I came across this recently and thought it was a super interesting and thorough examination of “the closet” or “coming out” of it.
i’ve never liked the idea of having to come out of the closet. I want to be able to say “oh, my boyfriend cooked my lunch, I don’t know what spices he used, i can ask him”, without it turning into “oh i didn’t know you were gay, thanks for letting me know, so brave” or something weird. we were talking about lunch, not who i like to sleep with
I tend to just note it in my head when I hear something casually dropped. I’m a type of person who is fine both not having a conversation but will engage sincerely if one is had at me. I went into a Lyft on the way to Dragoncon one year and saw a note that the driver was hiring impaired and would not communicate verbally.
“Cool, I’ll just listen to music and/or read.”
Then the driver started talking to me, and we had nice conversation about cons, nerd stuff, etc. He mentioned his boyfriend in a sentence but not really about his boyfriend, and all it really put in my mind is he probably had that sign up for people who could be problematic to talk about that stuff. I think I was maybe a little proud that he felt comfortable doing so so casually with me, but it otherwise didn’t affect the convo in any significant way, nor did I feel any need to comment on it with him. Just some internal thoughts.
I’m not sure if gay men have to deal with that more, or if it’s me specifically who’s weird for never having anybody do that to me when I mention my wife.
The one time anything like that did come up, I was the one who brought it up and the dude was just like “Yeah, I knew you were into women before you even said anything. You’ve just got that vibe.”
Point is somebody took the door off my closet.
I’ve been told several times “ah yeah I had kinda guessed” as a bi dude. Literally no idea how you could tell, considering I look the same as before I figured myself out.
Our environment has those things figured out more quickly than we ourselves.
They look from the outside in and a closet is easy to spot. But inside the closet it is dark.
This 100%. I also don’t like being at a new job or in a situation with new people and I don’t know if I should come out or stay stealth, both as gay and as a gender. Like I shouldn’t have to edit my language to keep on the good side of a group of people I haven’t really gotten to know or really care about yet.
I’m constantly “coming out”, every time someone finds out I’m a lesbian. The whole idea is a bit dumb.
🫤 Yeah… “I don’t want to be out. I just want to be”
But I also want other lesbians to know I’m lesbian 😅
Lol, I gave up on that shit when I realised how pointless it was, I’m not having sex anyway.
Aww sorry to hear that. Maybe you can wear a pin or necklace with something that may go unnoticed by straights but recognizable to lesbians?
Does that work? I’ve heard people explain it as “I need to use a keyboard”, or at most call it their “working fingers”, independently of their orientation.
Thats sick
Wait.
Sick = good or sick = bad?
Sick = very good, rad as hell even
That was not my initial reading, but then I saw the username and figure this was more likely!
Hell I’ll never forget what it felt like to look at myself in the mirror and say, “I’m not straight.”
Saying it out loud for the first time shook me.
It felt good to say it but I was filled with fear of telling my family and my relatives.
It was painful at times but I figured out who my real family is and who are just relatives.
Family is the relationship, relatives are blood. Sometimes family doesn’t share blood and that’s fine, the relationship is what matters. And whether you associate with your relatives is purely up to you.
Thank you for sharing this post
I’m personally on the first part of that journey and trying to find out who my real family is. Definitely still filled with fear about telling relatives. I can definitely relate to the shookness. Except I started at trans. The realization I’m not straight was kind of a funny later realization. 🤷♀️
Most of my relatives found out not because I told them but because another relative saw my tinder profile and then they proceeded to tell everyone who would listen
A lot of people were blocked that day
Finding your family is hard, but having found family is worth all the effort
I personally wouldn’t have told a lot of my relatives to be perfectly honest but the past is the past and once the secret was out I wasn’t going to deny it because seeing how poorly they reacted made me realize that I was better off and was going to be happier without having that fear hanging over my head
That really sucks! I don’t understand why people choose to be so shitty. I’m glad to hear it got better.
It’s a great article and a great point.
You never stop coming out.
They’ve got other ones with a similar feel about “tone policing” and maybe disability I think?
I really like this comic. Aside from being non binary and maybe asexual I’m also autistic, academically gifted and chronically ill (and if you want to stretch it, left handed). I’m in varying stages of coming out for these and for some I heavily resent having to come out. Gender identity is where I feel the worst resentment. If it was more normal to expect people to be queer it would be way less dangerous or not even necessary. The individual incidence of queer identities is rare but if you take all versions of queerness it’s not that rare anymore.
Yeah I loved the aspect explaining how the society around us builds the closet, it’s not inherently there and we choose to go into it.
Fun fact: where I live, just as LGBT+ social support has been on the rise… keeping lizards has been banned. 🤦
Only “naturally occurring” animals are allowed as pets, the “non-natural” ones have to go.
Good thing I’m into cats (“natural” since some people introduced them a few thousand years ago… but they can’t ban cats, right?.. right?).
On a more serious note, I’m tired of hearing the same arguments getting rehashed over and over, with just some words changed. The only rational conclusion, is that deep down, people love to hate. It really doesn’t make it feel safe to “come out” as anything other than whatever is currently mainstream, and even that can land you in hot water when the trends change.
But not stating something clearly, will make people just assume “the worst”… they can come up with. So it’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Any hope of leading a peaceful life, seems like an illusion; finding someone, a pipe dream.
