How do I come out? Who should I come out to? Should I come out at all? These are common questions everyone asks themselves. The important thing to remember is that the answers are different for everyone.

The process of coming out is a personal one, and no one gets to decide how, when, where, or if to come out except yourself.

 

The Trevor Project has a good resource on coming out that is easy to use and serves as a good introduction to exploring these questions.

Teen Health Source has a few good pages on this as well, which can be found here and here.

 

It might be useful to think of coming out as a process you do in stages. First, you notice that your attractions to other people or your feelings about your gender don’t fall quite in line with the straight and/or cisgender people around you. Next, you might consider telling someone you’re close to. Eventually, you’ll branch out into meeting other LGBTQIA+ people, and your social sphere will widen. This isn’t how everyone’s journey works, and it’s okay if yours doesn’t look like this. More details on these “stages” can be found here.

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Conversations You Might Have

There’s a lot about being LGBTQIA+ that cis straight people are going to have trouble understanding at first, and unfortunately they might be (intentionally or unintentionally) nosy, confrontational, or dismissive in their conversations with you about this. It depends entirely on the person, their views, and your relationship with them, so these conversations can vary quite a bit!

 

What’s important to keep in mind here is that your identity is your own, and not anybody else’s. You define it based on your life, and no one else’s. You’re the expert of your own experience! You can choose how much or how little to engage with other people’s questions and reactions about it as you want. It’s up to you.

 

Let’s look at several examples.

 

Example 1: Nosy Nelly

Nelly has just found out that you’re LGBTQIA+. She’s supportive, but she just has so many questions!

 

Nelly might ask...

• When did you know that you were [your identity]?

• How has your family reacted to you coming out?

• How does sex even work when it’s not my limited conception of straight sex that I learned about in sex ed? (Maybe she wouldn’t phrase it quite like that, but you get the point!)

 

It’s entirely up to you how much of this you want to answer. Even when she thinks she’s being supportive, Nelly is still being intrusive and it’s well within your rights to excuse yourself from the conversation. Nelly also has access to Google and can find out some of these answers on her own -- you aren’t her Guide to the World of LGBTQIA+ people!

 

Example 2: Confrontational Chris

Chris, an acquaintance you’ve known for a long time, has recently found out you’re LGBTQIA+. He thinks because of his past impression of you and his preconceived biases, this new information doesn’t add up!

 

Chris might say…

• But you dated [other person] in the past. That must mean you aren’t [your identity].

• But you don’t look like my stereotyped impression of [identity].

 

Your past dating life can have as much or as little influence as you want it to on how you define yourself and your identity now. Plenty of people date other people before they come out, and who you dated in the past doesn’t invalidate who you are at any given time. As for “looking like” any of the stereotypes that exist about various LGBTQIA+ identities, Chris is betraying his ignorance. LGBTQIA+ people can come in every different fashion and appearance combination under the rainbow.

 

Example 3: Dismissive Diane

Diane just found out you’re LGBTQIA+, but she’s operating under some harmful thinking about LGBTQIA+ people and thinks you’re just going through a “phase.”

 

Diane might say…

• Sure, you’re [identity] this week, but you’ll change your mind later.

• You’re just saying you’re [identity] to get attention.

 

It’s important first to remember that Diane is not the person who determines your identity or how you define yourself -- that’s all you. Sometimes people’s identities change over time, which is normal and okay. Sometimes they don’t, and you have known your identity your whole life and don’t anticipate that changing; that’s normal and okay too. You don’t have to prove anything to Diane here, and her snarky words should be dismissed as ill-informed and stereotypical. The same goes for her saying your identity is just to get attention. Even if you’re not confident in, or are new to considering yourself as LGBTQIA+, that’s your decision to explore and you don’t have to defend it to anyone else.

 

Gender Vs. Sex

A lot of people confuse these two things, but they’re different. Sex is defined as “the biological and chromosomal characteristics that determine whether a person is male, female, or intersex.” Gender is defined as “the social and cultural behaviors related to masculinity, femininity, and everything in between or outside those two points. The “gender binary” is the idea that the only distinct genders are male and female, but a more accurate description of gender would be as a spectrum. A person’s gender may or may not align with their biological sex.”

 

There’s a lot more to be explored around those two terms, so feel free to check out our Glossary for a more comprehensive understanding of this concept. You might also read up on various related terms while you’re there, such as: cisgender, transgender, AMAB, AFAB, intersex.

 

You can find a more thorough breakdown of this concept at Planned Parenthood and Teen Health Source.

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Using Pronouns

We use pronouns pretty frequently in our daily use of language -- she went to the store, he took the dog for a walk. But in English, the two most commonly-used pronouns (she and he) still adhere to the gender binary. It’s not always accurate or correct to rely only on these two pronouns for all people around the world. For example, people whose gender identity doesn’t fall within those two binary options might want to use another pronoun so as not to be grouped with a binary gender. In that case, other pronouns, such as the third-person gender-neutral they or ze might be utilized instead.

 

You can find much more information on using pronouns at MyPronouns.Org

 

Additionally, there’s an effort starting up to make asking for people’s pronouns more commonplace -- the more people who participate, the more normalized it becomes societally and the easier it will be to honor people’s definition of themselves. That effort is called “International Pronouns Day,” and a link for it can be found here: https://pronounsday.org/