From: mara@panix.com (Mara Chibnik)
Subject: Re: Tips for coming out to friends?
Organization: (getting there)
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 17:58:55 GMT


I've already had some email with Doron on this, but now that I've
cleared away a number of items pending from before my trip (lovely,
thanks), I thought I'd bring this to the net.  (And no, sadly, I
didn't get to meet Doron at the brunch on Sunday.  We'll just have
to do another gathering before too long, that's all.)

dem@cs.princeton.edu (Doron Meyer) writes:
 >I'm starting to contemplate coming out selectively to very
 >close friends.  However, I want to make sure to do it right,
 >as I can't undo things if I screw them up.

A number of people have responded to these points, and I didn't
think that _any_ of the advice was bad.  (Now, how often do you hear
something like that on Usenet?)  It certainly won't surprise some of
you that I'm going to address this question from the other side,
that of the newly come-out-to friend.

After reading Jack Carroll's comments on Stonewall and its
significance, I started trying to remember who my first out gl
(and for the moment, I'm not going to put in the "b") acquaintance
was.  By this, I mean someone I knew personally, and knew to be gay
or lesbian, and was known to know this.  (I knew they knew I
knew...)  Most of the comings-out-- in my life!-- have been second
hand.  That is, my friend A introduces me to her friend B, about
whom I've already heard that B is a lesbian.  B talks about this neat
couple she knows, C and D, and so, by the time I meet C (who is, by
now, dating E) I know that C is gay.  A, as it happens, is straight
(not that this is a necessity, of course). 

By now another straight friend has introduce me to a lesbian friend
of *hers*, knowing-- since I'm so friendly with the crowd I met
through A-- that it will be okay, at least in the sense that I won't
make homophobic remarks that would, effectively, put my foot into my
friend's mouth.  (Can we start a fetish thread now?)

This is pretty much what happened with me.  At least I was
sufficiently with it to realize who people were.  I did meet someone
who was friends with lots of glb* folks and didn't realize it for a
long time.  Everyone around her just assumed she'd caught on, but
she was-- literally, in this case-- clueless.  Fortunately it didn't
matter to her, so the enlightenment process turned out not to be
especially traumatic.

I'll relate the following examples, though, in case they help
someone come out to someone else:

1.  Tom:  He never did come out to us.  We'd been friends for a
couple of years, and it seemed pretty clear that he was gay-- at
least to us-- but he also seemed quite young in some respects, and
we weren't sure whether he was out to himself yet.  It turned out
that he was, and hadn't ever _not_ been.  But he was also very
single, so he didn't have any very natural way to let us know.
Eventually he did get involved with someone, but by then the
revelation of his sexuality was strictly (I beg your pardon)
anti-climactic.  I remember a long, luscious conversation with him
in the course of which I teased him about never having come out to
us, and his answer:  "It always seemed completely beside the point."

2.  Alexia (whose name is something else):  She describes the
incident as the time I took her out and got her drunk and made her
spill her darkest secrets.  In fact, the two of us went into a wine bar
on Madison Avenue one afternoon to celebrate the end of a project
we'd been working on.  (For the record, she bought her own wine.  I
think each of us had exactly one glass.)  She mentioned a mutual
acquaintance of ours who was very out.  She drew me-- as I realized
later-- into some mention of other gay and lesbian friends of mine.
Then she said, "You have a lot of gay friends, haven't you?"  I
thought about it for a second and decided I probably had.  She said,
"I'll bet you have one more that you didn't know about."   Well, the
wine had slowed me down, but not entirely stopped me, so I said,
"Hmm, I think you're telling me something."  She said "I am."  I
said "Thanks."  

I might also mention that, even though our mutual friend was very
out, I hadn't noticed it until she pointed it out to me.  It was
obvious enough when I thought about him, but it hadn't occurred to
me then to wonder.  

3.  Kay (also not her name):  Kay is an old friend, someone I knew
before she was out to herself, and with whom I was out of touch for
most of the time that she was coming out, in the limited way that
she has done.  (She faces a serious risk of being fired if her
sexuality is discovered, and is the most closeted-- that I know of--
of my glb* friends who is out to me.)  She came out to me in stages,
the earliest of which involved leaving a lover sitting in the car
rather than mentioning that she had a friend with her.  She realized
immediately afterwards just how foolish that was, but she wanted to
test the water and she felt painfully self-conscious about herself
at that time.  Since we live far apart, we were lucky to find a few
days that we could be in some proximity, during which-- phase 2--
she talked about life choices and roads not travelled in very
general terms.  I wasn't sure exactly what she was saying, but 
I seem to have reassured her, because the next time we saw each
other she did come out, explicitly, by mentioning a woman that she'd
been dating.  She tossed it off almost casually, but she was
watching to see how I'd take it, so I decided to address that, and
mentioned that the message, while it was more specific than
previously, wasn't exactly new.  It was still a while later before
she told me that she'd had a lover outside in her car that day,
though.

This is getting long.  My only specific comment is this:  I can't
imagine a case in which the way you come out makes any long-term
difference to your friends.  (This might not hold so well for
parents; I'm not sure.)  Whether you go through "something I've
been meaning to tell you..." routine or offhandedly name your last
weekend's date, or simply drool with sexual admiration over the lust
object of your choice won't make any lasting difference.  If
a friend feels hurt that you didn't say anything sooner, you can
respond by pointing out how important that friendship was to you,
and how frightened you were at the idea you might lose it-- and,
given the acceptance that the friend has already voiced, you can
say how glad you are to have a friend who feels that way.  

One more thing:  Be a little careful about requiring that your
friends keep a secret for you.  If you want to be the one to tell
so-and-so, that's fine, but then do it, especially if you've just
come out to so-and-so's closest friend.  And I know that I'm
always most comfortable with people who are willing to let me tell
my SO whatever they've told me.  It avoids setting up conflicting
loyalties.

-- 

  Mara Chibnik
  mara@panix.com                Life is too important to be taken seriously.