Sara
Posted by ulla on Saturday, February 28, 2009
Under: Bisexual
Name or Nick Name : Sara
Country or City you are from: : Canada and the US
Your Age : 24
Your Gender : female
What did you come out as? : Bi
What other words would you use to describe yourself? : geeky, chill, sarcastic
How old were you when you first realised your identity? : 17
How old were you when you first told someone? : 17-a week later!
Did you plan it? If so, how? : I hadn’t planned it at all–I was only still coming to terms with realizing I was bi but I was at a birthday-Halloween party with a bunch of female friends, and we were all somewhat drunk. Everyone was talking about which girls in our class they would be into if they were into girls, so I guess I felt comfortable, and when even later that night a friend of mine (very drunkenly) went around the room asking people, “Are you gay? Are *you* gay?” for reasons unknown, I answered, “Sort of…” No one seemed to think it was a big deal at the time or after. (Though, I suspect a few of them didn’t remember the next day anyway!)
What made you choose that person to tell? : The next time I came out to someone explicitly was two months later when my best friend from childhood, who lived in a different country, was visiting. One night, I got up the courage to tell her and she was surprised but not at all bothered by the revelation. I remember being upset with myself that I found it difficult to tell her, because I knew that once I did she wouldn’t care, and I knew *I* didn’t feel bad about being bi. That’s when I really started understanding the power of internalized homophobia.
Can you remember exactly what you said? : When I graduated from high school and went off to college I decided that I would come out immediately so as to avoid my perpetual coming out (it always seems that as a bi person I am constantly coming out over and over and over again because people either assume I’m straight or a lesbian, and I’m not comfortable letting that assumption stand most of the time). It was a very liberal college and many of the first people I met there were openly gay (including someone whose interview you just posted on the blog!) so I wasn’t afraid of the reaction, but it didn’t seem like something I wanted to just blurt out without context. So, the first chance I could, I segued a conversation I was having in a group to high school and crushes and said something like “Oh, yeah I had a crush like that,” in response to something someone else had said. He then asked, “What was his name?” and I responded, “Her name was Meg.”
How did you feel? : It felt good, because no one so much as blinked and the conversation carried on as usual. Every time I come out to someone I feel relieved but back then I felt more-so because I hadn’t quite twigged onto the existence of biphobia and hadn’t experienced the phenomenon of people disbelieving that your orientation exists. Nowadays when I come out as bi, it’s with a little more trepidation as I prepare to potentially argue that bi people ‘count’ as queer.
What was the person’s reaction? : After I came out in that conversation, a few days later, that friend who had asked me been there (openly gay, himself) sought me out to apologize for assuming I was straight. I found this very confusing I hadn’t gone out of my way to wear a literal or metaphorical rainbow flag before that point, so I didn’t think there was anything to apologize for. This was another step in my understanding of the potential power of de-normalizing or de-centralizing straightness.
If you’ve been outed unwillingly, who did it? : I was outed to my mother accidentally by a letter from an LGBT student group at a law school I was applying to. At the time I was not explicitly ‘out’ to my parents, though I was very openly engaged with LGBT activism and sexuality-focused academics. I actually assumed they /knew/ but it wasn’t something we talked about.
What happened? : They accidentally sent their letter to me to my family’s house rather than my address, and my mom thought it was my acceptance letter and called me, asking if I wanted her to read it to me. I said sure, and then we both realized that it was a recruiting letter.
She asked me why they sent it to me, and fleetingly I thought about lying and saying ‘Who knows?’ but the thought left a bad taste in my mouth so I sucked it up and said, “Well, when you sign up for the law application service they have a box you can check if you are lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer, or something like that.” Silence. “Mom, you know I’m bi, right?” What followed was a slightly uncomfortable conversation in which she tried to explain to me that she didn’t actually have any problems with gay people, but that she didn’t understand why someone would want to join an LGBT student group at law school, as it seemed like putting your private life inappropriately in the public eye. Or why I would even care that a school would have such a group. I explained why such groups were important to me and why LGBT issues needed to be public to fight homophobia and seek equal rights, and she begrudgingly agreed with me.
What were peoples’ reactions? : My parents and I still don’t talk about my personal sexuality much per se, but I have only become more politically and professionally active in the LGBT movement, and it is a large part of my life, so it’s not exactly something they can ignore willfully either. I don’t think they think about this all that consciously, but they’ve both become far less homophobic since then. I don’t know how much of that is a function of culture and how much is me.
I ultimately did end up attending that particular school for a year, and befriending the folks who had sent me that letter. I told this story to them to be amusing, since the outcome was good, but they were horrified and embarrassed. They made a note to change their mailing procedures to ensure this didn’t happen again.
If you’ve experienced homophobia etc, please give an example. : I have been very, very lucky in my life to live in very liberal and pro-LGBT communities but there are two areas of my life where I still feel the pressures of homophobia.
One, in parts of my extended family: some of them are very, very Christian and homophobic, and while I am not the only queer person in my family (my aunt is a lesbian) I made the decision not to come out to those particular members because I knew they would not let me spend much time with my much younger cousins (this is how they treat my aunt), who I very much want to influence and be a resource for. I don’t lie, and I never would if confronted, but instead of saying I worked at an LGBT organization I say I worked at a human rights organization. Still, I have great hope because my cousins are getting older and I know that at least a few of them are very pro-gay rights and have no problem with my being openly bi, despite their parents prejudices.
The other area is, as I’ve said before, when I face biphobia. Now, it’s much more subtle than someone yelling a slur or threatening me, but I’ve had dear friends who are gay tell me that my bi female friend who is married to a man doesn’t belong at an LGBT law conference because she may as well be straight and ‘doesn’t count.’ This particular person hadn’t realized I too was bi, and I explained to him that I was and why I thought he was wrong. Hopefully I can change minds, but I run into some truly astounding blind spots when it comes to straight and queer conceptions of bisexual people.
Since coming out how out are you at school? : all_out
Since coming out, how “out” are you at work? : all_out
Since coming out, how “out” are you with family? : partly_out
Since coming out, how “out” are you with your friends? : all_out
What does being out mean to you? : Being out to me means that I make sure a person both knows that I identify as bisexual and that I consider this identity to be very important to me for political reasons. As I have gotten older, I’ve started to present more ‘queer’, which means many people assume I am a lesbian and sometimes it would be easier for me to let them think this, but then I feel fake and not true to myself, so I don’t consider this state to be ‘out.’
Being out for me means consciously and deliberately checking people’s assumptions and correcting them if they are wrong.
What does the concept of the closet mean to you? : I’m not sure I can define it but it’s something I’ve gotten very good at recognizing in other people because I empathize with the experience–I wasn’t in the closet about being bi for very long, but I have had other experiences in my life where I spent a ridiculous amount of emotional and physical energy trying to hide a very significant part of my life from the entire world. It was an interest of mine that was ultimately very trivial in the grand scheme of things, and I was very young, but at the time I was sure I would face significant mockery and derision should anyone find out, so I lived in constant fear that people would, going to absurd lengths to hide my actions, speak out against the thing itself that I so loved, and to rationalize it away. When I finally met other people who had this same interest as me, I nearly wept with relief, and when I saw that they were open about this interest to little ill effect, I gained the courage to be as well. I honestly believe this is why I had a much easier time coming out when I realized I was bi. I knew how horrible it was to hide something that important and never wanted to do it again.
What advice would you give someone wanting to come out? : If you are worried about making too big a deal or attracting too much attention, and you think the other person will probably not react too negatively, find a way to work it into a conversation as if that person already should know this about you. It’ll probably involve backtracking in conversation a bit, eventually, but you’ll be surprised how many people just blink and go on like you said ‘my eyes are brown.’
If you could do it all again, would you do it any differently? If so, how? : I would have been more out than I was in high school. People knew about me (gossip travels fast) but no one talked about it to me because I didn’t bring it up again.
Country or City you are from: : Canada and the US
Your Age : 24
Your Gender : female
What did you come out as? : Bi
What other words would you use to describe yourself? : geeky, chill, sarcastic
How old were you when you first realised your identity? : 17
How old were you when you first told someone? : 17-a week later!
Did you plan it? If so, how? : I hadn’t planned it at all–I was only still coming to terms with realizing I was bi but I was at a birthday-Halloween party with a bunch of female friends, and we were all somewhat drunk. Everyone was talking about which girls in our class they would be into if they were into girls, so I guess I felt comfortable, and when even later that night a friend of mine (very drunkenly) went around the room asking people, “Are you gay? Are *you* gay?” for reasons unknown, I answered, “Sort of…” No one seemed to think it was a big deal at the time or after. (Though, I suspect a few of them didn’t remember the next day anyway!)
What made you choose that person to tell? : The next time I came out to someone explicitly was two months later when my best friend from childhood, who lived in a different country, was visiting. One night, I got up the courage to tell her and she was surprised but not at all bothered by the revelation. I remember being upset with myself that I found it difficult to tell her, because I knew that once I did she wouldn’t care, and I knew *I* didn’t feel bad about being bi. That’s when I really started understanding the power of internalized homophobia.
Can you remember exactly what you said? : When I graduated from high school and went off to college I decided that I would come out immediately so as to avoid my perpetual coming out (it always seems that as a bi person I am constantly coming out over and over and over again because people either assume I’m straight or a lesbian, and I’m not comfortable letting that assumption stand most of the time). It was a very liberal college and many of the first people I met there were openly gay (including someone whose interview you just posted on the blog!) so I wasn’t afraid of the reaction, but it didn’t seem like something I wanted to just blurt out without context. So, the first chance I could, I segued a conversation I was having in a group to high school and crushes and said something like “Oh, yeah I had a crush like that,” in response to something someone else had said. He then asked, “What was his name?” and I responded, “Her name was Meg.”
How did you feel? : It felt good, because no one so much as blinked and the conversation carried on as usual. Every time I come out to someone I feel relieved but back then I felt more-so because I hadn’t quite twigged onto the existence of biphobia and hadn’t experienced the phenomenon of people disbelieving that your orientation exists. Nowadays when I come out as bi, it’s with a little more trepidation as I prepare to potentially argue that bi people ‘count’ as queer.
What was the person’s reaction? : After I came out in that conversation, a few days later, that friend who had asked me been there (openly gay, himself) sought me out to apologize for assuming I was straight. I found this very confusing I hadn’t gone out of my way to wear a literal or metaphorical rainbow flag before that point, so I didn’t think there was anything to apologize for. This was another step in my understanding of the potential power of de-normalizing or de-centralizing straightness.
If you’ve been outed unwillingly, who did it? : I was outed to my mother accidentally by a letter from an LGBT student group at a law school I was applying to. At the time I was not explicitly ‘out’ to my parents, though I was very openly engaged with LGBT activism and sexuality-focused academics. I actually assumed they /knew/ but it wasn’t something we talked about.
What happened? : They accidentally sent their letter to me to my family’s house rather than my address, and my mom thought it was my acceptance letter and called me, asking if I wanted her to read it to me. I said sure, and then we both realized that it was a recruiting letter.
She asked me why they sent it to me, and fleetingly I thought about lying and saying ‘Who knows?’ but the thought left a bad taste in my mouth so I sucked it up and said, “Well, when you sign up for the law application service they have a box you can check if you are lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer, or something like that.” Silence. “Mom, you know I’m bi, right?” What followed was a slightly uncomfortable conversation in which she tried to explain to me that she didn’t actually have any problems with gay people, but that she didn’t understand why someone would want to join an LGBT student group at law school, as it seemed like putting your private life inappropriately in the public eye. Or why I would even care that a school would have such a group. I explained why such groups were important to me and why LGBT issues needed to be public to fight homophobia and seek equal rights, and she begrudgingly agreed with me.
What were peoples’ reactions? : My parents and I still don’t talk about my personal sexuality much per se, but I have only become more politically and professionally active in the LGBT movement, and it is a large part of my life, so it’s not exactly something they can ignore willfully either. I don’t think they think about this all that consciously, but they’ve both become far less homophobic since then. I don’t know how much of that is a function of culture and how much is me.
I ultimately did end up attending that particular school for a year, and befriending the folks who had sent me that letter. I told this story to them to be amusing, since the outcome was good, but they were horrified and embarrassed. They made a note to change their mailing procedures to ensure this didn’t happen again.
If you’ve experienced homophobia etc, please give an example. : I have been very, very lucky in my life to live in very liberal and pro-LGBT communities but there are two areas of my life where I still feel the pressures of homophobia.
One, in parts of my extended family: some of them are very, very Christian and homophobic, and while I am not the only queer person in my family (my aunt is a lesbian) I made the decision not to come out to those particular members because I knew they would not let me spend much time with my much younger cousins (this is how they treat my aunt), who I very much want to influence and be a resource for. I don’t lie, and I never would if confronted, but instead of saying I worked at an LGBT organization I say I worked at a human rights organization. Still, I have great hope because my cousins are getting older and I know that at least a few of them are very pro-gay rights and have no problem with my being openly bi, despite their parents prejudices.
The other area is, as I’ve said before, when I face biphobia. Now, it’s much more subtle than someone yelling a slur or threatening me, but I’ve had dear friends who are gay tell me that my bi female friend who is married to a man doesn’t belong at an LGBT law conference because she may as well be straight and ‘doesn’t count.’ This particular person hadn’t realized I too was bi, and I explained to him that I was and why I thought he was wrong. Hopefully I can change minds, but I run into some truly astounding blind spots when it comes to straight and queer conceptions of bisexual people.
Since coming out how out are you at school? : all_out
Since coming out, how “out” are you at work? : all_out
Since coming out, how “out” are you with family? : partly_out
Since coming out, how “out” are you with your friends? : all_out
What does being out mean to you? : Being out to me means that I make sure a person both knows that I identify as bisexual and that I consider this identity to be very important to me for political reasons. As I have gotten older, I’ve started to present more ‘queer’, which means many people assume I am a lesbian and sometimes it would be easier for me to let them think this, but then I feel fake and not true to myself, so I don’t consider this state to be ‘out.’
Being out for me means consciously and deliberately checking people’s assumptions and correcting them if they are wrong.
What does the concept of the closet mean to you? : I’m not sure I can define it but it’s something I’ve gotten very good at recognizing in other people because I empathize with the experience–I wasn’t in the closet about being bi for very long, but I have had other experiences in my life where I spent a ridiculous amount of emotional and physical energy trying to hide a very significant part of my life from the entire world. It was an interest of mine that was ultimately very trivial in the grand scheme of things, and I was very young, but at the time I was sure I would face significant mockery and derision should anyone find out, so I lived in constant fear that people would, going to absurd lengths to hide my actions, speak out against the thing itself that I so loved, and to rationalize it away. When I finally met other people who had this same interest as me, I nearly wept with relief, and when I saw that they were open about this interest to little ill effect, I gained the courage to be as well. I honestly believe this is why I had a much easier time coming out when I realized I was bi. I knew how horrible it was to hide something that important and never wanted to do it again.
What advice would you give someone wanting to come out? : If you are worried about making too big a deal or attracting too much attention, and you think the other person will probably not react too negatively, find a way to work it into a conversation as if that person already should know this about you. It’ll probably involve backtracking in conversation a bit, eventually, but you’ll be surprised how many people just blink and go on like you said ‘my eyes are brown.’
If you could do it all again, would you do it any differently? If so, how? : I would have been more out than I was in high school. People knew about me (gossip travels fast) but no one talked about it to me because I didn’t bring it up again.
In : Bisexual
Tags: sara canada usa female bisexual
