shared humanity – all of us breathing together as One. Ready? Okay, here we go. Yes,yes,yes!

Now, picture a Campbell River elementary school playground at recess. There’s a big cement area divided in half by an imaginary, but extremely real, line. On one side the boys are playing dodgeball, and on the other side the girls are playing hopscotch. Suddenly, one of the little boys who’s dressed oddly and doesn’t seem to like dodgeball very much -- probably because the other boys keep trying to hit him in the head with it -- crosses the invisible but forbidden line and starts to play hopscotch with the girls, setting off a flutter of buzzing that quickly launches a bigger and bullyish girl on an angry beeline towards him. The year is 1970. The little boy is me.

“Uh, oh! Here she comes again. Now what did I do wrong? Why does she hate me so much?”

Trollina Gartenfarkel – not her real name -- was the tough Queen Bee Bully of the school and I could see by the meaness in her eyes she was planning to publically sting me -- hard – again!

“Please don’t let her say the F word!” I silently prayed. But as usual when these shaming stingings occurred -- these humiliating “ shtingings” I call them now -- God didn’t seem to be listening, and if he was, he didn’t seem to care, because the bullies always said it anyway. Have you noticed the bullies always say it when there’s an audience around? She didn’t just say it, she shouted it -- shouted it out to the whole Willow Point School playground.

“Hey, everybody, come here! Look at her pretty belt! Nice outfit Femboy; everyone knows you’re the biggest Faggot in the school!”

“And you’re the biggest bully!” I wanted to say; but standing there, caught pink-footed in a hop-scotch square on the wrong side of the gender line, surrounded by the laughter of the crowd, wearing my mom’s shiny turtleneck shirt that zippered up the back tucked in to a pair of magenta and orange striped polyester bellbottoms, finished off with a macramé belt I’d made myself, I was shtung, red-faced and voiceless, choked silent by the big wad of shame that rose up and stuck in my throat.

I didn’t really understand what a “faggot” was, even though the word was hurled at me constantly; but I knew it was a bad, bad thing for a Campbell River boy to be. Even worse than a femboy, and that was bad enough, as my daily punishings proved. Whump! Two older boy bullies knocked me down, ripped off my macrame belt, and smeared it in dog shit.

Later, when no-one was looking, I picked up the shit-smeared macrame belt, the belt I’d made myself, the belt I’d been proud of, the belt that had been an expression of my authentic self, the belt now sullied and dirtied and disgusting beyond use, and threw it in the garbage burner. The sad thing was I wasn’t angry at the bullies, I was angry at myself. I was only in the second grade, but I’d already learned to be ashamed of who I was; already learned I deserved to be shtung.

‘Homophobia’ is a phobia, or fear, of people perceived as homosexual, or gay; a fear of gay people that can lead to verbal and physical violence. It’s the spirit killing result of a culture that insists on sorting and stuffing us all into narrowly defined, color-coded caskets of masculinity or femininity. I say caskets because the moment we’re sealed into one of those blue or pink gender boxes parts of us start to suffocate and die off. You know what I mean. We’re all taught the rules: boys don’t cry, girls don’t act aggressive, blah, blah, blah. In Campbell River in the 60’s and 70’s, kids who didn’t fit into the traditional blue or pink gender boxes were picked on and put down and punished. I’m living proof of that. Not dead proof – living.

Which is pretty amazing considering that when I was born Canadian law said homosexuality was a criminal offense, health care said it was a perverted sickness, and religion said it was a SIN of the worst kind. The Campbell River I was born and raised in --or I should say born and lowered in, or I could even say born and flattened in -- reflected and enforced those beliefs big time. Back then the biggest commandment in the Campbell River Blue Is For Boys Behavioural Bible was, "Those born with a penis must never ever show the qualities of those born with a vagina". In other words the big fear was: Little femmy fairies into full-on faggots grow, so: “Thou Shalt Not Be A Femboy!”

This was a titch of a problem for me because as a toddler I liked to carry a red plastic purse until it – shting! -- mysteriously disappeared; and wear my Dad’s long purple t-shirt that came down to my knees until it – shting! -- mysteriously fell into a fire; and put on shows wearing outrageously rainbow coloured costumes until my kindergarten teacher not so mysteriously banned me from the girls costume box – shting! -- and told my parents they should put me on steroids. Shtung!

I was the kind of Campbell River boy who didn’t enjoy fishing and hockey. The kind of boy who sang songs like: Thumbelina, what’s the difference if you’re feeling small? When your heart is full of love you’re nine feet tall! The kind of boy who secretly made outfits for the stolen Barbie Doll stashed under my bed in a Tinkertoy cannister. The kind of boy who wrote letters to Santa like: Dear Santa, please bring me an Easy Bake Oven – but not the yellow one, the pink one, please. PS, if your elves don’t know how to make one, you can find it in the Sears catalog.  

On Christmas morning I unwrapped the big present from Santa and was over-joyed to find – Holy cupcakes! -- an Easy Bake Oven! But not the pink one, the yellow one. He also threw in a muy macho barbecue apron and a manly chef’s hat – shting! -- just so no-one would get the wrong idea. Ouch! It hurt that even Santa -- a guy who pranced around in a white fur-trimmed, red velvet pantsuit with matching pom-pomed hat -- thought my wishes needed to be butched up a bit!

When my godfather came to visit I easy-baked him a little cake with a pink icing heart on top, and when I offered it to him he set it down as if it were something that might make him sick, saying to my parents, -- shting! –

“I think you got a little queer on your hands.”

And saying to me, -- shting! -- even wearing my little chef’s hat,

“There’s something wrong with you . . . boy.” -- Shtung!

I had no protection from these kinds of spirit killing shtinging attacks -- no armour, no shield, no voice to defend myself. I took them right to the heart like shame infected darts. Kids like I was are so vulnerable because these shtingings can come from anyone at any time; I got them from both cruel intentioned bullies who wanted to hurt me, and well-meaning teachers who thought they were helping by pointing out that I was dressing the wrong way – shting! -- or standing the wrong way – shting! -- or walking the wrong way – shting! -- or running the wrong way – shting! -- or throwing the wrong way – shting! -- or laughing the wrong way – shting! -- or playing the wrong way – shting! -- or creating the wrong way – shting! -- or loving the wrong – Okay! Okay! I get it! I EXIST the wrong way! I’m sorry. – shtung!

I tried to chop off all the stinger-scarred parts of me that upset people so much; tried to hack off all my terribly offensive Femboy qualities like Sensitivity – hack! Creative Expression – hack! Enthusiasm – hack! Compassion – hack! Gentleness – hack, hack, hack! I pruned off all the pinkish parts until I was just a pinkless shrub, a feelingless nub, a boring blue stub, a bloomless macho schlub. But like weeds, those damn femmy qualities just kept growing back.

Everytime I thought I had everyone fooled into thinking I was a normal boy, something would happen like going to PE and seeing a sign on the door saying, “Don’t change into your gym strip, we’re going to be square dancing with the girls today.” Oh boy! - And in my delight, I’d forget where I was, forget to act like a butchered blue stem and say out loud to myself,

“Oh goody! We get to dance today!”

Only to suddenly get that sick feeling I wasn’t alone, and turning to see a blue-stemmed bully waiting to show off to the rest of the blue stemmed bullies.

“So, you like to dance do you, Femboy?”

And UGGh! – kneeing me in the leg to try and wreck it for me. Even with a charley horse I’d limp through the do-ce-dos enjoying it anyway because we can never completely hide who we truly are – and why should we have too?

Especially in a so-called educational environment. Shouldn’t creating a shame free space for kids to discover who they are and what unique gifts they have to offer the world be the most important part of an education? I could never understand why it was so terrible for a boy to be sensitive or creative or compassionate or gentle. Aren’t those supposed to be good things? It was so confusing. I mean, in Sunday school they had pictures of Jesus wearing these sort of dress-like outfits and macramé-looking rope belts, with long hair like a girl, and he was always talking about loving each other and seemed so gentle and sensitive and even talked twelve other men into leaving their families and running off with him; but no-one called him a femboy or a faggot, or beat him up in the church parking lot. Of course they did eventually nail him to a cross, but the Sunday School teacher never said it was because he was a femboy or a faggot.

I was called queer and homo and faggot before I even knew what that meant; AND – here’s the crazy making part -- at the same time I was taught to sneer at and make fun of gays and lesbians just like you probably were; taught to fear and sneer at and hate gays and lesbians right along with everyone else; taught that being gay was a bad, bad thing to be; taught to be a homophobe; taught to be homophobic before I knew I was gay. So when puberty hit and I unequivocably realized I was this terrible thing, that everyone had been right, that my feminess had just been a prelude to full-on faghood - well, it was too late, the damage had been done. That relentless, spirit-smashing, soul-bashing barrage of culturally sanctioned, homophobic name calling and femboyphobic battering had penetrated me, bruised me on the inside - where it really counts - and formed a malignant clot of internalized homophobia that had a cancerous, terminal effect on my entire sense of self-esteem. I hated myself. Do you see how insidious that is? My self-esteem didn’t stand a chance! Congratulations, Society, you did your job! You taught me to fear and sneer at and hate myself! Now what am I supposed to do?

That’s the silent cry of many gay and lesbian youth still today when they realize they are this terrible thing they were taught to hate – Now what am I supposed to do!? -- Lesbos and Homos and Queers – oh my! Lesbos and Homos and Queers – oh my! For many gay and lesbian kids coming of age is like being lost in a haunted homophobic forest with no companions, no yellow brick road to follow, and no bogus wizard to help them find their way OUT.

Can you imagine how isolating it feels to be a gay or lesbian youth in a small town? With no one like themselves to talk too? No gay mentors to go to? No one to give them the antidote to all the shaming homophobic poison they’ve been shtung with? To be told, slur by slur, taunting by taunting, punch by punch, shaming by shaming, fag/dyke joke by fag/dyke joke, “that’s so gay” by “that’s so gay”, day after day, month after month, school year after school year, that who they are is un-healthy, un-acceptable, un-worthy, un-wanted, un-lovable, un-everything, UN – period?

And the ironic thing is -- considering all this un-ness is because of their gay sexuality -- they don’t even get to enjoy that! There’s no openly playful exploration of their gay sexuality allowed. No open flirting. No open dating. No openly walking down the hallway holding hands. None of the tender gestures of caring they’ve seen straight couples openly sharing all their lives. For gay and lesbian youth in Campbell River, romance still often has to be secret and shadowy and shutdown so they won’t get harassed. In my day I was so afraid of getting my head kicked in I buried my feelings so deeply, that no-one, including myself, was able to dig them up again for many years.

Sexual awakening should be a time of joyful exploration, but for me it was something that felt dangerous. At Southgate boys were forced to shower together, and I was terrified of being caught looking at someone, or even worse, getting an erection. I had to very quickly learn how to disassociate from what was going on around me – wiring my body to shut down sexually in what was for me a naturally highly charged erotic situation. I associated those situations with great danger. Today I see that as a form of abuse. I mean, imagine if you took a straight boy who had just come into puberty, stripped him and put him in a shower with 20 naked girls his age and told him that if he showed any interest, if he was caught looking or showed any sign of an erection, he would be severely beaten – we would call that a form of abuse wouldn’t we? It felt like abuse to me.

At 13 I had an ulcer and started using three things: drugs and alcohol to numb the pain of the stumps where my amputated “femmy” – ie. gentle, sensitive, compassionate, creative -- qualities had been; and girls to numb my fear of the bullies discovering they’d been right all along. I bragged about the girls so the bullies would think I was straight. I was in survival mode, desperate to fit in. Everything I did was for show, nothing I did was authentic. I wore a t-shirt saying, So Many Girls, So Little Time, and crossed everything out of my life that someone might think was gay – all the things I loved: Theatre – gay – gone! Choir – gay –gone! Dancing – gay – gone! Getting good grades – gay – gone! Excitement about anything – gay – gone! Trusting any-one with my secret? -- NO WAY!

At 14 it never occurred to me that society was wrong about gayness – that homophobia was the problem and not homo sexuality. I just followed the herd with all the other sheeple, sacrificing everything that was true to myself on the altar of Wanting To Be Accepted, killing off and burying all my unacceptable parts and not even bothering with a funeral. I didn’t care about school, I didn’t care about home, I didn’t care about anything; and I didn’t think anyone cared about me. How could they? No-one knew who ME really was.

At 15 my dad ran off with my mother’s friend, leaving her in a state of anger and pain that was a bad match for my own anger and pain. She noticed a hockey jersey I’d begged her to buy – in another pathetic attempt to fit in – was missing. It was humiliating telling her a bully had taken it right off me, saying I’d have to fight him for it. She said she was going to call his mother. I said,

“No, don’t it’ll make it worse!”

And she said,

“Are you going to fight him?”

And I said, “No, he can just keep it.”

And she said, “Don’t be such a Femboy!”

She knew that was a loaded word for me, and she was the one person in the world who wasn’t supposed to say it. Of all the shtingings I’d ever had, verbal or physical, that one shtung the most. Looking back I understand she was frustrated and trying to get me to stand up for myself, but at the time, all I heard was “DON’T BE” . . . don’t be. And I thought, okay, I won’t.

I was too dead inside to kill myself, feeling like every vital part of myself had been shut down, so I ran away instead, bouncing back and forth between Mackenzie, BC, and Vancouver. I ate from dirty room service trays in the hallways of hotels, I stole money from old ladies purses when they’d fall asleep on late night bus trips, I used drugs, I drank to the point of blacking out, often waking up in strange places lying in my own vomit. I put cigarettes out on myself, I vented my rage in acts of vandalism and arson, breaking and entering, and shoplifting. All of these things were huge violations against my true nature and innate sense of right and wrong – but I did them anyway because I was shut down and numbed out and completely out of touch with my true self. But deep inside there was a pressure building like a rushing river with nowhere to flow.

I put myself in dangerous degrading situations with dangerous degrading people who were happy to use me in dangerous degrading ways because that’s what I believed I deserved -- that’s what I’d been taught to believe I deserved. Deserved to put cigarettes out on myself, deserved to have my funny bone shattered by a glass bowl thrown at my head, deserved to be kicked in the testicles by someone wearing work boots, deserved to Not Be.

My abscess of internalized homophobia came to a head and burst when I made my first attempt at letting another boy my age know I liked him. He put the ‘sweet’ in ‘sweet sixteen’ in a goofy sort of way and I just felt happy when he was around. I didn’t have the courage to tell him how I felt, so I got the self-destructively stupid idea of sending him a love letter, along with some naked pictures of myself, and a note saying, “If you’re interested let me know.”

His parents "found" the love letter and pictures in his room, and you can imagine, circa 1979, how upset they were. Next thing I knew I was being charged with sending obscene materials through the mail. My love letter and private photos were considered underaged gay pornography.

I sat in an RCMP interrogation room watching my father and two officers look at the emotionally naked words and sexually explicit pictures of me sealed up in clear plastic evidence bags and pinned to the wall like something untouchably dirty or contaminated. I could feel their homophobic disgust right to my deeply lonely, profoundly sad, homophobic core. My father wouldn’t even look at me. -- Shtung! -- But this time the hot bubbling shame rumbled up from inside like a volcano of humiliation and anguish I couldn’t hold back anymore, and as that putrid lava of homophobic pus erupted through the crust of my defenses I finally found my voice and screamed out, unable to stop myself,

“I am not a faggot!! I know what you’re thinking! BUT I AM NOT A FAGGOT!!!”

And for the first time in my life, from the purest part of my true self I knew I wasn’t a “faggot” – the word “faggot” comes from England and means, “a bundle of sticks for burning”. Something disposable; something of no value; something to toss in a fire. No, I wasn’t a faggot; I was a 16 year-old human being who happened to be born gay into a time and place where that wasn’t embraced . But as I crumpled there before them, with my young, vulnerable words and sexuality pinned up on the wall for all to judge, letting go of a whole CR childhoods worth of ridicule and rejection and assaults on the essence of who I was, on my Beingness, on my right to exist as a femboy and a gay boy, oozing with tears and snot and shame, none of the so-called men in the room, including my father, were man enough to put their hand on me to let me know everything would be Okay.

But you know what? Everything was okay, I was one of the lucky kids: I survived. I didn’t become another gay teenaged suicide statistic from a backwoodsy, homophobic hometown because that was the day I learned to take responsibility for the care and maintenance of my own well-being, and I’ve been on an amazing journey of learning how to do that ever since.

I learned to go inside and find my Little Inner Homophobe, that little shame-based boy within myself who had been such a good little student, believing and taking to heart all the poisonous things he’d been taught about being gay. I went inside and searched for him not to destroy him, but to embrace him. To teach him about the rainbow coloured roles that gays have played throughout time as artists, creators, scientists, mediators, teachers, care-givers, shamans, tricksters, sacred clowns and healers; to teach him about the brave gay men and women that came before him – both famous and unknown; teach him about the entire generation of young gay men whose names are woven into the Aids Memorial Quilt and how he can honour and give meaning to their short lives and early deaths by developing and expressing and gifting the world with all the wonderful potentials that they didn’t live long enough to discover in themselves.

Are things better for kids like I was, today? Hmm . . . Would I feel comfortable in Campbell River today openly showing my feelings for another man? Hmm . . . The better question is would you feel comfortable if I did? I’m not talking about “go get a room for heavens sake!” public makeout sessions that wouldn’t be appropriate for anyone; I just mean the spontaneous expressions of affection that heterosexuals take for granted every moment of every day.

As a thinking and feeling person, do you believe I have the right to love the way that’s natural for me to love, to express myself the way that’s natural for me to express myself? To just Be who I am? I’m not asking you to tell me what’s in the private reaches of your heart; I’m just asking you to think with it.

Many queer people still feel un-safe to be who they are. Why? “That’s so gay!” is a phrase used for anything that’s negative – Why? The BC Crisis Center says the suicide rate for queer youth is six times the national average - Why? You know why. Think about the kids who weren’t able to fit themselves into those pink or blue boxes as comfortably as you did – think about the shtingings – all the shamings and stingings you’ve witnessed and maybe even participated in – think about how those kids were teased and targeted and tortured. Think about what you did, or didn’t do, to help them. You know why. We all know why.

The next time you see someone bashing a person for coloring outside the lines of their gender box rules, remember this: the most homophobic bullies are the ones with the biggest insecurities about their own sexuality. They’re struggling with their fears. So they need some compassion, too.

So what can you do to help kids struggling to be true to themselves? Work on being true to yourself. One of the greatest gifts the challenges of my childhood gave me was the ability to recognize shame and pain not only in myself, but in others too. And I’ve come to see that all of us have been flomped and whomped and tromped down by something that’s bigger than homophobia and every other phobia that shtings human kind: I-Am-Ness-phobia – the irrational fear of our own, and others, unique individual I-Am-ness. IAmNessphobia targets everyone, killing off so many spirits it has it’s own cemetery: The I-Am-Ness-Phobia Cemetery of Conformity. You know, the one where our unrealized potentials are buried? The one with the big statues of sheeple at the entrance? Those big creepy statues with bodies like sheep and heads like humans with phoney forced smiles and empty lifeless eyes? Baaa. Brrr. They guard the place we go when no one’s looking to lay flowers on the graves of the parts of ourselves we killed off in order to fit in. The private place we go to grieve for the parts of ourselves we never got to express. The bleak place where the most unique parts of our true selves, parts we were taught somehow to be afraid of or ashamed of, lie rotting beneath the ground. The scary place we visit alone, late at night, unable to sleep, staring into the dark, wondering why it feels like something’s missing.

If you really want to help kids like I was then find the courage to dig up and resurrect your own lost parts, breathe life back into them, and show young people what it looks like to be whole and authentic and free of feeling “less-than”. When you support and celebrate and champion the I-Am-Ness in yourself, you’ll naturally support and celebrate and champion the I-Am-Ness of others.

We’re all born and we all die, and in between we all just want to love and be loved for who we really are -- whether we’re in a blue box, or a pink box, or a straight box or a gay box or imagine if we all just ‘came out’ – pun intended -- of all of our boxes completely. My name is David. I was a femboy, I am a gay man, I am a human, I am a man, I am.

I let go of:

The ashes of shame,

The ashes of blame,

The ashes of hurt,

The ashes of pain.

I let go of the ashes,

Til nothing remains,

But the essence of truth,

Which is Love.