WHO WE SAY WE ARE - 4) Decisions and Consequences

Once you first accept anything in principle, there then follows a whole load of issues which will be the lived consequences of that decision. That was certainly so when I came out as gay. I've found it quite noticeable that the current manner in which the Trans issue is being talked about, is that the consequences are being gone over in a huge amount of detail, before the basic principle of trans peoples rights has really even been discussed, understood and fully accepted by society at large. It appears to have sprung fully formed out of nowhere as far as the general public are concerned. So the response has been alarm and resistance to radical change.

Homosexuality took many decades after decriminalisation to reach a level of understanding and acceptance. I'm not saying it has to be this way, but social changes in attitude do tend to move slowly, and shift with each succeeding generation.  So it is the 'inconvenient' consequences of trans legislation that seem to be being used as the reason to refuse to accept the basic principle. This impedes legislative progress, and it maybe that that is its intended purpose. To stir up great alarm and adopt defensive 'you shall not pass' positions. If you were to look back at the debates about decriminalising homosexuality it focused on it undermining family values and the corruption of youth. None of which proved to be concerns that were justified by what followed.

So there is a lot of scaremongering around at the moment. And it is hard to tell to what degree there is truth or veracity in some of the claims. About pedophiles masquerading as trans women in order to get closer access to children. Complaints that female safe spaces from men are being undermined by the presence of trans women. A fear that a trans women still with male genitalia will use access to female toilets to engage in rape. Trans women in female prisons being experienced as a disruptive force. Are any of these are a genuine risk? And if they do happen, to what degree?  But if these are genuine problems and not simply reactive concerns, they do not seem insurmountable. Workable solutions could be found, should everyone prove willing to find them. But there is a very vocal presence out there, who are simply not remotely trans sympathetic or pliable. Feet have been put down, and ideological barricades built.

I think its interesting that it is trans women that are being primarily picked on as the 'enemy within'. Trans men hardly appear to register. Do they meld into the general male background more easily, or are not considered significant enough even to mention? Though undoubtedly they have their own difficulties transitioning and living afterwards. We seldom hear about them. Or is it that its considered much more understandable, or perhaps less challenging to the status quo, if you want to become a trans man than a trans women? Is there a hybrid trans focused form of misogyny at root here?

I appreciate many women do have concerns regarding trans issues. Women are rattled by the thought of trans women entering their safe spaces. The men are protective of their space too, no doubt. Not only do you have trans men using your toilets, but if they don't get access to female toilets the trans women will be forced into using the men's. And even I can see that this cranks up the potential for conflict, for violent, if not murderous abuse, trans rape etc Its the women who appear to be being asked to be more open and tolerant, so the men don't have to. The toxicity of some men towards trans people, gays, lesbians or simply any women in general remains an under addressed consequence - well of quite a lot actually.

There are also consequences concerning personal history too, in the area of sports. That a trans woman who was previously a male athlete may have an unfair advantage in the women's game due to their past training and history with a man's physique. This is not an unreasonable or fictitious concern, but how you respond to it is unclear. Sports organisations appear to be burying their heads in the sand in the hope that either trans or the opposition to it, will go away in time. Afraid perhaps of drawing too firm a line and being called trans phobic, or too responsive and being accused of simply rolling over and capitulating. And let's be fair here, this is not an easy area to legislate for. And trans campaigners, sad to say, are not averse to reaching for the megaphone first, and name calling, instead of actively engaging in looking for a resolution.

It is not without an idea or two, but some maybe less palatable than others. And though trans athletes may not like being treated as a special case, because - who does? - maybe that is what has to happen. Trans women athletes, for example, could be given a competitive handicap in order to level the field. You develop trans athlete sports competitions within existing formats. Maybe you drop the separate male, female division in sports altogether. Develop an athlete ranking system so you compete in your own league, ascending or descending in them, like in football  Even as I am writing this I'm overwhelmed by how petty and ungenerous this level of detailed discussion can feel. As if trans issues have been reduced to being all about toilet usage and sports prowess. Instead of it being about freedom of choice, for individual people being able to live how they want.

And yet there has to be a legal framework to protect, define and balance everyone's rights when conflicting needs and consequences do emerge. People's views and concerns, whether real or imagined need to be heard. When to make it legal for trans people to self identify is another major consequence. When I hit my early teens this would not have been a good time to identify myself as gay. I was self aware enough to know I had these feelings, but not whether this was just a fleeting adolescent crush I was going through, or an early indication of who I was to be attracted to my whole life. Was this feeling here to stay or not? It was not conclusively clear to me until I started experimenting sexually, much later on, that I wasn't heterosexual or bisexual, I was definitely gay.

Finding out what is personally true for you, there is always a provisional journey of self exploration to be traveled beforehand. Whilst I wanted my parents acceptance of who I was, I wouldn't have wanted their active permission or active participation in the development of my sexual awareness. In ones teens there has simply to be enough room left for such self exploration, without any external adult pressure. A right to roam free of commitment, until you are ready to. I'd been confident I was gay for a number of years before I finally came out and declared it publicly. These things take time. Awareness of being trans I imagine is not that different.

I had a friend who struggled with themselves and who they were throughout all the time I knew them. They had a physical disability, and couldn't decide whether they was AC or DC. What they were sexually was unclear to them, and a bit scary. It all remained a bit theoretical. Over a few years they experimented with saying they were straight, gay, bisexual and eventually settled on being trans. But despite reaching that conclusion, this did not really resolve anything. Their worsening disability meant that personal truth might prove unattainable. As a lot of other things in their life had. Unfortunately they did later take their life. I'm not sure knowing what they were much earlier in life, would have helped avoid that end conclusion. It all felt and was quite tragic.

Personal circumstances, personal history and personal character can sometimes make achieving your personal truth, appear an overwhelming impossibility. As much as I enjoyed living in London, in Crouch End, a very bohemian tolerant area. My affairs 'sexualle' were few. Many were opportunistic encounters, where someone unexpectedly arose to get my end away with. One of the consequences of accepting I was gay, was I had to face up to my self esteem and confidence, of this not being as strong as I would have wished for. This meant I was never in danger of being thought a trollop. Finding someone I could have a stable long term loving relationship with, which was what I really wanted, took a while. But dear reader I married him.

Once you've declared who you really are, you then have to be prepared to act on that. And one major consequence of this is that life can still remain a hard struggle, even when you are sure who you are, and you've decided what you want to make of it. I mean, dam it man, is there no fairness, no justice?  Reality itself can feel like its against you, actively thwarting you, though actually it holds no opinion one way or the other. Coming out did not resolve everything for me, it was just the beginning of an entire new chapter of self learning and maturity.

What is sure is that nothing gets served up to you on a plate, that you haven't paid for many many times beforehand.

Who We Say We Are - 3) Personal History and Personal Truth

I was born in Halifax, Yorkshire in 1957 and the world I was born into was still in post war mode, not yet shifting up a gear that it did once the sixties kicked in. Whilst I've not lived in Halifax since 1969, I would still say that is where I am from. Even though I've lived the majority of my adult life in the south of England. This has not changed my sense of being from the north, even though the vestiges of my Yorkshire accent are a trifle thin and vowel sounds only these days. I've lived longer in East Anglia, my adopted home, than anywhere else. Though it will never be where I am from.

When my family moved from Halifax I was on the cusp of my teenage years. Already recognising the early hints of my sexual orientation awakening. I did not initially know then what to call that. When I did come across the word homosexual, I had to look up a dictionary explanation. I recognised that this bald definition was meant to describe me, but at the same time it didn't. For in my experience a homosexual was Larry Grayson or John Inman, which I did not feel I was at all like. This was only a few years after homosexuality was decriminalised. The prejudices in my village had not yet caught up, in fact the entire country hadn't. A homosexual was still viewed as an intrinsically bad person, which I knew I simply was not.

From the moment we are born emotional impressions of ourselves and the world that surrounds us are formed. And those impressions are never really erased, providing the nascent template from which everything we subsequently encounter is interpreted. Spending the rest of our lives trying to understand, unpick, better manage or get around these habitual reactions to ourselves and the world. And you know some days this can be a job of work for me and on others I don't buy into it at all. Everything can all feel too hardwired to change.

This self biased history of me and my experience exists whether I like it or not. Forming the raw unruly foundation for who I currently am. A strange mix of impressions and aspirations some from myself, some from my parents and society. Disquietingly, as I grow older I find recognisibly parental views and habits now seeping embarrassingly into my language and behaviour. Much as I might want to see myself as not being like that, there it is.

You cannot totally erase your personal history however you have experienced it, whether negatively or positively. It nevertheless played its part in forming you. One might wish to retrospectively rewrite it with better outcomes and snappier repartee. Memories being largely emotionally based, this makes the details of your life as remembered rarely how it actually was. Our past, however partial and uncomfortable to recollect, remains influential upon who you are now, and what you will become. To paraphrase the psychologist James Hillman - even through our childhood traumas and difficulties something fundamental to us is struggling to get out and be made manifest. From something soured a thing of altogether sweeter beauty may emerge.

If you do uncover and manifest the personal truth of who you really are, you can never unlearn that. My biology and gender at birth and my personal history have remained the same, because I never required them to change. The repercussions of realising I was gay, however, did profoundly affect my aspirations for myself. I clocked early on the path my life would now take. It was unlikely to be a conventional one. It wouldn't involve bringing up children. I never envisaged then that I'd ever be married to a man I loved. I emotionally signed off from a lot, and filed them under The Things That Will Not Now Happen. Whatever my life was going to be about, if it wasn't going to be a house, a wife and 2.4 children, puzzled me for some time. Until I became a Buddhist. But that's a whole other story of truth and transformation..

I would imagine that at some point if you are trans, your biology and personal history would dramatically diverge from personal truth. Things no longer feeling like they are traveling together in the same direction, if they ever were. Progressing down the path of transition, the focus maybe on the personal truth of who you feel yourself to really be, and making that a lived reality. I can understand why one might want to leave behind, rewrite or ignore ones personal history, even ones essential biology. But despite the fundamentals of surgery and the effects of medication, the basic body being transformed will remain the male or a female one you were born with. Whatever the person you create from it, its previous history is preserved in its bones and muscles. This cannot be imaginatively wished away, or brushed under the carpet, however much one might feel you want it to be gone, and gone for good. There is a uniqueness inherent to being a trans woman or man, and its in the alchemy born from an imaginative transformation, and the perspective this brings to a life. It is rare that people are born this way, they have the full and lived knowledge of being self created.

At some point though, there is a peace to be made with the person they were born as, and that early history in the wrong gender they've fought to make right. Personal truth is unable to revise all of that, but maybe to transcend it is now feasible. The journey a transcending person takes to living as the gender of their desire, is different to that of a person born into that gender. Its a radically different form of femininity or masculinity being given form here.  As I've said before, Feelings, not facts, require finding modes of expression. Its exemplified by the plethora of pronouns and specificly invented names to describe one persons individual sense of themselves. This is not unique to trans, but a manifestation of a much broader trend in our culture , paraded on Instagram and its like, of a self preoccupied narcissistic individualism. In love with a selfie. To make ourselves unique and special.

There were times when I wanted to put my own Yorkshire upbringing behind me. Not denying it, but it felt limiting, so I wanted to go beyond it. I could find myself forever internally grumbling about the 'professional ' northerner, living in the south, but laying the accent on thick for their television and radio appearances etc etc. It became for a while a personal  bete noire, something I did not want to be. 

To be honest, I have come a long way from my northern origins. A lot of that was deliberate on my part. I needed to create space in which to discover who I was, and how I was going to live life as a gay man. So there was a career move to London. There is often a need to put distance between ones personal history, in pursuit of personal truth. I don't want to forget my origins. Having moved about a bit, since 1981 I've lived in London, Diss, Ipswich, Cambridge and now Sheringham, I can see that maybe this sketches a picture of a lifetime spent in search of a new home for myself. And that would not be far wrong.

We were on holiday in Malton in North Yorkshire, a few years ago. Right in the heart of what many Yorkshiremen proudly boast is 'God's Own Country'. I cannot stand the conceited arrogance of this phrase. Don't get me wrong, I love the Yorkshire countryside and coast dearly. But I don't need it to give it the stamp and approval of a deity. There's a lot about  the Yorkshire countryside that evokes childhood memories of Halifax. It feels like home ground, even though I left this for good when I was eleven. I find myself resisting the cultivation of any type of sentimental mythology around my Yorkshireness. And I find its the same with my gayness too. 

Perhaps one always has mixed feelings about where we have come from. Linked in, as it often is, with uncomfortable memories of that unformed naive gaucheness which was your younger self. Someone we dearly hope we've grown out of being. Like an unfortunate friend you no longer wish to acknowledge having known. And it maybe that one's personal history never sits easy with the aspirations inherent to the pursuit of one's personal truth, of whatever it is you wanted to be. On the other hand, maybe there is something lurking behind my Yorkshire upbringing, or something in who I like to believe I am now, that I don't want to fully acknowledge, that I find hard to transcend the need for.

Who We Say We Are - 2) Fixed and Fluid

We are born with a consciousness, a body and a mind. Whether that birth biology can be overridden or denied, is debatable. When it comes to gender is it - mostly fixed at birth, a purely external outcome of our biology? Or is gender constructed and elaborated upon by each individual in the context of their biology and surrounding social culture? All of us get muddled about what exactly we are talking about once we enter this area. In truth biology, sexual orientation, gender and identity all these things overlap and intersect. Not everything fixed can be as fluid as we'd like, and not everything fluid can become fixed. Gender is an ongoing conversation between ones internal experience and external influences.

The convention of our culture is that gender is fixed, and its part of a binary, immovably male or female. For most of us that can be how it presents itself.  I've never thought of myself as anything other than male. I have a male body that I inhabit with a gay sensibility and mode of expression. I inhabit it with, for want of a better term, a 'gay soul'. This has always felt the most normal natural thing. It wasn't a problem for me. But what if it was? Imagine what that would be like?

My feelings, however, did force me to question who I was and the surrounding male heterosexual conventions I was encircled by.  Without that experience perhaps I too would be a baffled, defensive, angry man when faced with a view of gender that was open and fluid? However, I am sure all of us, whether male, female, heterosexual, homosexual or otherwise, have all had our issues and struggled in our own way with traditional gender roles and conventions that are forced upon us. If only in trying to live up to them. So much psychological distress arises out of them - what is it to be manly or womanly? - what it is to be a good parent, the pressures and expectations differing whether you are a Father and Mother - what do we need to do in order to be accepted, respected, loved and successful?

Once I became aware of and more involved with gay sub culture, I began to conform the sense of myself to align with it through my appearance and behaviour. It was as if I needed to pass my exam in basic gay. Chiefly in order to feel I belonged there. I'll admit to camping myself up a bit and sharpening my tongue. I could have remained more flexible and fluid, and just allowed my way of being gay to unfold naturally. But I had neither the confidence or life experience to do that at the time. Instead I did what most people would do, I tried to adjust and fix myself to resemble the gay template I held in my head. 

That didn't last long, as this soon began to grate on me, it felt, and was, inauthentic and lacked integrity. Fundamentally this wasn't how I felt I wanted to be as a gay man. I'm not effeminate or particularly camp, I'm a relatively straight looking guy, with an occasional flamboyant streak, lets say. All I needed to do was stop pretending, stop the performing and allow myself to be whatever I needed to be, whenever I needed to be that. To be flexible and responsive in my way of being me, gay or otherwise. As a gay man, I didn't need to be switched to 'Gay On' all the time.

I've known trans women and lived around one during their transitioning. Twenty plus years ago there was a huge emphasis then on being able to 'pass' as a man or woman. This was easier for some to achieve than others, and a lot of psychological upset and distress haunted this desire to 'pass' and the emotional and financial toll it took to get there. Sadly some became very bitter, did not cope at all well and some unfortunately ended up taking their life. This is likely to still be so today. But there is something in the contemporary non binary fluidity that feels fundamentally a much healthier attitude. People are permitting themselves to be whatever they want to be, and that doesn't mean they have to necessarily transform themselves into any binary gender or cultural stereotype, if they do not wish to. They can construct their own gender, one that can be adjusted and evolve in response to the deepening understanding of themselves.

Because of my experience as a gay man, I have no problem with the idea, that there are people born male or female who inhabit their birth bodies in an entirely different way than I do. Being female in an entirely male orientated world or a male in an entirely female orientated world is invariably discomforting. We continue to struggle as a society with the issues of gender, equal treatment and opportunity. What would it feel like to have the 'wrong' genitalia for your body, or an indeterminate sense of your gender?  Despite my empathy, I can find it difficult to grasp how this might feel. I try to make the imaginative leap, but it is too far beyond my experience. If binary gender difficulties have proved so intractable to resolve, you can see why non binary gender fluidity will just drive some individuals frustratedly up the wall. Unless you've been a wallflower at a wild party, you'll never know what that really feels like.

Women's liberation is built on very clearly expressed views on gendered power relations. If men can assume a female form of self expression, or women can assume a male form of self expression, or any permutation between. This might appear, on the surface at least, to be pushing that binary gender equality way way off message. So trans has been presented as being all about men disempowering women. This time by usurping the boundaries of their gender. This seems to somewhat misrepresent the point by burying it under a standard feminist convention- that trans is entirely about male power. Completely ignoring the women who wish to be transformed into a man. You may have thought defying gender stereotypes and expectations could be viewed as a shared point of view. Providing more energy to a general personal liberation message. But apparently not. Gender fluidity itself is being viewed as part of the usual problem with men. When both pro and against adopt defensive positions unwilling even to be debated. Neither side attempts to understand where other people and their views are coming from. We have a war of screaming attrition going on.

Gender dysphoria, of being externally one gender but feeling internally you are another, can be clinically diagnosed. This indicates gender has a potential range of expression that goes beyond the binary gender presented at birth. Its worth looking at it on the genetic level. For in amongst the dominant XX's and XY's there are rare conditions of three chromosomes XXY and one chromosome XO. There are XY genotypes who develop female characteristics, and XX genotypes who develop male. People have been born, throughout history, with either different genitalia to their biological gender, or have both forms, if only vestigially. Hermaphrodites were often treated as revered and treasured figures, sages and oracles. There appears then to be the potential for significant nuances within what appears on the surface at birth to be a clear binary. The degree of human genetic variance has been hard to establish, with the arrival of genomics this may change.

Human genes don't appear to always take an identifiable linear path when evolving either. Quite often genetic changes drift off from the norm in an indirect, experimental, almost random manner, as if to sees what floats. So it could be misleading to talk about biology, on a genetic level at least, as being fixed. Gender literalists out there for whom everything thing is formed and fixed at ones birth, please pay attention.When you are given tubes of oil paint on your birthday, its more important what make with them in a painting, than keeping the box they came in, in pristine condition.

No matter how many operations you have, or tablets you take. Trans will always be for some a sort of shallow vanity, infecting contemporary discourse, akin to an elaborate way of dressing up, of playing lets pretend. From this perspective being gay could also be viewed as an affectation. 'Posing as a sodamite' as the Marquess of Queensbury once accused Oscar Wilde. Gay can be seen as an erroneous choice you talk yourself into, or are in some way converted or perverted into by unnamed nefarious others. So it is no surprise then that someone who is anti trans may broaden their ire and become anti gay too.

If you've never had to question your sexual orientation because how you feel is the considered norm, you'll tend to kick back hard when the linguistic minefield of a non binary fluidity to gender identity rears its head. Such a thing is not in their experience at all. What they hear sounds like the worst form of deluded fantasy, they're being asked to go along with or actively support the promulgation of. And indeed what is being requested of society is a change that is seismic in its consequence. Perhaps one ought to expect massive resistance and uproar from both ends of the binary genders. For the imaginative leap required is huge.

As I've said before, how you subjectively feel about yourself does not necessarily have anything factual behind it, to support it. It is simply how you feel about your identity. True as this maybe, fighting on this ground would seem to me to be unwise. Facilitating a persons freedom of choice to love how they wish, to chose how they wish to present and express themselves to the world, would perhaps be more fruitful ground. In a democracy its about the liberty to be what we want to be. Are we allowed to choose or not? When one person's liberty conflicts with another person's liberty, how do you resolve that? Particularly if self denial is not an option.

My personal opinion is that there are many forms through which gender can be expressed. There are innumerable him ways to express masculinity. There are innumerable ways to express femininity. There are innumerable ways of expressing asexuality, or of presenting oneself as niether specifically male or female. Gender seems to me to be more of a spectrum, not a monochromatic filter. 

If we allow things to evolve, I see this as only healthy in the longer term. It maybe some of the intractablity within gender equality lies in the rigid adversarial fixedness of its binary arguments. Whatever softens the hard lines of masculinity and femininity might be a good thing. Its about everyone feeling at liberty to live how they wish, free of the obstacles of prejudice and stereotypes. And this can only make our culture richer. As it has throughout history.

Who We Say We Are - 1) Biology and Expression

Should I sit down and try to describe to you who I am, I might start with a physical description of my appearance. That I"m human, male, the colour of my eyes (green/grey), my height ( 6ft 1in and shrinking ) etc. Then progress on to listing what I like, what I do for a living, my career, my interests, my religion, my politics, my possessions. All the things I can name about myself that I could find that are notable, rational, logical, empirical, physical, evidence indicative of who I am. As though I am a magpie collection of views, habits and biases that I compose into one self, that I identify as being me. 

If I make a statement about my sexual orientation, say those words and declare that I am gay, there are no facts, visible on my exterior body, to support that assertion. We are in an interior realm of the mind, emotions and desire. I have the feeling of being gay, and feelings are rarely as definitive as facts. We value objective external verifiers. I'm in a relationship, but no one else outside of that can know my 'gayness ' for sure. There are signifiers and clues, but they are the sort of thing anyone could wear or adopt. One may start by talking of a history of my observable behaviours, using them like signposts in a story arc.

These may or may not conform to the cliche signs folk think of as 'gay'. Some of which may indeed be present in myself - my interest in the arts and performing for instance. But none of these sorts of signs are ever universally so. Not all artists or performers are gay for instance. There may be a higher percentage of LGBT+ people working in the arts due to factors such as - it being a welcoming vehicle for self expression of a gay sensibility, or you feel more readily accepted for who you are in the arts sector. Stereotypical conventions of what 'gay' is are rarely exclusively so. There are proudly heterosexual men out there, who are effeminate, camp or dress flamboyantly, for instance.

In our desire to understand and then to display who we are, gay men themselves adopt these external 'gay' signifiers. We try them on for size. Its a bit like unfurling queer flags for the external world to read - Oh, he's gay! Such gay conventions Quentin Crisp railed against, because for him they confined the range through which one's self and individuality could be expressed. A gay sensibility becoming reduced to a few camp hand gestures, a mince and a bitch for a mouth. These can be almost as much of a personal prison as conventional expressions of masculinity are.

Being gay, as I've said before, is a feeling for who I am. Over time I've come to know it as being more than the physical expression of sexual desire, it has its own sense of culture. And any culture is cultivated. This feeling may be hard for your 100% hetrosexual to imagine, and it can feel threatening to them too. On a factual biological level what could I say to support that feeling. Not a lot. You may of course point towards some research or other that indicates the existence of a 'gay gene'. My conscious reason for saying I am gay, are not derived from that at all. An understanding of my genetic inheritance was not required in the acceptance of who I am. I did choose to align myself with feeling gay.

In theory you could possess a 'gay gene' but still live a fully heterosexual life. There is a gene for most things these days, probably even shoplifting, but not everyone who has that gene becomes a shoplifter.  There has also to be a nexus of circumstances, opportunity, culture and habit playing their part, into which any genetic predisposition may be thrown in. If you live like a hermit you're unlikely to bump into a gay orgy any time soon. There maybe nature, but this always requires nurture from circumstances. Feelings, not facts, require finding modes of expression.

Saying I am gay is a statement of identity, its one of the things I believe myself to be. Once I felt confident to come out and say it, this was a relief. Because it is important that who we say we are, is visible and known by those around us. Though I know myself to be a much wider range of things than gay itself can encompass. Some of my personality has been built around being gay, other things have been adopted, many have nothing much to do with it at all. My interest in Ancient Egypt, and History in general for instance. Being gay is primarily about who I love, and though that is important, its not the be all and end all of who I am. Statements about who we say we are, are mainly subjective in nature. Being gay is a strong feeling, built around a desire, by my sexual orientation, and to some extent is extended and elaborated in a range of preferences and sensitivities, both aesthetic and otherwise. Ones I resist to call camp, because that is as broad and nebulous an umbrella term as 'gay' is  Its also an unrepresentative one, as not all my aesthetic preferences or likes fit into it at all.

Male and female gender cultures are largely constructed. They have always taken their range of expression beyond simply depending upon the facts of our biological sex. There are sub cultures attached to gender, of which gay is only one. There exists a wide spectrum of manners in which an individual gender can chose to be expressed.  Traditional stereotypical gender roles for men and women, are just some of the roles we can assume and perform as part of society. These may or may not be represented in who we are biologically, or feel we are emotionally. And when these are at variance. When the facade hides an interior person that does not match what you project to the world outside. This produces a stressful dissonance that has to be resolved one way of another. This can only be done via the doorway of imagination and expression.