Is a secret something that is meant to be hidden or is it something that is meant to be revealed? Well, if you're part of the LGBTQIA+ community, it is something you have to reveal. If you don't, then what's the point of even identifying a certain way? Every single person you ever meet should know that you are gay, or that you are bisexual, or asexual, or nonbinary or transgender. You must celebrate who you are and be loud and proud about it.
Except you don't. You don't have to come out. You don't have to announce to the world any aspect of your identity if you don't want to.
National Coming Out Day comes every year on Oct. 11 and was created in order to celebrate coming out, as the title implies. This day is meant to give people the chance to announce their identities to the world in a proud and unafraid way, sometimes for the first time. In the past, I have been a proponent of Coming Out Day. I always post a Facebook status, usually a humorous one, about who I am and how I identify. This past year, however, was a little different; this past year, I came out as transgender.
I decided to take this coming out seriously, mostly because I hadn't already come out to the entire world at that point. It was a first time for me, and it was also the first time I was announcing something this big. Gender identity is bigger to me than sexuality because it involves a lot more work to be that person who you identify as. So I came out with this serious long post asking everyone to use he/him pronouns and otherwise masculine terminology when referring to me from here on out. I received an outpouring of support from friends and colleagues, and it was an overall positive experience.
And then I came out to my family. More specifically, I came out to my mom. At that point, my mom had always been a big part of my life, and I was convinced that she would understand this better than the concept of being nonbinary, which is what I identified with for a few years before I came to terms with being a man. When I texted her about my news, her reaction was not what I expected. It was not overly supportive, neither was it overly dismissive nor negative. It was...depressing. She made it sound as though she had seen it coming, and yet at the same time, she said she didn't understand why I felt this way. I tried to help her understand; I tried to get her to ask questions so that I could answer them. I tried to be Google for her, but she refused.
Things began to get complicated after that. My privacy was invaded multiple times and my identity was questioned even further. My mom and her wife wanted proof that I couldn't give them, and tensions reached the point where I no longer felt safe coming home.
My mom and I had a meeting with my counselor and we communicated in what I thought was an effective manner. We tried to understand each other, and by the end, I thought we had come to some kind of understanding. Things were still fuzzy with my step-mom, but I was convinced that things were gonna be OK. I went home for winter break and for four weeks I thought things were OK. They still used my birth name on occasion and they never used the correct pronouns, but I accepted that. I figured they just needed time to get used to it, and I didn't want to seem pushy so I never corrected them. Not once.
The next thing I knew, I made one wrong move and the whole thing came crashing down. I made one comment about something small and completely unrelated and all of a sudden they were misgendering me and making sure I knew they were doing it on purpose. They told me I couldn't be a boy because there was nothing masculine about me, that it was just me trying to "fit in" with some trend on the Internet. They said all that and more; thinking about it still makes me want to throw up. I left home that same day, and I have not gone back since. I still talk to my mother, but at this point it is strictly business. We talk to each other if we need something and that is it. My step-mom sent me a happy birthday text when I turned 21. I did not reply.
Coming out as transgender to my family was a mistake. Do I feel better being out to them? No. Do I have any idea how I am ever going to afford hormones and surgery? No. I don't even know how I'm going to support myself for the last year of college and beyond. My life is now a sea of chaos and uncertainty; it is only through extremely fortunate circumstances that I have somewhere to live until I graduate college. Because of my experience, my stance on coming out and National Coming Out Day has changed drastically.
If coming out means you lose nearly your entire family, think very carefully about whether or not you can handle that happening to you. If coming out puts you in any sort of danger, I would highly recommend that you don't. It may feel weird to keep your identity a secret from people who are supposed to love you unconditionally, but if my story is any proof, sometimes hiding is safer than pride.
Coming out should be a celebration. I agree with that idea wholeheartedly, but, unfortunately, we still live in a world where people knowing who we are is as much of a curse as it is a blessing — maybe even more so. I came out to my mom, and now I don't know if I can ever face my little sisters again because I don't know how to explain to them that I can't live with them anymore. I will likely never come out to my father, because if a pair of gay women cannot handle me being transgender, how is a cisgender 40-something-year-old man with a severely religious upbringing supposed to understand?
My stance on Coming Out Day is this: I don't owe people an in-depth explanation of every facet of my identity. Neither does anyone else. It doesn't make you dishonest if you don't come out. It means that, for whatever reason, you are not ready for people to know that part of you. It is OK if you don't come out on National Coming Out Day; it is OK if you don't come out any other day of this year. It is OK if you never come out. It's nobody's business but your own. The most important thing is that you are safe, healthy and stable. So, when National Coming Out Day rolls around and you see a bunch of people saying things like, "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" do not think that you need to say anything about who you are.
