The whiteness of ‘coming out’: culture and identity in the disclosure narrative
By: Asiel Adan Sanchez
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It’s been eight years since I first kissed a boy, and two since gender loosened its grip on me, yet I never came out to my father.
I’ve made my peace with never coming out to him, or the rest of my extended family, for that matter. For someone straddling two cultures, this is a radical act. Mainstream queer narratives are often shaped by gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk’s edict to “burst down those closet doors once and for all”. Ideas of visibility and the closet have largely been shaped by white America and the gay liberation movement of the 1970s.
Refusing to subscribe to this narrative gives us space to connect with our gender, our culture and our sexuality on our own terms.
The thing about coming out is there must be something for you to come out into: the open arms of a shared experience, the waving of rainbow flags, and five seasons of Queer as Folk. This vision of coming out implies access to a cultural space where identity is well-defined and validated.
In its archetypal form, coming out is believed to be synonymous with living a free and authentic life. It’s the moment we supposedly purge our shame, self-hatred and repression, and demand for our queerness to be acknowledged.
However, when so much of queer visibility is grounded in white history, white bodies and white gatekeepers, we have to question who benefits from coming out. A 2016 study led by Adrian J. Villicana, a social psychologist at the University of Kansas in the US, compared the coming-out experiences of gay white men and gay Latino men.
Through a series of questionnaires and inventories, the study quantified the wellbeing of participants in relation to verbally coming out. Villicana and his team showed that gay white men often benefited from verbally coming out, whereas gay Latino men often did not.
For many gay white men, coming out is a way of showing their true, authentic selves. It signals their belonging to a particular minority group of sexual orientation, with its own particular subculture and sense of community. This in turn predicted greater wellbeing.
Image: Jess Craven
Gay Latino men, on the other hand, didn’t experience their sexual identity in the same way. As ethnic minorities, gay Latino men already had a unique point of identity. By verbally coming out, they often risked alienating themselves from their ethnic communities.
The study showed that coming out means something different in Latino culture because overt acknowledgement of sexuality is often met with intense disapproval; it can mean falta de respeto, or disrespecting modesty and family tradition.
Gay Latino men acknowledged their sexuality in actions rather than words. Many introduced gay friends to their parents, brought their partners to family gatherings, or showed their support for gay-related causes, without ever uttering the words, “I’m gay.”
As a Latino person, this echoed so much of my own experience.
The first time I painted my nails, my father barely commented on it. It was a small detail that made me feel lighter in my own skin. In time, he’d find a skirt, some heels, the stain of lipstick and an embarrassingly high stack of gay magazines in my bedroom.
Of course, I know my father is well aware of the meaning of these things, but there’s no reason for either of us to bring it up. He knows I go off to Sydney every few weeks to visit my partner, but to him, it’s never really my ‘partner’. It’s this in-between state of ‘friend’ and ‘life companion’.
To declare, “I’m gay,” would reduce my relationship with my partner because, in my father’s eyes, coming out is no more than the acknowledgement of sexual preference. The emotional support, companionship and significance of my relationship are lost in the process.
Similarly, to say, “I’m non-binary,” would render my gender incomprehensible to my father. There’s no way that he can understand where I’m coming from because there’s nothing he can connect it to in Mexican culture.
Mexican history is imbued with celebrations of patriarchy, and our colonised language only expresses two genders. Growing up, I was surrounded by insidious reminders that I had failed to uphold my family’s heritage, culture and history. For my father, being anything other than a straight man is not only a failure of masculinity, but also a failure of tradition.
The study by Villicana and his colleagues highlights how a gay identity has been constructed from a white, cisgender framework, to the exclusion of queer people of colour. For the gay Latino men in Villicana’s study, and for myself, our sense of identity and wellbeing relies on our culture and our family as much as it does on our sexuality. Our traditions, our families and our heritage are important to us. Before I ever thought of myself as queer, I was Mexican: fresh tortillas, dia de los muertos, huaraches, rebozos and tamales are my foremost cultural icons.
Mainstream narratives of coming out imply a white subjectivity, one that forgets the influence of culture, family and heritage. For many queer people of colour, coming out is a much more nuanced process than a single moment of verbal disclosure.
We come out in silence, between the refusal of mainstream queer narratives to acknowledge our culture, and the refusal of our culture to acknowledge our sexuality and gender. We come out in actions rather than words, because we have to navigate our gender and sexuality in terms of a very different cultural profile. Terms like ‘gay’, ‘trans’ and ‘non-binary’ aren’t universal. They have radically different meanings in different cultural contexts.
As a Mexican, non-binary person, I have to remind myself that there’s always been a space for my queerness in my culture. Gender diversity in non-western cultures is automatically subsumed into the broader transgender narrative. In indigenous Zapotec culture, Muxes are immensely valued members of their families, who tend to the household and perform filial duties better than sons or daughters.
If someone who is Muxe was to come out as a trans woman, it would replace their cultural value with one that privileges western definitions and identity categories. The sanctity of culturally specific genders would be thereby destroyed.
This sort of erasure was exemplified by Frida Kahlo, one of the most recognised Mexican artists. Although she was not Muxe, her work brought many aspects of my gender, sexuality and culture into a coherent whole.
She never subscribed to the idea of coming out, she refused to identify as bisexual despite affairs with many different kinds of people, and she portrayed herself with equal poise in femininity and masculinity.
Kahlo’s sexuality and gender were as much a playground as the expression of Mexican culture in her art. Kahlo never came out in order to lead her beautifully authentic life.
Growing up in a society where queer and non-binary are only talked about through a white lens can make it seem like they don’t exist in other cultures. Many of the ideas surrounding sexuality and gender have come from western thinkers, often at the expense of local culture.
Long before I had heard of the Muxes of Oaxaca, there was the word ‘transgender’. Before decolonisation, there was white supremacy. Rather than opening spaces for people to talk about the role of sexuality and gender in our culture, many queer people of colour like me are forced to become part of the larger pride narrative, effectively whitewashing our gender and sexuality.
Coming out requires a certain safety in visibility, in our families, in our jobs, in our cultures and in our homes. Many queer people of colour don’t have access to those privileges. When the closet is portrayed as a place of self-hatred, pride becomes an insidious reminder that, in order to be part of the queer community, you have to be visible, out and open. We are so often made to choose between our self and our safety.
This is complicated even further by the grim reality that visibility for queer and trans people of colour is so much more violent. Internet news site The Daily Dot suggests 19 out of 22 trans women murdered in the USA in 2015 were trans women of colour.
Image: Jess Craven
Here in Australia, every person of colour could recount an instance where the colour of their skin exposed them to violence. When this is compounded by being visibly queer, safety feels tenuous at best.
Numbers on non-binary and gender-diverse people are virtually non-existent. In the 2016 Australian Census, non-binary people were forced to jump through bureaucratic hoops to even be legitimised.
Metrics assessing hate-crimes and racist violence fail to consider trans and gender-diverse experiences as legitimate.
However, anecdotally, it is clear that trans and gender-diverse people of colour often face transphobic and homophobic violence. For queer people of colour, visibility comes with an increased risk of homelessness, joblessness and alienation from our cultures and communities.
As much as I feel empowered by my decision not to come out to my family, I acknowledge that part of it is rooted in fear. The fear of disownment and the loss of economic and emotional support hangs over this decision.
As much as I’d like to say it’s a radical act to challenge the whiteness of coming out, it is also rooted in a very primal and humane fear: the loss of one’s parents.
Mexican culture feels very much like a masculine culture. I still can’t bring myself to be visibly queer at Mexican festivals, or around my Mexican friends or Mexican family. Culture and family can also function as a source of trauma, teeth biting into me every time they close in.
It’s not that our culture lacks queerness, but rather that we haven’t been given space to explore it and express it on our own terms. Rather than self-love, authenticity and validation, coming out is underlined by a sense of loss and alienation from yet another part of ourselves.
Many queer people from multicultural and multi-faith backgrounds are just beginning to reclaim their heritage, but they struggle to be acknowledged in trans and gender-diverse spaces because many of them present or speak differently. These narratives are rarely represented, rarely listened to and very rarely legitimised.
My non-binary gender is one of expanding and reclaiming the masculinity imposed on me. It’s an attempt to create a masculinity that is not defined in opposition to femininity, and one that doesn’t rely on violence and the suppression of myself and others. Mine is a vision of femme masculinity that is wholesome, nourishing and kind.
Coming out erases the nuances of my cultural identity and the identities of many others like me. It fails to grasp the subtleties, dynamics and movement of oneself. The narratives surrounding coming out constantly try to convince queers and femmes that we somehow have to prove ourselves to be legitimate.
In truth, it is our whitewashed politics that have failed us. They have failed us in their capacity to describe our lived experiences and they have failed, again and again, to encompass our diverse identities.
I don’t need to come out to be authentic. Instead of questioning the legitimacy of those who choose to remain in the closet, we should question the reasons why the closet is there in the first place. Only then can we move towards queer politics that don’t rely on visibility, that don’t rely on whiteness. Only then can queerness make space for our culture.
Asiel Adan Sanchez has two last names and does not believe in bios.
This article originally appeared in Archer Magazine #7. Subscribe to the print edition of Archer Magazine here.
This article highlights intersectionality if anything at all
Beautiful article. I will be referring this in a paper for a class on Indigenous Decolonization in Canada. Thank you for sharing your beautiful story and thoughts. xo
As a white latinx person, I am out to my white family members and not to my Panamanian family because of these same reasons. Thank you for writing this article and honestly all of you saying that white people had to make these sacrifices can fuck off – acknowledge the privilege you have and stop holding onto your queer “minority” status as an excuse to write off the reasons why QPOC don’t feel comfortable hoping for a similar coming out narrative.
White people DO have it easier, ALL THE TIME – that doesn’t mean you don’t have struggles, it means that your race isn’t a hindrance in your struggles, so think about that instead of complaining that you’re getting “lumped” into a category that benefits you no matter if you want it to or not.
This article has many flaws (as have been pointed out above), but one more that really bothers me is the presumption of a white readership. POC and other minorities, who will soon not be minorities in the US, read too, and directing this essay as if only whites read is shaming in itself.
So being of Mexican extraction precludes you from coming out? Try being Jewish….
Love seeing a long list of excuses for POC not coming out and forcing white LGB people to take on the entire risk of coming out to increase exposure and progress LGB rights.
Then having POC complain that “coming out” and “LGB stories” are too white.
Hahaha, sorry but POC should have grown a pair and taken the risks their white LGB peers were taken. You don’t get to dictate how the stories are told after the fight is over and you don’t get to dictate the problems with what was done when your community did nothing.
So sit down.
No one has any obligation to come out. Staying in the closet is A Personal Decision Always.
White communities hide their true feelings with a tilted smile and a hug, but believe me, they are just as cruel in a puritan sort of way.
While this article gives a valuable perspective to understand and take into account, I can’t help but feel it puts all the nuance on the POC perspective and paints all whites as similar. Yes I’d agree that plenty of white Americans have less cultural identity and therefore lose less potentially in coming out (but gain a whole group with the LGBT community) – this was my experience as I was willing to give up my family to come out and feel comfortable with who I am. At the same time, for many whites their family and communities ARE significant parts of their identity as well (think small towns and rural communities or even large families with strong communal identity, etc.). Coming out is a struggle and conflict in some similar ways for those folks.
Beyond the cultural question though it can have impacts on relationships. Imagine if your loved one passes away and they haven’t come out to their family? If the family truly doesn’t know you’re leaving your spouse to be the one who “comes out” for you. Or if the person is in the hospital – how are you supposed to justify your presence there? Are you yourself supposed to closet yourself to the family? To suppress your own feelings to hide the true relationship? This article ignores all of the impacts to the significant others in these stories, especially if the partner doesn’t have the same culture or cultural identity.
Thank you so much for articulating the thoughts, feelings, and ideas that I was just trying to explain to a group of (perceived) white queer persons as a person of color myself. So much truth and honesty. It makes my soul smile to know it resonates with others.
Such a beautiful piece.
Coming out to what? I suppose that should determine if the closet is the only space of safety. Western notions of gender binaries dont acknowledge fluidity and perhaps that’s why coming out is so important for them.
So are you trying to say that, in general, white people are generally more supportive of LGBTI+ people? From my casual observations, this seems to be true.
Thank you Asiel for sharing your perspective. I have long been perplexed by the emphasis on coming out as central to living an authentic queer life, and agree that this pressure is unhelpful or even harmful to many of us, especially those who are multiply marginalized. Thank you for expressing this truth in a way that I could not.
A lot of words trying to justify LGBT POC refusing to risk anything, piggybacking off the sacrifices of white LGBT people who came out, and who are now benefiting from the advances white LGBT people created.
Also good work for supporting the “down low” culture that is the major driver of HIV in the community.
When it comes right down to it, if you haven’t come out you are a coward while at the same time enjoying the rights that people who did come out fought for. Without high visibility we would have never gotten those rights. You’re pathetic.
Wrong. Lest we forget, our precious Stonewall riot was started by Black and Brown queers. We’ve been here and we’re gonna be here on the front lines forever. Whether or not someone says the words “I’m queer” is a personal choice.
Coming out could mean death to any person 40 years ago. This article simply means the author values their families opinions of them more than they value living honestly. While such a thing might be necessary it is certainly not exemplary or applaudable. Ask yourselves , “Would I want my child/brother/sister to lie to me for decades?”. To live with the burden of being false. When the authors father is on his deathbed and decades after that man has been long gone the author will have to live with the reality that they couldn’t trust their parent enough to be open. I can’t think of anything more tragic. This is in fact a cultural justification for abuse of LGBTQ people and a similar line of reasoning could be used to justify all of us being in the closet.
This is a beautifully written article with very legitimate points that hit close to home. Many black gay American women find themselves in this conundrum, and you have given me the words and feelings to accept my decision to be “authentic” while not “coming out”.
Thanks for your article! I’m a South Asian woman and when I was in college (a couple of decades ago) friends would ask if I have come up to my parents as bi and I would joke/not-joke that I’d have to come out to them first as asexual. My parents I don’t think would be against me being gay so much as…confused. Dating is already confusing to them and the one time I told them I was dating someone they asked what the difference was between that, or just being friends.
For some reason this article comes across as blaming white people for intolerance in other communities. Can white people actually do anything right in the eyes of poc?
I dont think coming out is a white thing, even though Im on a similar boat as you. I am transgender and I do wish I could come out to my family, I wouldn’t have to hide who I am from them and they would get to know the full me, but my family is also very, fanatic about religion and would never understand or accept me since for them it would mean allowing me to live in sin and damnation, so I don’t think I’ll ever come out to them but I definitely wish I could
Wow, Cam your comment shows the ignorance to listen to those whose experiences are different, this will prevent yoy from reflecting on the culture you are part of. I understand the fears that might bring up, coming out of the closet and coming together (in the cities) means safety and sanctuary for so many. I can see how it can feel threatening to see the fight, that was put up over decades now, questioned. And at the same time we need to listen when queers tell us that their experience is not represented in the (white) gay mainstream.
“Mainstream narratives of coming out imply a white subjectivity, one that forgets the influence of culture, family and heritage.”
I appreciate the author’s experience, and certainly acknowledge that people from different cultures can have very different experiences during the “coming out” process. Nonetheless, underlying this article is a presumption that culture, family and heritage have little impact, or are not part of the mainstream “coming out” narrative. I think the author is fundamentally wrong in that respect.
Narratives abound in western culture of the LGBTQ community having to make very difficult choices in the “coming out” process – confronted with their own cultural biases and experiences and greatly impacted by the acceptance (or lack thereof) in their families and communities. Whether in small towns or large urban centres or in religious communities or culturally diverse backgrounds of their own, there are a diversity of narratives in the “mainstream” or “white” experience as well. It is certainly not exhaustive, and there are certainly a wide diversity of experiences beyond those, but for the author not to recognize the influence of family, culture and heritage in these more “mainstream” narratives very much undermines the strength of the author’s position.
In short, I don’t think the author needs to deny that heritage, family and culture plays a large role in the more “mainstream” white experience in order to be able to make the point that these influences are different and can sometimes be even stronger in other communities.
Yet again all white people are lumped together as one homogenous group. This generalization is dangerous, especially as the entire argument is based on one study. Coming out is different for everyone, and can bring greater wellbeing or further alienation from society, no matter your ethnicity. There’s many “white” people who has not benefited from coming, due to their family, religious adherence, communities etc. There’s more nuances in being LGBT and “white” than what’s being portrayed here. I’ve known “white” men who’s chosen not come out due to wanting to maintain their relationship with their family, as they’ve known that coming out would sever those ties. Thus, while I appreciate your story and and thinks it brings a valid point and more nuance to the “coming out” conversation, I disagree with the overarching generalization of “white people”, as they stem from a whole host of various ethnicities and communities, with a wide range of cultures.
So many words to excuse staying in the closet. Shame in you for trying to make that seem like an act if racial bravery.
Go back and read all those words again. You missed the entire point, or chose to. I’m grateful to this writer for explaining these nuances. Coming out can mean death to a person of color. Shame on you for choosing not to hear that.
Yes Tiffany “Coming out can mean death to a person of color”, so what?
You act like all the white people who ever came out were given balloons and a high five. Coming out is risky for everyone and was necessary to achieve the rights we have today. All this essay did was try to justify the cowardly actions of POC when it came to making personal sacrifices to achieve basic human rights.