How I failed to join a cult

My memoir as a gender non-conforming kid

My adolescence was defined by two arcing trajectories: violent rebellion intersected by deep longing for identity. In other words: adolescence, per se.

As a young teen I would scan the classified ads in the Toronto arts papers looking for somewhere to go. Something edgy to join. Somewhere vaguely dangerous, where I would be welcomed, and which would really test the limits of my mother’s love. I would have been a shoo-in for PETA or Jews for Jesus, but luckily I didn’t stumble into any of those storefronts on my naive forays to Queen St East. I didn’t know what I was searching for at the time, but in hindsight I get it. I wanted to join a cult. 

Thirteen-year-old me was nerdy, plump, and defiantly unathletic. I sucked at makeup and wardrobe and couldn’t flirt to save my life. My mother despaired of me and she made that abundantly clear. I couldn’t apply lipstick, but neither could I play field hockey or swing a hammer (although I admired the sporty crop-haired girls who did). I couldn’t do femme and I couldn’t do butch. I was interested in boys but I didn’t feel like I could compete on the high-stakes playing field of girldom, so I sulked wistfully around the sidelines and shrouded my early-blooming breasts in bulky sweaters. I hated being a girl but I didn’t want to be a boy. Mostly, I just wanted to disappear.

When I entered high school everything changed. I plunged into the inner-suburban soup of freaks, at scrappy Georges Vanier SS where there were boys who wore skirts and girls who carried knives in their steel-toe Grebs, and weirdo kids who were into poetry and politics and art. I went to punk bars – underage, but the bouncers looked the other way – with girls who shaved half their heads and wore military overcoats and evening gloves. Finally, I fit in by not fitting in. I found my people, survived puberty, and came out the other side – uniquely me, and very much alive.

I couldn’t compete on the playing field of femininity in the ’70’/80’s, but in perspective that bar seems laughably low. Girlhood now is ultra slick and hyper-femininized. The contemporary locker room is a sea of bouncing ponytails where short-haired straight girls no longer exist. If an adolescent female has the temerity to cut her hair she will be called ‘they’. Teen girls take their cues from Instagram influencers, posing like porn stars and wielding their sexuality like weapons. Skilled at kneecapping any man or boy who takes the bait and dares to return their gaze. But what of the ones who simply can’t manage the hair and the lipstick? What of the awkward girls with bad skin or weak social skills, who can’t do the twerk and the strut? 

Well, now the weirdos have an option. There is a cult they can join and they don’t need to scour the classifieds to find it. They can have a flag and a slogan, awareness days in their honour, and a global online fan club. Their parents will be brought to their knees; forced to affirm or be outcast. It is every loner and oddball’s dream. For kids who can’t or won’t compete, we offer a backdoor exit from the brutality of the playing field. If they can’t cope with the pressure of being girls, well then — they can be boys.

A new body, a new name, a whole new identity. I can easily conjour the sense of relief and life purpose that might have briefly brought to my confused young mind. If that ring had been tossed to me in the depths of my lonely adolescence, I would have seized it in a heartbeat. But instead, I grew up, and I grew into a woman — because I survived being a girl.

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Photo: From Portraints of Estonian Punk Girls in the 1980’s - which is the closest I could find to how I remember cool girls looking back then.