azurelunatic | Fear, loathing, and "coming out"

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Fear, loathing, and "coming out"

You say "coming out" like it's a neat little package, sometimes: realize that X or Y person has likely assumed that you are a heterosexual (as it's the societal default, given that it is the mode of sexual orientations, so it's perhaps a 90% safe assumption, and depending on your high school teacher, a 90% might even have been an A), then declare to them, "Hello, I am your old [relationship], [name]! I bet you had no idea, but I am [orientation]!"

And then they react to it, and eventually both of you go on your merry ways, and with any good luck they would not have been one of the people who is inclined to berate/fire/beat/rape/murder you for revealing that you are not straight.

There's a feeling I pick up from the community at large, and the feeling is that no matter how long it takes, if in the end the result of you coming out to someone is that someone accepting it, then coming out is worth it, both on a personal level for you, and for queer society as a whole.

The other part of that feeling is that the big hurdle to be overcome that is preventing people from coming out is their own fears of being rejected building up the act of coming out into a big devastating hurdle: if only people would realize that in the end many people who come out are acknowledged/embraced by the people they come out to, perhaps they would not fear it as much.

(And yes, of course these are gross oversimplifications, but they're oversimplifications that stick like little toxic needles into the hearts of young queer folk.)

It's not the act of saying "Hi, I am Azz, and I am bisexual*" to a workmate that I dread. The words are simple, and I know that particularly these days, for a woman, my risks are relatively low.

The part I dread comes in between the declaration and the acceptance where we go our own directions, where I am likely to be called upon by someone in the full exercise of their heterosexual privilege, demanding of me at least some of the following:

The commonly-understood definition of my orientation (because they have never heard of it before, and/or cannot Google it themselves)
Defense of my orientation's right to exist and/or seek romantic and sexual fulfillment
Whether I meet their preconceptions of my orientation
Exactly how I personally align and/or differ from the commonly-understood definition of my orientation
My personal relationship and sexual history
Whether or not my history complies with the definition of my orientation (either the commonly-understood definition, their own preconceived definition, or some weird combination of both)
Defense of why I identify as my orientation and not another orientation that they feel suits me better
Intimate details of my sexual activity and practices
Education on any other non-majority sexual practices and preferences they may have conflated or associated with my orientation

If, after an extensive and painful session of being quizzed about intimate details that are frankly none of their business, they then deign to accept that the orientation I stated at the beginning of things applies to me, and continue to treat me warmly, or at least continue to treat me the same as they previously had or better, then I am supposed to be grateful that the coming-out "went well", and be grateful that I was given the opportunity to educate them so that they could learn to accept our community.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I have been reading and following the most prominent parts of Racefail '09, and I was ashamed to see that as a white woman, I have been guilty of expecting the People of Color to provide me with a free/neat/tidy education after they had pointed out problematical points -- even though in most cases I did not say anything to ask or demand this. Despite not often opening my big mouth to make the situation worse, I was still failing in my mind and expectations.

Only now, after having repeatedly seen why it is my responsibility as a would-be clueful white woman to do my own damned homework, not their responsibility to give me the answers, do I begin to see why the nearly inevitable question and answer session that near-inescapably accompanies a coming-out is an exercise of heterosexual privilege and heterosexuals not wanting to do their homework.

The ritual of "Coming Out" enjoins youth to become educators and ambassadors, but also sends the message that it is OK for heterosexuals to not do their homework, that the queer community will gladly do the heavy intellectual lifting, that it is okay to anticipate a lengthy debate during which one's instinctive and possibly not thoroughly examined feelings will be expected to not be found conflicting and adhere to logical principles after announcing one's orientation (directly or indirectly).

Oh yes. Indirectly. The stereotypical "Coming Out" is when the queer person becomes tired of hiding their true self, works themselves up to it, addresses an important person in their life, and tells them their orientation. This is not the only way it gets done, oh no. There are a thousand times when you have to come out or choose not to do it, and it gets very old very fast.

Someone says something that assumes you are heterosexual, and you don't feel like letting that assumption pass.
Someone says something that assumes you are heterosexual, and you actually have to correct them because them getting it wrong is going to cause problems.
Someone assumes your sexual orientation, but got the wrong minority orientation.
Someone makes a disparaging comment about your orientation (and you don't believe they know that you are).
Someone asks about details of your personal life that would not cause comment if you were heterosexual, and you can be rude, lie, or come out. ("Is that your sister?" "Are you married?" etc.)

On a personal level for me, coming out to every person I know is too damned exhausting, even though I am okay with 99% or more of the people I have met knowing that a woman approaching me in a potential romantic or sexual sense would not get an immediate veto based solely on the fact that she is a woman. Sometimes it would even be unsafe (that other less-than-one-percent).

For the greater good of queer society as a whole, I am sometimes made to feel guilty that I do not have the resources to devote to coming out to everyone to whom it would be safe to come out to. When I do gird my loins and speak out about my sexuality even when I know there's a painful discussion coming up, I know that while I may not immediately reap the benefits of it, I'm taking one for the team, so it's all going to be OK in the end, provided I don't die of it.

I am not exactly shy about allowing people to know my sexuality. I make references to both ex-girlfriends and ex-boyfriends. I make mention of bisexuality (mine) in public journal entries. I belong to orientation-specific communities. I state the orientation on Facebook. My car sports a rainbow sticker and a bi pride flag sticker. Generally I do not get flak about these things, so they are not a problem. I do not mind people knowing. I do mind going through the fucking third degree when someone finds out.

It's not OK for queer people to be made to feel that they must pass as heterosexual in order to avoid conflict or be safe.
It's not OK to add to a young queer person's misery by expecting them to be a debater and ambassador on top of their other issues (and blaming them if they don't), unless they feel like doing that.
It's not OK for heterosexuals to expect us to do their homework.
It's not OK for heterosexuals to greet a queer person directly or indirectly revealing their orientation as time to attack or debate their sexuality. Revealing one's sexuality is not always and without exception an invitation to start a discussion.

*Bisexual is an oversimplification in itself. I suspect my true orientation is more in the direction of sapiosexuality, particularly as dumbasses of any gender identity actively repulse me.

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This. All of it. This is a fantastic post.

You have neatly elucidated many of the reasons why hardly anyone I was not sexually involved with knew that I also had sex with men, until I entered a committed relationship with a permanent male partner (which was something I had more or less decided against, until I met that individual). I'm 41, and I have enough else on my to-do list.

I have not encountered the term "sapiosexual" before, but it's quite possible that I am also one of those.

Yep. All of that.

That's why I don't actively "come out" anymore and haven't in over a decade.

YES. And the stupid idea that if you are sexually or erotically interested in one (or a few) persons of one kind, you are immediately interested that way in every person of that kind, and thus they are in danger from you? Especially from men? Strange that that same idea put to the standard male-female interaction makes them angry, then....

(here because you linked to this post today)

My idea (which I read somewhere) is that sexuality is not binary but can be divided into roughly 7 groups: from 100% same gender to 100% other gender, and that many people are somewhere in between. But because the norm is so strictly 100% other gender, and because not following the norm is looked upon as being so strange, most people who are mostly other gender do not recognise the same gender part in themselves.

Being mono- or polyamorous is totally separate from this.

sapiosexuality

I love this term and think it should be added to every English dictionary in existence.

And, yeah, I do get the point of your overall entry. While hearing and reading people discussing their sexuality has been educational and enlightening, it was definitely a gift from them to me, not something to which I had a right.

And I actually do like sharing, a lot of the time. I am a natural activist, so if I actually have a valid choice about whether or not to get into finer details, I'd often be happy to. But I just keep thinking back to coming out to my work1 team as a whole (many of the individuals on the team knew, but not the whole team), where I felt uneasy not coming out of the closet (their regard for me would prevent them from trash-talking my community in my presence if they but knew I was not straight), and since I did not feel like having the Inevitable Bisexuality Argument, I deliberately went for shocking and likely offensive, and instead of the usual "I'm bisexual", I went for "I'm only 20-30% dyke", to forestall the "So you're 50/50, then?" and "But if you're not 50/50, and you like men more, that means you're straight!", because good god*damn* I am sick of those.

Fantastic post, Azz. :)

*hugs*

... Straight people are weird sometimes.

I look at my personality a lot, and me being in excess of 95% straight is a problem. I am much less likely to cut women slack socially, and I'm much more likely to do it for men. I'm a lot more likely to react with hostility to other women. Manners help because they give me good automatic responses, but having men as my preferred gender definitely warps my reactions.

Same here... I hate the assumption that just because I have a somewhat stronger preference for men, that I MUST be OMG ST8. Even if I don't say anything about my preferences, for some reason, people just look at me and assume that I'm straight. =/ That pisses me off. (And don't get me started on the issue of gender identity... I can't get a single person to believe that I actually want to be male, that I reject aspects of femininity in myself.)

Anyway, beautiful post! <33333 And I'm sorry you have to go through that crap from others. D: People can be so stupid sometimes.

Excellent post. I'm going to have to quote you. :)

Just a small note about this part of your post. Just a small part, but it's an important part:

"The part I dread comes in between the declaration and the acceptance where we go our own directions, where I am likely to be called upon by someone in the full exercise of their heterosexual privilege, demanding of me at least some of the following:"

It isn't/won't be just heterosexuals who do this. Homosexuals will to. If nothing else, Bisexuals have just as big of a bias within the homosexual community,because they are seen as either 'tourists', 'players' or sitting on the fence and refusing to choose either side.

Maybe the SF community is more accepting, or perhaps less vocal, or maybe you just haven't run into the loud mouths yet. But another bisexual friend of mine up in Toronto ran into this attitude full force. It was common and loud, and they generally shunned bisexuals more than heterosexuals shunned them.

Gotta love double standards. =)

A good post with good points.

On a side note, I don't really expect to mention your sexuality, because I doubt it'll be relevant to things I'm saying. But if for some reason it comes up and I misrepresent it, I apologize. Sometimes I simply forget a friend's orientation or get it wrong with no intent. I'm not trying to shove a bisexual to either side of the spectrum or force someone more toward the center or whatever. But sometimes I misremember who identifies as what. I have felt bad in the past when I mistakenly said someone was straight who did not identify that way. Even though every time I login to LJ it tells me about a feature to keep my friends straight, and I keep thinking - some of them really wouldn't appreciate that.

My word. People actually expect that of you???

Speaking as a heterosexual female, I am appalled. I wouldn't dream of asking someone to explain their sexuality to me. No matter what variety it was.

Yes. Bisexuals get it bad from both the gay crowd and the straight crowd. We're unicorns or we don't exist or we're evil.

Oh, Notes. *snerk*

I'm the sort of polyamorous bisexual who could pass as a straight monogamous woman depending on who's doing the looking and when, which is kind of weird.

They don't always expect all of it, but I can expect at least a "So, bisexual, that means you like both 50/50?", and then when I say that I'm more in the 90/10 to 70/30 range, I am likely to get told that I'm really straight or just experimenting. I kind of don't like that very much.

Thank you!

Thank you! There's been some queer rage going around and I figured I would share.

Huh. So is it men that you're granting the exception for, then, or are you being extra tough on women?

If someone doesn't act stereotypically gay or lesbian, they get assumed to be straight by most people! This is totally normal!

I will totally believe that you would like to be male and reject aspects of femininity! Transgender and genderqueer issues are a whole other basket of no fun at all in a heterosexist, cissexist society.

Wow. How incredibly rude. I mean "So, bisexual, that means you like both 50/50?", let alone the response to your answer.

I guess I just don't understand that sort of mindset at all.

Clearly, a non-standard sexual orientation is everybody's business!

Interesting post. As someone who wouldn't think of teasing someone over their sexuality, it never really occurred to me that asking too many questions is just as painful, or at least intrusive.

Not unicorns or evil. If you're women, you're 'haaaawt', to the straight male crowd. Because... OMG, can I watch and join in?

*ahem*

It's the bois that have it the worst. :(

You are a lady of old time manners.

Asking questions like that was once considered rude. Like talking about religion and politics.

But nothing is sacred anymore. :(

I feel so old.

Someone makes a disparaging comment about your orientation (and you don't believe they know that you are).

Urgh, I had that happen to me recently. Me and this sort-of-gay* girl in my corridor at uni went to visit another corridor, and we somehow got to talking about how guys think lesbians are hot, and this one guy said that, if it was legal, he'd be gay-bashing all the time. We didn't think coming out to him was such a good idea :P but we left swiftly after that, and I for one am not planning to visit his corridor any time soon.

*sort-of-gay because she used to ID as gay and I'm pretty sure she doesn't ID as bi at the moment, even though she now has a boyfriend

Oh, eek. What a dreadful experience. That sounds like something to advise the RA of; even if they can do nothing or it's not appropriate to do anything, at least they will be aware that he's a bigot and the only thing stopping him from violence is the legality, because you cannot actually trust people who think that way. As I learned with AK-47 Guy. Short version: some guys order you out of their homes at gunpoint if hugged by a gay man.

Sometimes you get great discussions going with people you otherwise would not have dreamed of talking about orientation with, but those events generally happen when you're feeling like actually talking, not like hiding and like talking to somebody is already an intrusion.

Oh, if you talk to the right (or wrong) kind of angry lesbian who has been around too many breakups involving flaky types who happen to be bisexual, you'd hear plenty about the evils. Because we're all just waiting for some man in polished jackboots to come and bear us away so we can forget we ever "experimented".

I'm not sure. Since it's a binary choice, there isn't really a good way to test the validity of either. If we had 3 genders, it would be easier to see what the trend was.

But I *can* see that the combination of my sexual preference and my personality could be very harmful if I just went with my natural instincts. Which is at least a good thing to be aware of. And since I *am* aware, I can work on coping strategies.

...I *really* don't get some straight people.

Coping strategies are good!

I wonder if I have a similar bias.

You've been hanging out with the wrong lesbians. I'm a lesbian whose girlfriend is bi, and I would sooner walk through fire than make such hurtful assumptions about people. I've gotten enough hurtful assumptions about my own sexuality to do that to another human being. (This is also why I consider myself a trans ally. Nobody should have their gender identity questioned the same way my sexuality has been questioned.)

I've been tempted(*) to ask similar questions on at least one occasion (specifics not necessarily similar to those you describe), because the statement appeared to me to come completely out of the blue, leading to me thinking along the lines of "I have no idea why they're bringing that up with me now, or why I need to know, so maybe they're actually trying to start a discussion? Hmm, what relevant questions can I ask? *think* *think*" (IOW, trying to apply the Grice maxim of relation.) I wonder what shares this and entitlement have in the behavior you describe. (It seems to me that entitlement says "I'm allowed to ask those questions", and the maxim of relation that I should ask *something*?)

*: I honestly can't remember whether or to what extent I gave up to the temptation, although given my propensity to Ask Oodles Of Questions, it's likely that I did... well, ask oodles of questions. (I'm not sure what I asked, though.)

Given a situation where the declaration came out of the blue from your perspective, a reasonable response might include "Thank you for letting me know; what prompted you to tell me this?" if it's not immediately obvious that they're actually trying to start a discussion.

Entitlement also involves the expectation of an answer, thus:

Anna: Declaration of at least somewhat relevant personal information.
Bit: Acknowledgment of same.
Bit: Questions asking further details.
Anna: Declining to answer questions of excessively personal detail.
Bit: Declaration of Anna's rudeness in failing to answer Bit's perfectly reasonable questions.

Ah, I think

pauamma hit on what I was trying to ask/say. Hearing someone announce their sexuality out of the blue -- or what seems like out of the blue to me -- would seem to me an invitation for discussion, especially if said person was more of a friend than a colleague. How do you sound supportive and approving without drawing out the conversation further?

While "Thank you for letting me know; what prompted you to tell me this?" sounds like a perfect answer, I don't know that something like that would come to me spur of the moment.

It would probably not occur to me either, esp. since I tend to interpret that answer, when I receive it, as "I'm not really interested in listening to you, but if I really must..."

(I have other mechanisms that would help preventing the conversation pattern described upthread: if I was in Bob's position, my further questions would come with an IYDMMA qualifier. But that only deals with the expectation of a factual answer, not with the urge to ask, so it's not perfect, esp. if the other party treats IYDMMA as an empty formal noise.)

i just wanted you to know i really loved this post, it made me think a lot and i agreed with a lot of what you had to say. it is so difficult, and living with that 'do i or don't i' weighing on you with everybody you meet sometimes feels like the hardest thing in the world. because it's not like race, you *can* hide it, and sometimes it's easier to do so, but every time i don't correct someone's assumptions i feel so guilty about it. because if we don't, like you said, for the good of queer society, then who will?

♥ and thanks for posting.

My first thought on reading this was along the lines of "How rude. Why would anyone think those questions were appropriate?". Further thinking leads me to think that I'm not sure what I'd do if someone just up and blurted out a statement about their sexual orientation out of the blue. I might well interpret such a declaration as a desire to talk about it, and in that case I'd probably respond with something intended to let them talk about it. One thing might lead to another and end up with the conversation going places I'd not normally take a conversation. I don't think I've ever had anyone just blurt out something like that to me though. For the most part, if I know someone well, it either becomes obvious from their behavior or it comes up in normal conversation.

I tend to consider all facets of other people's sex lives as being not my business for the most part. Unless one or both of us is interested in a relationship or the other person is hoping for introductions to potential partners, I don't see why it should matter to me.

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trobadora referenced to your post from "Hello, I am your old [relationship], [name]! I bet you had no idea, but I am [orientation]!" saying: [...] The subject line comes from 's fabulous post, Fear, loathing, and "coming out". Everyone, go and read. And also this one by : so, it's national coming out day?(Comments are well worth reading, too!) (Incidentally, "national"? Which ... [...]

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Fear, loathing, and "coming out"

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"Hello, I am your old [relationship], [name]! I bet you had no idea, but I am [orientation]!"