Coming Out On Your Own Terms: Love, Simon
Fair Warning: This will contain some spoilers.
We don’t always get to come out on our own terms. For bi or pansexual people, I think it can sometimes feel like you don’t HAVE to come out. You can avoid feeling like an outcast, at least outwardly, by pretending to be straight, after all an opposite sex relationship isn’t necessarily off the table. Or you can jump to gay, say you fit into that other world. It comes with A coming out, even if it isn’t authentic, but then there feels like a set of rules you ought to follow: go to gay bars, join a GSA, be artistic, have a glow up, etc. To be honest, I’m sure what those rules are or aren’t because, I’m not gay. In Love, Simon, our protagonist fights to coming out on his own terms, a choice that ever person should have the ability to make for themselves.
Coming out as bi doesn’t have a rule book, but it also doesn’t really feel like it has a world to step into, so how can you have the rules for the bi road when you don’t even have road? Have you seen the trend on Twitter and other social media sites for “gay culture is…”? I’ve seen it loads, it reappears in my timeline every so often, but what I don’t see is “bi culture is…”. I’ve tried thinking of one but I’ve really not been able to pinpoint what bi culture is. Is it the Janelle Monáe video for Make Me Feel? Is it flirting with someone who you think might be queer, only to find out that they’re straight, only to realise you’ve been ignoring the painfully obvious flirtation you’ve had with their friend? That last one might just be me. Who can say! Maybe we’ve not yet figured out what our bi culture is. But if we don’t know who we get to be, in the many ways that we as humans can be, how can we “come out” as that?
We don’t ever come out just once
Coming out on your own terms then becomes a very personal and singular experience, as it always is, but that can also make it a solitary and lonely one.
My own coming out, if it can be called that, wasn’t something I chose, not really. I was outed by the home computer’s search history. Yes, I was an idiot back when the internet first started and didn’t realise your browser history could be erased. The dominos fell and there wasn’t a discussion so much as a warning, a known fact and then crippling silence.
Personally, I don’t think of that as my coming out because it was before then that I had admitted that I was bisexual to someone else, as well as myself. A friend had asked me while we were queueing in a store to buy….something, candy, a can of coke, whatever it was, he’d asked me if I liked boys or girls or both or what. I’d said something along the lines of, I guess I’d say I’m bisexual, because I fancy guys and girls. And that was that, it was cemented then in my mind. Kind of surprised me really. It made complete sense.
In reality, in a straight until proven otherwise world, we have to come out again and again. In Love, Simon, the titular character gets a few coming outs on screen, including the forced outing that he isn’t able to control. First, he comes out to his mysterious email pen pal, Blue, though as neither of them say who they really are, its not quite what most would consider a coming out. It’s the first rung on the ladder to being out. Then Simon comes out to his friend Abby. A second rung. She isn’t surprised, but she isn’t not surprised. I think my friend felt that way too, like it made sense. It was a consideration that had yet to be clarified. Looking back, I think I should have been more impressed he knew what bisexuality was!
Then Simon has his coming out stolen from him, having it posted on a popular students blog. He processes this (read: rages alone in his room) and makes the decision to tell his family. Simon comes out to his parents on Christmas morning; his sister has already read the blog. He comes out to his parents just after his Dad has made a joke about him getting a girl pregnant. Y’know, classic Dad joke, I imagine. It’s an emotional moment and I’m reminded of the crushing weight of having a truth you want to admit, but aren’t sure if you CAN admit. His family takes it well. His Dad struggles a bit more, but each parent eventually gets a scene with their son where they say what they want to say. Yes, Simon does get to reclaim his coming out to a certain extent, but when I think about his story it’s the one to one scenes with his parents that I am most envious of.
Parents have powerful words
Simon’s mother, Emily, repeats back to her son what she told them during his coming out speech. That he is exactly the same person he was before, that he hasn’t changed. Emily seems to be some kind of psychologist or therapist and so her careful choice of words and selecting when to speak to her son is purposeful. Not every parent can possible have the tools to say the “right thing”, but the wrong thing can be incredible harmful, especially if you are coming out as bi, a sexuality that many either don’t understand or intentionally misrepresent.
Jack, Simon’s father, confronts his son with tears in his eyes. He cries, he’s apologetic, sorry that he didn’t spot the truth and then make his words match what he would then know. He’s not crying because of who Simon is, he’s upset by his words and the impact they must have had on his son. You see it in Simon every time his dad makes a joke about a girlfriend. It reeks of discomfort and fear. Hearing what Jack says, I imagine that having your father, as a son, tell you that they want to make the right dad jokes, however inappropriate or awkward, would be reassuring to hear.
I don’t know what it would have been like to get that kind of response, had I been able to come out to my father, or mother, in the way that I would have wanted. Watching these scenes in Love, Simon made me very emotional, it felt so validating the hear those words from any parent, even if they weren’t my own. I think in part because even if I’d not been able to come out on my own terms, at least it would have felt like it all worked out in the end.
Let this be the first of many
Love, Simon is a great movie. It has a beautiful soundtrack, many moments that show the imperfections of teenage-hood, while also being a romantically hopeful coming out story. Its one of many LGBT focused movies and yes, focuses on one letter most of all. But it’s a breakthrough in that it’s for the mainstream market, unlike many queer films. I can’t wait for the day when we start to see bisexual and pansexual coming out movies, so that we can point, like the gay community is, to a film that will empower young people who are coming to terms with their pan or bi sexuality. Then at last, we might have our have a rulebook to follow. Or not, if we choose.
