[Applause]
hi I’m penny last year the Rochester
Fringe Festival
I really produced a show called spy in
the house of men it’s a story of my life
and it was really well received everyone
who saw it said everyone should see it
so this past summer I took my show on
the road to epic
Cincinnati Washington DC Minneapolis in
the back here in Rochester and that
continued why didn’t you do in the
future as much as I can
the are so many years of living in
hiding the positive response I received
from my show was amazing unexpected and
validating the one thing I really didn’t
talk about in my show was the title spy
in the house of man what does that mean
how much spy so and the spirit of
revealing the invisible I called my show
spy in the house of men because I didn’t
I applied for it before I actually wrote
anything for the festival and I had had
some sort of title in the application it
was such a cool one and you know the
news guy got in the newspaper and that
was on all the festival programming even
on my stationery
so I forget just go with it I really did
plan on talking about it during the show
by the way
but you know the bet all this backstory
I had to do about my
and there was a really cool story about
me admitting that I was transgender and
transitioning when I was 55 then all the
interesting things that happened to me
since then so by the time I wrote all
that I was already close to an out so I
just kind of glossed over the subject of
the sentence or two and nobody really
seemed to notice besides those stories
really all that entertaining that dark
really well there was darkness in the
stories I told to be sure but in those
stories I wasn’t the bad guy and I
wasn’t the bad guy much during that 40
year period in fact I think I was rather
a good guy I I helped people move I
bought pictures of beers sometimes when
it wasn’t even my turn
I told funny stories I have a steady job
I love my wife and kids all that stuff
in fact the bulk of who I am now is
pretty much identical to who I was back
then
except you know not nearly as much beer
I was just doing things better and more
joyfully and without that big
fundamental lie about Who I am and it’s
in that lie that we find the darkness
and as much as I would love to take all
of the things that require content
warning and say oh that was Brian and
then take all the good stuff and say
this is penny
I can’t it’s all me
and I think it’s really important that I
talk about this right now especially
with so many stories of men in the news
powerful men sexually abusing people and
with so many of my friends posting on
Facebook also a beginning basis about
all these random men just casually
objectify and terrorize them just to
being women in public because I’ve done
with that to which quite frankly
surprises the hell out of me I mean look
at me I’m 58 years old I’m bit like your
dad and I dressed like your mom but in
the past three years I have been
propositioned threatened and assaulted
both verbally and physically more than a
half a dozen times yeah I’m in the club
the thing is I’m in the other club too
the one that uses size and strength and
words and fear to get what they want
from others wish to god I wasn’t but I
am it’s a big part of who I was as a man
and I don’t know that I’m using
euphemisms like in the club because this
is an awful subject and it does require
content warnings because I’m talking
about abuse from the perspective of the
abuser it’s hard to talk about and I can
understand how hard it can be to hear so
please bear with me as I try to tell my
story as openly and as honestly as I can
with nothing at it and with nothing
taken away and please understand that
this is such a complicated something for
anybody to talk about especially for
somebody like me
I have always been transgender always I
was transgender since before transgender
was even a word since before I even knew
it was a concept something was different
about me but I didn’t know what it was
until I was 8 years old and I didn’t
know that anybody else in the world was
like me until I was 16 and that was when
renamed Richards it’s an eye doctor who
had a sex-change operation as it was
called back then made headlines for
competing in the women’s professional
tennis circuit and they reacted to her
and me small wealthy isolated little
town where I grew up it was pretty good
a formerly negative a lot of crude jokes
mostly many of them invoking title 9 the
federal amendment that made it illegal
to discriminate based upon sex they had
just recently been signed into law and
was equally ridiculed mocked and
resented but by this time I had already
made the decision that I was never ever
going to tell anybody who I was ever I
had decided that this was going to be a
secret that would be buried with me and
everything that I saw simply reinforced
that decision so I said about the
business of hiding myself and trying to
fit in and hoping against hope that I
could somehow kill that part of my soul
that kept screaming at me this is not
who I am and although I never did manage
to kill it obviously I was able to
starve it of enough oxygen then it kept
pretty quiet I called my show spy in the
house of men because that’s what I was I
was alone in a world that wanted me to
be a man and I wanted to be one but I
wasn’t and there was nobody to talk to
about this so I had to do this by myself
I had no mentor to guide me or coach me
partially for reasons beyond my control
but also because I was terrified of
getting close to anybody because they
would find out that I was a fraud so
so I did that and I did it by myself
because that was a good thing because
self-reliance it’s a very humanity trait
to have actually everything I learned
about being the man I learned by
observing and imitating other men and I
mean everything right down to the way I
walked because my dad told me that I
walked like a girl by the way you have
no idea how great it is Tiffany’s my
kiss when I walk by the entire lower
back as I say Colin thank God the world
I observe was run by men and these men
didn’t tolerate women and coaching to
their territory men were men and women
were women and we all had our own spaces
at any hint of gender variance was
either done as a joke or treated like
one this was the world I officer at home
where my father got everything that he
wanted without question and my mother
willingly went along with it this is the
world I observed at my school were the
older boys bullied the younger ones and
the assholes got all the cute girls so
when I got older I figured I was
supposed to be the one to bully and I
did the girlfriend thing not so much and
it was the world
I observed on television my greatest
teacher that taught me that women were
to be pursued and control that were
prizes to be captured and even if they
protested and struggled a little like
dick and they wanted it to be that way
in to be honest nothing I saw in the
world around me contested that view I
was a man and that meant that I could
get what I wanted I was forceful enough
that was bigger than many and stronger
than most and stupid enough to think
that this was a good idea
and if ever I came across a woman who
had a problem with this well it’s just
because she wasn’t reading the script
and I had a solution for it it was
called abuse I was an abuser of women
some that I knew and so that I barely
know every time I say those words but
using often because I don’t want
say them at all I want to throw caveats
into it some of those when I was young
and just learning to explore my
sexuality some of those when I was wrong
so that may even have been welcomed but
then again I thought all of it was
welcomed most of it was just in my
arrogance in the way I have checked if I
did belittled women most of it was not
really physical or even violent until I
got married and then it was just words
sometimes my words really loud and my
size of course so that was like just uh
just that hit mostly just they get no
just enough physical stuff in that a
great way to put it
physical stuff I could be talking about
an Olivia newton-john music video just
enough pushing and grabbing and holding
and hitting that I could get what I
wanted with just a word sometimes with
just a look worked on the kids too so
that’s not really abuse right I mean I
didn’t hit them much it’s certainly less
I got into the kids that’s better right
hey no no that’s not right
abuse is abuse is abuse and terror is no
better than violence and in some ways it
is worse because it can be it’s hard to
prove and it can be justified and if I
can justify his I can just keep right on
doing it so I did that and I was ashamed
of myself for doing it after a while I
got so ashamed that I got into therapy
and that’s where I learned about toxic
masculinity and I discovered that the
life that I was living the one that I
learned by worth watching
men was toxic and with my therapists
help I was able to admit that I was an
abuser and I began moving away from that
behavior and that was so hard because it
was so engrained in me that I default
into it
my therapist told me that something like
99% of spousal abusers never get
prevented and if those that do 99
percent of them never admit that their
abusers and my therapist didn’t say this
part but I have to believe that of the
ones who admitted their abusers ninety
nine percent of them have never got up
on stage and talk about it and of those
people know them just better than me so
how are you guys so that took care of
the big obvious fairly undeniable forms
of abuse admitting that I’m an abuser
was hard is hard because every time I do
I break my heart I had people who loved
me who cared for me who needed me an
admired me and I abused them emotionally
and physically and I was spent the rest
of my life making amends for that
behavior that’s my home I don’t want
anyone to be afraid of me ever again I
can’t say enough about getting your
heart broken by the way I think it’s one
of the greatest gifts that we can
receive and I’m not talking about that
romantic heart beats nothing on that
romantic heartbreak is you know
star-crossed lovers and scoring defenses
and longing gazes other women sweat
heads and stuff like that that’s how
about I’m talking about the breaking of
the
hardened from the heart with a big
defensive crust covering the true tender
scent of the soul the kind of heartbreak
I experienced when I could not stand
Haiti everybody and everything including
myself especially myself for one second
more and I found myself weeping and
saying things like oh my god I am such
an asshole and I found people who said
yes I know and I love you anyway and
eventually one of the people that said
that to me wasn’t me
and that’s when I let go of the toxic
and toxic masculinity which meant that I
could listen when someone told me that
something that I was doing that I
thought was perfectly okay was not and
so I could learn from that and change my
behavior and make amends for that as
well and then I could see that behavior
in others and I could say learn to say
to that know that it’s not okay even if
the behavior they were doing was not
negatively affecting me because it was
hurting somebody else and that was how I
healed my broken heart and I discovered
that my mended heart was stronger more
resilient and just plain better than my
crusty old hardened heart and I
discovered that I had only as sick as my
secrets and that’s when I realized I
needed to get rid of more than just the
toxic part of toxic masculinity and that
is how I became the spy who came in from
the the testosterone or something the
metaphor really breaks down at this
point the hardest thing about talking
like this is right-sizing my behavior on
one hand I don’t want to minimize or
defend anything I did
and I am aware that the words I use
prompts such negative reactions in some
people that I’m afraid that I will be
shunned and ostracized for talking about
it not still afraid of that but I don’t
know of any other way of talking about
this I may have a broader definition of
what constitutes abuse that the popular
one and certainly not the legal one I
can and did defendant might behavior and
that’s kind of the point
if the stigma admitting an unacceptable
behavior is so great that it is safer to
continue the behavior than to work in
changing it you’re never going to grow
as a society you may have also noticed
that I never actually mentioned any of
the abuse that I did that was deliberate
I didn’t let any time or energy spent
wondering if what I was talking about
actually was abuse or if you think it’s
some sort of yardstick to measure some
behavior of yours against if you are
wondering if you might be abusive
please continue wondering and maybe talk
to somebody about it probably not your
partner because there’s a chance you
won’t get an honest answer from them and
by the way men are not the only abusers
in our society not by a long shot
if you’re looking for some sort of
yardstick you can always use the one
that I use I believe that the proper use
of power in interpersonal
relationship is the first make things
safe for the person with less power not
to rescue or to stay or to correct or to
punish that might be part of it but
safety first are you being safe do you
feel safe whatever you do whether
anything ICF except here is of value or
not please be gentle with yourself and
with others
[Music]
[Applause]
hi I’m penny last year the Rochester
Fringe Festival
I really produced a show called spy in
the house of men it’s a story of my life
and it was really well received everyone
who saw it said everyone should see it
so this past summer I took my show on
the road to epic
Cincinnati Washington DC Minneapolis in
the back here in Rochester and that
continued why didn’t you do in the
future as much as I can
the are so many years of living in
hiding the positive response I received
from my show was amazing unexpected and
validating the one thing I really didn’t
talk about in my show was the title spy
in the house of man what does that mean
how much spy so and the spirit of
revealing the invisible I called my show
spy in the house of men because I didn’t
I applied for it before I actually wrote
anything for the festival and I had had
some sort of title in the application it
was such a cool one and you know the
news guy got in the newspaper and that
was on all the festival programming even
on my stationery
so I forget just go with it I really did
plan on talking about it during the show
by the way
but you know the bet all this backstory
I had to do about my
and there was a really cool story about
me admitting that I was transgender and
transitioning when I was 55 then all the
interesting things that happened to me
since then so by the time I wrote all
that I was already close to an out so I
just kind of glossed over the subject of
the sentence or two and nobody really
seemed to notice besides those stories
really all that entertaining that dark
really well there was darkness in the
stories I told to be sure but in those
stories I wasn’t the bad guy and I
wasn’t the bad guy much during that 40
year period in fact I think I was rather
a good guy I I helped people move I
bought pictures of beers sometimes when
it wasn’t even my turn
I told funny stories I have a steady job
I love my wife and kids all that stuff
in fact the bulk of who I am now is
pretty much identical to who I was back
then
except you know not nearly as much beer
I was just doing things better and more
joyfully and without that big
fundamental lie about Who I am and it’s
in that lie that we find the darkness
and as much as I would love to take all
of the things that require content
warning and say oh that was Brian and
then take all the good stuff and say
this is penny
I can’t it’s all me
and I think it’s really important that I
talk about this right now especially
with so many stories of men in the news
powerful men sexually abusing people and
with so many of my friends posting on
Facebook also a beginning basis about
all these random men just casually
objectify and terrorize them just to
being women in public because I’ve done
with that to which quite frankly
surprises the hell out of me I mean look
at me I’m 58 years old I’m bit like your
dad and I dressed like your mom but in
the past three years I have been
propositioned threatened and assaulted
both verbally and physically more than a
half a dozen times yeah I’m in the club
the thing is I’m in the other club too
the one that uses size and strength and
words and fear to get what they want
from others wish to god I wasn’t but I
am it’s a big part of who I was as a man
and I don’t know that I’m using
euphemisms like in the club because this
is an awful subject and it does require
content warnings because I’m talking
about abuse from the perspective of the
abuser it’s hard to talk about and I can
understand how hard it can be to hear so
please bear with me as I try to tell my
story as openly and as honestly as I can
with nothing at it and with nothing
taken away and please understand that
this is such a complicated something for
anybody to talk about especially for
somebody like me
I have always been transgender always I
was transgender since before transgender
was even a word since before I even knew
it was a concept something was different
about me but I didn’t know what it was
until I was 8 years old and I didn’t
know that anybody else in the world was
like me until I was 16 and that was when
renamed Richards it’s an eye doctor who
had a sex-change operation as it was
called back then made headlines for
competing in the women’s professional
tennis circuit and they reacted to her
and me small wealthy isolated little
town where I grew up it was pretty good
a formerly negative a lot of crude jokes
mostly many of them invoking title 9 the
federal amendment that made it illegal
to discriminate based upon sex they had
just recently been signed into law and
was equally ridiculed mocked and
resented but by this time I had already
made the decision that I was never ever
going to tell anybody who I was ever I
had decided that this was going to be a
secret that would be buried with me and
everything that I saw simply reinforced
that decision so I said about the
business of hiding myself and trying to
fit in and hoping against hope that I
could somehow kill that part of my soul
that kept screaming at me this is not
who I am and although I never did manage
to kill it obviously I was able to
starve it of enough oxygen then it kept
pretty quiet I called my show spy in the
house of men because that’s what I was I
was alone in a world that wanted me to
be a man and I wanted to be one but I
wasn’t and there was nobody to talk to
about this so I had to do this by myself
I had no mentor to guide me or coach me
partially for reasons beyond my control
but also because I was terrified of
getting close to anybody because they
would find out that I was a fraud so
so I did that and I did it by myself
because that was a good thing because
self-reliance it’s a very humanity trait
to have actually everything I learned
about being the man I learned by
observing and imitating other men and I
mean everything right down to the way I
walked because my dad told me that I
walked like a girl by the way you have
no idea how great it is Tiffany’s my
kiss when I walk by the entire lower
back as I say Colin thank God the world
I observe was run by men and these men
didn’t tolerate women and coaching to
their territory men were men and women
were women and we all had our own spaces
at any hint of gender variance was
either done as a joke or treated like
one this was the world I officer at home
where my father got everything that he
wanted without question and my mother
willingly went along with it this is the
world I observed at my school were the
older boys bullied the younger ones and
the assholes got all the cute girls so
when I got older I figured I was
supposed to be the one to bully and I
did the girlfriend thing not so much and
it was the world
I observed on television my greatest
teacher that taught me that women were
to be pursued and control that were
prizes to be captured and even if they
protested and struggled a little like
dick and they wanted it to be that way
in to be honest nothing I saw in the
world around me contested that view I
was a man and that meant that I could
get what I wanted I was forceful enough
that was bigger than many and stronger
than most and stupid enough to think
that this was a good idea
and if ever I came across a woman who
had a problem with this well it’s just
because she wasn’t reading the script
and I had a solution for it it was
called abuse I was an abuser of women
some that I knew and so that I barely
know every time I say those words but
using often because I don’t want
say them at all I want to throw caveats
into it some of those when I was young
and just learning to explore my
sexuality some of those when I was wrong
so that may even have been welcomed but
then again I thought all of it was
welcomed most of it was just in my
arrogance in the way I have checked if I
did belittled women most of it was not
really physical or even violent until I
got married and then it was just words
sometimes my words really loud and my
size of course so that was like just uh
just that hit mostly just they get no
just enough physical stuff in that a
great way to put it
physical stuff I could be talking about
an Olivia newton-john music video just
enough pushing and grabbing and holding
and hitting that I could get what I
wanted with just a word sometimes with
just a look worked on the kids too so
that’s not really abuse right I mean I
didn’t hit them much it’s certainly less
I got into the kids that’s better right
hey no no that’s not right
abuse is abuse is abuse and terror is no
better than violence and in some ways it
is worse because it can be it’s hard to
prove and it can be justified and if I
can justify his I can just keep right on
doing it so I did that and I was ashamed
of myself for doing it after a while I
got so ashamed that I got into therapy
and that’s where I learned about toxic
masculinity and I discovered that the
life that I was living the one that I
learned by worth watching
men was toxic and with my therapists
help I was able to admit that I was an
abuser and I began moving away from that
behavior and that was so hard because it
was so engrained in me that I default
into it
my therapist told me that something like
99% of spousal abusers never get
prevented and if those that do 99
percent of them never admit that their
abusers and my therapist didn’t say this
part but I have to believe that of the
ones who admitted their abusers ninety
nine percent of them have never got up
on stage and talk about it and of those
people know them just better than me so
how are you guys so that took care of
the big obvious fairly undeniable forms
of abuse admitting that I’m an abuser
was hard is hard because every time I do
I break my heart I had people who loved
me who cared for me who needed me an
admired me and I abused them emotionally
and physically and I was spent the rest
of my life making amends for that
behavior that’s my home I don’t want
anyone to be afraid of me ever again I
can’t say enough about getting your
heart broken by the way I think it’s one
of the greatest gifts that we can
receive and I’m not talking about that
romantic heart beats nothing on that
romantic heartbreak is you know
star-crossed lovers and scoring defenses
and longing gazes other women sweat
heads and stuff like that that’s how
about I’m talking about the breaking of
the
hardened from the heart with a big
defensive crust covering the true tender
scent of the soul the kind of heartbreak
I experienced when I could not stand
Haiti everybody and everything including
myself especially myself for one second
more and I found myself weeping and
saying things like oh my god I am such
an asshole and I found people who said
yes I know and I love you anyway and
eventually one of the people that said
that to me wasn’t me
and that’s when I let go of the toxic
and toxic masculinity which meant that I
could listen when someone told me that
something that I was doing that I
thought was perfectly okay was not and
so I could learn from that and change my
behavior and make amends for that as
well and then I could see that behavior
in others and I could say learn to say
to that know that it’s not okay even if
the behavior they were doing was not
negatively affecting me because it was
hurting somebody else and that was how I
healed my broken heart and I discovered
that my mended heart was stronger more
resilient and just plain better than my
crusty old hardened heart and I
discovered that I had only as sick as my
secrets and that’s when I realized I
needed to get rid of more than just the
toxic part of toxic masculinity and that
is how I became the spy who came in from
the the testosterone or something the
metaphor really breaks down at this
point the hardest thing about talking
like this is right-sizing my behavior on
one hand I don’t want to minimize or
defend anything I did
and I am aware that the words I use
prompts such negative reactions in some
people that I’m afraid that I will be
shunned and ostracized for talking about
it not still afraid of that but I don’t
know of any other way of talking about
this I may have a broader definition of
what constitutes abuse that the popular
one and certainly not the legal one I
can and did defendant might behavior and
that’s kind of the point
if the stigma admitting an unacceptable
behavior is so great that it is safer to
continue the behavior than to work in
changing it you’re never going to grow
as a society you may have also noticed
that I never actually mentioned any of
the abuse that I did that was deliberate
I didn’t let any time or energy spent
wondering if what I was talking about
actually was abuse or if you think it’s
some sort of yardstick to measure some
behavior of yours against if you are
wondering if you might be abusive
please continue wondering and maybe talk
to somebody about it probably not your
partner because there’s a chance you
won’t get an honest answer from them and
by the way men are not the only abusers
in our society not by a long shot
if you’re looking for some sort of
yardstick you can always use the one
that I use I believe that the proper use
of power in interpersonal
relationship is the first make things
safe for the person with less power not
to rescue or to stay or to correct or to
punish that might be part of it but
safety first are you being safe do you
feel safe whatever you do whether
anything ICF except here is of value or
not please be gentle with yourself and
with others
[Music]
[Applause]
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