Hello! Good evening! If you watched Wednesday’s video you’ll know how I feel about coming out
stories, so that’s why this isn’t really a coming out story, it’s more like the evolution of my
queer identity, and some ways I told people about it. It’s complicated
[intro music]
So where did it start? I think my first ever coming out as anything was when I was about 14,
give or take, those school years are very very very very hazy, but I was in school to a point
where I wore uniform so I must’ve been about year 9, and my first queer identity was bisexual. It’s
all a little bit complicated because I was bullied to the point where I didn’t feel able to explore
my queer identity properly, it’s a very very long story but I was bought up around queerphobia
a lot, um, I was called gay as an insult so I didn’t feel like I could pursue that questioning
without getting bullied more and it was quite bad. It’s a long story, we’re not gonna dive
deep into the trauma so 14, realised that actually no, weirdly, people are kind of right,
I do actually like women as well as men, and I honestly cannot remember how I got to the point
of this conversation but the first people I told were the people who cornered me in a library and
started asking me about it, and it just… I just told them. And it- it spread around school like
a wildfire and then my friends were angry at me for not telling them first, so how about maybe we
don’t do that to queer people? So yeah, my first coming out story wasn’t really mine,
and then I told my mum next backhandedly, I didn’t say hey I like girls, I said
damn, I got asked out by a girl today and if it weren’t for x y z reasons I would’ve been well in,
um, and then nobody ever spoke of it again because school- school is school and I didn’t
really need to do the coming out, I was kind of outed. But once I had been outed,
there was a little bit of kickback of the typical um “so who’s your girlfriend then?” “How do you
know if you’ve not been with a girl?” etc. all of the queerphobic stuff, um and someone else had
also come out as bi so I was accused of copying them, even though they had been calling me gay for
god knows how long. But once that had all come out and I realised that it wasn’t actually as bad as
people were making it out to be if I actually was queer, I actually started to explore my options.
Which led me at 17 to coming out as a lesbian! This coming out was actually my own story,
I was able to do the thinking on my own, I wasn’t rushed or pressured into telling anybody,
but I did want to tell everybody at once, so what I did was I dressed up in rainbows, wrote
“I’m gay” on my face, and went in to college. And, shockingly people didn’t just take that
at its word, they just assumed I was doing it for a bet, so I did actually instead of
having to tell everybody hello I’m a lesbian, I had to tell people that no yeah no actually,
yeah no it’s true, it’s not a joke, I am actually queer. So that was fun! Um, and then I met a girl.
And she was wonderful, she also happened to be trans, she was a trans woman,
and we were together, we were publicly out, and people had questions about does that still mean
you’re a lesbian- yes it does, uh well, it did. I’m not a lesbian any more but that’s not why,
and through watching her journey and her explore her gender identity, I started to look at mine,
and I realised that yeah actually, there is more than just being told I was a woman. Because
scroll back, go back to school times in secondary school times, I was badly bullied, and I wanted
more than anything to fit in and “be normal” and my idea of being normal was to like the
girly things, um, and to like boys. So I was very uncomfortable doing all of the girl liking boy
things, and it turns out that’s because I’m not a girl and I don’t like boys. I then realised that I
was genderqueer, and my coming out as genderqueer kind of happened inside of the discussions
of my now ex partner’s transness, because people were asking me about my sexuality
it felt like a good time to open that conversation to be like well actually I’m not even a girl so…
It’s a bit more complicated because my now ex-partner is a woman,
so I would be a lesbian but actually I don’t identify as a girl or a woman, I’m actually
genderqueer and then we segued onto that. And as more people knew more people had questions,
um, and I said in another video I can’t remember which one it was,
but I came out first to school peers because I could remove myself from that situation and
there was other things to focus on and there were teachers as mediators so if it got bad, they could
step in. And when it came time to come out to my parents I waited until I had left for university.
Again because I could separate myself from it and step back from the conversation and I didn’t
have to be there. So I wrote my mum a letter which you can hear me read out up here.
And I just sent it to be like hey, I’m going to change my name,
this is why, here’s my pronouns, you’ve got a trans kid, cool. Um, and I asked her not to tell
my dad and I don’t believe that she did, because he didn’t say anything to me and he’s the type of
person that definitely would, so I did that in my first year of uni and then I went home for
Christmas and I decided that enough was enough, in the new year, new years eve, my birthday, I
was going to come out to everybody and I was going to make a social media post, my dad was going to
be able to see it because I did not have the guts to tell him, and I wrote a long social media post,
and that was it, I just kind of explained hey this is my gender, here are my new pronouns,
my name is Max, it has been legally changed to Max, if you have any questions let me know,
and my dad saw that and he asked me some questions in the morning as like, obviously he would if he
had questions. He didn’t get it, he still doesn’t, but he doesn’t not support me. I was on the phone
to him the other day and bless him he tried his hardest to not use any gendered language and he
did quite well, so that’s- that’s like 7 years later so that’s- we’ll call it progress. And
that was my initial coming out to everybody as genderqueer. In regards to my sexuality now,
just being queer I think that never really had a coming out, it kind of started
when I came out as bi all those many years ago and lesbian and then genderqueer and
not knowing the right terminology, I’ve always used queer as a nondescript label of
being LGBT, being not straight, so I never actually had to sit anybody down and say
listen, I know I already came out as a lesbian, but actually I’m queer, that never happened,
it just was a language thing, and I’ve talked about this evolution of language,
it just became that. There was not pivotal oh I’m queer, it just… I don’t know how to explain
it otherwise. Fast-forward, um, my last partner before Cameron I was with and then we broke up and
then I did some soul searching and I realised that actually I sit somewhere on the asexual spectrum,
and I don’t actually think I came out officially as asexual either, like there wasn’t a hey
everybody I’m asexual, it was just kind of added to things and I posted on asexual awareness day
that hello I’m asexual here’s what it means to me I think, there was an Instagram post,
I’m an out and proud asexual. There is the asexual flag, you can’t really see all of it, there’s kind
of the purple here. Do I lead with it? Depending on the situation, eh, not really, um, it-
I have a complicated relationship of when I come out with it because it does lead more to questions
about like do you like sex? Do you have sex? And then comments like I don’t need to know if you
have sex or not, which is not what asexuality is as you’ll find out later on in the month,
it’s just- I don’t always have the spoons for those conversations, and it doesn’t feel
relevant really outside of relationships that I’m in to have to disclose it, but it comes up and
I talk about it, and I talked about what it is and what it isn’t and misconceptions, but like…
It just didn’t have a coming out. It just evolved as a part of my identity and I just started
talking about it and people were just like yeah ok cool. So no real coming out story there. In terms
of we never stop coming out, how do I tell new people? I just tell new people when it comes up,
I don’t usually start a conversation with oh hi nice to meet you I’m gay, it doesn’t
really happen like that. It more happens when people assume that I have a boyfriend,
or when people assume that I’m a she/her, or when people talk to me about sex and I interject with
I’m asexual. When it comes up, I come out when it comes up. My coming out story is not just one
story, it is a mishmash of just life experiences, and I come out as more than queer. I made a video
a while ago about coming out as disabled because I live in the world of invisible illness so I can
pass as able bodied kind of. So often I do have to come out as disabled, so are we including
that in my coming out story? I hope that this has given you some insight into queer life and coming
out especially when it’s not as cut and dry as people think it might be. Other people’s coming
out stories may differ drastically from mine and please be mindful in these discussions that not
everybody can share their coming out story. If you have liked this video ,don’t forget to
like this video. I’m tired. Drop a comment down below with your thoughts and feelings, if you have
any questions, or if you’re comfortable sharing your coming out story, my comments section is
a safe place to do that, subscribe to my channel if you haven’t already and ring that notification
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with at least one bonus video every single month, apart from this month when it’s Pride month,
you’re getting 2 videos each week, one on Wednesday and one on Saturday. See ya!
[Blue Skies instrumental]