LGBTQ Voices

I wish I didn’t have to come out—the first time or the innumerable times I have to do it every day. I wish I wasn’t the “queer” friend all of a sudden, no longer allowed to be the academic friend who happens to be queer. I hope that someday, I can theoretically interrogate queerness in my work, without needing to explain to people that I am queer. 

I remember walking into my first gender studies classroom, confused about and wanting to know what it meant to be a “woman.” I could never find a space within whatever I knew femininity to be, and I figured I was going to enter a space of knowing what my body meant in the absence of femininity. On the contrary, the space I entered seemed to make my entire existence a topic of debate. I was taught mostly by senior academics, trained in understanding the problems of cis women, claiming to comprehend the complexity of gender. And I was told that feminism equally meant an assertion of femaleness just as much as it meant androgyny. 

Androgyny in “female” bodies meant becoming male. I stood there, perplexed, wondering if my being was an inadequate resistance to the problems of patriarchy—were my hoodies a size too big and my jeans that slipped down even with a belt not enough as resistance, as rejection? Moreover, was I ever, in my nonbinary self, going to be allowed to exist? Would I ever be enough to no longer be seen as a “woman,” and would I be allowed a physical body that would ever be perceived outside an arbitrary category that I cannot understand?

I felt this line of debate continue into my coming out and after that, as well. In every instance that someone who knows my pronouns misgenders me or when I am told that I am “too sensitive” or when I am asked to educate the people who have the tools to do that themselves, I feel myself retreating into a corner I hope nobody finds me in. I remember coming out during the pandemic. I told a few friends, one of whom was with me. I remember her reaction: “Oh! Are lesbians averse to penises?” I do not think I will make as egregious an error as thinking this was a reaction borne from ignorance. 

I came out as nonbinary and was asked about something not only unrelated but simply terrible. I remember this friend, months later, trying so aggressively to support me as a queer friend, they forgot the complexity of my living an entire full and composite life. They wanted to see me as their sad queer friend, one who came to them in times of need, despite this violence and despite their “educate me” attitude. It’s especially complicated when the actions that make you feel small and insignificant are performed under the guise of friendship, of someone wanting to save you and alleviate pain caused by them—and much more, by the world.

A friend recently told me about how even when their queerness is celebrated, there is something still alienating when it comes from cis people. The celebration is fetishistic, vile and makes you feel observed and policed again. You become, in these spaces, a queer body whose existence is breaking norms. But never are you simply allowed the right to exist, to breathe, to live fully. Your body, your thoughts, your “complicated” feelings, are always fascinating, a sight to study, a revolution. But you aren’t a revolution; you’re an early 20-something who wants to get drunk and dance at a party. 

I shifted institutions recently, and now I am no longer a student. I teach some kids, and I insist they use my name, but they call me “ma’am.” When the institute wants to renovate the living space, their first suggestion is to cram me into a cis women’s space, forgetting once again who I am. I should not have to tell them. 

The onus to fight for space, for rights, for existing, should not always be placed on me. It’s exhausting and draining for queer people to have their entire mind, body and everything else understood as the other, the anomaly. Tokenistic and superficial fixtures do not make sense, when by design, by gaze and by “objective study,” we are sidelined and constantly made to feel like we have no right to inhabit space. We are not here to question the fragility of social codes; our existence is just outside of them. 

In some moments, though, you find immense care. Queer people do have a unique way of finding each other and doing for each other the difficult work of hearing painful stories, of understanding what it is like to exist within spaces that do not let you be seen or heard. We extend to each other friendship and moments of immense vulnerability; we hold on to each other. We let each other know that while we cannot fix institutions or universities, we can see each other. We can lend to each other the kindness of knowing each other in full complexity, as people who are queer, complicated and existing fully in a world that disallows it.

Love

I Wish You Could See Me as Queer and Complete

I grew up with a somewhat ambiguous idea about what I should be as a gay man. I came out in 2003, at age 16, and only because I had a huge crush on this guy in my German class who would rock up in shorts, while his tanned, muscly legs taunted me from across the room. Not able to keep the thirst to myself, I vomit-confessed everything to a girlfriend, who ironically had sent me love letters just a couple of years before. Poor Sarah.

In a way, I was finally at peace with my true self, relieved to finally not have to live a lie. The years of pretending I fancied the most popular girls in school—when really I just wanted to be them—was exhausting. But I had nobody like me—an introverted, working-class gay youth—to look up to, especially in the public eye.

While there have been gay characters on American TV for decades, their representation has been broad, colorful and often messy. In the 1970s, Hal Holbrook played a divorced dad who hid his sexuality from his son in the made-for-TV film That Certain Summer, which is believed to be one of the earliest sympathetic depictions of an LGBTQ+ character on our screens. In the 1990s, we had landmark moments like Ellen coming out in her self-titled series, plus the U.K. and U.S. versions of Queer as Folk, before probably the most famous of all, Will & Grace.

It was seen as radical at the time—and it is certainly still groundbreaking—to have gay protagonists. Will & Grace’s lead Debra Messing has been quoted as saying she didn’t think they’d make it past three episodes, which is extraordinary considering how successful the sitcom was and still is, two decades later. But shows like this and Queer as Folk dealt with stereotypes and cliches that made their characters difficult to empathize with. Don’t get me wrong, I love Will & Grace; in fact, I’m binge-watching it right now. But the gays are either rich (Will) or infantilized and have zero cares in the world (Jack). These weren’t exactly healthy or realistic goals for someone like me, who was just looking for something real.

We’re still told that richer is better, that money makes us complete, that this is the only way we’ll be accepted. According to a 2019 report by the Williams Institute, 22 percent of the LGBTQ+ community live in poverty, compared to 16 percent of cisgender straight people. This is, of course, extremely nuanced. Lesbian cisgender women and the transgender community fare worse than cisgender gay men, and if you’re an LGBTQ+ person of color or someone who identifies as disabled, the odds against you are even more stacked.  

Though white cisgender gay men like me are significantly more privileged than some of the other members of the LGBTQ+ community, the way we’re portrayed on screens and in the media is still unrealistic. As we are, thankfully, granted more rights—like being able to marry and being able to have our own children (if we’re out)—this utopian view of us living long, fruitful, easy lives is becoming more and more difficult and dangerous to digest.

Take having children, for example. My husband and I desperately want to start a family, but the amount of money it can cost, especially if you go down the surrogacy route, is kind of revolting. I’m in the U.K., and after pulling my hair out researching, I found that it can be as much as £50,000. In the U.S., you’re looking at between $60,000 and $150,000, though there are organizations that offer grants if you’re a citizen, like Baby Quest and helpusadopt.org. When I’ve told friends and family how hard it will be, they’re shocked. Why? Because all they see is "poster gay parents," like Neil Patrick Harris and Ricky Martin, who, on the face of it, seem to pluck children out of thin air—or, at least, this is what the non-LGBTQ+ people I have spoken to see.

I blame the “pink dollar,” a marketing term coined in the 1990s, which singled out cisgender gay men and women in particular and the need to take advantage of their supposed disposable income. The positives of this were considerable, creating an opportunity for these groups to legitimize themselves through their purchasing power and demonstrate their value to mainstream companies. It may now seem frivolous but great strides in equality were made through this initiative. Trouble is, the pink dollar came to represent all of our community, with no subjectivity.

As we have gained more rights, our priorities seem to be changing. When Will & Grace aired, its titular gay character was able to lend his friend, Jack, thousands of dollars without a moment’s hesitation. Now we’re starting our own families and, dare I say it, worrying about the same things that our cisgender heterosexual counterparts have been for centuries.

Such people still represent the minority of the LGBTQ+ population. The reality is, we’re not all millionaires who can have designer babies, and many of us are unable to even purchase a house because of the discrimination we face. According to research published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, 73 percent of same-sex couples were more likely to be denied a mortgage than financially similar heterosexual couples.

Though many of us embrace our uniqueness, we are starting to strive for "normality" and conforming to this idea of settling down. Perhaps things are gradually changing. On TV screens, we’re starting to see a wider range of experiences and, more significantly, storylines that don’t center around our sexualities. In Euphoria, the lead character Rue is a complex, beautiful queer human. Even cartoons are getting in on the action, with She-Ra and the Princesses of Power as a glowing example. Finally, it seems like we have role models for young LGBTQ+ people to look up to—and more importantly, relate to.

I want people to stop making assumptions about me and my community. I want to be seen as a person with my own journey—not just somebody who stands under a large, colorful umbrella. At the same time, I want acknowledgment for how much harder our journeys are, especially when it comes to having kids. Is that so much to ask?

Money

The Legacy of the Pink Dollar: Gay Cliches Have Created Unattainable Myths

I once had a therapist tell me that sex is a point of contention in a lot of relationships. One person wants more sex, one person wants less. It causes friction. 

I came out as asexual when I was 22 years old. I was married at the time, and while it wasn’t the only reason we split up, it was a major contributing factor. After I came out, my spouse told me that they weren’t sure if they could be in love with me if we weren’t having sex. “This isn’t what I signed up for when we got married,” they told me. I tried really hard to be accommodating of their needs and, desperate to keep our relationship going, I would sleep with them even though I didn’t want to. This was traumatic for me.

It’s really important to make three things clear. 

The first is that asexuality is a legitimate thing, just like any other sexual orientation. There just isn’t as much attention given to it, and it’s my firm belief that there are a lot more of us out there than many think. Because people are somewhat inherently self-focused, it’s difficult for a sexual person to understand the concept of someone not wanting to have sex. We also live in a hyper-sexualized society; this isn’t new information, and I don’t think I really need to spend an exorbitant amount of time explaining what I mean. But popular media portrays the lack of interest in sex as childish and temporary. 

The second is that asexuality is a spectrum. There are some asexual people who simply experience sexual attraction rarely. There are some who can only experience sexual attraction if they have a deep emotional connection with the other person. Your place on the spectrum does not invalidate your asexuality. 

The third is that no matter what your sexual orientation is, expecting anyone to have sex when they don’t want to is messed up. Period. 

People tend to equate being asexual to having zero interest in romantic relationships. And while there are some strictly platonic beings, a lot of asexual people still want to be in romantic relationships like anyone else. For sexual people, sex is generally an intense source of intimacy. So much so that other sources don’t appear as significant in comparison. But those other sources of intimacy are what I live for. Making dinner together, taking walks, holding hands, kissing—these are the things that make me feel romantically connected with someone. 

This isn’t to say that sexual people don’t experience intimacy from these things. It’s just that asexual people only have these forms of expression. When my ex-partner told me they didn’t know if they could be in love with me if we weren’t having sex, it cut deep. It felt like all of those little things that made me feel close to them meant nothing. And while that’s probably somewhat of an embellishment created by hurt feelings, one thing was clear: Sex mattered a lot more.

After my marriage ended, I started seeing a girl with whom I’d attended high school. I had made a post on Instagram when I came out and, one day, when we were hanging out at a bar, she wanted to be sure. “Are you really?” she asked, with an overly concerned look on her face, waiting for me to answer. I explained what my asexuality looked like, and though I could tell that she didn’t totally get it, she told me it didn’t bother her. I truly believed that but we ran into a lot of the same issues that I did when I was married. When I said no, her disappointment was palpable. When I said no, she would try to change my mind. 

Part of the issue was that I was still timid about my own sexuality. I operated as if I wasn’t asexual most of the time, and I was faced with the expectations that are put on a sexual person. I don’t think she could completely wrap her head around the idea that I hated sex, though she said she was OK with it.

I think that this cognitive dissonance is a big part of why it’s so hard to date sexual people as a non-sexual person. It’s 2021, and a majority of people acknowledge and respect different sexualities. But since there’s such a fundamental difference between asexuality and other sexual orientations, it tends to be acknowledged consciously but invalidated on a subconscious level. 

I’ve only been out for a few years, but I’ve always known that something about me was a little different. And ever since sex was on the table as a possibility—out or not—I’ve been expected to have sex when I don’t want to time and time again. As I navigate the dating world, I realize more and more that I have to be more willing to advocate for myself in those situations. But I think that if other people tried to understand asexuality better, it would be a little easier.

Doe Print Value - Curiosity

I'm Asexual: This Is Why It’s So Difficult to Date

In January, I took my first dose of estrogen. I decided to start my transition and embark on my own journey with gender-affirming care, also known as hormone replacement therapy (HRT). The estrogen I’ve introduced to my body will achieve a certain level of physical change. I have never been happier in my entire life. 

I don’t believe giving the reason behind my transition is required, but I do want to talk openly about what motivated me to do this because I have a strong feeling that someone, even just one person, might benefit from my story. I know when I was first struggling with the decision to begin HRT that I felt that there was hardly anything out there that spoke to what I was personally feeling. My intention with this piece is to encourage people to take a deeper look into the meaning of identity, our self-imposed limitations and ultimately expand our understanding of what it means to be trans or to transition.

I’ll start by prefacing I came out as a gay man when I was 17. I came out as non-binary when I was 24. And now I’m coming out as trans at 28. It is very important to mention that there isn’t just one way to be trans, something that I even had a hard time understanding at the beginning. Our identities are forever changing, growing and expanding, and exploring my gender is simply the next chapter of my journey. I want this to be super clear: This is where I am presently with my identity and this may change, and that’s OK. It’s my journey, my own experience, and it is by no means meant to be representative of all trans experiences. I hope you will afford me the same leniency and space to explore my identity that I had to learn to afford myself. 

Today, I identify as queer, non-binary, trans, trans-feminine and transgender. I no longer identify as gay. And, transparently, I’m having a hard time identifying as a trans woman at the moment because I believe the term “woman” is indicative of wishing to achieve yet another level of the gender binary. Although, like anything mentioned in this essay, my feelings towards this may change in the future. I learned from past mistakes to never speak to my identity in finite terms; rather, I embrace my continuous growth and evolution. For the sake of this piece I will be using the term "trans" when referring to myself, my experience and the transgender, GNC (gender-nonconforming), non-binary community. 

In our society, regardless of how much I wish it wasn’t the case, there are two recognized genders: man and woman. And while there have been strides made to be inclusive of trans individuals, I feel that a lot of people's understanding of what it means to be trans is, simply put, a man trying to be a woman, or a woman trying to be a man. It is easy for people to understand that because it's just a matter of checking the “F” box instead of the “M,” or vice versa. But it’s so much more than that. What I’d like to pose is, what if there were more options? What happens when the “M” and “F” boxes feel like they don’t apply to you?

If you’ll bear with me, I want to recount what I’ve experienced and the moments that ultimately led me to start gender-affirming care. I think we can all agree that 2020 was a hard year and, truthfully, I wasn’t prepared for it. Like for many of us, the solitude led to a lot of thinking. Fundamental questions would arise about my life and the life I wanted and, this time, I was forced to address them head-on.

Since I was a child, I’ve questioned my gender hundreds of times throughout my life. This is nothing new. The question of whether I was trans or not has come up for years and I would often satiate its persistence with “I don’t think so,” or, “I don’t have a hatred for my penis so I must not be.” These answers would suffice until a few months or years would pass and that question bore its way back into my mind. 2020 forced me to look at it and address it. For the first time, I couldn’t distract myself from that line of questioning. My heart knew that it needed answers and it absolutely petrified me. 

I haven’t told a lot of people this, but growing up, I used to spend my time after school in the shower crying, praying and begging God not to be gay. Growing up Catholic, I thought that would work. I remember promising myself that I would never be gay, as if it was a switch that I could just turn on and off. I was so afraid of not being “perfect” in the eyes of others. Think about how crazy that is. Let's just say, as I started to look back on my past, I began to see a pattern of denial.

One morning, I decided to give myself permission to explore this side of myself. “Maybe I am gay and so what?” I said on waking up. At that moment, everything changed, and I came out to my mom that morning. I literally woke up from a sex dream of a guy I had a crush on in high school, and when I woke up there was no denying it anymore. I loved men! It was like a eureka moment to me, even though my queerness was probably obvious to everyone except myself. I just hadn’t come to accept it.

My journey with gender identity has felt similar to this. And this time, as the questions around my transness would arise, my denial would slowly erode. I’ve always been someone who was different in both the straight world and even the gay world. I’ve never really felt connected to gay male culture, and even in that world I’m not the “standard.” It was like I came out of the womb just looking for somewhere to belong. But as I’ve gotten older, I care less and less about belonging and care more about being happy. 

Oftentimes, my desire to appear perfect to other people has led me to cater to what I believe other people want instead of actually listening to what I want. The fear of no longer seeming perfect, or no longer being desirable to others, was enough to dictate my identity, and ultimately have ramifications to my mental health. In short, I was deathly afraid of being considered unlovable. 

The sad truth is I didn’t believe that trans people were considered “loveable” to other people. It’s the reality that I, until recently, hadn’t seen a trans person in pop culture or in real life that experienced the type of love that all other people are free to experience. It was the irrational belief that if I were to transition, no one would love me, and I would just need to be OK living a lonely existence. In reality, I was in such denial of who I was that I believed I would be happier being what I thought someone else wanted just to be considered worthy of their love. This is the farthest thing from true. Trans people are loveable. 

It took knowing that real trans people of all experiences have fulfilling, healthy and loving relationships that I was able to finally address this fake belief. I had to reprogram my own mind and deconstruct this fallacy, one that likely came from the often sad and tragic narratives about trans people force-fed through the media. Many trans characters in mainstream entertainment are cast in such a negative light—most get murdered, find addiction and die, or get a disease and die. In this context, how is someone supposed to believe they are worthy of things as simple as a loving relationship? The lack of inclusion and variation in trans narratives is the very reason I knew I needed to share this vulnerable part of myself with you.

Another dangerous belief that delayed my gender-affirming care is that being transgender means having an aversion or hatred for the sex with which I was biologically born—that a hatred for my body was required in order to qualify for the right to transition. To really drive this home and make it as simple as possible for you: I do not hate my penis. Confused? Here’s the deal. 

Most of us trans and non-binary people have complicated relationships with our bodies to begin with, and most people often assume we just detest them, that we simply view ourselves in the mirror with disgust, loath our genitals and regard our bodies as something we can never accept. That we might happily use these parts for sexual pleasure is often shocking and hard for some to compute. And while my genitalia is not a source of gender dysphoria for me personally, it can be for many trans individuals. But it is not the default, and it is not a qualification to determine whether you are trans enough.

For those who don’t know, “Gender dysphoria is the feeling of discomfort or distress that might occur in people whose gender identity differs from their sex assigned at birth or sex-related physical characteristics.” It’s nearly impossible for me to explain how it feels to experience, but I will do my best. 

I didn’t experience gender dysphoria in that way, but I did when it came to other parts and aspects of my male body. From the beginning, I was born in a body that was “non-traditionally male.” Meaning, I’m not tall, don’t have big muscles and I don’t have a lot of body hair. My body innately started at a more feminine baseline, which is not the case for many trans-feminine people. And while I never developed that hatred for my male parts in a similar way to what common trans narratives portray, I still experience gender dysphoria. 

The onset of secondary male sex characteristics, like hair loss and thicker body, has affected me. I think it’s often been used as a joke in my family because my level of anxiety when it comes to these things has always been extreme and can appear comical to someone on the outside. And, please, before your mind confuses this as an issue of mere vanity, let me explain.

These particular secondary sex characteristics aren’t the only thing that has prompted gender dysphoria for me throughout the years, but the impact of these particular traits has left ramifications to my mental health and has left me to venture into the dark spaces of my mind where I would rather not go. 

As these secondary sex characteristics became more prevalent in me over the years, I realized I was ultimately going to have to age like a man. No matter what I did, I was destined on a course towards an inevitable end I knew that I didn’t want for myself. Suddenly, the feminine disposition I was born with, which comes naturally with being young, didn’t matter. In fact, it was slipping away from me with each passing day. There was nothing I could do to hold onto what femininity I did have. The amount of anxiety I felt waking up would grow in intensity with each buzz of my morning alarm until it became debilitating. I was bedridden, in a weeks-long depression. I felt trapped and subscribed to a future I didn’t want.

The hardest part of all of this has been coming to personally accept this part of myself. It took months of fighting, trying to convince myself that this wasn’t who I am, and doing my best to justify why I am not trans. Looking back, I think I would have inevitably gotten to this point in my life and possibly would have gotten here earlier with my current understanding. And I’m very sure that no one chooses this life for themselves—quite honestly, it’s not easy. This is just truly and purely who I am. 

And as I continue this journey, I have begun to love my transness. Once ashamed, I now see my transness as my superpower. I believe that I am neither man, nor woman, but simply me. I believe trans people transcend our understanding of society and experience life beyond the limitations of most people. I feel as though I have achieved a "me" who is completely uninhibited and untethered from society's expectations, and I believe I am capable of anything, endlessly. While my path and journey are hard ones, I feel so blessed to be transgender. 

I believe through my vulnerability and sharing my story, I may possibly help someone, possibly even save someone. And I fully intend to commit my life to the visibility and inclusion of transgender people of all backgrounds. I realize where I am privileged, and I intend to use my privilege to uplift my community. I will share my story, loud and proud, for all of us to hear and to remind people, we are here. And for those people who have struggled with their identity like I have, or identify as anything of than cis-gendered, I want to let you know that I see you. 

It doesn't matter if no one else can, because I do.

My Trans Journey With Gender-Affirming Care

“They can’t fire you,” my roommate explained. “You didn’t do anything!”

I glanced her way as I spit toothpaste into the sink. Then my gaze fell to the ground as I tried to convince myself that what she was saying was true.

“Yeah, you know what? You’re right. I didn’t do anything. Everything will be fine.”

A few days earlier, word had spread around the campus of our Christian college that a resident advisor in one of the dorms had been fired, and as much as the school’s administration tried to cover it up, we all knew why. The mere mention of a same-sex relationship or encounter was enough to get you sent to mandatory counseling. It didn’t take much imagination for us to put it together.

Shortly after the firing, the rest of the resident assistants had a secret meeting. We pooled into a small apartment to be briefed on the situation. I don’t remember much about what was said. All I could think was: I’m next.

The following day I received a phone call from my boss, the head of residence life, asking me to come to his office for a talk. It would be the first of eight meetings that I’d have over the next 24 hours. From his office, I went to the counseling center, to my own personal counselor off-campus, back to campus to meet with the head of the counseling center and finally back to my boss’ office again—where I answered the same questions I’d answered just a few hours before. Each meeting had different elements, but all shared the same goal of determining whether my presence was a risk to the campus.

The ultimate decision was up to the school’s president and vice president. In each meeting I went to, I was told that all the information I shared would be reported back to them. What I didn’t know was that they’d already made their decision. Ten minutes after it ended, I received a phone call to come to my final meeting, where I was brought into the disciplinary office and greeted by a face that I knew well. I had been a discipleship group leader in one of her classes the year prior.

She had tears in her eyes. Turning her face toward me she said, “I’m so sorry to do this, but the university has determined that you are a risk to the campus and we need you to move out of your dorm by noon tomorrow.” I remember asking why, but I already knew. Later I would find out that the wealthy parents of a few students had called and complained about gay RAs. They threatened to pull their children from the school and pull their funding for new buildings that were already being constructed on campus. It was the worship of money and devotion to fear that determined my fate that day.

I remember walking out of that meeting, not being able to feel anything. Five more meetings followed and carried on late into the night. I packed and moved out the next morning, storing all of my belongings at my friend’s place and sleeping on her floor.

The first night, I laid on her bedroom carpet, surrounded by the boxes holding everything that I owned, and thought back to my roommate telling me that they couldn’t fire me. But they had. They’d wielded their power as a private Christian university to throw me away. I’d given everything to the university—to my friends, colleagues, professors and bosses. I’d led countless groups and events. I was consistently pouring out all of the love I had within me. But there I lay, flat on the ground, outed to the entire university, with no home, no money and no job.

I honestly do not know how I managed to graduate the following semester, or how I’m still here today to write down these memories. At the beginning of 2016, I was admitted to a mental health facility after a suicide attempt. On the night I tried to take my own life, I writhed and cried on my bedroom floor, begging, “I just want to be free.” I had grown tired of carrying my own story—the memories, the grief, the betrayal.

Little did I know I’d end up getting free after all, at a hospital alongside other women who wanted the same thing. Twelve of them watched me be wheeled into the ward. After being processed, I sat down at the family-style table in the middle of the room. A few other women were coloring, and without a word, they passed me the colored pencils. Just like that, I was welcomed into their circle. We were women who had been chewed up and spit out by the world, carrying more spiritual weight than our bodies could hold. Yet we came together in this dark and awful place and offered each other what the world had denied us: a place where we felt welcome. We made it for ourselves, with matted hair, no bras and worn scrubs.

A couple of days into my stay, one of the women came up to me and asked me about myself. Her first question was, “So do you have a boyfriend?”

She quickly replied, “Well, do you have a girlfriend?”

We both laughed, and as I smiled, I found myself lost in wonder at how simple and easy this part of my life could be.

Maybe I didn’t have to explain myself to every Christian friend who wanted to know how I thought being gay was acceptable. Maybe I could leave that whole community behind and start over among people who would accept me.

Women

New Beginnings

I Was Fired for Being Gay, but Now I'm Free

Drugs & Alcohol

Up, up and away! Time to get out of the house with The Doe.

Travel

Stories that can only be told from the land of the free, home of the brave.

American Stories

Motherhood

Earth Day or any day, let's celebrate our planet. 

Mother Earth

Tearjerkers

The Doe celebrates its authors this Black History Month.

Black Voices

Extra, extra, read all about it! The news-media industry has shifted dramatically over the last decade—heck, within the last two years. Between print journalism, podcasting, social media and infotainment, The Doe turns over every rock in this evolving ecosystem.

Media

Stories of starting over and finding the fresh.

The ol' nine to five has changed quite a bit in the past couple of years, from working remotely to, well, not working at all. This month we take a look at how cash still does rule in our capitalist society and what the future of business and money might just look like.

The Doe's editorial team takes a look back at the year and shares its favorite narratives.

Best of 2021

I don’t remember my first kiss. I remember my second kiss, the kiss I told everyone for seven years was my first kiss because I was so ashamed of my real first kiss being with a girl. Years of lying and internalized homophobia completely erased any memory of my first kiss. I can’t help but wonder what else I’ve lost because of the homophobic environment in which I was raised. 

As a lesbian living in Oklahoma, I grew up around constant homophobia. Of course, nobody—myself included—realized I was gay while I was living there. I spent 21 years thinking I was a heterosexual woman when I didn’t even like speaking to men. I know there are layers to this. Obviously, I was in denial about my sexuality—that much is a given. I still get caught up in that even though I would regularly make out with my best friend; I still thought I wasn’t gay. 

If I were gay, wouldn’t I just know? “This was just about experimenting,” I thought. Everyone does it at some point! That level of cognitive dissonance makes me wonder if perhaps part of my own denial was rooted in a subconscious desire to keep myself safe. 

It wasn’t unusual for families to kick their kids out in my hometown if they were gay. I was lucky enough to make friends in high school who showed me that everyone isn’t like that. To be clear, my family didn’t ever kick me out or threaten to do so, but they made it crystal clear that the “gay lifestyle” was not one that they accepted or thought my sister or I would be a part of. 

I remember the first time I met gay people in real life (that I knew of, anyway); my dad introduced me to a lesbian couple with whom he’d been working for over a decade. He later told me that he didn’t mind them, specifically because they “didn’t rub their sexuality in [his] face.” From an elementary age, it was beaten into my head that gay people should live their lives silently and in hiding. I’d watch TV with my family only to hear negative comments during the rare times there was any kind of queer representation. “Ugh, I don’t know why that is necessary,” or, “I just wasn’t raised to think that is OK,” or, from a grandparent I thought was more progressive, “Ew, so they let fags on TV now?” The word “gay” was rarely ever used, as if it were dirty and we’d catch it if we spent too much time even hearing queer terms.

I was two years into my college and over a thousand miles away from my hometown before I realized I might possibly be into women. Even when I came to this realization, it was only because I was surrounded by queer friends and realized that everything they said about being queer felt like they were taking thoughts I didn’t even realize were inherently queer directly out of my head. It took a pandemic and months of isolation and self-reflection (plus a not-so-subtle comment from a lesbian friend that every man I had ever found attractive looked like a woman) to realize I wasn’t into men at all—to realize I was a lesbian. 

Since then, I have become vocal about LGBTQ+ rights, as well as my own lesbian identity on social media, much to the apparent chagrin of my family. When I came out publicly, everyone on my dad’s side of the family stopped talking to me. I spent two years almost entirely outcast from my family. I wasn’t invited to holidays, family events or even my cousin’s wedding.

My family now says they’re not homophobic. In fact, they “never have been” and they’re sorry I’ve ever “felt that way.” The kid in me who never felt accepted by her parents wants to believe them, if not just so I can have the relationship I have always craved. I want to be able to ignore our past. I want to be able to have a relationship separate from opinions on sexuality, but how can I do that when so much of my identity is related to being a lesbian? 

I often look back and think about how my life would have been different if I knew I was gay growing up. Would I have had a girlfriend before college? Would I have avoided my abusive relationship for almost a year? I watch movies and TV shows about queer teens that have come out in recent years and think to myself, “This could have been me, if only I had known.” The perspective has shifted a bit—all the signs were right in front of me.

As a freshman in high school, I regularly kissed a female friend and had suspiciously close female friendships that typically ended in explosive friendship breakups. I had absolutely zero interest in men—even when I was dating them. Of course, ignorance probably played a role in my denial, but I think, for the most part, I was so scared of what could happen to me if I were gay that I couldn’t even let myself consider it. 

I want to push down my feelings toward my family. I’m torn between wanting to form a relationship with my parents for my younger self and cutting myself off from my family to protect my queer identity and my future self. Sometimes, I can succeed in repressing my feelings of resentment toward my mother, but forgiving her for 18 years of conditioning me to hate a fundamental part of who I am feels like a betrayal. It’s not just a betrayal to my younger self but a betrayal to all of the young LGBTQ+ kids in hostile home environments who may not have the opportunity or ability to fight back. 

Coming to terms with and understanding my sexuality was a process that came with a great deal of grief, self-loathing and abandonment from family and friends alike. I had to grieve the idea of myself created in the image of what people wanted me to be. I had to grieve the aspirations I had for the future, which I wasn’t attached to until I realized they no longer fit in the picture. I’m still realizing daily that things I have dreamed of for years were never my dreams to begin with. The more I discover about myself, the more I realize I hardly knew myself at all. I was a shell of who I could be, who I’m desperately trying to be now, masquerading as anything everyone else wanted me to be.

Now I’m faced with a family who says they love me for who I am, a family who wants to see me, spend time with me and have a relationship with me. I’m out, I’m loud and I am proud of who I am, but when I spend time with my family, I feel small, defenseless, exposed and uncertain. I’m constantly reminded that while they may say that they accept me for who I am, they wish I was someone else. Someone who agrees with them, who marries a nice man and settles down to pop out a few kids—definitely not a vocal lesbian with tattoos, piercings and an inclination to start arguments with just about anyone when necessary. 

Can they even love me if they have to compartmentalize my personality to do so? Can they love me if they would choose to have a different baby almost 24 years ago if it meant that baby would be straight? I want to believe that they can, but the 14-year-old queer kid who thought she was a disgusting mistake for kissing her best friend is having a much harder time accepting that. 

My gut says I should leave my family behind and rely on found family and myself. Unfortunately, my heart still has a hard time letting them go, and I find myself wanting to see the best in them and hoping that one day they will change. Why is it that after 24 years of proving to me who they are as people, I still find myself not believing them?

Ancestry

I Don’t Know If I Should Forgive My Homophobic Family

I never thought I’d have kids. Or rather, I thought that I hated them, and so the idea of being responsible for one just never occurred to me. Besides, I was too busy going out and grinding up against a new man every night, drinking way too much and taking enough drugs to almost bring on a heart attack, at least in my 20s. (OK, into my early 30s too.)

Kids, for me, were a reminder of the bullying I experienced as a young queer person. (Even as an adult, when I encounter a group of teens, I still expect abuse.) Kids were for cis, heterosexual people. Let them have the “normal” aspirations. Let them have the dirty diapers and broken sleep.

Then, something changed. Was it from getting older? Getting married? Moving out of the big city I’d lived in since I was 20? Because of COVID and the subsequent lockdown in 2020, my husband and I didn’t see the point in continuing to pay extortionate rent for an urban existence we couldn’t enjoy and instead moved to a seaside town to live with an elderly member of his family. There’s nothing like a pandemic to force you to see life differently and to give you a vastly different perspective on things. Here we were, out of the rat race and done with working jobs we disliked but had been unsure before how to leave. There was more to life, you know? 

Truthfully, I think what really changed was actually looking after a pair of kids—my sister-in-law’s, to be exact. While she went off to work, my husband and I looked after her 6-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter, scaring them with tales of T. Rexes, teaching them math and—my personal favorite—building forts out of Frozen merchandise. I thought I’d be so awkward with them, not knowing what to say or what to do, but I felt like a natural. Even watching them by myself one afternoon and taking them for cake—which they subsequently threw around and generally behaved like little arseholes—didn’t put me off. In fact, I quite liked it. It was nice to feel like an actual responsible adult for once.

Because in my experience as a queer person, feeling responsible isn’t something that has historically come naturally to me. I know many people my age who aren’t LGBTQ+ could, and would, say the same thing, and they’re totally entitled to that. But I feel like the media, culture and our surroundings tell people like me that we should just be content having fun with our poodles and fabulous wardrobes instead of doing grown-up things. Even if we’ve wanted to feel responsible by settling down and starting families, such journeys in life and aspirations haven’t felt accessible—they’re still a cis, heterosexual “thing.”  

As someone who is very conscious of his queerness, I’ve gotten used to feeling othered and that I don’t quite belong. I’m also naturally a very observant person, often preferring to just watch and listen during a conversation with friends rather than vocally getting stuck in. So I can see quite keenly what kind of world I am in from the margins and what kind of life path many cis, heterosexual people are expected to follow. I’ve gotten used to seeing what feels like everyone having kids. Cis, heterosexual people don't think anything of it—why would they? For many (though not all), it's just another rite of passage that's taken for granted because it's so easy. 

It's not easy for my husband and I to have children. The two options we’re considering are adoption and surrogacy, but the latter can cost up to $150,000 once you factor in embryo creation, fertility clinic fees and surrogate expenses, among other things. Plus, it’s more difficult in the U.K. than the U.S., where being a surrogate is essentially a business, and if you’ve got the funds, you can get one as easily as your weekly groceries. (OK, maybe not quite.) I say “considering,” but the reality of us becoming dads is just such an overwhelming prospect, especially when we can barely afford our weekly coffee budget. We’d like to become dads before we’re 40, but right now, that just feels impossible.

Now my little sister has a month-old baby. She’s a weird little thing, more alien than human at this point, but just looking at her is a wondrous experience. On one hand, I’m reminded of the miracle of creating life, but again, how much easier that can be for some people. My sister and her partner didn’t necessarily plan to start a family; they just stopped using birth control—“If it happens, it happens.” What I would give to have the privilege of such flippancy. 

I love being an uncle, and it is far more than what some LGBTQ+ people who want their own kids have. I can’t forget how lucky I am in that respect. But is it enough to slyly teach my sister-in-law’s kids to be subversive, to think their dad is a dickhead when he flaunts his narrow-minded views at them? To look forward to reading my sister’s daughter all of the books I used to love as a youngster? It's so hard being close to them but feeling like I have so little control. We just wish our family would understand more about what it's like being LGBTQ+ and how we struggle with knowing that we might never be more than “the fun uncles” to a child.

From what I can see, it’s becoming easier for LGBTQ+ people who want to become parents. The envious feelings I have as I watch our nieces and nephew grow up may one day start to ebb. But unfortunately, I don’t think there’s going to be a drastic change in our ability to have kids quickly enough. I think—or rather, I hope—that won’t be the case for future generations of LGBTQ+ people. Of that, I’m certainly less jealous. 

My Sister Had a Baby: It's Not Easy Being Happy for Her—Because I'm Queer

Six months ago, I spoke the unspeakable. I looked my parents in the eyes and told them I’m bisexual and have a girlfriend.

My mom and dad were the kindest people I’d ever known. They taught me to respect people fully and deeply under any circumstance, but that day, I saw them stripped of everything they’d taught me.

It was a six-hour-long conversation. Though I’d call it a football match, where my mom and dad kicked me back and forth until the clock painfully struck 6:00 a.m.

From midnight to 6 in the morning, they insulted me until they’d consumed all my self-worth and pride. Everything was so painful that I started scratching the skin around my tattoo with the golden bracelet my girlfriend had gotten me. I desperately wanted to erase that mother-daughter tattoo when my mom said, “So, I have a retarded child, and there’s no cure?” My bisexuality was a plague to our family.

Nothing has been the same since. The child my parents were most proud of was gone and replaced with a nostalgic idea of their old daughter—before she came out as queer.

I’ve become a ghost to my parents while I’m still breathing, still flesh and bone.

Growing up in Muslim culture, I knew there was no space for queer people. I constantly woke up to the news of trans men being murdered or gay teens being kicked out of their homes.

One night, a trans woman drove through the Bosphorus Bridge and committed suicide. Minutes before her surrender, she recorded a video for her mom. Crying and with a hopeless voice, she said, “I never wanted this, Mom. They made me do it.”

Although our religion was founded on respect and kindness, Muslim culture struggles to accept queer people. Knowing that my fellow Muslims would see me as sinful damaged my mental health. Knowing that my own parents might leave me unprotected left me suffocated.

So my sexuality never came to me with a full pride badge. In a culture like this, being cisgender or heterosexual, which fall into the normative gender spectrum, are the requirements for pride. When you fall outside these definitions, it feels impossible to be proud.

Instead, I hid and repressed my desire for women, hoping I wouldn’t have to reopen those doors.

Admitting my bisexuality wasn’t easy. There were so many days I wished I could go back to being normal.

But over time, I decided to come to terms with it. I started believing I could be proud of my sexuality. Although I was closeted to my parents, I wanted to come out to my friends. Unfortunately, it didn’t help. While most of them accepted my sexuality, they still thought I was chaotic.

“I’d understand it better if you came out as a lesbian, you know?” my best friend said. She went on: “Do you really think this is normal? It’s OK if you want to experiment, but eventually, you have to come back. You can’t possibly be attracted to both sexes for the rest of your life. How are you going to choose one? There’s no need to cause so much chaos.”

I’ve never understood why my sexuality perplexes people so much. The most challenging part of coming out as bisexual is that people never see me as human but as a science project to observe and study. They want to know what’s going on in my mind and how I’ve ended up like this: perverse and freakish.

But they could never read me—us—so we end up categorized under “unknown.”

I’d always yearned for approval and acceptance from these people. But the more I wanted to see a warm welcome in their eyes, the more they alienated me and pushed me out.

I spent so much time trying to explain myself to others, trying to explain that I don’t choose a gender but a person. That I don’t care about the person but the personality, just like everyone else. That in the end, I just want someone to fall in love with.

I never quite succeeded. I was always greedy in their eyes, someone who doesn’t know what she wants so she just takes everyone. The more people tried to label me, the more I felt detached from my sexuality and identity.

People didn’t know how to handle me, so I just had to accept I was a freak. No one heard me when I told them I meant no harm.

For so long, I fought inner battles trying to believe I was normal. There was a deep shame in my sexuality and identity because my world wasn’t empathetic and inclusive enough. I despised who I was and had very low self-esteem. I thought that it was not only easy for people to hate me but also that I was impossible to love.

It took me a while to stop looking for validation in other people, but eventually, I stopped trying to fit into people’s expectations and labels. That’s when I met my girlfriend.

My girlfriend gives me a form of love I haven’t experienced before. She makes the world stop while laying next to me and looking into my eyes. She gave me a reason to believe that I’m perfect as I am and should be proud. And with that love and pride, I went to my parents. I’d buried who I am inside for so long that I could feel a fire burning under my skin.

My parents raised me with much love. I thought they would want me to find a person who loves me the way my girlfriend does, regardless of gender. My parents gave me the world so I could be happy. But they hated the world in which I was happy. My girlfriend gave me heaven, and my parents refused to be a part of it.

Although I’d reconciled with my sexuality over time, all my progress got erased after coming out to my parents.

It takes a lot to want to be yourself when you realize you're different. It takes a lot to love what society condemns as sinful. It takes a lot to imagine having a family with your girlfriend and believe in that dream. It takes a lot to be happy when what makes you happy kills another part of you.

In our lives, all types of love affect and rewrite our identity. They all bring and take pieces from us. When we lose a friend or our partner’s love, we can find someone else to replace that love. But it doesn’t matter who comes and goes because we at least always have that same tree branch we sit on. It’s solid, warm, stable and protects us against earthquakes. It’s a place we can always go back to. It’s essentially who we are.

Losing my parents because of my sexuality felt like that branch had broken. The stability was gone, and I lost the essential sense of knowing who I am. Parental love isn’t something you can replace or a void you can fill. And that feels shameful. It’s hard to admit that the two people who raised me with so much love wanted me out of the picture. While I’m proud of myself for coming out, I wish I could look in the mirror and be fully comfortable with my reflection.

I heard from my aunt recently that my mom has been mourning. It must be hard for her to lose a daughter. But thinking that my mom is mourning for my loss while I’m still alive inflicts so much pain and reopens the wounds of shame.

So I’ll pass on Pride this year. I used to feel so hopeful during this time of the year, looking at the rainbow flags outside or on social media posts. I’d be amazed by our community. But seeing them now only frustrates me.

I left my pride on the living room floor after six hours of insults from the people who were supposed to love me unconditionally. I’m frustrated at my sexuality. I’m passionately angry at who I am and what I’ve caused. I agree with my friend now: I do feel chaotic. And I hate it.

Religion

I Lost My Pride When I Came Out to My Muslim Family

Like with most things in life, if you’ve not personally lived through an experience, you really don’t know much about it. I know this well from living a life of secrecy. The most difficult part of identifying as anything other than a straight person in Nigeria is the energy it requires to conceal this vital aspect of yourself. 

In other words, I live with the constant fear of not doing anything contrary to the norm, behaving like a straight person would, with little to no room for being anything else. We all just try to conform so no one can ever suspect anything is amiss in our chase of conventionality.

Coming from a typical Nigerian family, it’s difficult to be liberal with your thoughts. It’s believed that the father speaks on behalf of the family—other members are simply meant to fall in line or they risk getting cast out. It may seem very hard to understand for most, but I guess when your life and reputation depend on it, we all do things we never thought we were capable of doing. In this case, it’s the act of being inconspicuous.

I always knew there was something quite different about me. While my friends in high school were busy trying to catch the attention of boys, I was busy forcing myself into thinking about them too. But catching the attention of a boy just felt wrong to me. Even then, I did it to seem normal.

I wasn’t really aware of much after that. I had a boyfriend, and I only really cared about graduating, so the thought of dating went away—and so did the boyfriend. Fast-track a couple of years later: I was in love with my friend of the same sex, let’s call her S, and we both felt an effortless attraction. Although we had to be really sneaky about it, no one really paid us much attention, so we carried on for years. 

Reality interrupted when S was taken in for a deliverance at our church for being possessed by a demon. That’s when I knew her parents had found out about her being gay. In our country, being gay is synonymous with being allied with the devil, but S became unapologetic and fierce about it. “Haven’t you heard I’m the spawn of the devil himself?” she would yell, seeming insane to anyone who had just met her. I knew she was cracking under the pressure of being conventional and perfect. 

S was a gentle, sweet soul, but not long after the deliverance, she simply vanished. I think she was sent somewhere—I never really found out where. I was brokenhearted and had to move on in silence without telling anyone about S and our time together. If anyone noticed my sadness, they must have felt I was just missing my best friend.

At 20, I began to understand the bigger picture, realizing my childhood struggle with being gay was just a drop in a bucket. The biggest shock was realizing that almost everyone I met who identified as gay in Nigeria had a similar story as mine. Eight years ago, the government passed a law in which anyone who identified as gay or who was caught in the act with someone of the same sex was to be sentenced to a 14-year jail term. Knowing this law existed, a few gay friends came together and moved our scene underground to keep us hidden. 

Still, we encountered so many problems with the law or with blackmailers, and at some point, we all agreed the whole trouble was too much and it was best to stay secretive. During that time, our biggest issue came from people who infiltrated our scene under the pretenses of being gay or bisexual. Then, they simply vanished a week or two later, and almost immediately, the place would get raided or shut down. It was deeply upsetting to know some people think being gay is a fun, one-day choice.

Of course, it’s not. But in Nigeria, we have to be more subtle and careful to avoid suspicion; otherwise, our careers or families could be gone forever. We’ve had some really famous gay Nigerians speak up, but they still get to leave the country. Their brief and very privileged stays, along with their wealth, make them untouchable in Nigeria—effectively, being openly gay or bi is dependent on how much money or influence you have. 

As I often say, Nigeria is not so much anti-gay as it is anti-poor. Just a couple of months ago another law was passed, which can impose those found guilty with fines of up to $1,200 or six months in jail. Yet the rich and famous are not affected by this—just the average Nigerians. In what we often call “jungle justice,” gays or cross-dressers who are caught on the streets here are often either stripped naked or beaten, sometimes to death. 

The only ray of hope is if influential gay Nigerians speak up. It seems almost impossible. Everyone is trying to preserve their reputation or status, and we can only look to the Western countries as a beam of sunlight into how to live, clinging on to the hope that one day soon, worldwide, LGBTQ communities will find a solution.

I’m Living a Secret Life in Nigeria’s Underground LGBTQ Scene

If you spend long enough in the liberal social mediasphere, you’ll eventually just sort of pick up how to be a good trans ally, as if by osmosis: Use the right pronouns, avoid gender-specific language, don’t ever use someone’s pre-transition name. That’s how I learned it, back at the dawn of Twitter. At that point, I hadn’t ever really met a trans person (that I was aware of), and learning the rules of trans allyship felt a lot like learning which silverware to use at fancy dinners, which I had also done: It was something I didn’t have a practical need for at the time but that I hoped I would in the future and wanted to get right perfectly from the start.

Now that I’ve transitioned, I constantly encounter people who have the same kind of formal approach to allyship that I used to have and the same apparent anxiety about it. People in business Zoom calls conspicuously ask the group to declare their pronouns at the start of meetings. Friends rush to apologize when they accidentally say “you guys” instead of something gender-neutral. Strangers use my correct pronouns, with a little extra emphasis so I make sure to notice they got it right. I know it all comes from a good place, and every time it happens, I’m grateful for the consideration that they show, but I also want to tell them that they shouldn’t worry about it because it really doesn’t matter.

There’s a widespread belief, perpetuated by infographics and scolding tweets (often shared by straight, cis people), that being an ally to trans people means following a strict set of rules about what you can and can’t say and that if you make a mistake, it means you’re a transphobe (or at least that you’ll be called one on Twitter). It makes allyship into a tightrope walk over a pool of Internet lava—treacherous, easy to fuck up and an overall unfair situation for anyone to be put in. It’s no wonder the anti-trans movement has seized on the idea of trans people trying to control how cis people can speak as one of their main grievances.

To be clear, we don’t want to control how you speak. In reality, using the right language for trans people is like using good table etiquette, in that it’s a mostly ceremonial thing that you can use to show respect to other people. How strictly you need to stick to it depends on the situation and specific people you’re interacting with. And like good table etiquette, it’s not worth freaking out over if someone messes up.

The truth is, a lot of trans people don’t really care about that kind of stuff, or at least not enough to make a big deal about it. We’re so used to getting misgendered that for a lot of us, it’s just a minor everyday annoyance. Being intentionally misgendered is hurtful, and so is being repeatedly misgendered by someone who should know better. But we also understand that people fuck up sometimes. Very few trans people—besides the terminally online—will ever lose their shit on you for using the wrong words or for saying “you guys” to a group that includes transfeminine or nonbinary people or for not always using the strictest and most thoroughly inclusive PC language possible. 

Because for most trans people, pronouns and inclusive language aren’t the most pressing issues we face. Most of us have bigger concerns on our radar, like our physical safety and autonomy. I live in New York City, which I think is the greatest and safest place in America and maybe the world in which to be a trans person, and I still get extremely anxious for my safety every time I leave the house. Trans people are routinely threatened and physically attacked in even the most socially liberal parts of the city. Finding healthcare providers who know how gender-affirming care works can be challenging, even in places where it’s not being legislatively attacked, and even if you can find someone who knows what they’re doing, transitioning can be prohibitively expensive even for those of us lucky enough to have insurance. And the rising anti-trans movement that’s gaining footholds on all ends of the political spectrum is a constant existential threat to all of us.

Like table etiquette, trans etiquette is useless in a fight, which is what we find ourselves in right now. Despite the gains trans people have made in “visibility” and “inclusion” over the past decade or so, we’ve always had to fight simply to exist. We desperately need allies in this fight—real allies who are willing to do real things in our fight. 

Being a trans ally is much simpler than the social media discourse can make it seem. All you have to do is love trans people—or at least respect our right to exist—and be willing to show it. There are a million ways you can do that: speaking out against anti-trans legislation, donating to legal groups pushing back against those laws, donating to fundraisers for trans people seeking gender-affirming healthcare or simply standing up for us when transphobes around you start acting up. None of these acts are much more work than putting your pronouns in your bio or learning to add “and femmes” when you say “women.” All of them are about a million times more effective.

If you can show up for trans people out of a place of love, you don’t have to worry about getting everything right all the time. We’re all human and all deserving of forgiveness for the mistakes we all inevitably make. An imperfect ally who actually cares is worth more than every virtue-signaling post on social media. We need as many of you as we can get.

Trans People Don’t Want to Control How You Talk

I’m not saying my mom invented being nonbinary. I’m just saying that she was saying stuff to my brother and me like, “I don’t feel like a woman or a man; I’m just your mom,” all the way back in the 1990s. So maybe it was her and like, David Bowie. But she was doing it before it was all the rage and before we had the language to describe it. 

Growing up, I remember my mother always talking about her childhood and how different she was from me. She marveled at the way I wore dresses and played with makeup, how it came so naturally to me despite her never wearing either in her whole life, let alone around me. She would mention in passing how much she dreaded puberty as a child, how her budding breasts announced the truth to people, no matter how short her hair or how much she dressed like her older brother. My mother’s relationship to her gender revealed itself in her funny stories about trying to pee standing up as a kid, in her obliviousness to things my friends’ mothers would teach them about hair and clothes, in the way she only started shaving her legs when she realized her hair was embarrassing to her kids when at the public pool. Sometimes, it revealed itself matter of factly: “I don’t feel like a woman or a man; I’m just your mom.” 

I’m not saying I invented bisexuality, but I will say my first kiss was with my neighbor when I was 3, and my second kiss was his older sister later that day. I knew I was queer basically as soon as I had cognizant thoughts. It always just felt inherent to human life. It wasn’t until I fell in love with my best friend in middle school that the fact it made me different really started to creep in. When my best friend fell in love with me back is when I knew it was time for me to do that whole “coming out” thing. There was something strange to me about coming out to my mom; like subconsciously, there was an understanding that queerness is simply the default. I was more nervous about coming out to my mom as a person who was regularly kissing another person than I was that I was queer. 

“Mom,” I told her one day as she sat at her desk, “I have something to tell you.” She looked up from her computer at me, and as if someone was paying me to say the following words as fast as I could, I blurted out: “I’m bisexual, and I’m dating Alex.” Before she could say anything back to me, I ran to my room and hid under the covers, hoping that by the laws of you-can’t-see-me-if-I-can’t-see-you, she would simply leave me alone and never bring it up again. 

There was a tap on my bedroom door, and a few moments later, a hand on my back through the blanket. Through a chuckle, as if it was obvious, she just assured me that she’s bisexual, too. 

I’m not saying I’m so gay that the mere presence of my embryo’s DNA running through my mom’s veins turned her gay, but it is canon that the first time my mom fell in love with a woman was when she was pregnant with me. Or maybe that’s what turned me gay. (Given my mom’s underlying gender identity, who’s to say if her feelings for my dad weren’t actually gayer?) 

The point is, we’re both gay, whether it’s the gay apple that doesn’t fall far from the gay tree or it’s the gay apple seed that turned the tree gay. The tree and apple weren’t done learning what they had in common, though. At 16, when I was chronically online, learning about sexuality and identity on Tumblr, I started coming to the dinner table with words like “intersectional feminism” and “gender spectrum,” lecturing my exceptionally progressive family about how backward and behind they were. My mom very graciously gave me space to be a condescending and bratty teenager, but her interest was piqued. Gender? A spectrum, you say? Not long after that, I began exploring what gender meant to me, personally. My boyfriend at the time and I started wearing each other’s clothes and doing each other’s makeup. Part of me felt punk for breaking all the rules, but another part of me felt the most lawful and legitimate I had ever felt. Like I was following a code inside of me I didn’t even know was there. My rejection of the binary looked and felt different than the not-woman-not-man-just-mom who raised me, but suddenly, it began to click that I, too, am a not-woman-not-man.

I'm not saying the internet made my mom and me trans. No, I'm actually not saying that. But what it did do was give us the language for what was living under the surface all along. Together, parallel to one another, we were two queer kids from different generations coming of age in our own ways. Without my mother always being open and bold enough to be herself and be honest about her experiences—regardless of the vocabulary available to her at the time—I may not have felt empowered to so comfortably and, without doubt, come into my own. And without my access to the new queer generation's fearless rhetoric and my dissemination of that discourse to my mother, she may never have felt empowered to claim and internalize her identity. 

In the years that have followed, she has changed her name but not her pronouns. I have changed my pronouns but not my name. We both live unapologetically queer lives, and our nonbinary identities and how we express them physically may be different, but what remains the same is how we continue to see and understand each other in ways nobody else really can. “Pride” means something entirely different when you are lucky enough to know your queer lineage, and who you're proud of reaches beyond the limits of your own individual self. I'm proud of us.

I'm Nonbinary—and So Is My Mom

I have a recurring fantasy of how I want to come out as bisexual. I do it publicly, on social media, and incite chaos in my homophobic family. 

It may be a picture of me, or maybe it’s just the bi pride flag, and it says something to the effect of: “I am bisexual. It took a long time and a lot of work to overcome the homophobia I was surrounded with growing up, but I finally understand that this is who I am and I am proud of it.” It is direct and serious and leaves no room for questions. I imagine that in the outpour of support from my friends and colleagues, I will get lots of texts and phone calls from my mom, asking questions like, “Why didn’t you tell me before? You really should have told me privately before shaming us publicly like this. I can’t believe you would call us homophobic!” Maybe my dad finds out when a cousin or aunt shares the post with him. Maybe he desperately tries to call me in a rage, sends me insulting text messages or possibly just ignores me entirely. Whatever the response, I do not engage but bask in the glory of the shitstorm I’ve created. 

It makes me giddy to think about shattering my hateful father’s illusion of who I, his one and only son, really am. Destroying the illusion that we are a happy, functioning family. I secretly hope that he’s bigoted enough to disown me entirely when he finds out. I want to deny him the ability to sweep this under the rug, to keep it hidden from my extended family. I want my mom, who enabled his abusive, hateful parenting style, to see my post and understand why I’ve become so distant from them. I don’t want their acceptance. I just want them to leave me alone. 

I do also have constructive, positive reasons for wanting to come out: Announcing to the world that this is who I am, confidently and unequivocally, would feel amazing. Really, I just want to be my authentic self. But the thought of making the homophobes in my family squirm feels like it would grant me even greater joy and catharsis.

I could not accept that I was bisexual until my 27th birthday. Looking back, I had known I was bi since I was 14, and yet it took me over a decade to earnestly admit it to myself and even longer to feel comfortable enough to share it with the people closest to me. 

Like many queer people, I didn’t have the luxury of my parents’ unconditional love to make me feel secure in exploring my sexuality. I didn't even have to waste my time guessing whether or not my parents would be accepting of me if I was gay. One evening at dinner when I was 15, my dad made a homophobic comment about the idea of gay couples having the right to marry. I spoke up against him, and we got into a heated argument. My mom mostly sat on the sidelines, but at the end, she asked my dad, “What would you do if our son was gay?” And his answer was, “He wouldn’t be my son.”

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