For National Coming Out Day, we are celebrating the stories of perpetual and continuous coming out — how our identities keep shifting and changing as we grow and get to know ourselves even better.
For many of us, the beauty of entering a queer identity is that it opens the door to a Vegas-style buffet of ways to learn how we can be even more ourselves — whether it’s about our genders and sexualities or how to move most comfortably in the world. For National Coming Out Day, our writers and editors discuss how we approach coming out and what it means to us, the kinds of coming outs we’ve had since the first time, and the ways our identities have shifted into the people we are today. You know we want your thoughts on this too!
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Drew, I’m p sure I have zero Capricorn in my chart but I said “YUP” right out loud when you mentioned having to make a list of who you could come out to yourself and who you had to enlist someone else to do it for you. As it happens, I may have to actually come out myself to someone on the latter list in a few days – my super Catholic grandmother (who likes to pretend she was never repeatedly told I’m gay YEARS AGO) is coming to visit, and I’m 99.9% sure she’s going to ask me if I’ve met a nice man yet.
Valerie, I also totally received more judgment when I announced dietary changes (pescatarian but otherwise vegan, in my case) than when I came out. That’s just wild to me. I also feel fraught about the way the word “lesbian” has been weaponized against trans people, and as someone who never wants to hurt anyone ever, it’s tough to navigate. But I’ve chosen to lean into it, and even, as Heather does, the words “dyke” and “queer” because I’d like to represent those of us who are aggressively proud of who we are and stand as examples of how you can do that while not being an exclusionary asshat.
Honestly certain parts of all of these hit home, and I love that that can happen in this space even while our experiences are so different.
Did anyone else know from a young(ish) age that they’re some flavor of LGBTQ, but it took you forever to tell other people? Like, I was about 14 when realized I was attracted to girls, but didn’t come out to another person until I was 23…
Aw, this was great everybody! Yes, I agree with so much here.
When I first came out to myself as bi, it took me some time to come to terms with it. I also thought I was straight (and just had lots of friend crushes on girls lol) for the first 23 years of my life. I had gay friends, but no bi/pan/queer friends so didn’t know there were other options! I wasn’t homophobic to others…but I think I had some internalized homophobia to get through. I took my time tearfully coming out to friends who were very supportive, and casually mentioning I was “also dating girls” to family members who seem fine with it (that phrase seemed the easiest to get out of my mouth at the time, instead of a direct label *sigh*).
Now that I’ve been out for 6 years, it’s less important for me to come out to random people. I’m not out at work, and I’m not out among my friend-acquaintances. It’s really only important if I’m interested in dating someone, and it would certainly become more obvious if I was in a serious relationship with a queer woman/nb person.
And yes, letting people know that I’ve gone vegetarian has been an interesting process as well! A coworker found out today and thought I was going to judge her for her lunch…no, that’s not how vegetarianism works! I choose what I eat, you choose what you eat, and we can eat peacefully :P
Looking forward to more wonderful years of knowing I’m bi, getting to be honest about my crushes & dating, and living my life the way I want to :)
Count me as another one who caught more flak for “coming out” as a vegetarian than announcing I had a girlfriend. My grandmother in particular just could not understand why I wouldn’t eat things I used to eat, and kept trying to feed them to me anyway.
Drew, my journey with polyamory started with those same thoughts and questions – I felt like I could be happy in either a polyam or a monogamous situation, depending on the person/people involved, and I wasn’t sure if that meant I could really identify as polyam. And even though I’m in a non-monogamous relationship now, the pandemic has really put the brakes on things, so it looks very much like monogamy from the outside, and I haven’t come out to many people about it yet. But really, I think it’s like any other identity label – you don’t need to have actually done anything in particular to claim an identity if it feels right to you.
That’s a good point! I do think it’s how I exist naturally and informs how I interact with the world. So maybe it’s more about that than the specifics of every future relationship I’m in.
I came out as trans and asexual (not always both to any particular person) during my late teens, but in the end it barely mattered; no one acknowledged it in any way that mattered, and some people just forgot.
I came out again as trans and bisexual when I finally developed a sex drive in my late 20s, but again it barely mattered; those who remembered continued to refer to me with he/him pronouns and my deadname while only vaguely acknowledging my trans status in ways which barely mattered, and those who didn’t basically seemed to consider me a gay male who wasn’t all of the way out of the closet.
In my late 30s I was finally in a position to be able to seriously transition (after a few short, aborted attempts over the previous two decades) and it stopped being a problem. These days I don’t really “come out” on purpose, as I work from home, and it’s mostly along the lines of “if you didn’t read that part of my profile before we met then that’s on you.”
Wow. This rules.
Same as Vanessa. Coming out to myself took forever.
I’m really appreciating all the love for the word dyke, which was the main way I described myself through my 20s. I started using queer more in my 30s and still tend to do that in my 40s. When I came out to my mom, nearly 30 years ago, I said I was gay, even though I’ve almost never used that word for myself.
Coming out to myself took forever. I could tell I didn’t just like boys as a teenager, but I DID like boys and so that’s what I latched on to, and I ignored everything else because I didn’t understand it and I was terrified (even though I was desperately trying to experience queer culture via the media I consumed–this was 20 years ago so options were limited). I liked one boy in particular and we got married fairly young and I shoved all my other feelings down and didn’t think about them for a long time. In my teens I had convinced myself I was straight. In my 20s I knew I probably wasn’t, but by then I was in a committed relationship and I just figured I would ignore it forever. In my 30s I started acknowledging to myself I was probably bi, but so what? I didn’t need to tell anyone because it didn’t matter. I’m now in my mid-30s and I’ve spent this year gradually coming out to my husband, immediate family, queer friends and a few other close friends (I definitely made a list, like Drew). My parents don’t understand why it matters, which is hurtful but unsurprising. I’m sick of passing for straight and I long for the sense of belonging that Rachel describes. Other than that and a lot of complicated feelings related to ignoring a huge part of my identity (and passing for straight which feels like a benefit and a crushing erasure at the same time), I feel incredible and I’m so excited to finally feel more like my authentic self and to figure out who I am and who I want to be. I’ve spent my whole life doing what’s expected of me and I feel like I’m just now realizing I don’t have to. I have so many more feelings than I ever thought it was possible for me to have.
Vanessa, I felt the same way you did when I came out! I was also 20 when I kissed a girl for the first time and I was so frustrated at myself for not realizing I was queer sooner. (“How could I possibly not know this about myself?!” I thought at the time. “I went to an all-girls Catholic high school! Two of my high school friends dated each other!”) I got over it after a few months of angst, but I wasn’t sure what label – queer, bisexual, lesbian, etc. – to use for myself for years after.
Whenever I get anxious about how there are probably more things about myself I don’t know yet, I remember what my ninth grade Scripture teacher would say: “We are already, but not yet,” and it makes me feel better.
I dread Coming Out Day every year. I hate thinking about coming out and I hate reading everyone’s else’s happy stories (though I truly want to be happy for them). I find it low-key retraumatising, even though I’ve been out for years.
Blergh
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“so do I lean into it so it can’t be taken over, or do I just call it a loss and move on from it?”
Kinda like I feel about the term “Christian”.
I usually use the term “Christianist” to single out Talibangelicals and Popoids, but even then, trying to apply “Christian” to Queer Episcopalian Me feels like it’s going to set up too many misconceptions, so I use “Jesus-follower” for that. But even then…