Outness

[serene]

I have bowed out of a discussion elsewhere, but I still have thoughts in my head about outness, and I'm putting them here. Feel free to argue with me -- I may not argue back, depending on my energy levels.



1) I think it's everyone's right to choose to stay closeted. While I think it's a suboptimal choice, I fully support the right of every human being to make choices I find to be suboptimal, given that I really don't have any faith in my own omniscience.

2) I think that if you're an adult, and you say you have no choice in the matter, and you *have* to stay in the closet, I'm not going to take you seriously unless someone has a gun to your head or has you locked in the cellar or something. It may be a difficult choice, but you're making a choice. Again, the fact that I don't like your choice shouldn't give you the impression I think you're bad/wrong/evil if you make that choice.

3) I think that if you're out to select people and not to others, [edit: and you think that no one will find out about it,] you're deluding yourself about the reliability of your closet.

4) I do not consent to helping people maintain their closets. This is not to say that I will go spouting off to everyone I know that you're queer/poly/whatever. If someone asks me if you're queer/poly/whatever, I'm likely to ask them why they're not asking you instead of me. However, if we're partners, I'm not gonna pretend I'm your pal if we're really licking each other's cunts. If we're seen in a gay bar, I'm not gonna pretend you're my straight friend along for the ride. If someone tells me something that makes it obvious they know you're queer, I'm not going to correct them to "cover" for you. I'm not going to enter into a don't-ask-don't-tell relationship. And so on.

5) If you say to me that you will lose your job if you come out, my response is likely to be, "Okay, then don't come out, but I want to let you and others know that many of us are out and still manage to put food on the table." This is not in any way intended to shame you -- it's intended to offer options to others who may be reading, and to perhaps let you know that your option field is broader than you may think it is. If you still choose to be in the closet, fine. If you still insist it's not a choice but an imperative, see #2.

6) I'm not sure why it annoys me so much when people say things like "Well, you're lucky you can be out of the closet -- I don't have choices like you have." But it *utterly*. *Annoys*. *Me*. I did not fall into outness because the luck fairy came and bonked me on the head with his magick wand and made my life consequence-free. I grew up in Navy towns. I lived in a conservative shit-kicker town with my wife. I worked for military contractors and other corporate weenies. I chose to be out, *knowing* I could get fired or even killed. If you don't want to do that, you don't have to, and that's entirely fine with me. But you insult me when you say it's just because I live in some magical world where being out is completely consequence-free.

Being out is both a personal and a political act for me. It costs me something. I don't expect everyone else to make the same choices I make, but dammit, I made the choice, and if you want to, you can, too.

Okay, rant over for now. Moving on.

Comments

[calebbullen.livejournal.com]

6) I'm right there with you on that one. It seems to me that a lot of the worlds problems would've been solved a long time ago if folks en masse said, a la Sammy Davis Jr, "I Gotta Be Me".

the thing is, luck doesn't matter much for most people. Obviously one can think of extreme examples where being out really isn't an option but in this time and place not so much. But people staying closeted are enabling the unintentional prejudice that's out there and making things worse for the folks who choose not to hide themselves.

And really, isn't that kind of a universal? I mean it goes well beyond sexuality or even religion (two big areas where people closet themselves)into the whole marketplace of ideas. Pick almost any bad idea from The Cold War to the Nazis to Disco, after the fact everyone spoke up saying, "Oh golly I knew that was a terrible idea all along"

Where were they before things got all out of hand? In the closet, and that aint right.

[baerana.livejournal.com]

I agree w/ everything you say 100%. I've gotten very upset/angry/something when people have told me they have no choice. Or that I'm lucky.

I am in a relationship w/ someone who is in the closet. And it makes me CRAZY!!! It's worth it for me to deal with it, for the moment, but I really hate it and wouldn't enter into this kind of relationship again.

but everything you say here is true and very well said

digressions in response

[redbird]

I can see both that it's easier/safer for me to be out than it would be for, say, most rural Africans, and that both they and I are nonetheless making choices.

I also think I'm more sympathetic to someone who says "I can't afford to be out now because $reason" if the reason makes sense to me (no invisible pink unicorns, and "I might lose custody of my child" is more convincing than "some of my neighbors wouldn't talk to me anymore") than if they just say "well, you're lucky, you can do this." The former recognizes that there are prices, and trade-offs between risks, and that you and I also live in the real world.

I'm not thrilled about referring to one of my partners as "Q" here, but I know the reasons why zie wants this, and they make sense to me. And if we're out somewhere, people are likely to figure out that we are, in fact, partners, and mostly zie doesn't worry about that (with specific exceptions that make sense to me, but that I don't think I should detail here). It also matters to me that the specific reasons aren't going to last forever, and that Q doesn't like this either.

From another angle, part of my discomfort with closeting is that it distorts my behavior; using "Q" instead of zir real name isn't much of a distortion in a context where I'm using LJ handles for a lot of other people. Come to think of it, someone reading only my LJ wouldn't find any of my partners' real names; cattitude and adrian_turtle deliberately don't have their real names on their journals. Our friends know about the relationships, which is what I need for my own comfort and emotional well-being. And people I talk to in other contexts do get Q's real name, and Cattitude's; Adrian goes by that name socially, and it would feel odd to call her something else.

[jb98.livejournal.com]

However, if we're partners, I'm not gonna pretend I'm your pal if we're really licking each other's cunts.

*swoon*

[jb98.livejournal.com]

Now that I've recovered somewhat, here's a more coherent reply. I agree with everything you've written here, with a most heartfelt agreement with #6. When people tell me I'm lucky, they discount my entire experience. Luck had nothing to do with it, it's the result of some painful, gut-wrenching, and costly choices. Most people pay a price for their outness and I don't enjoy mine getting dismissed like it's some sort of privilege.

Thanks for writing this up so articulately.

[sagefemme11.livejournal.com]

**swoon, part II**

[redandfiery.livejournal.com]

Thirded.

*swoon*

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Oh, you guys. *blush*

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

(nod) I can understand all of what you said, and I resonate with most of it completely. I've (somewhat reluctantly) chosen to honor requests not to speak about certain (now ex-)partners in particularly public venues (e.g., on TV), but I won't participate in a DADT relationship for similar reasons to those you've listed here. It *is* a choice, and we all get to be where we're at on our journey with it. But it's still a choice. Anyone who thinks that I'm "lucky" to "be able to" speak about my relationships forthrightly on TV doesn't know the hours of agonizing it took for me to be willing to out myself on that level. It's a conscious choice to be seen, a personal and political act, as you've said. It takes work to be in integrity with yourself. Congratulations on your choice to do so. I know how much work it can be, and how much risk you chose to take on.

[sagefemme11.livejournal.com]

Selective outing of oneself is a farce, this I have learned in exquisite vividness.

Great post, quite articulate. :-)

[leback.livejournal.com]

I think that if you're out to select people and not to others, you're deluding yourself about the reliability of your closet.

You're welcome to think this of me, but I wonder whether it's based on inaccurate assumptions about what people hope to accomplish by being out to some people and not others. There are people I don't tell certain things to because I (or other people in my life) don't want to discuss those things with them, and all else being equal, I (or other people in my life) would rather those people not know. But I have no expectations whatsoever regarding the reliability of my closet. It would be very easy for the people I don't tell things to to discover those things, and I'm aware that it could happen at any time, and I'm comfortable with that possibility. In some cases, I would actually prefer that to telling the person directly; in others, it's an acceptable contingency, and the downsides to someone's finding out that way instead of directly from me (or finding out later instead of now) are outweighed by the immediate benefits of my not telling them.

On the "choices" stuff, though, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think there are people in the world who have no choices I can call meaningful about some kinds of outness (for instance, I'm in no position to expect people to martyr themselves in places where acknowledged homosexuality is likely to get you a death sentence), but the people I actually see claiming they have no choice do not tend to be those people.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your input. I have edited my post.

[leback.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! I'm glad to have helped you clarify.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Thank you for writing this; it's very useful for me as I'm trying to reconcile a bunch of my male college friends, all of whom it transpires are bi/gay, but none of whom are out to more than one of the others apart from me...

I'm so tempted to just send a mass email that says "We're all queer, get over it", but instead I'm just getting them together and trying not to let them off the subject. We shall see.

I'd only disagree with you on the reliability of closets - my experience is that they can be more reliable than I might want, in that coming out to someone in a new job more likely than not doesn't mean I don't have to repeat myself a dozen times to the rest of my colleagues. Similar situations with new friends. Although the one of the lads referred to above who managed to attend my commitment ceremony, watch me snogging the best man, drink for 8 hours with 80 bisexuals, and knew I was the webmaster for a bi newspaper, but still didn't realise I was bi or poly, is just beyond help...

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

"Not everyone automatically knows I'm queer" has nothing to do with a closet. If you're telling people, even wishing they would know, you're not in the closet. Not everyone in the whole world knows I'm queer/poly/atheist, but I'm not closeted in any way. The closet is about keeping secrets.

[sapphicprincess.livejournal.com]

I feel the same way about being out. It irritates me when people argue that, "Straight people don't go around telling everyone they're straight!" Yes, they do. Straight people talk about their boyfriends and girlfriends and spouses. I don't know how people can maintain a relationship when someone is in the closet. It's hard enough when it's not a secret! It seems that it would put a huge strain on the relationship.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

One of my partners is not out to zir parents or to one of zir employees. I don't like it, but it's not my call. What is my call is that I won't pretend to be zir pal, so I haven't met zir parents, nor do I stick around if zir employee is around. Zie feels bad about this, but that's zir problem. I'd love to get to know zir parents, but not as a lie.

(The other two partners told their parents, and I've had good relationships with all of them.)