Coming out will significantly change the lives of almost all transgender people. I opened up about my gender and sexuality when I was 8, in 2003, before I even learned the word “trans” or “queer.”
It was a tiny town in rural Northern California. While I was open in the classroom, I hadn’t talked about it with my parents. My teacher, who denounced my femininity, quickly called them to complain that I was telling others that I was a girl. By outing me, my teacher took away my agency to self-determine.
She went on to ban makeup from the classroom after I wore lip gloss. While this seems minor, it had a profound impact on how I understood the education system and coming out.
“This was my first moment realising that only trans youth can know how to protect ourselves”
When the ban turned the other girls against me (they couldn’t wear makeup anymore either), the teacher claimed it was for my own protection. This was my first moment realising that only trans youth can know how to protect ourselves. Only we can know how to support one another.
After years of coming out over and over again, I finally decided I couldn’t continue living as a boy when I was 13. It was my 8th-grade promotion and I was expected to walk down the hall in highly masculine clothing in front of my whole town. I left an “I Think I Might Be Transgender, Now What Do I Do?” pamphlet on my parents’ bedside table, hoping they would get the message.
However, they still made me walk for the promotion, tears coming down my cheeks in humiliation. My mom confronted me that I was having an “identity crisis.” In reality, she was the one having a crisis with my identity.
“Not everyone needs to come out and it shouldn’t be so central to our queer and trans narratives”
Following half a decade of coming out as other identities (bisexual, pansexual, queer, and gender nonconforming), I realise that the very act of coming out delimits us to a set narrative. Not everyone needs to come out and it shouldn’t be so central to our queer and trans narratives.
While coming out can be an act of resistance, it can also set boundaries around who we are. In the future, it’s my hope that we will no longer presume people are straight or cisgender. Instead, we must believe in a world where the fluidity of identity is recognised by all.
Eli Erlick
Edited by Ash O'Keeffe
LGBTQ+ Activist
