Pansy St. Battie’s Coming Out Story

It’s hard to shape my coming out as one thing. I’ve come out to myself, my family, my friends, the public. It’s easy to reduce coming out to one defining moment, but it really is a process, an ongoing story. However, each of these steps is its own story, and coming out to myself was probably the most difficult, but most monumental one. It’s certainly the story that feels the most important to share. 

I didn’t learn anything about sexuality from my parents. They never spoke negatively of anyone, but both my parents immigrated to the United States from India and they adhered to the cultural norm at the time of not acknowledging anything other than heterosexuality.

In elementary school, I heard a rumour that one of our teachers was gay. I asked my mom what that meant after school, and unsure how to respond, she said: “it’s a man who wears one earring.” Considering my teacher didn’t have any piercings, I was confused, but my mom told me she didn’t know. It wasn’t shown as a bad thing, but it was something I learned to not ask questions about. 

Because of this, I didn’t truly learn what being gay even meant until I was in middle school. Unfortunately, that school had a strongly homophobic culture. A teacher was reprimanded for explaining what being gay was to our class, a staff member was fired for her sexuality, and when a classmate asked our sex-ed course what non-heterosexual relationships could look like, our teacher said something along the lines of, “Gay people don’t have the parts to have sex.” It was further exacerbated by the more vocal members of my friend group at the time, who spoke negatively about being gay when it was brought up.

“I only felt safe to consider my sexuality behind closed doors”

While I have always been lucky to live in a wonderfully accepting city, and a family who, albeit taking a while to learn, were never hateful, my school experience warped my views on sexuality and what it could actually mean to be attracted to the same gender. It built up an air of shame around questioning, which meant that I only felt safe to consider my sexuality behind closed doors.

While other students were going on dates, I was at home trying to figure out if I was attracted to girls by kissing pictures of women in magazines. In retrospect, it’s a silly image (as puberty often is), but it was the only way I knew to explore those feelings.

I didn’t truly come out to myself until the first year of high school when I saw other people around me living openly. The second I realized it was truly an option, it became obvious. For years, introspection was like reading in a dark room, and suddenly there were people around me to remind me I could just turn the light on. It was scary, but relieving, freeing, and joyous. Since then, I’ve surrounded myself with other lgbt+ people, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Coming out stories