I have absolutely no problem telling the world that I am a straight ally of the LGBTQIA community. In fact, I enjoy telling people, regardless of positive or negative reactions. Weirdly enough, though, I have trouble "coming out" to members of the LGBTQIA community.
It has to do with my job. Pretty much anyone who hears that I am the LGBTQA Connection Associate instantly believes that I, therefore, must be either a lesbian or bisexual. At the very least, I must be closeted, right? I get it. "Why would a straight, cis-gendered person have the audacity to apply for this position? She's snatching an opportunity right out of the hands of someone who is actually LGBT!"
I know that there are people who think that I am not qualified to work with the LGBTQA Connection. The hardships and adversities of the LGBTQIA students on this campus are not my own, and that experiential factor is crucial in fostering relationships with the students who I will be working with. There are bound to be students who do not or will not see me as an accessible resource.
Showing posts with label coming out. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coming out. Show all posts
4.26.2012
The Ins and Outs of Coming Out
If you were to ask me about my sexuality now, I'd immediately tell you what I identify as, as well as having a few pithy nicknames for it. (Example: Oh, I'm an equal opportunity employer.) However, it hasn't always been this way. Coming out to my family was a much longer and more awkward process.
My mother was the first to know, and like all serious conversations, it happened in the car. I don't know about other families, but most really serious revelation conversations happen in the car. I came out to my mom at 14 in the parking lot of Friendly's, I kid you not. Looking back at it now, it seems like something out of a movie: me and my mom sitting in the parking lot, me turning to her and saying I had something to tell her. Her response was one of tentative acceptance, saying she needed some time to think about it. She's 100% supportive now.
Fast forward to Christmas Eve my senior year of high school. My sister and I are driving home from church. We're at a stop light and I turn to her and say, "Sarah, I'm bisexual." Good thing we were stopped at the time, because she turned to me and said with shock, "Really? But you're so boy crazy." I remember laughing a little.
Telling my dad was the much more dramatic, sit in the living room on opposite pieces of furniture kind of scenario at the end of high school. The jury's still out on how he feels. He pretty much ignores it. I've come to accept the fact that until I actually bring a girl home, it's kind of a non-issue for him.
Moral of the story: Make sure the car is parked. You don't want your family driving off the road when you come out. Coming out to people might seem like a momentous, impossible task, but it's not. Do it on your own schedule. The right people will be accepting of you.
My mother was the first to know, and like all serious conversations, it happened in the car. I don't know about other families, but most really serious revelation conversations happen in the car. I came out to my mom at 14 in the parking lot of Friendly's, I kid you not. Looking back at it now, it seems like something out of a movie: me and my mom sitting in the parking lot, me turning to her and saying I had something to tell her. Her response was one of tentative acceptance, saying she needed some time to think about it. She's 100% supportive now.
Fast forward to Christmas Eve my senior year of high school. My sister and I are driving home from church. We're at a stop light and I turn to her and say, "Sarah, I'm bisexual." Good thing we were stopped at the time, because she turned to me and said with shock, "Really? But you're so boy crazy." I remember laughing a little.
Telling my dad was the much more dramatic, sit in the living room on opposite pieces of furniture kind of scenario at the end of high school. The jury's still out on how he feels. He pretty much ignores it. I've come to accept the fact that until I actually bring a girl home, it's kind of a non-issue for him.
Moral of the story: Make sure the car is parked. You don't want your family driving off the road when you come out. Coming out to people might seem like a momentous, impossible task, but it's not. Do it on your own schedule. The right people will be accepting of you.
4.15.2012
Letter Not Sent (August 2008)
In August of 2008, I sat down at my family's living room computer and for the first time, told a girl Megan, my ex-girlfriend from many years before, "I'm gay."
It was a computer at which, in years past, I had exchanged e-mails with middle-aged men about sex and sexuality. Some of them had been good to me, offering advice and the vaguely comforting sense that they'd "been there." Most of them were unhappy, unattractive in that they were still sitting in the darkness of their own living rooms. Hiding.
It was also a computer at which I had constructed fake internet personalities that suggested the kind of boys I wished I had been. Boys braver, more boyish, more likable than I thought myself. You are what you are not. The boys who I pretended to be were those whose energy was directed outwards rather than inwards. Boys who explored what lay under the stones they found in the woods rather than what lay beneath those less-tangible things they found within themselves. They laughed often; swung their arms when they were excited; grinned broad grins; spoke countless words to crowds of attentive people rather than writing to an audience that consisted only of the self.
"My eyes look back, they self-examine," I wrote at seventeen in my journal. "They look for solid answers. My mind wanders back to... the fact that I'm always alone..."
I was lonely and alone among friends, writing to a girl who lived in California simply because she existed in the realm of elsewhere, in a world other than my own. She was less of a threat to the reality I wanted to preserve, where I could be silently gay forever: "If I could go my whole life without telling anyone what I'm about to tell you, I would"-- a sad statement not only because I desired such a fabricated existence, but also because my internal ache was becoming so unbearable that my speaking out, my coming out, was perceived as inevitable in spite of such a desire.
"I think I trust you more than anyone," I write to Megan. It's a lie. She was the intended recipient of this letter, the later recipient of another letter saying a more concise and less honest version of this one, but the only reason that I was sending it to her was because I knew she didn't exist in my day-to-day world. I could live with her never speaking to me again: "I'm not ready to lose a friend over it." I just needed to prove to myself that I could do it. I was in the bottom of a well looking up at daylight, realizing where I was and where I could be. This letter unsent signifies the beginning of my ascent.
In one of the paragraphs most unusual for to me read now, I mention my friend Jacob, who I've known longer than I've known any of my friends, and how I might not blame him if he found out and never spoke to me again. Six months or so after this, I will have come out to him. He will be driving his car and I will be riding shotgun, waiting until this moment exactly because that way I do not have to look him in the eye. My hands tremble and fumble in the dusty heat exhaled from the vents of his station wagon. In the year that follows before we leave for college, we will continue to have these conversations, confessing things we had imagined we would never speak, assigning words to ideas thought inarticulate. We are infatuated with our own reluctant audacity. We drive through the darkness of the night, through the sleeping suburbs we've grown up in, then in-between the tall buildings of a city we're only beginning to know and then we ascend the mountains. We reach the peak and for a moment we can see through the dead winter trees the persistent quivering light of Harrisburg. Here we are not still going up, not yet coming down; we are all potential energy, like a book on the edge of a desk. We are glowing. And then we are not--we are descending, weaving through the trees which are no longer trees but shadows pierced by headlights. We are breathless, returning.
It was a computer at which, in years past, I had exchanged e-mails with middle-aged men about sex and sexuality. Some of them had been good to me, offering advice and the vaguely comforting sense that they'd "been there." Most of them were unhappy, unattractive in that they were still sitting in the darkness of their own living rooms. Hiding.
It was also a computer at which I had constructed fake internet personalities that suggested the kind of boys I wished I had been. Boys braver, more boyish, more likable than I thought myself. You are what you are not. The boys who I pretended to be were those whose energy was directed outwards rather than inwards. Boys who explored what lay under the stones they found in the woods rather than what lay beneath those less-tangible things they found within themselves. They laughed often; swung their arms when they were excited; grinned broad grins; spoke countless words to crowds of attentive people rather than writing to an audience that consisted only of the self.
"My eyes look back, they self-examine," I wrote at seventeen in my journal. "They look for solid answers. My mind wanders back to... the fact that I'm always alone..."
I was lonely and alone among friends, writing to a girl who lived in California simply because she existed in the realm of elsewhere, in a world other than my own. She was less of a threat to the reality I wanted to preserve, where I could be silently gay forever: "If I could go my whole life without telling anyone what I'm about to tell you, I would"-- a sad statement not only because I desired such a fabricated existence, but also because my internal ache was becoming so unbearable that my speaking out, my coming out, was perceived as inevitable in spite of such a desire.
"I think I trust you more than anyone," I write to Megan. It's a lie. She was the intended recipient of this letter, the later recipient of another letter saying a more concise and less honest version of this one, but the only reason that I was sending it to her was because I knew she didn't exist in my day-to-day world. I could live with her never speaking to me again: "I'm not ready to lose a friend over it." I just needed to prove to myself that I could do it. I was in the bottom of a well looking up at daylight, realizing where I was and where I could be. This letter unsent signifies the beginning of my ascent.
In one of the paragraphs most unusual for to me read now, I mention my friend Jacob, who I've known longer than I've known any of my friends, and how I might not blame him if he found out and never spoke to me again. Six months or so after this, I will have come out to him. He will be driving his car and I will be riding shotgun, waiting until this moment exactly because that way I do not have to look him in the eye. My hands tremble and fumble in the dusty heat exhaled from the vents of his station wagon. In the year that follows before we leave for college, we will continue to have these conversations, confessing things we had imagined we would never speak, assigning words to ideas thought inarticulate. We are infatuated with our own reluctant audacity. We drive through the darkness of the night, through the sleeping suburbs we've grown up in, then in-between the tall buildings of a city we're only beginning to know and then we ascend the mountains. We reach the peak and for a moment we can see through the dead winter trees the persistent quivering light of Harrisburg. Here we are not still going up, not yet coming down; we are all potential energy, like a book on the edge of a desk. We are glowing. And then we are not--we are descending, weaving through the trees which are no longer trees but shadows pierced by headlights. We are breathless, returning.
3.27.2012
"Is coming out as bisexual easier than coming out as homosexual?"
I kid you not -- that was a question on C's "Sexual Identity Across the Lifespan" exam. And I kind of went into a frenzy over Facebook on her status when I found out.
First of all, the question was NOT open-response -- no essay, no paragraph crammed into a too-small space. It was multiple choice. I mean, how can someone predetermine right and wrong answers to such an incredibly subjective question? Did you not think that this question was subjective?
Oh, but let's look at the options C's class was given ... As well as C could recall: (A) Yes, because their parents have hope that they may become straight. (B) Yes, because of reactions and stereotypes. (C) No, because their parents have hope that they may still become straight. (D) No, because of reactions and stereotypes.
I have a few discrepancies with these answers.
First of all, the question was NOT open-response -- no essay, no paragraph crammed into a too-small space. It was multiple choice. I mean, how can someone predetermine right and wrong answers to such an incredibly subjective question? Did you not think that this question was subjective?
Oh, but let's look at the options C's class was given ... As well as C could recall: (A) Yes, because their parents have hope that they may become straight. (B) Yes, because of reactions and stereotypes. (C) No, because their parents have hope that they may still become straight. (D) No, because of reactions and stereotypes.
I have a few discrepancies with these answers.
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