A few days ago I announced that I started one of those ask-me-anything platforms. The first question I got was from a 20-year-old reader who asked how I came out, and how I would suggest she come out. (She mentions being in college and having a supportive liberal family and gay friends - to give you all context.)
.
So, this response post is a bit long because, well, damn - there’s a lot there! I’m trying out the break-line formatting option, so hopefully those who want to scroll on by can, and those interested in coming out stories and advice, you are welcomed to
.
(also lets all just pause to watch this one more time, yes?)
*
How This Dyke Came Out
.
I’ll start with the easier, story-telling, part first.
.
So, despite the whole cheerleader/dancer fact of my youth, I was always pretty dyke-y. Or at least, I always felt like I was. If I had known the term “butch,” I probably would have been afraid I secretly gave off that vibe. (My actual more-so butch friends now are all laughing at that belief, I am aware!)
.
I grew up in a really homophobic poor town where women were supposed to have children with the fellows they dated in high school (either while in high school or directly afterwards). In addition to matters of sexual orientation, that lifestyle didn’t match what I wanted with my life. Nor did the overwhelmingly conservative forces of the town, including and beyond the gay-hating implications of it all.
.
The one gay bar in town (The Back Door, for reals was its name!) was constantly burnt down, and effeminate students were regularly jumped at my high school. My mother, who I think was on to my future ways, would tell me, as a teen, not to hug my female friends, as that was improper.
.
Maybe it actually helped that my home life was anything but pleasant, and so I started running away really early, and was more so consumed with running out of town and staying alive than I was about defining my sexual orientation. Although, my nine-year-old walls were all Paula Abdul and no New Kids - so, even without conscious thought, trends were showing!
.
When I ran away in my hometown, a friend put me up with an old friend, who was a queer woman who had just left her husband. It was a mess of a set up for a young kid to be in, but the apartment was where all the older theater folks in the town would gather, and several of the key dancers I was fond of were the ones who apparently had started to experiment with relationships between them. They all thought I was a dyke, but I still just didn’t have the time to give too much thought to the concept.
.
Eventually I skipped my senior year of high school, graduated at 16, had a dream about San Francisco, where I felt at home in the dream, and packed all of my stuff into a car, drove to the Bay and never went back. I first fell in love with a woman who lived down the hall from me when I started as a college student, upon arriving in San Francisco. So, suddenly it became tangible. And I was no longer surrounded by the world I grew up with, so I had the time to mentally walk myself through what I basically already knew. Falling in love with that first woman, in that new environment, really helped push along my internal work on the issue.
.
(Dropping a Happy young lez love story footnote - that woman I first fell in love with is still awesome. And when we were all young and cute, we used to talk about how she would be a bad ass filmmaker some day. And now she is. And those of you in NYC should all go see her latest documentary, which the Village Voice says fab things aboout, and which is playing at the IFC from the 29th-2nd.)
.
So I eventually had something of a coming out to the people around me, but it was in San Francisco and no one was too shocked. For me, it was more just coming to terms with internalize homophobia and working my way through that. As in, I was raised around people who though that LGBT folks should not be around children, and just all sorts of other crazy thinking. So I really had to get to a point where I felt proud and comfortable to say that I was a lesbian, and a member of the queer community.
.
As a part of that, I went through my neurotic research tendencies and learned everything about LGBT history and literature and built myself an amazing community of diverse queer folks and lived it all up while playing with what that meant to my identity. (I never did the head shaving young lez ritual, but I did listen to a lot of Ani DiFranco.)
.
Eventually I came out to the few folks I still knew from my younger childhood, and incidentally, most of these were people I knew from a religious camp I would attend outside of my hometown. I was nervous. They were awesome. And it was really great to have supportive religious people not trip, so I didn’t have that extra layer.
.
(Edit: I realize upon rereading this that maybe it is not clear that I fully ran away and never went back, and cut off all contact with my biological family. So I don’t have a personal story of coming out to my biological parents, and all my “extended family” I met and built relationships with after I ran away. But my adoptive godmother met me right when I ran away, and she’s a little old black church lady radical activist. (Note this church she works at is strongly black *and* gay.) My coming out just led to her calling me, endearingly, “witchy,” (which she still sometimes does) and then her telling me more about her love life, including the woman she was apparently dating at the time! So, you know, I get that my story is not the standard, in more ways than one!).
.
Generally speaking, I’m the type of person who has a very limited ability to live with cognitive dissonance. I really value living honestly to who I am and surrounding myself with others who do so. So, for me, being comfortably out is an incredibly positive thing. I also like fucking with people’s assumptions (less so these days) that a femme looking woman might not be what they think, as far as orientation. And I really do believe the Harvey Milk line of thinking that we have a responsibility to be out, not just for younger LGBT folks to see us, but also for the rest of the world to see us and move beyond their prior concepts about LGBT people.
.
That said, everyone’s situation is different. I have friends who have supportive families. I have friends who ran away and left their family networks. I have friends whose parents couldn’t deal with the info, and then one or three or five or even ten years later have become more accepting and welcoming to partners, etc.
.
The situation varies for everyone. But there are support options out there. And, personally speaking, I think those who find a way to live out as who they are, and to integrate that into the various areas of their life, tend to be some of the strongest, most secure and happy people I know. The term Fierce got adopted by the LGBT community because the process of coming to terms with who we are, in a society that often denies us, brings out a certain fighting spirit and ability to create beauty in life that can be something gorgeous.
*
Advice On Coming Out
*
I think it is important to acknowledge that everyone’s situation around and experience in coming out is different. And so it needs to be realized that folks do it in different ways for different reasons. (Rachel Maddow posted it on a note taped to every bathroom stall door in her college door. So that’s one way!)
.
There are questions about physical safety and family support, which are more pertinent for particularly young folks, but which should be considered.
.
The way a lot of LGBT folks come out is to first come out to their LGBT friends, and then their straight allied friends, and then to expand this circle from there. This process is often used to test the waters, and remove fear over how people will respond, and to build a safety net of support around the process. If someone is nervous about coming out to their family, it is useful to have this support network in place first.
.
There are a bunch of online resources around the coming out process, and information for family members who have just had a loved one come out to them.
I would advise anyone to think about what their sexual orientation means to their personal experience, and how that plays out in how their view their ideal life. Most people want to be honest with their friends and family about who they love, and their experience in life. Coming out is a part of the process of getting to where you can share that. And it ideally gives you peace of mind that you can more comfortably be who you are, and not have to worry about changing pronouns or withholding stories. And then, on top of that, the messy, gorgeous, awesome, complex, rich LGBT community and its history is something that I personally believe is of value for LGBT folks to be able to participate in and work with and fight with and create better visions of future world alongside.
.
That was long! And I’m not sure it was of much help or interest. But, you know, I felt like the ghost of Harvey Milk wants thorough responses given to such questions!
