David Turmon Griffiths is 32, lives in the West Midlands, UK and is long term disabled. He has aspirations towards being a full time writer, is very much a believer in giving help and advice, and although is not a member of any support or campaign groups does all that he can to fight prejudice, mainly concentrating on the prejudice received by the LGBT community.
David, could you please tell me a bit about your upbringing? Where were you born and raised? What was your family situation like?
I always joke about my birth circumstances as the story of my life. I was born in the morning of April Fool's day in 1977 in Odstock Hospital, Salisbury. My mum was an 18yo girl from Perthshire, my dad a 33yo gunner in the Royal Artillery, based in Larkhill but for a couple of generations at least hailing from Manchester. It would be nice to say that I was raised there but when I was about two or three my dad had asked to be reposted in Hannover, West Germany. That was the very first of many moves. My mum was someone who I believe had the best intentions but had a tendency to a little self absorbed. She tended to be a very angry person and even at the age I felt her hand on a very regular basis. My dad tended to keep his distance when my mum was angry but even at that age I could see he didn't like the way things were. But when things were good they were brilliant. And I mean really brilliant. Toys were rarely in short supply and I had plenty of people to play with.
Shortly after my sister was born though my dad moved away. It was many years later that I found out why. At the time I was simply told my dad was dead and I immediately blamed my sister, even though she was only a few small months in age. There were a number of moves since then, mainly Pitlochry and various parts of Birmingham and life was cruel. I don't think my mum ever lost her good intentions but at the time and even in hindsight there was no hope of being able to see it. I very much enjoyed school and being able to play outside, anything to get me away from my mum, although I never dared to try running away or even phoning childline. My mum had seen though that I wasn't happy at the loss of my dad and maybe that was part of why these things happened. But whenever she had a boyfriend she would always try and convince me that her boyfriend was my dad. Thankfully this started to come to an end when I was ten and my real dad just seemed to appear out of nowhere. It was confusing for me at the time, I mean I thought he was dead and suddenly there he was tucked up but wide awake in a hospital bed. My mum had bought a Get Well card for me to give him and even let me write it out for him. It was nice, even if while writing the card I didn't understand what was going on.
You found out something about your Dad didn't you?
Found out would probably be the wrong word for it. The hospital bed he was in on my first meeting with him was the bed he was in recovering from a transgender operation. And yes it was confusing for me. The idea that a man could stop being a man and start being a woman was beyond understanding, as was the idea that a man could want to. I was at that age very much against the female side of the species and the kiddy relationship I was in at the time was simply a case of the girl, Maggie, absolutely refusing, under any circumstances, to take no for an answer. But when my mum told me that the person in the bed was my dad I had no doubt that she telling the truth. It was almost as if I'd already known. And the fact that my dad was now a woman, as confusing as it was for me, hadn't changed a thing for me.
Could you tell me a little about the time you spent with your Dad and his boyfriend in Grantham?
Well I'd moved in with my dad a year later in '88 when I was 11yo. Originally it was because my mum wanted to get away from the only boyfriend of hers who had ever fought back physically. It was the single most joyous time of my life and when, a month later, my mum told us we were going back to Birmingham I went and asked my dad if I could stay. He agreed wholeheartedly and together we tricked my mum into agreeing as well.
Life with my dad was fantastic. It was very much like going from Hell to Heaven. School was bad since I got bullied on a regular basis but I learnt to live with it on the basis that life began when school finished. Me and my dad would go on mountain climbing holidays everywhere on an average of about four times a year even taking time off school for it to happen. And every Sunday without fail, sometimes Saturdays thrown in as a weekend venture, we'd go out somewhere. Birdwatching, fishing, short mountain trips, we lived life to the max. I'll confess I didn't really think much of the fishing but it was with my dad so what did it matter? I can't say absolutely everything went smoothly. Rare as it was we did have the occasional fall out and there were three occassions when I did run away, one time while camping in the Lake District. But when it got dark it wouldn't take long for me to come running back, albeit in the Lakes I had to flag a passing car to take me back.
Brian wasn't an idyllic person either. Although he did care, and you could see he did, he was very money conscious and very short fused. Me and him had plenty of arguments and there were a few times when he'd told my dad to take me home to my mum. In fairness though I don't think he understood why I wanted to be there either. One of my dad's problems was that he suffered from fear a lot. I think, same as me he was a bit oversensitive. And as a result me and my dad kept from Brian the fact my dad was transgender. As far as Brian was concerned, Karen was my dad's sister, my auntie. Brian did seem to be the only person who believed it. The few friends I had at the time used to mention about how he still looked like a man and even my mum later said that nature had cursed my dad by giving him a build that didn't work. I've never really been comfortable with the subject of his appearance because what he was was important to him and what he was like inside was what was important to me but if I had to give an opinion I think the only thing I could say would be the possibility that the field was still in the making at the time and it would take them time to perfect it.
Can you remember how old you were when you first began to question your sexuality?
Exact age I couldn't hope to give. In fact it is a rather complicated subject. Sexually I was a late developer and in some areas I had to give it a push. It was around about the end of school when I had my first pubic hair in fact. And my first act of masturbation at around the same time was purely based on the fact that everyone was doing it. For me there there was no physical need for me to do it, just a need to be part of the crowd. But I did have feelings for boys and girls during secondary school even though I didn't understand them. In fact, the best friend I've ever had might quite possibly have had something to do with the fact that I did have those feelings for him as well. Thing for me though was that other than the very basic physical description of sex, the whole love and romance field was a book written in a language that it would take me some time to learn. In fact it wasn't until I'd lost my virginity to a girl just before I started college that things clicked into place. But even then, not fully. I'd heard of gays and lesbians and without knowing the name for the prejudice. I'd known there was a great deal of homophobia about them. But gays were attracted to men and lesbians were attracted to women but I was attracted to both and because at that time I hadn't heard of bisexuality I felt like I was a bit of a freak. But even as a freak I had things in common with the gays and so for that reason I was afraid to ask people about it on the basis that people would hate me for it.
Your Dad passed away when you were 15. It was around this time that you began to experience mental illness. Do you think what happened regarding your Dad precipitated it in any way?
It's commonly regarded that my dad's death was the official trigger for my schizophrenia although the more precise term would be the final straw. Schizophrenia is a stress reactive disability and in my life before I moved in with my dad as well as my dad's death itself there had been an immense amount of stress. And people think that as soon as you're out of a stressful situation the stress is gone. The fact is the stress is never gone until you've learnt how to make it go away. And to this day that is still something I'm learning. But I will say that while I did get my schizophrenia as a result of my parents, the cause would have been only one of them. It is now widely accepted that while schizophrenia requires one or more stressful life experiences to trigger it, it is a genetic disorder. So while both of my parents can be said to have triggered it, it is most likely that only one of them gave it to me.
Being Transgendered, did your Dad have an empathy towards LGBT people?
Well the T people certainly. Although as far as I know he had never known anyone LGBT, he did sometimes speak of transexuals, transgenders and transvestites with a lot of positive acclaim, even though he avoided speaking about it in his personal sense. With lesbians and gays he seemed to be rather uncomfortable about it. I don't remember him ever displaying hostility as such but it was possible to believe, considering his other prejudices, that he may not have liked them. But, although I don't now consider myself to know nearly enough about transgenders, the difference I've encountered between my dad and the one other transgender I've known in regards to sexual attraction does lead me a little to believe it possible that as a man, my dad may have not just been trans but also gay as well and out of the two he'd chosen to deal with his gender instead.
You developed an interest in religious matters and were a member of a forum online. Could you tell me about this time in your life?
Ok. Well since my dad had died I'd often considered the possibility of a higher being. Some have suggested I might have been looking for someone to replace my dad. I personally doubt that one though. But I was desperate to believe that there might have been an omnipresent being who was always there with me, going through everything I was going through. In fact one of religious stories that I still hold very close to me even now is Footprints In The Sand. But to this effect I had read up on as much religious information as I could get my hands up, my only drawback really being the tendency of the occasional pieces of information to escape as I tried to squeeze more and more in. At one point I'd even started going to St Botolph's Church (The Stump) in Boston but after another move a few months later I felt that I'd been wrong to do it. I had gone because I wanted to believe, not because I did. So I stopped.
However a couple years later in 2002 I'd moved in with my first long term girlfriend and we'd got internet, dial-up initially because BT refused to provide broadband to the customers in Amesbury. And one of the first things I'd done was to start broadcasting my presence on the internet. I'd gotten a profile on Faceparty, one on a website now called Profilenation and one on Myspace. I found Faceparty was pointless, although I agreed with their main standpoint but Profilenation was useful to me for the ability to deal with people on a social level. To bring me out and thanks to that I eventually took my first steps into Myspace's R&P forum. I think I'd merely come across it as a result of looking through forums to find one of interest and for the first few weeks all I could do was watch the topics and get to know the kind of thing to expect. To this day I find it funny that despite being more religious than philosophical it was a very hostile place and most of the hostility came from those who supposedly followed the path of Love but the hostility of the forum did come close to making me turn away and look for something else. I think the only thing that stopped me was the fact that I had ideals of my own and even if I had to build my confidence first the atheists like myself, as well as the LGBT and other targets of prejudice needed a person who could stick up for them.
And so eventually I made my first replies. I wasn't very good initially. I was a very angry person myself and very quickly came across as a maltheist, which earned me enemies amongst the theists and the atheists but I managed to settle in and I learnt. I was determined to find the answer to the question of God but I've always had a scientific turn of mind and I knew that only by obliterating the lies could the truth be found. It was educating and it was fun. We got to take the mickey out of the fundies, both theistic and atheistic, although I should note that despite the origin of the name fundie these days doesn't mean fundamentalist but rather someone who's religious beliefs and the views that come with them literally cannot be changed no matter what. And I was always the first to stand up against prejudice, even if I didn't understand enough about what I was defending. And the main focus of the prejudice, other than between religions was towards the LGBT. Of course to be able to defend anything properly honesty is required and I'd found that by admitting to when I didn't know something it earned me a great deal more respect and in turn reduced the intolerance of the forum. In time some people even started to admit to their own sexualities and although I never spoke to them personally, reading their forum posts did give a lot of insight into the community and myself. I never did find a satisfactory answer to whether god was real or not but I did earn people's respect and, amongst the atheists, even admiration. They actually offered me a place in their elite as well. But most importantly of all I learnt a great deal about myself as well.
Do you follow a religious/spiritual tradition?
Well other than what's stated above and the overall conclusion that I'm an agnostic atheist my mum is, I think the best term would be, a semi-practicing catholic in that she does believe but rarely ever bothers with church or even the catholic community. My dad was a gnostic atheist but had a great deal of respect for the dead gods of the world. Or at the very least the ones he'd heard of. He was very much against Yahweh though believing him to be a constructed result of religious theft but at the same time he never displayed hostility about it unless doorknockers came round. I think all of my generation are non-practicing Catholics except me who was never christened but I my sister does seem to respect the religious heritage enough that she's always insisted on Catholic schools for my nieces.
Through the relationships you've had, do you now have a clearer idea of who you are within that in terms of your sexual identity?
With one exception I'd say most certainly. I do feel that my first long term relationship with Amanda came with a certain encouragement from her even despite her feelings about herself dating a bisexual. On the whole she was exceptionally in favor of the LGBT community and she even confessed to a fantasy that involved bisexuality.
My second long term relationship was quite the opposite. My sexuality was repressed and demeaned to a description of being a straight person with a simple anal fetish. It would be nice to think that this was just one of her ways of dealing with a hyper jealous personality but since me and her split up she has since made a single homophobic remark that removes the possibility of this.
Andy was brilliant in allowing me to open up to my sexuality and giving me the confidence not to hide it. I think the only thing I found detrimental was a very temporary belief, when it was eventually discovered he was double-dating, that bisexuals did indeed need both genders. However, looking inside myself and at my history, even at before I knew who I was, made me realize that I wasn't that kind of person and that Andy would've been a cheat even if he was straight or gay. Some people might think it odd that the events of before I found out would help in that but the simple fact is, finding out in 2007 that I'm bi doesn't mean that I wasn't bi before that and throughout my entire life, although I've never ruled out polygamy, I have always been more comfortable that my relationships were monogamous. The idea of having to share someone for me doesn't fit a serious relationship and I neither does the idea of someone I love having to live with that either.
But my latest ex I would say came as an excellent epilogue to the book. She was again very tolerant of LGBT although she didn't have much respect my interest in Eddie Izzard. But at the same time she wasn't initially very comfortable with the idea of sleeping with a bisexual man. There was a certain physical reason for the reluctance but her biggest fear was the possibility that she wouldn't be enough for me. After all, bisexuals of both genders have a reputation and my way of being subtle about saying I was bi, referring to myself as a fence-sitter, didn't help a great deal because of Ruth's awareness of the statement about how the grass is always greener on the other side. However I did love her and she did love me so with a lot of patience and a few suggestions from a Canadian friend of mine I initially made it so that she would in her mind be enough for me and then in time she came to realize she would have been anyway. So in that relationship I did get a firm understanding of how there were ways of dealing with the views that bisexuals have to endure.
Are you more physically or emotionally driven to one gender over another?
Ok this one is probably going to make me seem a little screwed in the head. Overall on basic terms, I am equally attracted to both genders. Simple as. However I am more physically and affectionately attracted to women while being more sexually and romantically attracted to men.
There is one balance tipper at the moment but I do believe that with a bit of time I can recover from that. The balance tipper ultimately is that, albeit in consideration that I've been with a few women and only two men, I've found women to be more painful and as a result I do have a tendency to need increasingly large amounts of time to recover from a breakup. Ultimately though, maybe because of the kind of person I am, despite the advantages that either gender has over the other this doesn't actually have an impact on what I have to offer either gender in a relationship. I am just as loving to a woman as I am to a man. I'm just as affectionate with a man as I am with a woman. I do have a tendency to be more sexual with men but that tends to revolve around certain fears about how some women can react and I guess that even despite being against stereotyping in any form there are some things that are hard to shake.
There's a lot of minsinformation about bisexuals floating about, which myths do you hear most often and what's the best way to quash them?
I believe I've heard them all but I could be wrong. I've heard the ones that are attached to bisexuals through homophobia and I find the "Book of Leviticus" one very amusing since no one spots the flaw in the argument. On top of that there is the idea that we're greedy, that because we're potentially attracted to the entire population that we are on a mission to sleep with the entire population. Again no one ever thinks about the fact that straight people and gay people are potentially attracted to 50% of the population and since bisexuals are supposed to be greedy bisexuality would be self defeating since homophobia reduces the number of members of the opposite gender who would be attracted in return and biphobia would reduce the number from both genders.
Another rumor is that bisexuals spread disease and that even without disease are jeopardizing lives. There are scientific statistics about anal sex that can be used to counter the biggest disease accusation although this wouldn't help when coupled with the greediness aspect. On top of that I find it amusing when straight people mention about jeopardy since they're referring to a penis involved in anal sex that then goes on to do vaginal sex to which I can only point out the number of men who like to give anal to their girlfriends. These people do forget that gays and bi's do wash.
Another one that I believe used to be a homophobic attitude but recently appears to be specifically targeted at bisexuals is the idea that our sexuality is a psychiatric disorder and can be treated with sex therapy.
My only answer to that would come from my personal past and the fact that I was, in effect, bi even before I was sexual. Added to that there has been a psychological report done when I was 9 that I have managed to access recently that makes mention of a number of people including the views of my school and psychologist herself, that I was effeminate. I think these days the best way to deal with biphobia is the same as I'd deal with homophobia and indeed any prejudice. And it's simply to make them understand that it's not evil and if they're too closed minded to understand then if they've crossed legal laws make sure the legal services know of it and if they haven't get them out of your life and returning humiliation is often the best way of doing it. I used to try and encourage a closed mind to open up but since then have found that a mind won't open unless it has been given enough cause to want to. And to that effect I have yet to encounter a case where I could have enough to do that.
Where does biphobia come from and have you ever experienced it?
Well I've had experience of two, one in a hostile way. But I've also had experience of one, which I don't know was homophobia or biphobia but I'd have to assume homophobia despite the two friends she had before then who were gay.The possible homophobic attack came from my exgirlfriend and mother of my daughter. I must point out that this wasn't the reason for her cutting me out of my daughter's life although it could have ended up a possibility if timing had been different. But this attack was while I was with Andy and Kirsty had, in order to try and keep legal services out of the way, reluctantly agreed to let me see my daughter. But I was with Andy at the time and while the initial agreement was that my daughter came to my house, when I mentioned to Kirsty about my boyfriend she changed to location of the meeting to her mum's house on the basis of, "I don't want you and your boyfriend to shag each other in front of Georgia." I couldn't react to it because she put the phone down but it made me so furious and I don't think I've ever let that one go.
The more common one I've dealt with has been the misconception that because bisexuals are potentially attracted to 100% of the population that we are slags and although not in a hostile way it was a great concern to Ruth mostly in terms of our future together but also to a lesser extent in terms of how people would view her.
The second one, that I've received from one straight guy who ganged up with two gay men to humiliate me with was that bisexuals were dirty. That we spread disease and have no regard for a woman when I have vaginal sex with her after I've slept with a guy. At the time of that attack I couldn't really answer back to it. I felt humiliated, especially since it had been said in front of all my friends and neighbors and that the attack was equally targeted at Ruth because of her low standards and lack of self-respect. And with the exception of Ruth and a couple of her friends who were completely drunk and thankfully unaware of what was going on, all my friends and neighbours were just watching the show. All I could do then was retreat back to my flat and it took a couple of days before I dared venture out of the flat again and only at Ruth's insistence. It took a few more days after that before I could look anyone else in the face again. And I do feel a little angry at myself even today that I let them get away with that. I did get an apology from the straight guy a week or two later. Apparently he couldn't remember but I never saw the two gay men again.
Based on your life experiences up to this point, what's the best piece of advice you could give others?
I think a lot of people would phrase it as be yourself but that's a bit daft since a person can pretend to be someone else but they could never be anyone else. My advice is know yourself. Everything you can know, know it. And if you don't know it then find it out, either by research, by asking friends, advisory bodies, or even, and this is the most reliable one, by looking inside yourself because even if you don't have the answers you can still find the questions and why look for an answer if you don't know the question?
What's the most valuable lesson you yourself have learned in life?
As above but I've also learnt that when given the choice between fear and yourself, fear should never, ever be the choice.
What are you reading at the moment?
At the moment I'm reading what I'm typing. Nah sorry. No books at the moment. But I do very frequently read the views of others, mainly on prettypinkpearl.com but to a lesser extent on facebook as well.
Do you have a favourite album or band?
Difficult one. Very difficult. I'm very much an eclectic appreciator and while I have an enormous respect for people who can write and play songs I'm more into the songs than the bands who produce them. As better music comes to my attention favorite albums tend to change with time as well but I would say if I had to name a band then Foo Fighters is good and my favorite album at this current time would have to be The Real Thing by Faith No More.
What do you do to relax?
Well firstly I need to learn how to relax. That being said I have recently taken up a form of Kung Foo. I'm still learning it and have yet to get the spelling right but I do find Wing Chun very relaxing even if exhausting at the same time.
How would you describe yourself in 5 words?
Good, Pacifist, Passionate, Moral, Oversensitive.
If you could do or be anything, what would that be?
Myself. No one should ever want to be anything else.
Where do you see yourself in 5 year's time?
Not good at thinking about the future to be honest. I'd say ideally I'd be settled down to the fullest extent with a wonderful partner and my daughter at the very, very least, staying with me every other week for the whole week.
Thank you David for an incredible interview.
(This interview is from June 2009)
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