Okay first off: a bunch of new people signed up for this newsletter yesterday, which is very cool but nervewracking. Sure hope I don’t disappoint all of you! Also I highly recommend browsing the archives of this newsletter, which is about… 10 months (!) old at this point; there’s a lot of good stuff that will help you better understand my whole deal.
Anyway.
Is there any queer experience more universal than coming out? It is foundational, right, the thing that allows one to identify as openly queer. And yet I have to admit I just find it kind of weird as a concept.
I mean for starters: what exactly do we mean when we talk about “coming out” in the first place? When I think about my coming out story, there one thing, and one thing only, that comes to mind: me at fourteen, standing in my parents bedroom, blurting out, “I’m bisexual!” to my mom (who, to her credit, just responded, “You mean you like boys and girls?” and left it at that). Were there other people who I had to reveal my bisexuality to over the years? I mean yeah, sure, of course. But none of those disclosures felt like “coming out” — none of those disclosures felt like the same kind of awakening, same kind of public debut, that I experienced in telling my mom.
But it is one of the odd constructs of “coming out” that people can frequently be considered “closeted” even while living full, vibrant queer lives. Is the celebrity coming out a wholly different beast than the coming out that you or I might do? I mean, perhaps. But I still find it odd that a celebrity (or really any public figure) can be actively dating and fully accepting of their own queerness and yet still considered “closeted” if they haven’t made a press release about the fact that they’re a big queerdo.
And I mean, I do get it. It’s partly a holdover from the era when living openly as a queer person was basically impossible — the era when to be queer, even actively queer, was necessarily to be closeted, hence the entire construction of “coming out.” And it’s also just a product of the fact that even now, even in 2023, being an actor, or a politician, or some other public figure who announces their queer identity is to be an actor or a politician or some other public figure who is suddenly shunted into a little box. The siloing is less intense than it used to be, but it still exists; announcing one’s queerness still comes with risk, and thus the public announcement still has weight.
And yet.
The thing I’m dancing around here, I think, is that what really bugs me, what really gets my goat, is that the entire construction of “coming out” is contingent on the assumption of straightness as a default. It’s so irritating, you know? If I go to a celebrity’s Wikipedia page and it doesn’t say anything about their sexuality, I’m supposed to assume that they’re just a regular degular hetero; if they’re some flavor of queer (and especially bisexual) it must be formally announced. No one is ever expected to “come out” as straight; one can simply carry on that way their whole life without ever making a formal announcement. There’s no burden on you to identify yourself unless you are queer.
And certainly, there’s a political power in the public coming out, a way in which it is necessary in order to dismantle that heterosexual hegemony. I get it. But I also grow tired of the way it boxes us all in, the way it makes shifts in attraction an identity crisis rather than just a natural fluctuation. I grow tired of the way it means that we’re expected to give the public an update every time we find ourselves attracted to someone who didn’t quite fit with our previous criteria, rather than simply being allowed to enjoy the exploration of a new mode of attraction.
Honestly I wish more of us could go through life like Niecy Nash, who just married a woman she fell in love with and left it at that. Nash, herself, doesn’t seem too worked up about labels or how her current relationship aligns with her past or future ones. She just loves her wife.
I think that’s neat.
I'm reading Elliot Page's memoir right now, and he mentioned how a former agent/manager figure said, "I tell all my clients to keep their personal life private," but then he'd see those other clients routinely come out as straight in interviews by talking about their partners. It IS annoying that heterosexual is just the default. Maybe it's not, with the younger generation, I don't know.
The reason I'm out is that there is a burden to identify one's self as non-heteroseuxal, and that's because heteronormativity is a form of bigotry. That's a personal choice, but it's one I make out of necessity. I don't want people thinking of me as heterosexual, but they will when they see me with a nonbinary partner.