Today is National Coming Out Day
National Coming Out Day is an awareness day that was initially observed in the US in the late 80s, but (under the umbrella of the Human Rights Campaign) has now grown to become a day that is recognised internationally.
The HRC describes National Coming Out Day as a day to celebrate people who have come out as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ). To ‘come out’ means to be open about your sexuality.
The obvious question is whether this is still a valid concept. You would think that with the equality legislation and social acceptance that is now evident in most western countries, that the idea of ‘coming out’ would be a bit irrelevant — this is 2016 after all.
But it’s not irrelevant. I’m not sure that it will ever be irrelevant.
My own coming out moment was about 20 years ago. I was in my mid-20s. It wasn’t anything dramatic, I just kind of blurted it out one night while having dinner with my parents. Maybe I’d had a few too many glasses of wine. There was nothing particularly brave about my coming out — I was confident in the love and support of my family, my close friends already knew, I’d moved away from home to a city where there was a pretty healthy gay scene. I guess I’d just got tired of pretending to be something I wasn’t.
For a few years after I felt a bit of pressure to ‘come out’ again with each new job I started, or new social situation. These days that doesn’t seem to be an issue. It seems to be fairly obvious to everyone that I meet that I’m into guys.
If you’re not gay (or lesbian, or identifying in any of the other queer categories), then it may be a difficult to understand what all the fuss is about. Everyone loves gays, right?
Every queer person’s journey is a bit different, it is their own, but in my head the act of ‘coming out’ is more about reaching an acceptance of yourself than about what anyone else thinks. To be able to say confidently to friends, family, or total strangers that ‘this is me — I’m gay’ is a personal declaration that you know who you are. That’s a pretty big deal.
Today is National Coming Out Day. My name is Gareth — I’m gay.
Originally published at glxy.eu.
