Thought

[serafina20]

Sometimes, in fic (and real media), when someone comes out and their friends start going off with, "How could you not tell me? I'm your best friend? Didn't you trust me?" and it gets dragged out and laid as a guilt trip, I'd like to see the queer character say something like, "Look. It's my sexuality. It's for me to deal with, and I wasn't ready to tell you before. I told you when I was ready and if you can't understand that, that maybe this is big and complicated, maybe you aren't as good a friend as you're professing to be." Except, maybe without so many italics.

Incidentally, this is also how I feel when a public figure states that they are not gay and then people insist that they are. Because, maybe they are (although how would any of us know unless we fucked/were fucked by them) but it's not our sexuality and everyone should get to come out in their own time (if ever, because, dude, it's not our right to know. Unless we're married to them).

So. Maybe I should write that sometime.

Comments

[ceares.livejournal.com]

I usually don't comment on stuff like this, but it's sort of a discussion I have with my mother frequently so here goes.

I believe there are things that are fundamentally a part of who you are-whether they are things that you are born with like sexuality or things that happen during your life. Those things affect how you behave, they affect how you react. If you are in an intimate relationship with someone and you hide that from them, there is no way that does not affect your relationship negatively. It might be yoursexuality but both of you are in the relationship.

It's a big complicated thing that you locked someone who loves you out of. How could they not feel betrayed if they gave you their honesty and their trust and you did not return the same? I'd say they weren't as good a friend as they were professing to be if they weren't hurt by it. And why would you not feel guilty about hurting someone you loved, even if it was to protect yourself?

Coming out may be big and complicated but dealing with the people affected by your coming out is a part of that, not a separate thing.

I won't get into the public figure/obligation to be out or not thing because I'm of two minds about it, but there is validity in the idea that a gay public figure who denies it(presumably repeatedly)stigmatizes it even more for both gay and straight people.

[serafina20.livejournal.com]

And why would you not feel guilty about hurting someone you loved, even if it was to protect yourself?

Because if I'm trying to come to terms with something within myself, and I'm not ready, I should be given the time to deal with it without being made to feel as if I've done something wrong. I'm not saying people can't feel hurt about it, but to attack them or make them feel as if they've done something wrong when they're already trying to deal with something big isn't fair.

I won't get into the public figure/obligation to be out or not thing because I'm of two minds about it, but there is validity in the idea that a gay public figure who denies it(presumably repeatedly)stigmatizes it even more for both gay and straight people.

But if someone has come on the record saying they're straight and one day they'd like to meet the the right woman and have children, have never given any indication they were anything but straight, and people still decide they must be gay, that's not fair. We aren't privy to their personal lives, and deciding someone's gay with no proof, assigning a label, isn't fair. And everyone has their own reasons for coming out. I don't think it's fair to force someone out who may not even be out to themselves, and by insisting they are something they feel they aren't, they may not want to admit it (even to themselves) because it's other people who want to assign the label.