Being myself vs expectations after coming out | Out-Spoken series

20th February, 2023    |    By  headspace    |     403

Introducing Out-Spoken! Our latest video series talking about sexuality, gender identity and everything in between with young Australians in the LGBTIQA+ community.

In episode 2, Leo, Zoe, Winona and Grace discuss how they have learned to stay true to themselves, while managing others’ (and their own) expectations of how to dress or act as members of the LGBTIQA+ community.

Want to hear more of the conversations? Visit https://bit.ly/3YHJ0jO where you can also find ways to support your mental health and wellbeing, including group chats with young people in the community, accessing free online support from a headspace clinician or reading some of our helpful resources.

Disclaimer The young people you see in these videos are passionate advocates for youth mental health and the LGBTIQA+ community. headspace celebrates the diversity within and across LGBTIQA+ communities. headspace acknowledges these videos represent a subset of both diversity and intersectional identities. There is a wide range of terms and language related to bodies, gender, sexual orientation, sexual attraction, sexual behaviour, and legal and medical processes, and this language is constantly evolving. You may find some of the words in these videos useful to explore your identity, however you may not relate to some of the terms, or you may relate to a term for a period of time, all of this exploration is part of your experience and is valid.

Just a reminder the views and experiences of these young people in these videos are their own and may not reflect your experiences.


Also check the related topics:  

Sexuality & Gender

Video provided by headspace

WEBSITE   
SHARE

Video Transcription

Being myself vs expectations after coming out | Out-Spoken series

I’m not exactly a fashion queen. Um, I had a propeller hat. I will not be, okay, go for it.

What does being your authentic self mean to you? Very simply, it’s being happy. Yeah, there’s a Baz Luhrmann quote that I love because I grew up watching Strictly Ballroom. I know that “a life lived in fear is a life half-lived,” which is, I know, I watched that around the time I was coming out and I went, “Oh yeah, I don’t want to, you know, have to tuck away part of myself when I go into different spaces. I want to be proud of every facet of me no matter where I am.” So for me, it’s being proud of who I am. It’s living a full life in everything I do, and it’s being happy, surrounded by people who I love and who love me in return.

I think being a queer, trans, and disabled person sometimes it feels very radical to say that out loud, especially in different spaces, but it’s also really beautiful to be able to sort of try and give permission to others that it’s okay, and try and create space for other people who have similar experiences. It’s mine within those spaces.

What’s your experience of intersectionality? Oh, I love this question. I think for me, intersectionality impacts everything that I do and that I experience. When I experience things as a queer woman, I’m also experiencing them as a person living with mental health conditions. I’m experiencing them as a person living with a chronic illness. I’m experiencing them as a person from a rural area originally. I think it’s taking every part of me that grows hand in hand and recognizing the importance of it. So I am a proud Aboriginal woman. I’m a proud queer woman. I do live with mental ill health, and that’s okay. It’s just not focusing on one specific part of my identity or making that the one thing that defines me. I think it’s also about honoring the legacy of the people who have fought so hard for me to have the rights and privileges I do now. Absolutely. And I think sort of when you’re in those spaces of advocacy, I think sometimes they’ll only pick you for one of your identities, and I think intentionally bringing along the rest of my experiences and being like, “Hey, these are things we need to talk about. We can’t just address the queer community because there are queer disabled people who you will miss if you do that.”

Did you see LGBTQIA+ representation and visibility growing up, and how did that affect the way you wanted to express yourself or even how you felt about yourself? For me, you know, a lot of the stuff I saw in the media I did not relate to. It was not representative of me. It actually made me go, “Oh, I don’t look like that, so maybe I’m not queer.” But for me, a really special memory was at my childhood home. My next-door neighbours were two beautiful gay men, and you know, that was my first, as a, you know, I would have been two or three, my first experience of people of diverse backgrounds. And my parents just went, “Yeah, they’re together and they’re in love, and that’s it, full stop.” And I didn’t think twice about, you know, their relationship or the fact that it was two men. It was just, “They’re really cool because they have a cool slide in their backyard, and they’ve got like 20 animals, and they’re really nice.” So that was my, you know, my first experience. And so growing up, I never thought of queer couples and queer people as any different. It was just, “Oh yeah, two people together, that’s nice.” And so it didn’t make it feel so scary when I was first realizing, you know, I didn’t think twice about how I would experience life because, “Oh well, yeah, I would just, just means I’ll be with maybe someone of the same sex or maybe I won’t. Cool.”

Which I think makes it, like, I feel like a little kid when I see things like Heartbreak High, and there’s Plenty, who’s the disabled lesbian. And I’m just like, “Oh my God, like that is amazing, like oh my God, they captured an experience that mirrors mine.” And I think that’s like why I try and do things and, you know, advocate for the community is because I really want there to be more representation for, you know, for little kids and, you know, young people who might be, like, not even sure what the LGBT community is. I also didn’t really have much. I’m sure there definitely was, but I was just so oblivious to it. It wasn’t spoken about. It wasn’t something that, you know, anyone really talked about. And like if it was ever in the media, it would be very much like dramatized so that it was like, “Oh, this is a thing that’s happening,” or, you know, like, so it was always like, just seemed so not in my world. And I think that really impacted my whole journey of, like, not really recognizing it in myself. People are talking about it now, and we’re actually being able to have our voices heard, and I think that’s just going to continue, and I’m so grateful and proud to be part of that.

Did you ever feel like there were expectations on how you should dress or act when you came out? I would say a little bit. I think I felt the pressure to dress in certain ways, like be a bit more alternative. And to be fair, some of that is just because I get to feel more comfortable in my clothes and I want to be more alternative and wear what I want, and who cares if it stands out a little bit? And I think I was worried that people would think that dyeing my hair was a whole “Hey, I’m queer!” It’s so not. It was something I’d wanted to do for ages anyway, and I think there was that pressure to perform, but it was more just I wanted people to know and I wasn’t scared of hiding it, and I think that was a nice moment.

Yeah, I think I don’t know if there was ever a pressure or whether or not I created that, but it wasn’t really something that I leaned into or felt pressured by. I think that was just constant throughout my life, whether or not it was due to my identity or societal pressures. I think, like, for some people—I don’t know if this is relevant to everyone, but I don’t feel like it’s necessary to be entirely outward about your identity and fully express it. And I think, I don’t know if that comes from being in a rural town, but it’s about picking and choosing—not necessarily picking and choosing, but for what’s best for me at the time and what I feel safe and what I feel comfortable with. I don’t feel like I need to drape myself in a rainbow and run around, and that’s, I think that’s something that I’m learning, and something that I’m getting to feel more okay with, that I can just be exactly who I am at the time and exactly where I feel comfortable. I don’t need to sort of venture either way.

Yeah, I felt a lot of pressure, um, okay, again with media and the way that queer women were represented when I was growing up. Um, I thought, “Well, if I don’t look that way, then maybe I’m not.” I had other, you know, other people when I was in high school saying, “This is what a gay person looks like, and you don’t look like that, so you can’t be.” You know, I didn’t dress the right way. I was told I was too feminine, and yeah, there’s a lot of labels and stereotypes that were put on me that I didn’t really relate to, so I felt a lot of pressure when I was younger that, “Oh well, maybe I don’t actually belong in the community because I don’t look the right way.” But as I’ve gotten older, and the media has become more diverse and representative—it’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better—I’ve gone, “Oh, I don’t have to look a certain way. I can look super feminine or I can not look super feminine.”

I think the way that the trans community thinks about our relationship to our bodies and what we look like is one of my favorite things about it. And so I actually felt like there were a lot more options when I came out as non-binary or trans to myself.

Do you have any advice on how to stay true to yourself? Think about your values, what’s important to you. Um, for me, no matter where I am or what I’m doing, or you know, if I’m in a queer space or a mental health space or a disabled space, for me it’s just about what’s important to me, and what’s more important to me is love, truth, integrity, all that fun stuff. I think recognizing as well that it’s not always easy to stay true to yourself, like that’s actually—it can be really hard—and sort of thinking about that. And I guess if you have a situation that you reflect back on and you say, “Wow, that really wasn’t me,” well, that wasn’t the version of me that I want to portray, understanding that that’s okay as well. I think that’s really important.

What would you do to make yourself feel more okay about that, do you reckon? Um, I wish I knew. I wish it was easier. I wish it was so much easier to just sit and be like, “That’s who I am, and I want to be okay with that.” So I think it is really such a journey. I think like staying true to yourself also has a lot to do with, like, the social situations that you’re in, and the people that you’re around.

Yeah, um, I think sometimes it isn’t safe to be your true self, and that is completely fine. Safety is the number one, whether it’s emotional or physical. I think sometimes you can stay true to yourself inside while knowing that there’s not much you can do about the external situation. Yeah, um, and I think also for me, like, sometimes I don’t have heaps of friends, but like, the friends that I have, I value so much, and they are people who make me feel like wherever I’m at, whatever I’m, you know, wherever I’m at in my journey, that, you know, I can express myself how I want to. There’s really nothing I’m afraid to say to my friends. Um, and so I think it’s a lot about the people that you’re able to be around, or they can choose to be around.

[Music] Thank you.

Video by Headspace