Coming Out Isn't A One-Time Thing — And It Should Always Be On Your Terms

By Allison Hope


“Are you a lesbian?”


It was a little bit different than the “pass the salt,” that my father generally mentioned to me at the dinner table.


“Um, maybe,” I mentioned, although I knew with every bone of my 17-year-old self that I was, case in point, a lesbian.


I eventually came out several months later in 1998, the same year that two males approached 18-year-old Matthew Shepard at Fireside Lounge in Laramie, Wyoming, and planned him a ride residence. Shepard was just beginning his life as an out gay man, once those boys detoured to a remote area to beat him and tie him to a fence. He was discovered some 18 hours later in a coma; he died six days later in the hospital.


It was the same time that Ellen DeGeneres noticed herself unemployed soon after television executives canceled her eponymous sitcom far less than each year right after she came out as a lesbian. It had been a big moment, complete with Time cover and also a storyline on her show about her character’s parallel sexuality. Still, that visibility came at a cost. "The biggest thing was that I lost my career. For three years, I couldn't work, and was not provided one thing. I was running out of cash and didn't know if I was going to work again. I was 45 years old, and I was like, 'This doesn't look good,’” DeGeneres reflected in 2017. Still, her biggest regret isn’t that she came out publicly, although that she didn’t come out sooner.


The act of delivering what you know to be true about your sexual or gender identity to other people is referred to as coming out. It isn’t an one-size fits all act, nor is it ever an one-and-done announcement, since it is assumed folks are straight up until a person declares themselves otherwise. For several people, coming out is a continual process that begins the moment you tell the opening person. The stakes of coming out are higher for those who inhabit other minority identities — if you’re transgender or gender nonbinary, if you’re a person of color, in the event you come from a little town or more rural area, or if your family members or community is non-affirming. Some days, some people believe it’s safer to prepare other choices, or begin new lives elsewhere. Some people don't get to create that choice for themselves.


It’s not a given that you have to come out. It’s a rather personalized decision that can vary based on so several variables, including where you are on your journey, your relationships with people, your safety and comfort level, and more.


I knew I was attracted to ladies for about per year and also 1/2 before telling them. I had been attempting to hold off on telling my parents up until I was as close as possible to leaving for college in the case that they kicked me out. The fear was founded: Twenty years back, there were no out athletes, no out celebrities, no elected officials who publicly supported LGBTQ+ rights. Two decades ago, any time If I came out, LGBTQ+ people couldn’t get wedded. Lawmakers made their careers on attempting to ban LGBTQ+ people from having kids or purchasing homes in suburban neighborhoods. Our lives weren’t normalized. I thought coming out meant a hard life, and perhaps even a devastating one.


I was terrified.


So, once my parents guessed that I could be gay, which itself is a version of outing someone and taking away their business in the process, I certainly feared that my world might come crashing down.

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October 11 is Coming Out Day, a national day of LGBTQ+ awareness. Two activists, Robert Eichberg and Jean O’Leary, traditional it in 1988 to mark the anniversary of the 1987 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, as soon as visibility was seen as a lifeline to several people who were exhausted by living in the shadows. Every year, people honor the day by wearing pink ribbons, sharing their own coming out stories, or maybe coming out if they determine it’s right for them. Social media has increased the exposure of the day, as people change their profile photographs to include rainbow frames and advocacy groups share content about the importance of coming out and creating greater LGBTQ+ awareness.


Right now, years later, we’ve progressed from a slow trickle of people coming out in their everyday lives to a proliferation of LGBTQ+ pride. We’re finally seeing queer people win in ways I never could have fathomed: Movies and TV shows are beginning to get it right once it comes to representation (though there’s plenty of work to be done). More than one-third of Generation Z mention they know someone who identifies as nonbinary, and are pushing for the rest of society to affirm identities outdoors of the male-female binary, also. Increasingly young people also identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community themselves. People can actually vote for an openly gay presidential hopeful in the Democratic primaries. A recent GLAAD and Harris poll also noticed that the vast majority of Residents of the
U.S. Support equal rights for LGBTQ+ people.


And Shepard’s death ignited a national movement and heightened awareness around the hate that LGBTQ+ people face, and sparked a conversation about what being out means and why we need to protect LGBTQ+ people from the harms face whenever they come out. His death also culminated in the resultant passage of a federal hate crime legislation dubbed the Matthew Shepard Act, signed into law by President Obama in 2009.


It isn't likely the current administration will follow in those footsteps, which is a shame: Anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes are up year over year, nearly reaching levels we haven’t seen since I first came out 20 years prior. The Supreme Court also heard consolidated cases to determine whether LGBTQ+ people can be fired from their jobs or discriminated against simply for being who we are. Trans girls of color also face a epidemic of violence and murder; at least 18 Black transgender females are known to have been killed this year for now in the U.S. Alone.


I had once imagined I was destined to be someone’s old aunt although never a mom, and that I would habitually have to refer to my girlfriend as my roommate at family member gatherings. Today, I am happily, legally wedded to an extraordinary woman and we have a cute son we’re raising in a lovely house in a welcoming community. And while I’ve fought against stigmas as well as a second-class citizenship status in plenty of ways, my family member is, for the most part, accommodating and loving and accepting.


I’m so happy I was wrong about how coming out would affect my future, yet I also know I’m extraordinarily lucky. Young LGBTQ+ people face homelessness, bullying, rejection, depression, violence, and other health disparities at much higher rates than their straight and cisgender counterparts. Nearly half of all LGBTQ+ young people mention they reside in communities that are not supportive and 40 percent of all homeless youth are LGBTQ+. They are twice as likely as their peers to be physically assaulted, and 92 percent mention they hear negative messages about being LGBTQ+. As soon as it comes to accessing care and services, 1 in 5 transgender or gender non-conforming people report outright being rejected care and nearly 1/3 have been harassed in a healthcare setting.


And for several, the choice of coming out was not made for them. From McCarthyism to the Hollywood gossip machine, LGBTQ+ people have long been outed by others against their will and some days to their demise. In September, a classmate of 16-year-old Channing Smith outed him as bisexual on social media; the teenager from Manchester, Tennessee, later died by suicide. And then some people might not directly feel they require to tell people about their sexual or gender identities at all — but if backed into a corner or asked a question like the one my father posed to me, @they could feel obligated to respond before they are truly prepared to do so.


“Everyone’s situation and environment is different, so it isn’t safe for each person to come out as themselves,” Kevin Wong, head of communications for The Trevor Project, told MTV News. Resources like the Trevor Project Support Center and GLSEN issue services for LGBTQ+ youth, including suicide hotlines, support groups, and educational materials. Lambda Legal also lists resources for LGBTQ youth by state where young people can also seek in-person services.


Several young people who pick to come out right now have more autonomy to pick any time to come out and who to come out to, which means they have corporation over their own narratives. In the past year alone, the NFL’s Ryan Russell, rapper Lil Nas X, The Bachelor’s Demi Burnett, and Disney star Joshua Rush have all made such a decision for themselves. And the more major networks and corporations support members of the LGBTQ+ community on their own terms, the more young people receive affirmation about their identities, whether or not they’re out.


“While the concept of coming out is a more mainstream topic of discussion these days, and there really is more representation of LGBTQ+ people in media, the coming out process itself hasn’t changed all that drastically,” Brian Wenke, the executive director of the It Gets Better Project, told MTV News. “Coming out is a very personalized experience. Whether or not come out, why as well as how to do so, is dictated by several factors, including someone’s environment, family member and social circles, and personalized process.”


We have a possibility to flip the script. It’s due time we get to pick who we hope to have the privilege of knowing that we’re LGBTQ+. And it’s due time that each person is aware that coming out isn’t a decision to be made for anyone else.


The bottom line that there really is no regular for how best to come out, or perhaps once or how or why you have got to. Coming out has more than one answer, and a multitude of choices. One or none of those might be right for you. That should be up to you to decide.


We need this freedom right now more than ever.


To learn more about issues affecting the LGBTQ+ community, head to lgbt.Mtv.Com.