Coming out, part 1
In order to talk about what I'm doing now, I need to talk about the past as well. Of course, coming out was an important milestone. But I managed to stretch it out a great deal, coming out to my mother a few years before I said anything to my father. And it's not like they are separated, or anything. I'll explain this later.
I came out to Mum when I was about 24 or 25. I was living in a share-house and dating Miranda, who was literally the girl next door. I had slept with women before, but not in any kind of serious relationship. On a visit home to my parents’ place, I told Mum that I liked girls as well as boys. It was a bit more complex than that – I was attracted to both sexes, but mainly to women, especially in an emotional sense – but I didn’t go into the details. It was only 9am, and I just blurted out a statement about my sexuality. Mum didn’t want to talk about it. A few minutes later, she yelled out from the lounge-room, ‘You should watch Rikki Lake today’.
‘Why?’ I asked her.
‘I’m not telling you. You should just watch it.’
I looked at the TV Guide a few minutes later, and read the episode title: “Today I Choose Between my Male and Female Lovers”. Great.
We didn’t really talk about my sexuality much after that. My mother’s one caution was: Don’t tell your father. When I tell my friends this, they are astonished. Wouldn’t your mother tell him? They ask. But ours is not really that sort of family. My parents are very traditional in some ways, and Mum is the centre of the universe. All information that exists seems to filter through her first. What she deems unfit for public consumption doesn't get passed on to other family members. Mum would have told me not to tell Dad as a way of protecting each of us, to minimise upsets. But it also meant I felt like a liar and a coward.
Part of me agreed that it would be simpler not to tell Dad, and I even reasoned that I didn’t want to know anything about his sex-life, so why should I presume to inform him of my own? Another convincing argument was my father’s attitude to anything vaguely out of the norm: he has pretty conservative values, and it was unlikely, I knew, that he would welcome the news. [At the same time, he’d always hated the idea of me going out with men, so, Who knows? I thought to myself. He might prefer a dyke for a daughter.] So for years, I said nothing about my sexuality to my father. Until I met Heather.
I came out to Mum when I was about 24 or 25. I was living in a share-house and dating Miranda, who was literally the girl next door. I had slept with women before, but not in any kind of serious relationship. On a visit home to my parents’ place, I told Mum that I liked girls as well as boys. It was a bit more complex than that – I was attracted to both sexes, but mainly to women, especially in an emotional sense – but I didn’t go into the details. It was only 9am, and I just blurted out a statement about my sexuality. Mum didn’t want to talk about it. A few minutes later, she yelled out from the lounge-room, ‘You should watch Rikki Lake today’.
‘Why?’ I asked her.
‘I’m not telling you. You should just watch it.’
I looked at the TV Guide a few minutes later, and read the episode title: “Today I Choose Between my Male and Female Lovers”. Great.
We didn’t really talk about my sexuality much after that. My mother’s one caution was: Don’t tell your father. When I tell my friends this, they are astonished. Wouldn’t your mother tell him? They ask. But ours is not really that sort of family. My parents are very traditional in some ways, and Mum is the centre of the universe. All information that exists seems to filter through her first. What she deems unfit for public consumption doesn't get passed on to other family members. Mum would have told me not to tell Dad as a way of protecting each of us, to minimise upsets. But it also meant I felt like a liar and a coward.
Part of me agreed that it would be simpler not to tell Dad, and I even reasoned that I didn’t want to know anything about his sex-life, so why should I presume to inform him of my own? Another convincing argument was my father’s attitude to anything vaguely out of the norm: he has pretty conservative values, and it was unlikely, I knew, that he would welcome the news. [At the same time, he’d always hated the idea of me going out with men, so, Who knows? I thought to myself. He might prefer a dyke for a daughter.] So for years, I said nothing about my sexuality to my father. Until I met Heather.
posted by Michelle | 7:57 am
1 Comments:
haha... i can totally empathise with your story about your parents... one of the first things my mum said when i came out to her was 'don't tell your father'.
we still don't talk about my sexuality much, even though i know my folks accept it... don't embrace it... but accept it.
i like what you said about you needing to accept your parents as you would like them to accept you... very wise... wish i had've thought of that!
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