Coming Out - Techer Perspectives

These days I see coming out as something I'm always doing

I say coming out to myself as a lesbian (acknowledging the direction of my attractions in my own mind) took about a year, because thats how long I turned it over in my head consciously, but really it took all the twenty years leading up to it.  Once I had figured things out for myself, though I was nervous, I never thought seriously about being closeted.  I came out to everyone important to me within a couple months.  It was a big deal; each coming out conversation was an event in my mind, and for the most part it went well.  I came to Caltech for grad school living openly as a self-identified genderqueer dyke.  These days I see coming out as something I'm always doing, as I, and people around me, continue to try to understand and appreciate my, and their own, identity and preferences in new ways.  When it comes to my sexual orientation, I don't think of it as coming out so much as people recognizing a false assumption they had made about me.  I mean, unless you say that a straight guy is coming out as straight when he mentions an ex-gf, I don't think I'm coming out if I do the same.  These days I don't keep track of or regulate who "knows" things.  If things come up, they come up.  Like everyone else, I have a lot of different truths and aspects that can be understood at different levels.  Most people don't know that I don't really see myself as a woman or a man.  They also don't know that I'm Buddhist, though that seems to raise fewer eyebrows. I find my life experience much more complicated than any label can contain, so context is important.  For me its necessary to be honest and open, and also patient with people struggling to understand, especially if I can see their good intentions.  As for work, sexuality and gender have nothing to do with my ability to do science, and I've found scientists in general to be openminded or largely disinterested in each other's personal lives.  There are exceptions, and I know the deck is stacked against me at some level, but I feel relatively comfortable in my research group.  On a social level on campus, both my gender presentation and sexual orientation freak some people out, but given time most people realise more and more that I'm just like them, a human being trying to make it in this world.

--Graduate Student

"The sky didn't fall in"

Coming to terms with being gay has been a big thing in my life recently. I was very slow in coming out. Let's face it, I was a complete sniveling coward about it. But the sky didn't fall in-on the contrary, as far as I know I haven't lost a single friend. I'm very conscious of a debt to people before me who smoothed the way.

--Staff Member

From a rural town

I came out as a lesbian to my family and a few friends during my senior year of high school. I'm from a rural, closeminded town, and my mother didn't know anyone other than me that was openly gay, so she was afraid of how people at Caltech might treat me if they knew. She effectively suggested that I crawl back in the closet, and I was scared enough to take her advice at first. After a day or so of Frosh Camp, I was sick of having to hide who I really was, especially since everyone was being forced to socialize in the hormone charged atmosphere perpetuated by "the ratio." A girl I had been hanging around with started asking me if I thought some random guy was cute, so I told her I wasn't really into guys. She asked whether I was into girls instead, so I came out to her. It turned out that she had had gay male friends in high school, so she was at least used to the idea. When I came out at home, I had a friend who said she was OK with it, but she would never hug me, not even when I left for college. I had known this girl since 6th grade and was terribly hurt that I had become a completely different person in her eyes just by saying the words "I'm gay." After Frosh Camp, I decided I never wanted that to happen to me again. By the end of Rotation, anyone who knew me more than superficially knew I was a lesbian. This way I knew that people were choosing to be my friends with full knowledge of my orientation. It was a little lonely at first; it seemed like all the other frosh were busy glomming or being glommed, but I made some upperclass friends and things eventually turned out ok.

--Undergraduate Student

Coming Out in Sophomore Year

It seems to me that I knew I was gay long before I really understood what it meant.  I remember being attracted to guys in fourth grade, and it was at that point that I realized I was somehow different than most people, but it took me a few more years -- until I was 12 or 13 -- to fully comprehend what it meant to be gay, in terms of my own sexuality, and in terms of how I would be viewed by family, friends, and society.

Although I knew early on that I’m gay, I repeatedly put off the issues of coming out -- I kept telling myself I would deal with it later -- but that was only a vague concept, I had no real goal or idea of when it would happen.  Instead, all through middle and high school, I buried myself in books -- I never dated, although all my best friends in high school were girls.  Ironically, I think this motivation to focus on school (so that I would avoid dealing with being gay) is largely responsible for getting me into Caltech.

By my senior year of high school, I was longing for the ability to be myself, to have a relationship, not to deny who I am.  But I was still not ready to come out.  Even during my freshman year at Caltech, I was leaning heavily on the closet door, but I did not dare touch the handle.  The gay student group was nonexistent at that time, and the gay discussion group was invisible.  Gay issues never came up, except for the ubiquitous Caltech undergrad jokes about one course or another being equivalent to "anal rape" (why are all the straight guys at Caltech so obsessed with anal rape, anyway?), so it was hard to judge what the atmosphere would be on campus, and how well I would be accepted once I came out.

During the summer after my freshman year I came out to my best friend from high school.  To her it was a non-issue, and she was really excited because now we could talk about guys together (!) ... although we’d done plenty of that before.  Over the next few months I told a few more friends from high school, and I started going to the GLBT discussion group at Caltech.  I was very nervous at first, but everyone was so warm, accepting, and friendly, I immediately felt as though I were a part of the group.  A month later I came out to my roommate (he was the first straight person on campus I told), and he was fine with it, and by the end of my sophomore year, I was a walking pride parade, with a rainbow necklace, and without any hesitancy to let people know I’m gay.  That summer I came out to my parents, and I guess the rest is history....

In retrospect, GLBT issues were invisible at Caltech when I was pondering coming out.  I had no way to gauge ahead of time how people would react.  It turns out, though, that people who knew me realized that being gay was just a part of who I am, and it didn’t change who I was.  I can’t say that everyone I told was overjoyed for me -- most people just didn’t understand what the big deal was (and what is the big deal, anyway?) -- but even the few people who I think had a problem with me being gay, kept their issues to themselves, and never bothered me about it.  Overall, I’d have to say I was surprised at how few people were phased by it, considering what little I knew about people’s attitudes beforehand.

Fortunately, a lot has changed at Caltech since my sophomore year.  There is much more GLBT visibility now, with many more Out students, staff, and faculty, and CSPA has created quite a visible presence on campus.  The student support networks -- Res Life, The Caltech Y, The Women’s Center, Minority Student Affairs, the Dean’s Office, and others -- are eager to show that they are true GLBT "allies".  Many straight faculty, staff, and fellow students are equally eager to show their support.  While there may always be a few idiots or a few fossils who just aren’t retiring soon enough, I’ve discovered that the Caltech community is generally very open-minded and very accepting of people who are different, including those of us who consider ourselves queer.

--Undergraduate Alumnus

One isolated student's story...

Everyone in my department was so busy there was no time for people to develop real friendships, since there was no time to do anything other than work. Every night for two years I would go to bed and stare at the ceiling, feeling older, feeling that there was no point in living if I couldn't take the time to enjoy life as it went along. Being gay was something that didn't occur to me most of the time, it was compartmentalized away in my head.  I could barely tell myself I was gay, let alone contemplate telling my family, or even a friend. Over ten years in the closet is was a long time, but in some ways it took the solitude of the first two years of grad student life to crystallize my situation and cause me to evaluate what was really important to me in life; living for other people, or living for me. Logic prevailed, and I resolved that I had to come out.

My second school year transitioned into the summer, and I knew that the third year would afford a little more time for a social life. Deep down, I knew what I had to do, that I was going to do it, and that I had no idea how or when I would come out. The precipitating event was a family wedding that summer. I was deliberately seated at the bridesmaids' table, and an evening of that, plus my mother's expectations that I should dance with them (I _detest_ wedding dancing), finally caused me to crack, at least internally. While I still had the fresh trauma of the day's events to motivate me, I came out to my housemate. In the actual event I found that the words, which had been running around my head for the last few hours, came out automatically.  It was as if listening to myself saying the words from elsewhere. My housemate's immediate reaction was "no, no, you're just kidding", and it took another 20 minutes to convince him that I really am gay!

After that, I told close friends at the rate of one every week or two. I deliberately told my housemate first because I wanted someone supportive if things didn't go too well. I didn't know anybody else at Caltech who was gay, so other than my housemate I had nobody else to talk to. I wanted to meet other like-minded people, so I searched on the web and found the CSPA website. According to the website at that time, the only social events were discussion groups, sometimes followed by a trip to a bar/coffee house. I had seen discussion groups in the movie Fight Club, but never actually been to one, and I quickly decided that I'd rather approach this group in a more informal setting, preferably with a beer in my hand! So I decided to attend one of the after-discussion-group trips, this time to the Equator Coffee House in Old Pasadena. I scoured the CSPA website Outlist for anyone I might vaguely know. It turned out there was one person on there whom I'd met a few times before, so I e-mailed him, told him that I intended to show up and that I wanted to know that at least one person that would be there. I was expecting to be terrified and knew I'd feel quickly better once introduced to everyone else. When I turned up it was less terrifying than I thought, everyone was so friendly I didn't really need to be introduced. After chatting with people and drinking coffee late into the evening, I went away feeling that this was the best thing I'd done for myself in my entire life.

That winter vacation I flew back home for a couple of weeks and systematically told my entire family and friends. I vividly remember the long plane flight home, knowing what I was about to do. I was terrified, but in a positive nervous energy kind of way – I knew what I was about to do would have wonderful results, and I was also buoyed by a recent revelation about a guy I'd had a crush on in my class. After months and months of secretly thinking “please let him be gay”, it turned out that actually he was! It later turned out that he was also a porn star, but that's another story…  I was most worried about telling my mother and father.  As it turns out I told my father after a long drinking session at the local bar, and he gave me a big hug and said it doesn't change a thing, he still loves me. Once I got the chance to tell my mother, her reaction was initially mixed, but after a few minutes she came back with an uncharacteristic air of brilliance that I've only ever seen once or twice, and rising above all the unimportant things, she said “You must have gone through such unimaginable hell. I love you very much – you're my son. I think you should tell everyone.” …and that's exactly what I did.

--Graduate Student

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