One Foot Out of the Closet

Photo by Creative Commons

Article written by Her Campus UNT Freelance Writer Elizabeth Bair

Please note that the students mentioned in this article prefer the pronouns “they/them”

The LGBT+ community is one of the most diverse and multifaceted groups of people you’ll ever meet. Despite stereotypes, queer people come in all shapes, sizes, colors, religions, you name it. And yet, we all have one experience in common: the act of coming out of the closet. We’ve all seen it in TV shows and in movies: that shining moment when a character finally reveals their orientation and starts living their truth as a queer individual. Never again will they live a lie! Never again will they hide their true self from the world!

….Yeah, we all wish it was that simple. For a majority of queer youth, coming out happens bit by bit. Even after years of being ‘openly’ queer, there are still places where you feel too uncomfortable or unsafe to be open about your identity. For UNT students, however, campus isn’t one of those places. “I chose this campus because I felt most comfortable in it,” says Noa Telisak, a UNT sophomore and openly genderqueer student.

While they said it’s true that being open about their identity can be nerve-wracking at home, but that same anxiety doesn’t seem to be present on campus. About the accepting atmosphere on campus, they said, “I think it is pretty unique [to UNT] because I did visit some other schools on various points of my high school career and if I did the same thing at [other colleges] I feel like I’d have to work a lot harder at it.”

And UNT does seem to have a more relaxed attitude about their queer students, from those in same-gender relationships to acceptance of transgender youth to straight students actively showing their support as allies. The Pride Alliance, a group dedicated to advocating and supporting queer students, is incredibly active on campus and hosts events like Second Chance Prom that are geared specifically towards those who could not be open when they were living at home in high school. Aside from student organizations like the Pride Alliance, UNT offers resources like LGBT-specific group counseling at Chestnut Hall and education training through the Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

But this kind of atmosphere on campus tends to contrast with the home lives of many LGBT students. Despite the gradual acceptance of a more diverse gender and sexuality spectrum in the American public, many students still feel that being out at home is difficult and the appearance of acceptance may be deceiving. For a lot of families, being gay is okay– as long as you aren’t living under the same roof as a gay person. The city of Denton offers a unique experience, it seems.

In other places in Texas, being openly queer can be dangerous. One student singles out their hometown as one of these places: “I feel extremely unsafe,” an anonymous UNT student reported. “Not only in my home, because I’m not out, but even when I’m out and about just in the city without my family. I feel like I am going to get stopped and harassed for looking too gay.”

And this kind of anxiety has its toll on queer youth. The National Alliance on Mental Illness reports that LGBT youth are four times more likely to commit suicide due to the strain of being stigmatized and discriminated against.  “It’s really stressful,” the same student explains. “Like so stressful I avoid going home, I don’t want to answer phone calls, I double and triple check what I’ve written into a text before I send it. It’s so incredibly draining to be constantly misgendered and dead-named [called by their birth name instead of their chosen one].”

But wouldn’t it just be easier to rip the band-aid off? Surely being out and proud at home can’t be as nerve-wracking as being closeted. After all, college students have a certain level of independence we didn’t in middle school or high school, and it must therefore be easier to break the news to the folks back home. “I genuinely don’t know how they would react if I came out,” the UNT student confesses about their family. “It could range from acceptance and even having been expected to them cutting me off and kicking me to the curb and refusing to ever see me again or acknowledge my existence.” The student adds: “They might just pretend I didn’t come out. Pretend that nothing’s different. And that would almost be worse and more hurtful.”

• equalrights
• LGBTQ+