Life without coming out: guarding privacy, not forcing sexuality, or living a lie?
I have 16 years of experience with gay life without coming out. Because then I couldn't take it anymore and I had to tell someone. Being gay was a huge, heavy secret that was eating away at me. I had to tell the people around me at some point! But how would they react? What will it be like? What will happen then? Completely unsurprisingly, my very reasonable and accepting surroundings reacted just fine and everything was fine. I was lucky.
I never questioned telling anyone I was gay. It's always been a given for me - I have to tell people. Coming out was something I took as my duty, something I was supposed to do. It's just that when I think about it all these ten years later, and incorporate all my knowledge of the LGBT+ world, the world in general, society and the ugliness of the human race, I think maybe the duty thing isn't so hot after all.
Like a phoenix from the ashes?
The prevailing cultural notion of coming out is simple: Someone (usually a white cis male) sits down with his parents and, with tears in his eyes, tells them he's gay. Whatever the parents' reactions then, there is one principle that is important about this idea of coming out: it is the person in question who is revealing his or her "true" identity to someone. And he's actually lucky if people accept him. When that happens, the audience in the cinema or in front of the TV celebrates and wipes their eyes with emotion; when it doesn't, the gay hero has to resist the adversities of fate, go through the harrowing thorny path of living on his own after his family rejects him, and finally get the perfect job, partner, show everyone that he is normal, functional, beautiful, fit toto love, win back the love of his family, and rise like a phoenix from the ashes of rejection. And the audience cries again.
The problems of coming out
It's just that this concept of coming out contains several things that are problematic to say the least. First and foremost is the aforementioned notion that coming out has to be done. That it is necessary to tell others that we are gay/bi/trans/queer. That if we don't tell them, we're lying to them. That others have a right to know that we are "different".
Another problem is that when coming out is perceived in this way, queer people are in a subordinate position. They are announcing "the awful truth" and are at the mercy of how others then treat them. Accept? Will they reject? Coming out in this conception takes power out of the hands of queer people and hands it over to those who are not queer to decide the fate and well-being of those who come out as if it were their right.
And to top it all off, in this stereotypical coming out, queer identity is seen as something terrible, bad, binding. A person who hasn't yet told others that they are queer must necessarily be suffering, and only coming out is the path to freedom and flourishing. The English phrase "come out of the closet", literally "to come out of the closet", is actually a symbol of exactly this - in order to live freely, one must come out of the dark confined space of a small dungeon into the one true big shining world.
Invitation instead of abandonment
But the closet is a safe space. For many people, the stereotypical coming out is out of the question. Maybe because they'd lose the roof over their heads. Or their lives. It's inappropriate to force someone to come out in that situation. Maybe even perverse and despicable.
Yes, on the one hand, the more people in society who are publicly outed, the more people who are just normal gay, trans, bi, etc. the more normal it will be and the more acceptance there will likely be in society (even if it is a generation late), but forcing someone to come out is inappropriate.
Whether someone chooses to tell someone something of their private life is always their business. And it doesn't really matter if it's information about sexual orientation, a medical diagnosis, the status of his account, or even his partner status. To force information out of someone about whether they are gay, straight, have a penis between their legs, etc., or to further disseminate such information if the person is not completely comfortable with "being known" is an illegal crossing of personal boundaries.
So instead of coming out, the concept of invitation has been around for a few years now. Instead of leaving one's safe owl box because one "has to", it is up to one to invite someone into it. If he lets someone know more about himself. Telling someone about one's orientation is an expression of trust and one's own decision about who knows about that person's identity. So you could say that the fact that most people live blinded by a heteronormative understanding of the world is their downside. They don't see how colorful, beautiful, and interesting the real world is. They can only hope that someone will allow them to know it more intimately.
Zdroj: GiphyImposition vs. living a lie
On the other hand, of course, the question then arises whether such a life without coming out is not actually a life of lies. I think the answer is more complicated. And it has to do again with this distorted idea of what coming out is. For those who are not involved in the first-person announcement of queer identity are often completely unaware that coming out is not a single event, but a process. In fact, the whole life of LGBT+ people is a constant coming out.
This is because most people see the world in hetero- and cisnormative terms - they automatically think people are straight and cisgender. So when a queer person is going through life and even just not actively hiding their identity, all of these people are actually coming out at every moment.
So it goes hand in hand with the fact that coming out is not just one thing. And that it's perfectly possible to be openly queer in some areas of your life and in front of some people and not tell others. Ignorant people think that with that "one coming out" everything is already solved and that then the "until then straight" is "officially gay". It's a naive notion. And it's so ironic when an openly queer person is then accused of constantly imposing their sexuality or identity on someone else. He's not. He's just not hiding it.
So rather than talking about life without coming out, we should talk about life without coming out to everyone. Or a life where we choose who we let know we're queer. Or who we talk to, who we open up to. Of course someone "looks queer", no matter how hard they try to pretend. But that's not his problem. It's the problem of those who can't accept it. But it hurts a lot that instead of educating or persecuting these people, the anger is turned towards those who just exist.
But of course, there is also life in a lie. Someone cannot tell anyone about their identity. Out of fear or perhaps because they haven't found their way to themselves yet. And some people never find it and lie to their inner self that they are not queer. It's sad, but it's true. Still, it is not appropriate to force such a person to come out. It should never be forced. But it can be a helping hand. Including acceptance, openness, love, kindness. Guiding through a period of self-discovery and acceptance.
