so, it's national coming out day?
Oct. 11th, 2009 10:42 pm![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thingswithwingsapparently? this is a thing. here's my deal: I don't believe in coming out. I don't believe that I should have to. I hate the idea that queerness has to be announced - and therefore that heteronormativity is assumed/default. I hate the idea that being any kind of queer is like giving someone a surprise party, where you jump up out of a darkened space and then they say, wow, I didn't expect that! I hate it. I like to say: I don't believe in coming out - I believe in being out. I'd like a system where there is no in or out, but, yeah. Obv YMMV, some gay or queer people feel really great about coming out, but I . . . don't.
And the thing I hate most is that it doesn't really matter that I don't believe in coming out. Because I'm forced to do it all the time anyway. Here's a time I was forced to come out:
male friend of a friend, talking with me at a bar: "So, why isn't your boyfriend here?"
me: "I . . . I'm not seeing anyone. And I don't date men."
Here's another time I was forced to come out:
woman leading getting-to-know-you exercise, when I first started at my old workplace: "Let's all go around the room and say our celebrity crushes! Mine is Johnny Depp."
me, when it's my turn, after listening to all my heterosexual coworkers confess their celebrity crushes with increasing anxiety: "I've been watching a lot of Six Feet Under lately, and really like Lauren Ambrose."
And another:
close (straight) family member: "I think the world's gotten so much better and more liberal! Why, even in Manitoba, everyone can feel free to be gay and out without having to worry about it."
me, knowing this not to be true: "I've never felt safe bringing my girlfriends home."
So, while the drive towards coming out has its roots in gay politics (the idea that the more we come out, the greater our numbers, the safer we could be) - and while there are a lot of good reasons to be out, and while I do believe in being out as much as possible (because where I work and live, I have that privilege - though it's worth noting that I can be legally fired for my sexuality in New York State) - I still feel tired whenever I think about the concept of coming out and all it entails. Because I have to do it all the time, we all have to do it all the time, or else make a conscious choice to not come out to the mailman or the lady at the grocery store or the hiring committee or the random prurient asshole at a party.
Because coming out is not only never finished in the sense that you have to do it over and over and over again - it's also never finished in that saying "I'm queer" or "I'm a lesbian" or "I don't date men" is not and cannot be the end of it - it is always followed by an excruciating session of having to explain (or having to refuse to explain) your sexual habits to friends, family members, and complete fucking strangers. So have you ever had sex with a man? Did you like it? Didn't you date that guy? Didn't you have a crush on David Duchovny when you were fifteen? (I did, yall). What kinds of women do you like? But you still want to have babies, right? And if it's someone I know, it becomes a project of Justify The Gayness - like every decision I've ever made, every person I've ever dated, every action I've ever taken, has to make sense in some sort of Unifying Theory of Gay. So Oh That's Why You Had Close Male Friends or Oh That's Why You Had Close Female Friends or So You Really Didn't Like That Guy You Were Dating And Were Repressed Back Then. And if it's someone I don't know, they'll often try to ask enough questions to get to the point where they can come up with that Unified Theory of Gayness.
I hate coming out. I hate that we have to do it. I hate that I have to do it even though I'd rather not. I hate that it never ends. I hate that other people use the coming-outs that I hate in order to reinforce their heterosexist and cissexist assumptions about gender and sexuality.
I wish there were a National Stop Being a Jerk to Queers Day instead. Maybe we could put the onus and the burden on straight people for a change.
And the thing I hate most is that it doesn't really matter that I don't believe in coming out. Because I'm forced to do it all the time anyway. Here's a time I was forced to come out:
male friend of a friend, talking with me at a bar: "So, why isn't your boyfriend here?"
me: "I . . . I'm not seeing anyone. And I don't date men."
Here's another time I was forced to come out:
woman leading getting-to-know-you exercise, when I first started at my old workplace: "Let's all go around the room and say our celebrity crushes! Mine is Johnny Depp."
me, when it's my turn, after listening to all my heterosexual coworkers confess their celebrity crushes with increasing anxiety: "I've been watching a lot of Six Feet Under lately, and really like Lauren Ambrose."
And another:
close (straight) family member: "I think the world's gotten so much better and more liberal! Why, even in Manitoba, everyone can feel free to be gay and out without having to worry about it."
me, knowing this not to be true: "I've never felt safe bringing my girlfriends home."
So, while the drive towards coming out has its roots in gay politics (the idea that the more we come out, the greater our numbers, the safer we could be) - and while there are a lot of good reasons to be out, and while I do believe in being out as much as possible (because where I work and live, I have that privilege - though it's worth noting that I can be legally fired for my sexuality in New York State) - I still feel tired whenever I think about the concept of coming out and all it entails. Because I have to do it all the time, we all have to do it all the time, or else make a conscious choice to not come out to the mailman or the lady at the grocery store or the hiring committee or the random prurient asshole at a party.
Because coming out is not only never finished in the sense that you have to do it over and over and over again - it's also never finished in that saying "I'm queer" or "I'm a lesbian" or "I don't date men" is not and cannot be the end of it - it is always followed by an excruciating session of having to explain (or having to refuse to explain) your sexual habits to friends, family members, and complete fucking strangers. So have you ever had sex with a man? Did you like it? Didn't you date that guy? Didn't you have a crush on David Duchovny when you were fifteen? (I did, yall). What kinds of women do you like? But you still want to have babies, right? And if it's someone I know, it becomes a project of Justify The Gayness - like every decision I've ever made, every person I've ever dated, every action I've ever taken, has to make sense in some sort of Unifying Theory of Gay. So Oh That's Why You Had Close Male Friends or Oh That's Why You Had Close Female Friends or So You Really Didn't Like That Guy You Were Dating And Were Repressed Back Then. And if it's someone I don't know, they'll often try to ask enough questions to get to the point where they can come up with that Unified Theory of Gayness.
I hate coming out. I hate that we have to do it. I hate that I have to do it even though I'd rather not. I hate that it never ends. I hate that other people use the coming-outs that I hate in order to reinforce their heterosexist and cissexist assumptions about gender and sexuality.
I wish there were a National Stop Being a Jerk to Queers Day instead. Maybe we could put the onus and the burden on straight people for a change.
It didn't work. Instead I had the conversation with them later, and with all of their friends and my family as they found out, one by one; my 'favorite' was the conversation with a family friend whom I am very very close to, and who asked me, "Wait, but, I don't get it. You seem to really like men." Yes, I said. I'm bi. "But you like men so much!" Yes. I'm bisexual. "But do you like girls that much?" Yes. I'm bisexual. No. I'm not experimenting. You live within walking distance of the Castro Theater. Please stop acting so surprised.
I still haven't come out to anyone at Scripps since the first time I tried, which was casually, in the middle of a conversation, at which point the girl I was talking to informed that that was so cool, she had a lot of gay friends, it's wonderful, it must be so relaxing to date women, I didn't seem really pushy like all those other queers.
Which is to say: yes. Yes. To all of this. I hadn't thought of it like that before. But I feel the same way.
Bisexuality being framed as something ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE, SURELY YOU ARE NOT is one of those things that make me want to tear out my hair. Especially when it's followed with the (depressingly frequent, in my experience) "but then you can never be faithful/have just one lover" OR "but you're not bisexual - you're dating a man right now!"
And the Scripps conversation you mention - yes, exactly, that's perhaps the worst one of all. <3
National Stop Being a Jerk to Queers Day
DONE.
Weren't you also the proposer of International put your finger up your ass day? You come up with all the best holidays.
yeah, the "confess your celebrity crush to a group of coworkers you've just met" game was embarrassing and ill-considered even before you added in the forced outings.
When I did that training recently for being on a panel and talking about queerness/genderqueerness, I was kind of perplexed/anxious about the way it was framed, b/c it was called a "Coming Out" panel, and we were all supposed to tell our "Coming Out" stories. And I sat there scratching my head a lot and trying to remember when/how I had even ever told my parents anything about my sexuality. I mean, I guess I must have at some point in time, but I don't remember doing so. And as for gender identity, I do remember telling my mom she should read Gender Outlaw, but aside from that, yeah, idk. Instead I started out trying to tell, like, my story of self-discovery, the journey I've gone through and the different personal things I've had to deal with in arriving at the gender & sexual identities I currently hold. But then everyone thought those stories were boring. They wanted stories about ~TELLING OTHERS~. IDK maybe it's b/c they think that (non-queer, non-trans/genderqueer) ppl in our audiences will only be able to relate to "Coming Out" stories that relate to me relating to people who aren't those things either. But I found it weird and difficult to deal with in coming up with the "story" I was going to tell. And I felt chagrined that I didn't have some nice tidy typical "Coming Out" to satisfy their requirements.
I also get irritated by the concept of "Coming Out" when, yeah, it's often portrayed as this dichotomy of: If you are a Good Queer and comfortable with yourself, you will Come Out to everyone, everywhere, all the time. If you do not do this, you are a Bad Queer and/or obviously not comfortable with/accepting of your own identity. Like, completely ignoring any other factors that may affect someone's ability or inclination to "Come Out" in this specific way, and placing an extremely heavy value weight on that. (Like, if I live somewhere where my life would be in danger if I "Came Out," I should still feel guilty and bad about my decision not to do so.)
IDK sorry I am rambling and exhausted and have a cold.
Absolutely. But it's kind of - it goes along with a particular expression/style/display of queerness that you might not want, too, because it kind of implies that you have to remain Out in a very obvious way, like it should be the first thing that people notice about you in order to not have to have the conversation all the time, and while I'm comfortable with my sexuality I'm not comfortable with shoving it in people's faces in the same way that I wouldn't feel comfortable with PDAs even if I was straight.
Sorry for jumping in, I'm just - this post is so very close to home.
I have to do it all the time, we all have to do it all the time, or else make a conscious choice to not come out to the mailman or the lady at the grocery store or the hiring committee or the random prurient asshole at a party.
Yes, exactly.
*nods* I feel like this too.
1) I was doing visibly queer things, like leading my school's gay/straight alliance and doing drag and having crushes on people some of whom were girls, at the same time that I was refusing to self-label because frankly, I didn't think anybody had the right to ask me to name and annotate myself to dispel their discomfort at ambiguity.
2) I never felt that my personal safety, my relationship with my friends, or my relationship with any family members under the age of 80 was jeopardized by my queerness. In other words, I was really fucking lucky.
In late high school and early college, coming/being out -- basically, letting my queerness be textual in conversation -- became something I did for the benefit of other queers. I felt like a lot of the straight people around me needed a reminder that they couldn't presume the rest of us were all straight too. More than that, I knew there were a lot of queer kids around me who were worried about if they'd be accepted or safe, and I was perfectly willing to be loud and proud so that, when nothing bad happened to me, the other queer kids could feel more able to try out a greater level of outness.
This has turned out to be a hard habit to break, but I've also kept it up in part because I find the way people treat me when they think I'm straight to be. Extremely. Tiresome. I find the people I'm interacting with socially these days tend to take less for granted (particularly about how they expect me to do my gender) if they know I'm queer, and most of them are also not jackasses and therefore don't assume a reference to my queerness is an invitation to interrogate me about it. I'll admit that I've been having mixed feelings about it, sometimes, but a lot of the time it's such an easy escape hatch from bullshit heteronormative expectations that it's hard for me not to just be way out preemptively to save myself hassle.
I'm really glad that you had such a lucky experience, and that you're able to conceptualize the coming-outs as something you do for other queer kids . . . that's really helpful to me, and may help me to put up with it better in the future. I mean, it's true that coming out and being out can do a lot of good a lot of the time! Just . . . I think my family and my experience growing up and the kinds of conservative people I knew and still know make me feel less generous towards the process.
it's such an easy escape hatch from bullshit heteronormative expectations that it's hard for me not to just be way out preemptively to save myself hassle.
also very true. I do like the moments when you can wield it like a weapon, when someone tells a joke or says something not quite on and you can say, "I'm queer, actually," and see if they want to go on talking.
I wish there were a National Stop Being a Jerk to Queers Day instead. Maybe we could put the onus and the burden on straight people for a change.
Yes, both of these.
Now I wish I just actually practiced the first one more often. I spend an awful lot of my time pretending to myself that I'm abiding by that one even though I'm not always. Because I have this tendency to let slide opportunities to use clarifying language** (the 'my ex-girlfriend' becomes 'my good friend' and it isn't a lie, it's just not all of the truth) because I get so damn weary of the conversations that happen afterward. But every now and again, when I'm feeling either sufficiently devil-may-care or sufficiently comfortable with a set of people, I'll say 'and this one time my girlfriend and I' and it does feel damn nice. But it annoys me that I have to specifically say 'girlfriend' in order to not be assumed to be straight. Which, now that I think on it, is probably part of the reason I don't always use clarifying language. Not that me protesting the underlying societal assumption of heterosexuality by deliberately using nonspecific language is actually accomplishing anything, so, eh.
Possibly more thoughts re this post to come later, if they actually gel in a timely manner.
**When I tell stories I tend to give little glosses of the people in the stories and how they relate to each other and to me. This is so that the audience, who is of course taking notes, can keep track of everyone involved in all the stories. I'm not quite sure where I picked up this habit. Point being, excluding descriptive information takes actual effort since it's not my default.
If you think of it as a protest to use nonspecific language, then maybe it is. Shrug. It's not your responsibility to educate the public. <3
Happy to hear more thoughts, if they gel.
Yes, exactly - SOMEHOW, it always comes up. Having to defend and prove one's sexuality is tiresome and awful and I'm sorry people put you in that position.
I can understand how for some people 'coming out' is liberating and freeing. But I really wish it didn't have to be. I wish that we all felt comfortable, and no-one needed to liberate themselves because we are all liberated by default.
"I wish there were a National Stop Being a Jerk to Queers Day instead. Maybe we could put the onus and the burden on straight people for a change."
THIS IS BRILLIANT. It is exactly how I wish it would be too. Why does someone who isn't heterosexual have to announce what they do in their minds/fantasies/bedrooms/life? Why is that so important to have 'out there'? WHY WHY WHY????? /rhetorical ranting.
It would be nice!
I appreciate your ranting. :)
I hate the Unifying Theory of Gay! Oh wow, that's such a good way of putting it. And I hate the 'let's name our heterosexual crushes!' game too - I think I mostly flashback excruciatingly to high school when I was doing that all the time, ugh.
PS, <3!
I wish there were a National Stop Being a Jerk to Queers Day instead. Maybe we could put the onus and the burden on straight people for a change."
Amen to that.
it all comes down to taxi drivers. I live in a country other than the one in which I was born, and I moved here to be with my (female) partner. I don't have a car, so I wind up taking buses a lot, and cabs at least once or twice a week. Cab drivers here are
nosy and intrusivefriendly and inquisitive, especially when they hear my accent. The questions "why did you move here" "are you married?" "do you have kids" come up ALL THE FREAKING TIME, and I have to decide if, in the course of a 20-minute cab ride, it's better to lie, or to tell the truth and risk, at best, yet more intrusive questions and, at worst, violence or threats of violence.Anyway, I fully support the idea of (Inter)national Stop Being a Jerk to Queers Day. Maybe we can ask the latest Nobel Peace laureate to make it a project?
Amusingly, in the really horrible way, when she took Swedish lessons, the teacher asked everyone in the course to talk in Swedish about why they were there (the course was paid for by her employer; everyone there was a doctor from another European country hired to work in Sweden). E. explained that her girlfriend was Swedish. Whereupon the teacher interrupts her and says "No, no, see, you have to think about how in German, the word "girlfriend" (freundin) means "a female friend", but in Swedish the corresponding word (flickvän) always means "a female lover", or people will misunderstand you." And E. was all "Yes, thanks, I KNOW what "flickvän" means. That's WHY I USED IT." I find that to be such a perfect example of heteronormativity: even when we do come out and talk about our sexuality in a natural way, which takes so much courage, people assume we didn't really mean to say what we just said, because it doesn't compute with their world-view.
I didn't actually know there was such a thing as National Coming Out Day - we're not that big on these kinds of random whatever days in Sweden in general, and if we do have a concept as horrible as this one, it's probably on a different day entirely - but ever since posts about it started popping up on my flist yesterday, it's been making me feel uncomfortable and vaguely angry. I don't want a day that celebrates having to define myself to others; having to define myself is not something to celebrate. It's just something I have to live with that really, really sucks.
Everyone I meet on a daily basis and my entire family know I'm queer, but I don't usually read as queer unless I come out and say it, so every time there are new people I have to make the choice of whether or not to correct assumptions. Does it matter in that particular situation? Am I up to talking about this when I don't actually want to be talking to this person at all since I loathe small-talk and am only having a conversation at all because it's socially required? Why should I have to feel like a coward and a liar because I don't correct my niece's uncle Sven's heterosexist use of pronouns when I will most likely never see him again after we're done singing Happy Birthday? I hate all situations like that, and I don't particularly want to celebrate them.
Yup, yup, yup, this EXACTLY.
What you say about reading as queer makes me think about really effete, limp-wristed gay men I've known, and really butch plaid-wearing lesbians I've known, and now that I'm older and wiser I think I understand those performances more as a preemptive strike, a defensive position that seeks to prevent the question from being asked - or the assumption from being made - in the first place. When I had short spiky hair AND my facial piercing, I had less trouble, come to think of it, than I do now with long hair.
Why should I have to feel like a coward and a liar because I don't correct my niece's uncle Sven's heterosexist use of pronouns when I will most likely never see him again after we're done singing Happy Birthday?
I empathise with this situation so strongly. I know exactly what you mean - when I'm in this situation, I always feel frustration and anger at myself for feeling like a coward and a liar, or I feel frustration and anger for letting it slide and therefore betraying the cause, or . . . ! And then basically we're the ones in the crowd singing Happy Birthday who have to go through all that turmoil, while Uncle Sven doesn't have to know anything about it, not really, even if we do say something.
Oh god. I'm only just discovering that. It hit me like a wet fish in the face. I thought I was Officially Adjusted because I had the awkward parental conversation, but every single time it comes up: with the boss, with the guy who thinks it's ok to be homophobic because "there's no queers here", hell, even with the kids at queer youth group (this sometimes requires bisexual specification), with my housemate... it's driving home to me how *not* adjusted I am. I don't know how to face the extended questioning, because I'm just NOT THAT SURE. I'm sure of what, but not why or how or why the hell I'm supposed to be explaining it or how I got from cute little vanilla church girl to this... For all I know, it *might* be Just A Phase instigated by bad hetero-experiences. How's that anyone's business? :(
And sexualities shift and change over time, and like you say it's not anyone's business. I'm really sorry that you feel a bit set upon by all the people around you.
Argh, yes, National Explain Your Sexuality to Strangers Day: that's it exactly.
a) I get to define my sexuality and gender identity. She doesn't.
b) Words change over time, and what "queer" meant to her several decades ago (pejorative term for gay men) is not what queer means to me or my community now. We've reclaimed that sucker and it's ours now. (Also, arguing over definitions is a really effective way of dodging the reality of her queer daughter standing in front of her.)
c) She's starting from assumptions about gender binaries that I just don't share and am never going to agree with. (I mean, I'm willing to accept that they're valid for her; I'm just not willing to let her assume everyone else is using the same paradigm.)
I don't just have to come out, I have to repeatedly argue for the existence of people like me. I fucking hate that.
National Stop Being a Jerk to Queers Day. I like it. How about Stop Erasing Us Day?
("...so does that mean you're a lesbian? Do you have a girlfriend?" "It's kind of more complicated than that...[insert Queer Studies 101]")
A is the one that gets to me the most . . . the way everyone, from strangers to moms, will outright say to someone "but you're not gay" or "but you're a woman" even if the person they're saying it to is saying "I'm queer" or "I don't identify as female." I hate that we're not even allowed to speak for ourselves. Stop Erasing Us Day, indeed.
This whole thing just makes me tired! My university puts on a whole National Coming Out Week extravaganza which I've never been able to bring myself to attend, much less get excited about, for exactly the reasons you list.
I don't like the pressure from within the gay community to come out (though I understand why it's helpful politically, that doesn't mean every individual person needs to toe the gay line). I resent that pressure because I have encountered huge amounts of biphobia from within the gay community and witnessed a lot of transphobia, as well as conformism and non-welcoming queer cliqueyness, which hurts on an even deeper level because hey, this is supposed to be my happy haven of love and support, right? I literally would be at the LGBT Coming Out Group at the campus center, and would get negative reactions for coming out as bi. Then later, the leader of that group took me aside and thanked me privately, because she didn't feel like it's okay for her to come out as bi in that space. Seriously!
I don't like the idea of there being a "day" when you come out, either. Just like you say, coming out isn't something you do once or twice or even a hundred times. It's a choice you have to make every day. and it can be exhausting to the point where I sometimes hate meeting new people because I'm just tired of having that extended awkward conversation (or not having it and angsting over whether I'm a traitor to the cause for NOT coming out to a new person right away for the entire interaction).
<3 thank you for your comment - it helped me think this through a little further.
That works for me.
Thanks for sharing, babe.
Other times, not so much. Generally conflict makes me feel sick.
A day gives me an excuse to get some of it over with, but oh, how I'd very much rather that people noticed it on my Facebook profile instead, or something.