Growing Up Gay: Coming Out, and Fitting In
School can be a shark tank for any kid. The trends and unspoken rules of society at large tend to trickle down into schools, creating the kind of dog-eat-dog world that is often worse in the classroom than the office. Bullying among adults is at least a lesser issue, though not a completely non-existent one. Sure, the underlying attitudes are still there later in life — with what you wear, how you look and who you associate with being things that people will always judge you on — but in the pressure cookers that we call schools, judgement is freely and openly given. And if you happen to be on any area of the LGBT+ spectrum? The difficulty setting can go from medium to hard real quick.
Now, not everyone will have the same experience. I’m sure some people have had great experiences while being out and proud at school, and that’s always going to be a good thing. I’m not trying to say we’ve all had it just as bad as each other because that undermines all of our personal experiences. But this is my personal experience. That’s not to say that I suffered severe bullying, but I did suffer for my sexuality, even before anyone (including me) knew what that was.
Despite the mystery of my sexuality, I always knew I liked girls. There were the odd confused periods where I’d inexplicably fall for one of the boys in my year, because hormones really will make you crazy. But girls were always there, from my first crush at around 5 years old, to my first girlfriend at 15. My dating her seemed to decide something for me. I’d always known it would have to happen, because being attracted to women isn’t particularly easy to hide over an entire lifetime. I’d always known that but hadn’t cared to spend too much time thinking about it. Now, though, I was dating a girl. It solidified that abstract idea of what being gay was. I had to come out.
My family were nothing but supportive and for that I’m thankful. I suppose I’d always known they would be because my mum had never turned me away from my natural inclinations. She let me wear tracksuits, she bought me toys from the ‘boys’ aisle and she allowed me to revel in my boyish behaviours. My brother probably nurtured a lot of those behaviours, either willingly or not, and I couldn’t have had a better person to model myself after. So, no — my coming out changed nothing in the home. It only improved for my honesty. School, however, was a different matter.
I didn’t come out at school so much as be openly affectionate with my girlfriend in plain view but to be clear, the kids at my school did not need any announcement from me. They had already decided my sexuality long before this relationship, based on a number of things. They’d taken note of my school trousers and shoes, so obviously from the ‘boys’ section of George. They’d labelled my unruly hair as something masculine because it hadn’t been straightened or tamed. They’d seen the way I acted — hands in pockets, stance wide, my laugh goofy and unrehearsed — and how that behaviour was all so laddish. But I wasn’t a lad, and I surely couldn’t be left alone to be whatever I wanted. Thus, it was decided from my first year of senior school that I was a lesbian.
At the age of 11 I barely even thought about my sexuality, but I knew it wasn’t the norm. I certainly didn’t know I was a lesbian, or even bisexual. Labels didn’t exist for me at such an age. Having said that, I knew being a lesbian was unsavoury. I knew because I’d seen people call the girl with the shaved head in the upper years a ‘lesbo’. I knew because other kids had told me that lesbians were ‘butch like men’, ‘overweight’ and ‘ugly’. I accepted all of that because I had no real examples to counter any of it. So the first time I was asked quite matter-of-factly if I was a lesbian by a boy in another class, I felt my life was over.
The label stuck fast. Suddenly I was a ‘lesbo’, a ‘man’, a ‘dyke’. The embarrassment was raw. It forced me to realise, for maybe the first time in my life, that people had external opinions of me, and that they weren’t nice opinions. I looked at myself differently — at my hair, at my clothes, at how I behaved. It forced me to wonder if there was any way I could control the way they thought about me.
By 12, I’d already started straightening my hair. I started wearing flared school trousers from the ‘girls’ section and shoes that were at least neutral. I toned down my behaviour — kept my head down, scripted my laughter, turned down my volume button from 11 to 3. Essentially, I tried to counter the bullying by editing myself, by being someone other than who I was, someone who would fit in better and attract less negative attention. It wasn’t about becoming popular or currying favour — it was about blending in so that people wouldn’t see me when they looked for their next target.
Therein lies the problem. At the time, I thought I felt good about changing because the results were good. I did get picked on less. Now, though, looking back as a 26-year-old I can see how damaging it was, not just then, but in the long run. While most kids from the ages of 11 to 16 are finding themselves, exploring who they are, what they like and what makes them tick, I was hiding all of that. I didn’t feel like I was allowed to find out who I was. I lost out on what should have been a period of growth, of freedom. In terms of self-discovery, I was set back several years.
It wasn’t just about external appearance, either. That was a big part of it but really, it was more about inner identity. Changing parts of yourself because you want to is empowering. Doing it to fit in because of harsh, prior judgement from others is enough to indefinitely affect your sense of who you are. While I’m more comfortable in my outward appearance now than I’ve ever been, that scared 11-year-old is still in me. I’ve never turned my volume button any higher than 3 since a particular day in 2005. I keep my head down. My laughter has been carefully tailored over the years. And I strongly feel that if it still affects me now, at 26, it still will at 56.
The problem certainly doesn’t start or end with me. I’m simply one of the many LGBT+ people around the world who were bullied for who they are, and who are still feeling the after-effects today. People who still keep their heads down, who are still self-conscious about how they dress and act. People who feel robbed of what should have been some of their best years, of an identity they could otherwise have cultivated without bullying.
Don’t get me wrong, everyone feels the after-effects of bullying. Anyone who has been picked on by others for who they are, LGBT+ or not, will tell you that it stays with you in some palpable way. I respect that. Bullying is awful no matter who’s suffering from it.
But this conversation is about LGBT+ children, both of years past and of today. While the situation is certainly improving, with acceptance and tolerance being a bigger part of today’s society than ever before, there are still children in school who would relate to my 11-year-old self. There are still children who are editing themselves to some degree, hiding away who they really are in favour of someone who blends in better.
So, yes — the acceptance of LGBT+ people is on the rise and it thrills me to know that. But the issue still exists, and the fallout is massive. Some people may have even said back in 2005, when I started senior school, that acceptance was improving and they would have been right. It was better in 2005 than it was in 2000, and it was better in 2000 than it was in 1995. But progress towards complete acceptance is a slow and sometimes arduous journey, especially when many lose not just their sense of self for it, but their lives.
This article is for the many who have felt the way I have, both in school and in the years after. It’s for the people who may or may not be coming to terms with who they are. It’s for the people who have always strived to love themselves, but struggled. It’s for the much older people who grew up in a world that would never have tolerated their coming out. It’s for the people who never came out. Perhaps most importantly, though, it’s for the people outside the LGBT+ community who have never had to cloak themselves in a lie of normalcy, who have never edited themselves to fit in with a crowd that they don’t even identify with. We know that it happens — so should you.
