Tales of the Closet

plaidder invited LGBT folks to talk about The Closet and why they're not going back in no matter what, in response to the Lies About the Union address.  So, accepting her kind invitation, here's my bit about The Closet:

Short answer: It's dark and there are spiders.  Fuck that.

Long answer: I am one of the very fortunate people who just missed the Historical Period of Mandatory Closeting.  I have never really been in the closet, except in the sense that people assume that I'm straight and I have to come out to them so that they know that I'm not (especially since I'm married to a man - I'm bisexual; y'all knew that, right?).  So, I suppose in some sense I'm in the closet to anyone to whom I haven't made The Declaration, but I tend to make The Declaration quite a bit (see parenthetical note above), and there have been very few times to my recollection that I've neglected to make The Declaration when the opportunity has come up.

(One of those times, interestingly, was when I was volunteering at the Gay Pride Parade in LA and was assumed to be a lesbian by some folks that were making rather nasty remarks about het people; it sort of hurt my feelings in a way and certainly made me feel alienated, but I kind of understood why folks might feel inclined to verbally-bash straight people at the Gay Pride Parade, and let it go.  Later I wished that I'd been a little bit more confrontational and made The Declaration, in the nicest way possible, just so it would have put a stop to the remarks.  I certainly would have made The Declaration if I'd been witness to nasty talk about queer folks, without a second thought.  But, I digress.)

My first memory of being aware of the concept of bisexuality was when I was probably twelve or so, watching David Bowie on TV with my mother.  My mom really liked Bowie (still does, I think) and said something about how he was bisexual and that she thought a lot of artistic people were, because they tended to fly against the winds of prevailing attitudes and do whatever they wanted.  This was a pretty bi-positive statement, and I just realized, yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm lbisexual, too.  Girls seemed just as hot and interesting to me as guys, really, and it seemed like a very reasonable thing to be; why limit yourself to one gender or the other if you could have both?  I didn't say anything to my mother about it at the time.  I just filed the information away for later use.  "Sexual preference: bisexual.  Also, David Bowie: hot." 

My family also had a history of being fairly gay-positive, especially for Tulsa, OK.  My interior designer paternal grandmother had several very close friends who were gay, and my maternal grandfather rented the house in front of ours to a gay couple for many years.  Even though he was/is a fundamentalist Christian, he liked the couple a lot and was sorry when they finally moved out because they were excellent tenants. My dad was an atheist who thought everybody should just leave everybody else alone to do their own thing.  So even though I grew up in a really conservative place, my immediate family was pretty queer friendly and I never thought about queerness as having a major stigma attached to it except in the larger culture.  I was always very clear that homophobia was just as wrong, bad and prevalent as racism, and I thought of it in the same terms. 

As I grew up and became sexually active, I dated a lot of men in my early twenties, mostly because I was hanging out in straight venues and didn't meet a lot of women.  It's a lot more work to meet women to date, especially if you're bi because there are a lot of lesbian women who treat you like you've got the plague, and so I mostly dated men.  I let people assume I was straight a lot, but I would make The Declaration every now and then, when it came up, and I think a lot of people realized that I was bi.  I'm one of those bi-seeming people, I think.  I give off the bi-vibe, whatever that is.  I'm told.  Eventually, I went to grad school and started being a lot more intentional about making The Declaration as a matter of principle, and I dated women a bit more during that period as well.  I've been fortunate that I've been able to find jobs where I could be out and no one cared; I've also been very intentional about looking for those kinds of jobs.

So, obviously, my experience of The Closet is pretty limited.  What I do know about The Closet is this: every time I have to decide whether or not to make The Declaration, I feel a little spark of fear.  I worry about being rejected.  I worry about something even worse happening, some shadowy threat that might accrue from having come out - a bashing, a lost opportunity, even simple gossip.  Just that one little spark of doubt and worry is painful enough.  I can hardly imagine what it would be like to live my whole life that way, with the constant fear and worry that someone will find out, that you'll be caught out, that something so intrinsic to one's identity and life is dangerous to one's well-being.  That's horrific, and I'm grateful everyday that I've got the freedom to be as out as I wanna be.  I have no intention of allowing anyone to push me into that nightmare.

As plaidder notes, the pressure to re-closet everyone is growing in the US, and the hostile atmosphere across the board made me profoundly uncomfortable, even living in LA where I didn't experience it directly on a daily basis.  I didn't feel safe there anymore.  Not in the sense that I was afraid for my physical safety in an immediate way, but in the sense that I worried about the political climate shifting suddenly in a bad direction and not being able to get out.  I had concentration camp fantasies, tried to map elaborate escape routes that I might use if the borders were suddenly closed.  When you're making plans for genocide, no matter how fantastical they may be, you know things aren't going well in your country.  I felt even more alien than usual, like the US didn't want me and my kind.  I felt like a foreign national in the land of my birth. 

I was lucky and the opportunity to move to Canada came up, so I left.  Now as Bush readies another go at legislation to prevent gay marriage, Martin (Canada's Prime Minister) is readying legislation to make it legal here nationwide. (It's been legal in several provinces for some time.) When I found out that Canada's anti-discrimination laws include sexual orientation, it made me feel so good.  I felt really protected and welcomed.  Even though discrimination has mostly been theoretical for me, just the existence of that clause made me feel wanted by Canadian society.  It had an enormous psychological impact for me.  I feel safe in Canada in ways that I never, ever did in the US.  Everyone should have that opportunity, to feel safe and wanted in their country of residence.  That should certainly be a requirement for any country that is going to advertise itself as the Home of the Free and expect that people won't take it ironically.

Some days I wonder if I've done the right thing by leaving.  Part of me feels ashamed that we've essentially run away and left our less fortunate sisters and brothers stuck planning their desperate and illusory escape routes.  But part of me is still so bitter that a majority of the population were too homophobic, stupid and/or lazy to prevent Bush from taking office and inflicting further ruin that I can't really regret our decision.  I love living in Canada and I'm hoping to stay, and a good deal of that is a desire to stay away from that nasty ole Closet.

Anyone else want to share their Tales from the Closet?