Done That

Diana’s post on Wednesday reminded me that Tuesday was National Coming Out Day. 

I missed another one! 

It is not an entry on my calendar because I don’t have to worry about coming out any longer. I am out to just about everyone I know (and don’t know). The only stragglers are some aunts and first cousins and the Internet savvy ones probably know if they ever Googled our last name because my “secret identity” comes up in the Google search results. (Note to cousins: You can tell me you know. I won‘t be embarrassed.)

C'est la vie!

One truth I discovered when coming out is that you are likely to have better reactions if you do it yourself rather than via a second party. I have come out to hundreds of people and have had no negative reactions (to my face – who knows what goes on behind my back?) The worst reaction was from an old friend who remarked, “Why would anyone choose to be a woman?”

When you use an intermediary, the reactions may not be so positive. My wife did a lot of the coming out to her family and friends. As a result, one long-time girlfriend ended her relationship with my wife over it. My in-laws, in general, were not supportive (oddly, the wife of my very non-supportive brother-in-law was very supportive). 

If I came out to them myself, I wonder if their reactions would have been better?

I was not always so free about revealing my secret identity. In the past, I took baby steps when I came out, carefully picking and choosing the people I considered coming out to and mulling over whether to do it or not.

Early on, I only came out to females – never to males. It was easy to come out to females because I was telling them that I am on their team. Men were not so easy. Just encountering men when I was en femme used to give me pause; coming out to a man was unthinkable. But I finally reached a point when I had to come out to males.

When I decided to attend a ham radio convention as a woman, I felt obligated to inform the officers and directors of the organization whose booth I would be staffing at the convention (I was an officer and director myself). 

I composed a coming out letter. That was the easy part. Sending it was the hard part.

I recall copying that letter into the text of an email, adding all the email addresses into the To: field and then hesitating to click on the Send button for hours... over three hours. 

I finally realized that my hesitancy was ridiculous – I had to come out to these people or chuck my plans to attend the convention as a woman. So I clicked on the Send button and waited for the reaction.

The response was anti-climatic. I received 100% support from the people who received my email. Not a discouraging word was heard.

And so it goes.

Wearing Venus

Greg Kean femulating in a 1993 episode of television’s Designing Women.