(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . I'm Coming Out as Queer and Non-Binary, Because I'd Rather Die Than Go Back [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-25 The first half of this year has been one of the most emotionally trying of my life: long held relationships are crumbling, I’m losing my house, two beloved pets had passed so far this year and a third is likely sooner rather than later, and the threat of fascism and the end of liberty both grow more overt and more real every single day. And yet today, I feel better than ever. For the first time in my life I can honestly say I can die happy, and it’s because it’s only now, after three decades of depression and mental fog, that I finally feel like I’m living again instead of just surviving. It’s because, after a lifetime of suffocating half of myself, I’m finally letting my entire self live and thrive. I used to let fear and isolation keep me in denial and hiding from myself as well as the world, but one single evening with my family made it all clear. Maybe it’s cliche to cap off Pride Month with a coming out story, but in my defense it happened by coincidence in Pride Month itself. It’s also a perfect time to come out publicly because, after all, it IS Pride Month. I’ve always felt out of place in the world, and sometimes those feelings were rooted in more obvious causes, like religious or racial or cultural barriers separating me from the wider community around me, but sometimes they were something I could never put my finger on or verbalize. A brief flash of jealously that girl scouts got to wear skirts, but boy scouts didn’t; wanting to try makeup or nail polish; wondering why I thought it was unfair I could try out to be a cheerleader if I wanted, but couldn’t wear a girl’s uniform as part of it (don’t try and convince me male cheerleader uniforms aren’t insanely boring, or at least they were in the 90s). I couldn’t understand these urges, because I was not just perfectly happy in my male gender from birth, but reveled in my masculinity. I camped, I backpacked, I built an actual log cabin with my bare hands at a summer scout camp. I took weight lifting in high school and put up numbers on par with the football team. I got my letterman’s jacket and cut the perfect image of an All American Teen Boy, and LOVED it. So, why the hell did I long to grow my hair long, braid it, and be an adorable Girl Next Door? What was wrong with me? This went beyond just “comfortable in my masculinity”: I grew up with extremely progressive parents who loved my brother and I unconditionally and were both perfectly secure in themselves despite not conforming perfectly to heteronormative stereotypes: my mom squealed with delight when my dad bought her a new tool set for her birthday, and my dad (the former makeup artist) would chide her for drying her hands with his nice decorative bathroom towels. I wasn’t worried that wearing lip gloss would make me gay or that putting on a skirt would make me less of a man. It’s that sometimes, I wanted to feel like less of a man and it didn’t make sense to me. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out who I was. I first thought maybe I was gay; again, it was the late 90s/early 2000s, and I was young and stupid, so “feminine man = gay” was what pop culture had to teach my impressionable teen self about gender expression. A few encounters in my 20s with men left me more confused than before. I clearly wasn’t gay, but I also didn’t hate trying to figure it out, but didn’t like it enough to think of myself as “bisexual”. Confused? I certainly was. So, maybe the problem wasn’t that I was gay, but maybe I was trans. That could explain a lot: I was a woman trapped in a man’s body, a lesbian yearning to be free from this masculine cocoon. I didn’t feel particularly trapped, but what did I know? If I was happy as a man, I wouldn’t want to be a woman, obviously. I worked up the nerve to come out to my mother, who gently suggested that I keep thinking. Clearly not wanting to hurt my feelings, make me feel rejected, or stop my personal growth, she gingerly tried to convince me that IF I was trans it would be fine, but that didn’t seem like it was the case, and I shouldn’t settle for it because I didn’t have a better answer yet. My mother is a very smart woman, and what she said made sense. Of course, knowing what the answer wasn’t also didn’t help me figure out what it was. The next 15 years weren’t much more illuminating: I wondered if perhaps it was a sexual kink, a hormone imbalance, repressed trauma, born intersex and given corrective surgery at birth, Klinefelter (XXY) Syndrome...all of which were dead ends for explaining the confusion within me. Trends like “metrosexual” never fit either, and in fact sort of annoyed me. It’s not that I had a problem with men using makeup or hair product, or getting mani-pedis and taking an interest in dressing fashionably, or any of those trends of traditionally feminine things being reinvented as masculine choices. My irritation was that I was still locked into the gender binary despite these changes. Oh sure, I could wear makeup...but NOT to look more womanly. I could wear a skirt, but, you know, a masculine one. A simple gloss coat on my nails was fine, but French tips were as far as I could push it and that was indeed pushing it. It infuriated me; I liked feeling feminine when I did feminine things like wearing makeup or putting on a skirt, and it’s like I was being told rather than get to be feminine and enjoy that feeling, I was being made to embrace another way of being masculine instead. Don’t be girly, be a manly skirt wearer! Don’t be girly, be a rugged macho makeup user! Except...I wanted to be pretty. I wanted to feel, and be seen, as feminine. I wanted to be a girly makeup queen, not a stylish and handsome king. Except for when I did want to be a king. Confused? I certainly was. I didn’t want to be a woman full-time. I didn’t want to be a man full-time. I rolled my eyes whenever pronouns came up or another letter joined the gay and lesbian lineup: sure, those terms were useful for a lot of people, but they just made me feel more and more like there was nobody else like me. Even as I learned about terms like “queer” and “non-binary”, a part of me still felt like they didn’t fit, but I couldn’t quite get what did fit. I hated trying to find a word like “genderfluid” or “genderqueer” or, most cringe-inducing to me of all, “tomgirl” to sum me up. Boxes were useful for many, but I thought the whole point of feminism and the sexual revolution and all those groovy movements was so we could wake up one day in a world without boxes, man. I didn’t want to be a label. I wanted to be ME, and not have anyone care about it. I wanted to live how I wanted to live and be taken at face value. Being seen publicly as a cisgender, white, straight man had a lot of perks to be sure, but it also had a lot of rigid boundaries I chafed against, that were slowly but surely killing me from the inside. Despite my denial about being in the closet, it’s pretty clear what I was feeling was exactly what being closeted felt like. Which brings me to a few weeks ago, when I found myself at my brother’s house with Father’s Day weekend approaching. The past few days had been a whirlwind of chaos, emotions, and spilling out bottled up secrets and feelings to my incredible, supportive, loving family. I didn’t have the words or labels, but I used “non-binary’ and “queer” because they were close enough. My sister-in-law had a dress a size too big she offered to give me, thinking I’d look good in it. I tried it on, and it fit wonderfully. I asked, tentatively, if I could wear it to dinner and if she’d help me with my hair. She excitedly agreed. While I did my makeup, my brother and sister-in-law broke the news to my nephew. To say he couldn’t have cared less was an understatement: he saw nothing unusual about any of this. Better than being affirmed, I was getting what I really wanted. I was being accepted, just for myself. No one was asking for my pronouns, or worried about a dead name, because I wasn’t finally becoming my true self — I was just finally being my complete self. My sister-in-law and I went for a drive together, and had a long and wonderful talk. On the way back, we stopped for a drink at Sonic. I stopped to get some things before heading back to my brother’s place, and didn’t give a second thought the entire time that I was out in public, in full makeup, hair styled, in a dress. In Deep Red Texas. I didn’t care anymore. I had always hid this part of myself, dipping my toes into the waters here and there, timid and nervous. I feared, reasonably, that in a country where hysteria over trans groomers and drag perverts coming for your kids was being whipped into a frenzy as part of a neofascist movement that I could be victimized. Violence against queer, trans, nonbinary people, whatever was drawing conservative ire isn’t a hypothetical here: actual blood is spilled, every year, over this in Texas, today. But I didn’t care anymore. I had lived more in six hours than in 30 years of fear and confusion and denial. I had resolved to fight the growing fascist movement in this country because I had decided I would rather die fighting than give up my liberty. That Sunday I realized I would rather die being myself than kill half of my soul to keep living. My liberty under the law was useless, incomplete without liberty of my being. I am unafraid to be my complete self anymore. I refuse to waste one more minute being afraid or shackled by the past or the narrow-minded among us who want me not just in a box, but not to even get a say in the box. I’m coming out as non-binary and queer, not because those labels fit me but because they don’t. Because I refuse to BE labeled. I wear what I want, when I want. I present how I want, when I want. I love and kiss and court and befriend and fuck who I want. I don't have time or interest in labels because I have life to live. I’m nonbinary and queer because one gender and one sexuality isn’t enough for me. I want to feel it all, live it all, do it all, and die knowing that whatever else, I was free. I am finally living a free life, and I would rather die than go back. Happy Pride Month, everyone, especially those of you (like me) who didn’t think all this “pride” stuff is for them, and perhaps still don’t. 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