Come Out

It’s that time of the year again.

As that giddy feeling of seeing queer content on your timeline slowly floods your system, so does the urgency to be out and proud. Your community calls you to the streets, and big corporations call you to embrace your own identity by buying their products or sharing their campaigns.

It’s a time when people build the courage to speak their truth and own their identity. But is that all it takes? 

A handful of willpower and strength to power through the fear of what the world would think of you as a queer person?

Coming out is a lot more than just overcoming a fear. 

The pressure we feel from allies and supportive people in the world to just “be yourself” can also be detrimental to a person’s journey with their sexuality, and add an extra layer of shame for not coming out soon enough.

Let me walk you through the factors I had to consider before coming out.

Family

Assess if your family might accept you for who you are. If they accept you, is it fair or realistic for you to expect them to fight your battles with society alongside you? 

There are battles that come from being a parent to an openly queer person in India too, and while your identity is never to blame for any of these difficult moments, your personal safety is often impacted by the safety and mental health of your caregivers and the immediate community. 

It’s worth calculating how you foresee these conversations playing out before you make yourself vulnerable.

Housing

After coming out, are you prepared for the battle of finding a home to rent in India?

What happens when neighbours or landlords see your partner/s?

Do you have a temporary housing solution with trusted people, in case it takes you time to have your own space?

Friends

Are your cishet friends going to treat you the same way?

Will you still hang out and have nights out like before and travel together, or will you start getting excluded from these social circles? 

If you do get excluded, do you have a sense of support and community elsewhere?

Career

Will your career growth be hampered? Being openly queer also means continuously having battles of discrimination and objectification in the workspace by cishet people in power. How ready are you for the possibility of a hostile or unhealthy work environment? How ready are you to consider quitting your job and looking for another one in case the current space does not support you? 

Financial

Do you have the financial capacity to survive in case one or all these factors take a turn for the worse? 

No family support, no home to rent, career stagnation, and the loneliness of your friend circle diminishing. 

This isn’t even accounting for the possibilities of physical, psychological, and financial violence or neglect you may encounter.

Now, I know how scary this sounds, and maybe it’s too skeptical of me to reduce the joy of coming out to something so cold and calculated. 

But the truth is, as queer people, we’re often taught over time that our safety takes a backseat. 

We are told that our performance for cishet eyes matters more than our actual desires and needs.

I come from a very privileged household with regards to my caste location and social standing, and yet, these factors still mattered. 

They affected me and I needed to make sure coming out was something I was ready for. Not just emotionally, but ready-for-the-absolute-worst ready.

I was 30 when I came out. I was set in my career; I could survive more than three months without an income. 

I had looked at all the factors necessary before I even announced to the world that I was a bisexual, polyamorous man who had multiple partners of all genders.

The pressure we seem to be placing on Gen Z to “come out” is immense. Allies and others try to hype them up only emotionally, as though all they lack is the courage to be their truest self. 

As though smiling through your teeth and hiding your identities in the workplace or at school isn’t an act of courage and self-preservation too.

I am yet to hear of stories where allies have offered practical, real-world support to someone who is in the closet. Have they even asked the right questions? 

Have they offered any other type of support other than chanting “You are brave & beautiful” in our faces?

Don’t tell us we’re brave like it’s our job to be resilient, show us that you’ll make the world safer for us. Ask us if we’re good on rent.

Pay attention to businesses and healthcare facilities that are queer-affirming and safe, so you can guide us towards those spaces. Shield us from your friends and families who like to make snide comments about us, excuse them from conversation, and teach them how to act like compassionate human beings.

I had found that support in family, friends, and in my career.

This is not to deter anyone from coming out, especially during pride month. It’s to make sure that you see how all the marketing around the queer community by corporations & brands this month is exactly that — just “marketing”. You need to make sure you have real support. Instagram likes are not the same as actual respect in real life moments of distress.

Whenever I see Pride campaigns, I am always reminded of the dark call by villains in children’s stories or movies—“come out, come out, wherever you are”. 

But this is your journey and yours alone. Come out when you’re where you need to be to actually feel safety, joy, and relief. 

You aren’t less queer because you’re not out. 

You are you, inside and out.