Steve M
Posted by ulla on Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Under: Gay
Country & city: London, UK
Name/nickname: Steve M.
Age: 42
Gender: Male
What did you come out as (gay, bi, transgendered, use any terms you like here)? Gay
How old were you when you first realized your identity? I knew I was same-sex attracted from the age of 12, but didn’t call myself gay until I was 21.
How old were you when you first told someone? 34
Did you plan it? If so, how? Yes I planned it for a short time and wrote letters to my mum and brother. But it was more like an emotional damn burst and I just had to let them know.
What made you choose that person to tell? Because they are the most important people in my life.
Can you remember exactly what you said? I was to the point but purposefully reassuring.
How did you feel? Some fear but an overwhelming sense of relief.
What was the person’s reaction? Cautiously positive at first and then accepting and celebratory.
What was your relationship with the person like afterwards? The same as it was before only I didn’t have to lie anymore.
What’s it like now? Good, no change.
If you’ve experienced homophobia etc, please give an example. The atmosphere at my secondary school (1978-1983) was rabidly homophobic. It was a large school and single sex, which I think made it worse. During my early teens I internalised the pervasive homophobia to such an extent that, after leaving school, the most destructive homophobia I experienced was my own. From puberty I was comfortable with my sexual orientation, but I was petrified of the label “gay”. I desperately wanted to be seen as “normal” and certainly not as the kind of perverted, deviant monsters I “knew” gay people were.
Since coming out, how “out” are you in the following areas of your life:
Job: Not out.
Family: Fully.
Friends: Fully.
What does being out mean to you? It was a wonderful feeling to at last come out to my nearest and dearest, but I now realise it was not an end in itself. Coming out, for me, was a way of accepting my earlier life but that has not been completed. If I am honest, I deeply regret that I was not given the opportunity and/or did not find it in myself to come out a lot earlier in life.
What differences, if any, did your cultural background make to your experience of coming out? That’s a great question but can I change it to ask: What differences, if any, did your social background make to your experience of coming out? My cultural background is mainstream middle class suburban English. My experience of my sexual orientation has coincided with a dramatic change in the social acceptance of homosexuality. When I realised I was gay as a twelve year old in 1979, gays were social outcasts and gay sex was illegal unless you were over 21. Society was predominantly traditional in its views on marriage, etc. My coming out was dramatically influenced by the emancipation of gay people from the shadows of society. If that emancipation had not happened I am not sure I would be out today.
What does the concept of the closet mean to you? My closet was the place in which I hid my true identity from the outside world. I built it when I was a twelve-year-old child to protect me from the real threat of ostracism and, very possibly, violent bullying that would have resulted had I not done so. I didn’t choose to build it; it was a simple necessity and happened subconsciously. Its foundations were the rabid homophobia I experienced at secondary school and I maintained those foundations subsequently by the homophobia I internalised at that time. Although I was 100% clear that I was homosexual, within my closet I fostered feelings of contempt for openly gay people. It was as if they were challenging me or poking fun at me, even blaming me. For a period in my late teens I constructed an argument that it was OK to be homosexual but not to be gay! Being homosexual, it seemed to me then, was a simple matter of fact. Being gay, however, was an identity. When I reached adulthood, the closet became all about identity.
My closet was a very effective and enduring psychological construction. But, across its walls a huge tension existed. Anyone who has kept secrets and systematically deceived others for a long time – even themselves and their nearest and dearest - will know this kind of tension.
What advice would you give someone wanting to come out? I am no great believer in sexual confusion. I think you know if you are gay or not at some point in your life. When you know this – and knowing could happen at any time – I would advise anyone to come out when they feel that not to do so will adversely affect their chances of finding happiness.
Name/nickname: Steve M.
Age: 42
Gender: Male
What did you come out as (gay, bi, transgendered, use any terms you like here)? Gay
How old were you when you first realized your identity? I knew I was same-sex attracted from the age of 12, but didn’t call myself gay until I was 21.
How old were you when you first told someone? 34
Did you plan it? If so, how? Yes I planned it for a short time and wrote letters to my mum and brother. But it was more like an emotional damn burst and I just had to let them know.
What made you choose that person to tell? Because they are the most important people in my life.
Can you remember exactly what you said? I was to the point but purposefully reassuring.
How did you feel? Some fear but an overwhelming sense of relief.
What was the person’s reaction? Cautiously positive at first and then accepting and celebratory.
What was your relationship with the person like afterwards? The same as it was before only I didn’t have to lie anymore.
What’s it like now? Good, no change.
If you’ve experienced homophobia etc, please give an example. The atmosphere at my secondary school (1978-1983) was rabidly homophobic. It was a large school and single sex, which I think made it worse. During my early teens I internalised the pervasive homophobia to such an extent that, after leaving school, the most destructive homophobia I experienced was my own. From puberty I was comfortable with my sexual orientation, but I was petrified of the label “gay”. I desperately wanted to be seen as “normal” and certainly not as the kind of perverted, deviant monsters I “knew” gay people were.
Since coming out, how “out” are you in the following areas of your life:
Job: Not out.
Family: Fully.
Friends: Fully.
What does being out mean to you? It was a wonderful feeling to at last come out to my nearest and dearest, but I now realise it was not an end in itself. Coming out, for me, was a way of accepting my earlier life but that has not been completed. If I am honest, I deeply regret that I was not given the opportunity and/or did not find it in myself to come out a lot earlier in life.
What differences, if any, did your cultural background make to your experience of coming out? That’s a great question but can I change it to ask: What differences, if any, did your social background make to your experience of coming out? My cultural background is mainstream middle class suburban English. My experience of my sexual orientation has coincided with a dramatic change in the social acceptance of homosexuality. When I realised I was gay as a twelve year old in 1979, gays were social outcasts and gay sex was illegal unless you were over 21. Society was predominantly traditional in its views on marriage, etc. My coming out was dramatically influenced by the emancipation of gay people from the shadows of society. If that emancipation had not happened I am not sure I would be out today.
What does the concept of the closet mean to you? My closet was the place in which I hid my true identity from the outside world. I built it when I was a twelve-year-old child to protect me from the real threat of ostracism and, very possibly, violent bullying that would have resulted had I not done so. I didn’t choose to build it; it was a simple necessity and happened subconsciously. Its foundations were the rabid homophobia I experienced at secondary school and I maintained those foundations subsequently by the homophobia I internalised at that time. Although I was 100% clear that I was homosexual, within my closet I fostered feelings of contempt for openly gay people. It was as if they were challenging me or poking fun at me, even blaming me. For a period in my late teens I constructed an argument that it was OK to be homosexual but not to be gay! Being homosexual, it seemed to me then, was a simple matter of fact. Being gay, however, was an identity. When I reached adulthood, the closet became all about identity.
My closet was a very effective and enduring psychological construction. But, across its walls a huge tension existed. Anyone who has kept secrets and systematically deceived others for a long time – even themselves and their nearest and dearest - will know this kind of tension.
What advice would you give someone wanting to come out? I am no great believer in sexual confusion. I think you know if you are gay or not at some point in your life. When you know this – and knowing could happen at any time – I would advise anyone to come out when they feel that not to do so will adversely affect their chances of finding happiness.
In : Gay
Tags: gay male "united kingdom"
