The always awesome S. Bear Bergman put this up for National Coming Out
Day, and I immediately loved it, and shared it, like you do.
What surprised me was that a few people responded thinking it was sarcastic, not heartfelt. Bear said no one had interpreted that way before.
So it occurs to me that there is a subset of my readers, in particular, who take National Coming Out Day particularly hard: the crossdressers, surely, and even some (stealth) trans men and women. As groups, for the most part, they aren’t always or even often out. Sometimes they’re making sure to stay employed because of dependents. Sometimes a partner or spouse doesn’t want them to be. Sometimes it’s just easier for them not to, because they’re not the kind of people who want to explain shit all the time. (As I’ve always joked, I wrote my books so I could enjoy parties again.)
And recently I’ve been thinking about the alarming number of younger out folks who have committed suicide, and somewhat maternally wonder if maybe everyone shouldn’t be, or at the very least shouldn’t feel like they *have* to be. I still think there’s a huge difference between gays and lesbians vs. trans outness, but also, I now live in a place where the repercussions of being out are far more drastic than they might be elsewhere.
So maybe let’s remember that: all of us choose not just when and how we come out, but IF we do, and even why we might not. As per usual, let’s give ourselves some room for diversity of situation, judgment, and choices.
Love to you all whether or not you’re out. Pride doesn’t require us all to be the same.
I came out on July 26, 2005. It was something I felt comfortable doing. A person should come out when they feel comfortable doing. I do understand those who choose not to. You have my support and respect. Your safety is more important.
My own view on this, as a gay man who came out in 1974, and more recently as a trans woman, is that it is best to be out – unless you can see a good reason not to be. (And “fear” alone does not count as a good reason, though fear of something harmful that could happen AND is moderately likely to happen may be a good reason.) It often makes life simpler.
After I came out as gay, I made a point of remaining out all through my career in the oil business, and made only one exception. That exception was when my company loaned me to Kuwait, as an adviser to the state oil company. I felt that being out in such a position in a conservative Islamic country might make it harder to do my job, which might reflect badly on my own company. I think it was a reasonable viewpoint, though I learned, many years later, that the Kuwaitis knew anyway. (They obviously didn’t care very much, as they never referred to it in any way.)
As a trans woman I have been out most of the time, again with just one real exception. I dance quite a lot, and am taking lessons with a prestigious dance school in a large city, some 80 miles from where I live, with the hope of eventually performing with them (as a woman). I won’t give details, as it could blow my cover. If they realize I am trans, I know that I will fail their audition, however well I dance. I have already had an experience like that in a small town nearer to where I live, and don’t want it to be repeated. So I am not telling them. (Fortunately, I can pass when I want to.) Again, it seems reasonable to me to make this one exception to my usual principles.
I think that the situation for trans women is definitely different, and more complicated, than that for gay men, however. “Passing” and “being out” are, in the nature of things, incompatible. “Passing as straight” when you are gay is hard to defend morally, but “passing as your preferred gender” when you are trans is, for many people, a fundamental part of being trans.
I took it sarcastically. How lovely that someone who undoubtedly lives in a queer ghetto, and is surrounded in their private and professional lives by other queer people, feels such a level of sanctimonious privilege as to make value judgements on others, without any regard whatsoever for other people’s circumstances.
I find it tragic that we, as a community, have had the shit beaten out of us so many times by those outside of us, and then turn on ourselves and beat the shit out of each other.
We are Precious. It’s hard to hear that in a world full of raging, damaged, deluded souls who take their only amusement in bringing emotional and physical pain to others.
The world is already Hell. I prefer to take Bear at his word.
To clarify my comment above, I am just so used to “trannier than thou” people sticking the boot in to stealth people, that I automatically assume the worst.
For example Dallas Denny:
http://www.tgforum.com/wordpress/index.php/stealth-is-soul-destroying/
Or there’s Cristan William’s take:
http://www.transadvocate.com/a-rant-about-mtf-stealth_n_8806.htm
Precious, I could care less. It’s the self bit that had me pissed off. Closeted or stealth is always equated with selfishness. For me, I’m stealthy, or at least extremely compartmentalised, because otherwise I’d be unemployed, living in the ghetto, dysphoric as fuck. So I don’t disclose, and I get to be a fully functional person.
If that’s selfish then do be it.