When and how did you come out as bi, lesbian, gay or trans?
I was fourteen when I first told my family I also liked girls. And I’d like to remark the also because heterosexuality was always assumed of me, as for most people. This is the story of how coming out of the closet empowered me and motivated me to write with a Transfeminist perspective.
My first kiss was with a girl. I was very young, not even twelve. Back then, she was one of my best friends, and we kissed to practice how to, later on, kiss some boys. “I don’t know how to french kiss”– I sad nervous after arranging a date with the guy who was supposed to be my ‘first kiss’. “Me neither. Should we practice between us?”. And there we were: joining our open mouths without knowing how, when, or where to move our lips. “I think we need to stick our tongues out. That’s how it’s shown in movies”, I said after this awkward moment. We both laughed. At our second attempt, still, with our mouths wide open and our lips touching one another’s, we both took our tongues out until they touched the others. “That’s it?” we replied at the same time. But that couldn’t be it.
After that catastrophic but funny event, I met the girl who, later on, became my first sexual experience. I was thirteen, she was eighteen. She had already had sex with tons of fellas, while I barely –and badly– had kissed a couple of them. We were getting ready to go to some party when she asked me if I’d kiss her in order to ‘get boys’. I didn’t understand it at first, since I was very innocent back then and I had no interest in ‘getting boys’. But as she felt insecure about herself, I saw it as a little aid for my friend, so I agreed. One kiss that, unexpectedly but consensually, ended up in crazy lesbian sex.
After that experience, I regularly kissed some of my girl-friends in party environments, because it was something fun to do, according to us, and according to everybody in our social circle. I never questioned if I liked girls before, since I never understood that was a possibility. I knew few LGTBI+ people, and my parents always talked about having grandchildren, which made it hard for me to perceive myself as part of the rainbow community. But the truth is, I was kissing girls because I liked how it felt.
Later on, I went on my first solo trip with friends –solo as in without parents’ supervision. We went to a club and we drank quite a lot. As I was a newby in both, drinking and dating, I got lost in between the booze and the reggaeton songs. After realizing I had lost all my friends around that huge club, I went to the bathroom to look for some of them. Of course, they weren't there. But I didn’t care much about it because everything was a bit fuzzy. I was washing my hands when I saw this beautiful girl in a red dress. She looked at me and asked me if I needed help. “Help at what?” I said to myself but didn’t say a word to her. I was just admiring her. Then, she took my hands full of soap and started rubbing them in a very sensual way. She then approached me and we kissed. As I told her I’d lost my friends, she told me I could be with hers. And so there I was: with a gorgeous unknown girl in a Mexican club, kissing and dancing all night long. After party time was over, I re-encountered my friends and we all headed home. “Admit it, you are bi!” they told me after I explained my experience. “I don’t know!” I replied. The truth is, I was very confused. Was it wrong to be bi? Or it was just a stage?
I wanted to discover my sexuality, and lucky me, I had the freedom to do so. Of course, the first thing I did: asked to Mr. Google: “how do I know if I’m bi?”. The answers were kind of awful. They moved between “you like sex too much so you don’t care about someone's gender” to “It’s just a curiosity phase”. I think if I had been a lesbian, I would have known it earlier and everything would be at least, a bit clearer. But since I had been with boys and girls, all of a sudden my identity was put into question. How was it possible to like both at the same time? Was I being 'promiscuous', as Google said? As I knew I was still discovering myself, I didn’t give much importance to the how, but rather to the what. And that what was very clear: I liked boys and girls.
As I assumed my bisexuality, I thought it was important for my family to know about it. Especially because they have always supported me in everything, and there are no taboos at home. My sister and I have been tought about sex since we were very young, and this topic was current at our dinner table. However, we never learned about lesbian sex, for instance. For that I don’t blame my parents: they were born in other times and it was already a lot to explicitly teach a nine-year-old kid how to put a condom or a tampon.
I first went to my mum, because she is one of my best friends and during my teenage years she’d been my best ally. “Mum, I’ve gotta tell you something very important”. As she straightened her face and looked at me seriously, I finally said it: “I think I’m bi”. She suddenly changed her look and stared at me with a smile and her loving eyes to say: “And I’m straight. So what?”. I have to admit her reaction was a huge relief, because she didn’t care at all about my sexual orientation, as long as I was happy with it and was living my sexual life in a healthy and protected way. “The problem is not with me, but be careful when you tell your sister and father”, she later said. And she was right: they are (or were) a little bit more conservative than us, and perhaps their reaction wasn’t going to be as friendly as my mum’s.
So I took them to dinner and after some wine and tequilas, I spit it out: “I’m bisexual”. They both stopped doing whatever they were doing and looked at each other with crazy big eyes. They started laughing so hard that all the restaurant customers could hear us. “It’s ok to be whatever you want to be, just be careful because this world doesn’t accept lesbian girls as much” my father said after. And he was right: I was a bisexual teenager (but not a lesbian) and growing up in a lgtbi-phobic and sexist world, so I didn’t have it as easy.
As time passed by and I experienced with other people and learned about the LGTBI+ community, I realized non-binary people existed too. Then, my bisexuality was not only ‘bi’ for the binary girl/boy, but rather for the binary/nonbinary people. Let me explain: for some bisexuals, being bi means they feel attraction towards girls and boys. For many others, like myself, that simply means we are attracted to binary gender identities (as women/man) and to non-binary identities (as non-binary but also as gender fluid or a-gender, etc). In that sense, and since I didn’t know at first about this, I thought my sexual orientation was rather pansexual. However, after speaking with tons of other LGTBI+ people, I realized everyone defines their own sexual orientation, and that I felt more comfortable defining myself as bisexual rather than pansexual. So that was it.
Coming out of the closet helped me dig deeper into LGTB+ topics, and also get to know more people inside the community. This new (but crucial) information empowered me as a bisexual person and motivated me to write about LGTB+ topics. I always felt that if I had grown up with all the information I hold today, doubt and fear would have never come at me, but rather I would have been empowered from the very beginning. Also, I would have avoided traumatizing events and experiences around my sexuality. However, life went as it was, and I couldn’t be more thankful I had amazing people around me, supporting me regardless my bisexuality or transfeminist ideals. I am thankful because, even though acceptance should be the norm, I understand not everybody grew up under these circumstances, and lots of people are afraid to come out of the closet because of the social consequences that come with it.
At the end of the day, coming out of the closet was an empowering experience and a long road to acknowledging other sexual and gender identities. Of course, worry and distrust were in my way, as they come with every unknown experience. But my mum was right: why do we, LGTBI+ people have to come out of the closet? I am bisexual, so what? Why do we have to explicitly talk about our sexual preferences and our gender identities? The reason may pass through the ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality’ society we live in. Because, for no reason (or tons of historical and cultural reasons I don't feel like sharing today), people feel entitled to assume one’s sexual or gender identity, and into those assumptions, heterosexuality or cisgenderism are there.
For all of this, I consider it crucial to make sexual and gender diversity visible, and to widespread the experiences of those commonly invisible. Ignorance is the short path to hate speech, and in order to make the world a better place for all dissident identities, it is fundamental to endow LGTBI+ education at every level.
Meeting other LGTBI+ people, and sharing my experience with them and with the world, not only empowered me but also made me understand that there are more people than we imagine still living in fear because of who they are. And who the hell are we to not allow people to live in peace?
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