I’m sitting in a chair at the hair salon a few weeks before Christmas, and as my lovely stylist trims away, she cheerfully asks if I have anything in particular planned for the holidays. As I begin to tell her, I realize I have a decision to make in a few words. Do I tell her that my girlfriend and I will be staying in town, baking and watching movies, or do I tell her my friend and I will be staying in town, baking and watching movies?
Of course, I want to say my girlfriend, because that is who she is, and I feel a wave of guilt at the idea of relegating her to the category of nameless friend. On the other hand, calling her my girlfriend means I need to be prepared for her reaction.
It might be a good reaction, it might be a negative reaction, it might be a teeny tiny barely there reaction, as slight as a raising of the eyebrows, or a soft “oh!” Or there may simply be no reaction, which I desperately hope to be the case. But if I choose girlfriend, it is an undeniable reality that I must then be prepared for one.
In the early spring of this year, when I finally came out to my friends and family, I thought it would, in some sense, mark the closing of a chapter – my time in the closet. I would work up the nerve to tell the people I loved – the people I felt needed or deserved a formal conversation – and then I would move on. Having never lived my life as an openly queer person until that point, I did not appreciate that this was merely the beginning rather than the end. It may sound silly, but I simply failed to account for all of the small ways in the months to come that I would have to decide whether or not to let strangers in on that piece of my identity.
“When I started a new job, I remember it was my second day, and one of the girls that I worked with was asking me a bunch of questions like ‘how do you find the job?’ that kind of thing. And then she asked, ‘oh, do you think any of the guy co-workers are cute?” recalls Chaya Tabac, a first-year student at McGill University who identifies as a lesbian.
“And then you have to say you have a girlfriend, and that’s probably not what they’re expecting. And then it’s sort of like you came out, but not really, and it probably wasn’t even their intention with the conversation.”
Tabac, like myself and many other young queer folks, finds herself grappling with the notion of coming out in a world that is radically different from that of queer people just a generation before us.
“Many young queer people, in particular adolescents, live in a world in which they don’t make assumptions about gender or sexual orientation,” says Deborah Kasner, a Winnipeg-based social worker who also identifies as a lesbian. But it’s a world in which many, and in particular many parents are not yet living in.
And so, particularly for younger LGBTQ+ individuals, one’s queerness and how and when you make that queerness known, must also straddle those two worlds: a heteronormative world that assumes heterosexuality unless told otherwise, and a rapidly progressing social ideology that rejects those notions.
“I think that everyone should kind of have that experience of saying ‘hey, you know what, I’m not straight,’ and having that moment,” says Mackenzie Casalino, who identifies as non-binary. “I found it to be quite empowering to be so vulnerable and open and tell people.”
For Casalino, a large part of their coming out process was coming out to themself, and that process of self-discovery and self-exploration is one they wish was more accepted.
“Just telling people hey, I don’t know yet what my pronouns are, or I don’t know yet about my sexuality, stuff like that.”
“My coming out was probably not typical. I kind of pushed it off for a few years, and it just reached a point where my mom basically knew and there was really no hiding it,” Tabac laughs.
“I had a girlfriend, and she kind of deciphered that for herself, and then she came to me and was like ‘I know, it’s fine.’”
My girlfriend, Belle Riley Thompson, also had a similar experience, in which coming out was largely a non-event.
“I grew up in a very sexually accepting family. I used to ask my mom all the time if she had any heterosexual friends, because all she had were lesbian friends,” she quips.
“I never came out and said ‘oh, I’m gay’ because my parents never raised me with the assumption that I was straight.”
As we talk later with her mom on the phone, she recounts to me the story of a seven- or eight-year-old Belle declaring her love for a girl in her class; at nine, engaging in a dinner table conversation about how sexuality is a spectrum.
“I didn’t feel like I had anything to come out about. So when I did get into my first relationship, I called my mom, and was like just so you know I have a girlfriend, and that was that.”
However, as Kasner notes, many parents have a harder time coming to terms with their children’s sexuality than they thought they would.
“They’re okay with people being trans, or something other than straight. But when it comes to their own kid being not heterosexual, or gender non-conforming, that’s not so okay,” says Kasner.
“It would be great if people didn’t have to come out, but that isn’t always the reality.”
In my moment of uncertainty, I tell my stylist that my friend and I are staying in town, with plans to bake through my new cookbook and re-watch our favourite movies.
Predictably, I feel the guilt crawl into my stomach at what I feel to be an act of cowardice. However, it’s mixed with the tinge of resentment. My straight friends will never, ever experience that pause, the need to make that calculation, the hundreds and hundreds of times deciding whether or not to come out, before introducing their significant other in a conversation. My stylist, of course, remains blissfully unaware of this internal debate.