“Coming Out” of a Discourse
By: Molly May
Tags: Discourse, LGBTQ, Queer, Literacy, Pride

When I was fourteen years old I came out to my parents.

In my Freshman year of high school, on a camping trip with my family, my dad made a dumb joke that changed our relationship forever: “What, do you bat for the other team or something?” I had never planned on my coming out happening this way, but it did, and I responded truthfully. I told my parents that I was bisexual. I look back now and I realize that this was a turning point in my relationship with my father and the discourse we both shared. In one breath I shared the heterosexual discourse with my parents, and in another, I didn’t. The shared values we had, the values I had previously held, were gone, and it was difficult to navigate. If I’m honest, I prepared myself for the worst. I prepared for our relationship to fail and believed this to be the moment that my involvement in my family discourse failed too. To me, rejecting this discourse was rejecting my family.

I was, and have been fortunate enough to be able to premise this essay by saying I’ve grown up in an incredibly supportive and loving household that accepts my sexuality. However, it has not been easy. At twelve years old, I would find myself in the position of every budding queer; I would stay up for hours past my adolescent bedtime taking BuzzFeed quizzes with titles along the lines of “Am I Gay?”. I would catch myself locking eyes with girls and would interpret the feeling in my stomach as jealousy (being a teenage queer is not easy — “do I like this girl, or is my self-conscious and hormone ridden brain telling me I want to be here?”). Conversations about gay people at the time seemed only to center around politics and being gay either didn’t exist, or it was something my father had seemed to disapprove. Being gay was something that only happened to other people — this was something both my parents and I knew.

So when I came out to my parents, the reaction was… subpar. My father made another joke, this time about gay sex. It set a tone in our conversation that continued to be awkward for years. My mother cried. I had prepared myself for the worst possible reaction from them. I was prepared for a screaming match, to be kicked out of my home, and to never speak to them again. I knew this wouldn’t happen, but I knew that every queer person has to be prepared for this on some level. When I finally said it, I could feel at that moment my shared discourse breaking down. The reaction wasn’t the worst, and it wasn’t the best. It wasn’t a conversation about them accepting me and telling me they would always love me, and it wasn’t kicking me out. Because of this, I interpreted their reaction to be the worst.

The issue that arose from this mindset was one that caused problems later; my parents built me a primary discourse that I relied upon to support my relationship with them. James Paul Gee’s describes Discourses as shared values and interactions, among other things, that help people identify and be identified in a group. My primary discourse, the “initial discourse that I acquired and learned to be a real person” (173) came from the values my parents held to be important. Marry a man, have a quiet life, raise some kids, continue. As I look back now and try to interpret these conversations, I realize that my parents were doing their best to protect me — to teach me ways to be a member of the dominant discourses of society. In this case, it’s pretty easy to understand what this dominant discourse might be — to my parents. Leading a “normal, straight” life, where I would marry a man and raise two children was the key to a happy life. The dominant discourse, the discourse that would deliver me “social goods in society” (180) was a heterosexual one.

As I got older, I began to slowly transition from one discourse to another. When I came out to my parents, I immediately found myself without this major aspect of my primary discourse that I had forever known. The assumption, while I was being raised, was that I was straight. The social goods I would receive from straightness was assumed by society and my parents, and it affected how they raised me. This major part of myself no longer belonged to a discourse that I could recognize and it left me feeling incredibly hopeless. Not only was this “heterosexual discourse” (of mine) an aspect of my primary discourse, but to my parents, it was a way to raise me, and it was a major aspect of what we assumed would be a part of my lifeworld discourse; these lifeworld discourses are important, because they’re “our culturally distinctive ways of being an ‘everyday’ person”. Despite heterosexuality only being one aspect of my identity, the emphasis of its importance in my life made things disheartening. Yes, of course, leaving this discourse meant entering another, but the key thing about new discourses is that to feel completely comfortable and to identify completely with it, it is almost essential to be literate — to be able to fully grasp and control the discourse you’re a part of. Although it is still possible to be a member of a new discourse without being fully literate, with something so important as your identity, it’s terrifying to feel as though you don’t belong. And that’s where I found myself. I was going through this transition in my primary discourse, all while experiencing the conflicts in identity any preteen feels. I never felt as though I belonged anywhere — at school and around my friends I felt I didn’t fit in, and at home, I believed I didn’t fit into the primary discourse. My relationship with my parents became awkward. We never acknowledged my sexuality after I came out; there were no conversations about my identity, and debates at the dinner table involving gay people ceased. It felt like there was an elephant in the room, and the elephant was that I liked girls. It was always there but never acknowledged. It was awkward. I constantly felt like I was in a battle with my identity, and I needed to adapt. It was at this moment in my adolescence, during my first years of high school, I had to rebuild a narrative for myself. I had to accept that what I perceived to be my discourses had to evolve, and I had to accept that I needed to do it myself.

To feel as if I was allowed to completely enter my new, “scary homosexual discourse”, I had to teach myself. Learning was the easy part: consciously “gaining [knowledge] through teaching”. I could read books about queer history and pride parades. I could learn pronouns and queer icons like Lady Gaga, and I could look up what “butch” meant, but it wasn’t going to make me literate — I wasn’t going to be able to apply this to my life or feel like I could be a real member of my new discourse. Until I tried mushfaking my way to feel accepted, “partial acquisition… making do”, I occasionally flirted with girls and joined GSA, but I hadn’t fully acquired what it meant to be a member of the community. Acquiring meant actually exposing myself to aspects of the gay community, not pursuing any actual teaching, and then going out and actually doing it — involving myself. I needed to do whatever I possibly could to actively be a member of the new discourse; participate in conversations and tradition in the LGBT community. Except, active engagement wasn’t something I realized I needed to do. I was still scared that being a member of this new discourse, and leaving my old one, meant bad things for my relationship with my family and even worse things for my already unstable membership in my primary discourse. I couldn’t fully embrace my new one, for the risk of losing the old.

I began to involve myself in this new queer discourse I was a member of, without actively trying to learn to be a member. After a few years, I finally brought home my first girlfriend to my parents. I was terrified of the reaction I might receive and was unsure if I would damage an already seemingly unstable discourse with my parents. We had never had a conversation in years prior about my sexuality, and as far as I knew, they simply pretended it didn’t exist. Elephant in the room. But things didn’t blow up in my face like I thought they would. My parents supported my relationship thoroughly and began to agree to activities that allowed me to acquire more and more knowledge of my new discourse. I attended my first Pride Parade, I went to a school dance with a girl, I made other queer friends and I began to resonate with the queer history I had read about — I understood the efforts and struggles the people before me had pursued to give me what I have today. It was through this acquisition that I no longer felt like I needed to fake things. I was no longer mushfaking in my discourse, I was a literate member.

I had always interpreted my father’s opinions as something negative, and in some ways they were — insensitive sometimes, and it caused incredible conflict for me. But my father became an unexpected sponsor for me. I say unexpected because I didn’t realize until now what he had, and has, done to support and sponsor me. I thought my father would be a sort of gatekeeper — regulating my access to my new discourse. But he wasn’t, he became a supporter. According to Deborah Brandt, by definition, a sponsor is “any agent, local or distant who enable, support, teach, model and gain an advantage by it in some way”. My father, specifically, has been a major supporter and enabler of my new discourse. When I came home with my first girlfriend, he welcomed the relationship wholeheartedly, far more than I had expected. The lack of conversation in the household around my sexuality encouraged the awkward tones through my early teenage years. Bringing home a girl allowed for him to go above and beyond and overcompensate his acceptance of it — inviting her over for dinner, allowing her into my room, and letting her know she was always welcome. By supporting my relationship, he became a sponsor for me, all while gaining an advantage — being able to talk to me again. My father accepting my relationship, allowing me to attend my first pride parade, and developing a newfound relationship with the LGBT community because of me resulted in a completely different dialogue between us. It was at this time that I realized my fears of losing my primary discourse were irrational. I had spent so long believing that I would never recoup and that I had lost a part of myself, but my fears were never true. Losing such a large part of my discourse clouded my judgment and despite feeling as though I would never regain my primary discourse, I did. It wasn’t the same, but it was still there. His acceptance of me and my sexuality has become so normal in my household, it’s become startling when it’s highlighted. Both he and I worked together to create a dialogue — we began to discuss queer politics at the table again and he acknowledged my sexuality. We completely transformed my family discourse, and I once again felt settled in my new, evolved primary discourse.

As I looked around at the crowds of people, the rainbow balloons and floats, the drag queens and the couples, I found myself thinking of my father. Just one year before I attended my first pride parade, my dad made it clear that he didn’t think it was safe for a 16-year-old. He and I never discussed whether or not I could go, the answer would always be no. I thought he was never going to accept my sexuality, or at the very least acknowledge it. But that same year, my father showed me that he was willing to change and accept me for who I was. I was allowed to go to my first Pride parade, and it was there that I was able to silently thank him for the support, and realize that I never let go of my family discourse, I learned to finally feel as if I was a solid member of both.