Coming Out and Growing Up

TNG reader Selena submitted this piece.

Six months ago, I was watching The L Word with headphones alone in my room, having raunchy dreams about my straight roommate, and wearing plaid timidly around the house. By the time I moved to DC three weeks ago, I had gone through some reassuring therapy, a difficult conversation with my parents, and phone calls to all my closest friends from college. I was ready to be out. I was ready to meet chicks.

But although now I talk about coming out in the past tense, I still find myself somewhat confused and disoriented. I have terrible gaydar. I know nothing about lesbian courtship practices and codes of conduct. I never know how to bring gayness up, and continue to have convoluted, gender-neutral conversations with friends from work, (i.e., "I'd like to meet…someone, but it's hard to meet…people."). I experiment with sweater vests and crew neck sweaters, but can't seem to get it right. When will it all make sense? When will being gay become gracefully integrated into who I am?

I'm reminded of But I'm A Cheerleader, when Megan runs away from straight camp and asks the gay couple who takes her in to teach her how to be a lesbian. They tell her just to be herself. Since, if she likes women, then being a lesbian is just being who she is inside.

I suppose that's true, but being a lesbian is a tricky thing. It's a balancing act between sending out "I'm gay" signals to other gays, being yourself (although for most of us, self-presentation is hardly static), and avoiding becoming a stereotype of yourself.

In order to find peace and clarity on this serious issue of identity, I turned to the interwebs. A blog entry for therapists called, Whether you come out or not, you're still gay, presents the six stages of coming out thusly:

Stage 1: Identity Confusion
Stage 2: Identity Comparison
Stage 3: Identity Tolerance
Stage 4: Identity Acceptance
Stage 5: Identity Pride
Stage 6: Identity Synthesis

The blogger takes these stages and expands on them, sometimes drawing on experience with past clients to illustrate each stage. (These stages are taken from a paper written in 1979. That's right kids, coming out in 1979 is tantamount to coming out 30 years later. We have Ellen! We have Rachel Maddow! But I digress. It's worth noting because it runs quite a risk of being outdated.)

Finding this post threw me back to 5th grade, staring at the five stages of puberty in my What's Happening to My Body? Book for Girls and trying to decide which stage I was in. "In stage three, underarm hair may begin, and a young woman may notice her skin becoming oily and producing pimples." Except here, it's:

(From Stage 1): Many clients at this stage do not use the word gay or lesbian, as it would reflect affirmation and positivity. If anything, they'll usually self-identify as "homosexual" or "heterosexual with homosexual fantasies." Therapists need to stick with their clients' terminology to avoid rushing them or blocking them from continuing with their process.

I would rather wear Uggs than call myself a "heterosexual with homosexual fantasies." Does that mean I've moved on? Stage 2 is basically more of the same, except they start to use the word "homosocialization." In Stages 3, 4, and 5, an adolescence metaphor emerges. That's when some crazy shit goes down:

Individuals are teenagers trapped in adult bodies—and minds. Again, like adolescents who do all kinds of things to underscore their "emerging" as individuals—dying their hair, shaving their head, piercing themselves, wearing T-shirts with slogans that discomfort their elders—gays and lesbians assume a similar "in your face" attitude. They delight in shocking behavior that's over the top. They relentlessly tell everyone they're gay. They wear T-shirts that say I CAN'T EVEN THINK STRAIGHT. They're rebellious and promiscuous. They French-kiss in public. They love to draw attention to themselves, but their critics—and they themselves—don't realize that this is only a phase of development that they missed at their age-appropriate time. The difference is that their "gay age" doesn't match their chronological age. Whereas such behavior is appropriate for teens, it doesn't seem appropriate for adults.

Wha? By Stage 6, gays see the error of the heterophobic ways, and "understand that there are "good straights" as well as "bad straights," that heterosexism and homophobia needn't dominate their lives, and that they can relate to both gays and straights without any loss of self-confidence."

Ok, so a lot of this is crazy talk. I'm not a teenager in the body of an adult. I don't need to wear stupid T-shirts and be shocking and over the top before I realize the difference between "good straights" and "bad straights." It's so freaking specific, it sounds like it was written by someone with a grudge.

I mean, there's some stuff in the post that rings true. Devouring reading material by gay authors is one. Venturing out into the gay community (if you're lucky enough to live somewhere where there is one) and trying to figure out where you fit. But the adolescence metaphor, especially there at the end, just doesn't work that well. Not that it hasn't occurred to me before. A lot of things feel like they're new, and the social disorientation I've felt sometimes does feel a lot like middle school revisited.

I joked a few weeks ago with my friend from college about feeling like I was a 13-year-old boy, voice-cracking and pimply, trying to muster up the courage to talk to girls. Sure, he said, in some ways you may feel like an adolescent—navigating these new social realms, working out how you present yourself and the company you keep—but in so many ways you've got things figured out. You've graduated from college, you have a good job, you know what music and books you like, you have a network of friends that love you. In so many ways, you're self-possessed and put-together. This is one thing in your life that is making you a little crazy. And of all things, sexual identity is a pretty legit one to find confounding.

He told me this a few months back, which, in the time frame of my coming out process, was centuries ago. Now that I'm here in DC, watching the premier of The L Word's new season in a bar with more lesbians than I thought existed in the world, I still need to remind myself of that idea. No doubt in the next few months I'll continue feeling confused, having awkward, ambiguous conversations with coworkers, and trying to develop an appreciation of the Indigo Girls. But a lot of things are beginning to—slowly—fit into place.