Coming Out
Today is National Coming Out Day.
And, as many of you know, I've already come out. Many times, actually. In small, personal moments with people in my life I hold most dear. In conversations that happened because I needed someone to know. In moments when I didn't have much choice about whether to share that part of myself. And in the more formal announcements like the ones I posted on National Coming Out Day over the years
I've come out as a trans woman. I've come out as asexual. I've come out as panromantic. And I've come out as polyamorous.
But this year, I want to do something a little different.
This year, I want to talk about all of it. Not just one part of who I am, but the whole of it. Because while I've talked about these parts of myself individually, I don't know that I've ever really brought them together to explain what it means to be all of these things at once.
I am a polyamorous, panromantic, asexual, trans woman.
And, sometimes, I just say I'm queer. It's less of a mouthful. It's simple, it's inclusive, and it captures something about the way my identity challenges and queers the expectations people have about gender, sexuality, romantic attraction, and relationships.
I've always been all of these things. Even when I didn't have the language to recognize them. Even when I didn't understand why I experienced relationships differently from the people around me. Even when I was trying to fit myself into expectations that never quite seemed to fit.
It took me a long time to understand all of this. And, in some ways, understanding one part of myself helped me recognize another. So let's talk about what all of these identities mean to me.
I'm polyamorous.
For much of my life, I didn't recognize myself as polyamorous because I didn't understand that this was what I was experiencing.
I've had deep friendships and intimate relationships that fulfilled different needs in my life. I've experienced romantic attraction to more than one person at a time. And I've nurtured those relationships while also receiving love, connection, and care from the people involved.
For a long time, I didn't have a framework for understanding these experiences. I knew that my friendships often fulfilled needs that other people seemed to look to romantic partners to fulfill. I knew that I could feel deeply connected to more than one person. But I didn't understand how all of that fit together.
What I eventually came to recognize is that I had been experiencing polyamory without having the language to identify it.
That doesn't mean I always understood how to navigate those relationships. There were times when not understanding my own needs contributed to hurting a partner, particularly when I turned to other people to fulfill needs I didn't know how to communicate. Understanding myself better has helped me recognize the importance of being intentional, honest, and considerate of the people with whom I build relationships.
Being polyamorous isn't simply about having multiple partners. It's about recognizing that the capacity for romantic love and connection isn't necessarily limited to one person, and understanding what that means for the way I build and maintain relationships.
I'm panromantic.
For a long time, I didn't fully understand that romantic attraction and sexual attraction were different things.
Recognizing that distinction helped me understand myself in a way I hadn't before. I could experience romantic attraction to people regardless of their gender, even though my experience of sexual attraction was something I could not figure out because. . . Well, because for me, it simply doesn’t exist.
Looking back, that understanding has also changed the way I interpret some of my own relationships. Friendships that I once understood only as deep, intimate connections sometimes included romantic feelings on my part that I simply didn't recognize for what they were.
I didn't have the language to name those feelings. I didn't necessarily understand that other people might experience romantic attraction differently from me. And I didn't have the representation that might have helped me recognize these things earlier.
Being panromantic means that my capacity for romantic attraction isn't restricted by someone's gender. It doesn't mean I'm romantically attracted to everyone. Even though I can fall in love at the drop of hat. It also doesn't mean every close friendship is secretly romantic.
Understanding this part of myself helped me make sense of my relationships, my history, and myself.
I'm asexual.
This is another part of myself that took a very long time to understand, partly because we live in a society that treats sexual attraction as though it is a universal experience.
We build so many expectations around sex and relationships that it can be difficult to recognize when your own experience doesn't follow the script society has written for love. Sexual attraction is often treated as the natural foundation of romantic relationships. It’s also frequently presented as something everyone wants, needs, or should be pursuing.
But that's not how I experience the world.
I'm asexual. And unlike allosexual people, I don’t experience sexual attraction. And understanding that has helped me make sense of my relationships and my needs in ways I couldn't when I was younger.
Being asexual doesn't mean I don't want intimacy or connection. And it certainly doesn't mean that I don't have relationships that are deeply meaningful to me.
It means that sexual attraction isn't the thing that defines my experience of love and relationships.
One of the things I've often said is that I can mostly get everything I need from my friendships. That's true, but it's also an oversimplification. I experience romantic attraction. I value intimacy and connection. I want meaningful relationships with people who matter to me. But those things don't necessarily follow the same patterns or expectations that society tends to attach to sex. And sometimes I need what a romantic partnership offers that friendship doesn’t. Those sensual and intimate moments that lovers share. . . But not the sexual ones.
Learning about asexuality and recognizing myself in the language of it has helped me understand why some of the assumptions people make about relationships have never quite made sense to me.
I'm a trans woman.
This is probably the part of my identity that most people know best.
I started coming out as trans in early 2016 and in June 2017, I publicly announced my transition. Since then, I've talked openly about being transgender, about my experiences, and about what it means to live authentically as myself.
But coming out as trans is different from coming out about an orientation. Sometimes, coming out is a conversation you choose to have. Sometimes, it's something you have to do because the world makes it impossible not to.
I've talked before about how often I've had to come out simply by existing in public. With healthcare providers, employers, government agencies, businesses, and people who knew me before my transition. There have been countless moments when I've had little control over whether I disclosed that I'm trans, when I disclosed it, or who else might overhear.
I want to be clear, I'm a woman. Being trans is part of my experience of gender, but it doesn't make my womanhood any less real. It is part of my history, my understanding of myself, and the life I've lived. It’s an adjective, not the sum total of who I am.
Transitioning gave me the opportunity to live more authentically as myself. It helped me stop trying to fit into an identity that never truly fit me. And, as I've come to understand the other parts of myself, I've also come to love everything that I am.
Which brings me to the part that matters most. I'm not four separate identities walking around in the same body. I am all of these identities. At once. Together. They are all woven together.
All of these parts of myself work together to shape how I experience intimacy, how I build relationships, how I understand love, and how I relate to the expectations people place on me.
For a long time, I didn't understand all of this myself. I was trying to make sense of experiences I didn't have the language to describe. I was trying to understand why certain expectations didn't fit me, why my relationships sometimes looked different from those around me, and why the explanations I had been given didn't always reflect what I knew about myself.
Having the language to describe these parts of myself hasn't changed who I am. It has helped me understand who I've been all along.
And that brings me to another word I've come to embrace: queer.
I'm queer.
I haven't always been comfortable with that word.
When I was younger, queer was a word people used against people like me. It was an insult, a way of making someone feel different, wrong, or less than. It was a word that could make a person feel unsafe simply for being who they were.
Words have histories. And when a word has been used to hurt you, learning to embrace it isn't always as simple as deciding that it means something different now.
It took me time to become comfortable with queer as a word I could use for myself. Time to separate the way it had been used against me from the meaning it could have when I chose it for myself. Time to understand that a word once intended to shame me could become a way of describing and embracing who I am.
I know that not everyone has the same relationship with that word. Some people embrace it. Some people don't. Some are still figuring out how they feel about it. And that's okay.
For me, queer has become a word that makes room for all of these parts of myself without requiring me to explain each one every time I introduce myself. It's a word that acknowledges that my identity doesn't fit neatly into the expectations society has established around gender, sexuality, attraction, and relationships.
It's inclusive of all the ways my identity queers those expectations.
And, honestly, sometimes it's just easier to say I'm queer than to recite the whole list.
But the list matters, too. Because every one of those words has helped me understand something about myself that I didn't always know how to name.
So, on this National Coming Out Day, I want to leave you with something to think about.
I've been fortunate to reach a place where I can talk openly about who I am. I can share these parts of myself, write about them, and use my experiences to help other people understand identities and experiences they may not have encountered before.
But not everyone is in that position. Not everyone is safe enough to come out. Not everyone knows how the people around them will react. And not everyone has the language, the resources, or the support they need to understand themselves, let alone share that understanding with others.
Coming out should be a choice. It should be something a person can do when they're ready, in the way that feels right for them, without having to worry that being honest about who they are will cost them their relationships, their safety, their housing, their job, or their healthcare.
And we all have a part to play in making that possible.
So today, and every day, make sure the people in your life know that they are loved and supported for exactly who they are.
Tell your loved ones. Tell your friends. Tell your coworkers. Let the people around you know that you believe LGBTQ+ people deserve to live openly, safely, and authentically. Let them know that your love and respect for them aren't conditional on their gender, their sexuality, or the way their relationships look.
You don't have to know whether someone in your life is LGBTQ+. You don't have to know whether someone is questioning, whether they're ready to come out, or whether they've already come out to everyone else.
You just have to make it clear that if they ever choose to tell you something about themselves, they will be met with love, respect, and support.
Because you never know who needs to hear it.
And you never know what a difference it might make.
Happy National Coming Out Day.
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