By Haley O’Halloran

Moving back home at the beginning of the pandemic was difficult for a lot of 20-somethings. Even though the severity of the COVID-19 outbreak was explained time and time again, along with the economic downfall that followed, there seemed to still be the expectation for us to succeed and thrive in a world that was falling apart. I graduated in quarantine. While I waited for opportunities to arise, I was able to do a lot of self-reflection. During this time, right before my 23rd birthday, I decided to come out to my mother as bisexual. 

I would describe my mother as conditionally accepting. She loves her gay friends and her straight friends, but she doesn’t really understand the “other letters in that acronym”. She often votes Conservative, and she is a woman who is very set in her ways. These are all reasons that I couldn’t come out to her sooner. I slowly realised that it was also the reason that I had never come out to anyone – the memories of microaggressions in the scared, closeted person’s mind are persistent. 

In my third year of university, I lived with two girls and one person who was so close with our friend group that they basically lived with us. One girl was straight, one girl was openly bisexual, and the friend who visited often was non-binary and openly bisexual. Ironically, I feel like the straight girl was my only ally that entire year. 

Our visiting friend and my bisexual housemate would often say I had all the “makings of a bisexual girl, but I was dating a man”. They often said my behaviours or clothes were ‘bisexual’ (this included but was not limited to: cuffing my pants, having short hair, being a gifted child, studying film, having short nails). I now realise that these internalised expectations of what being queer should look like was a form of microaggression. It made me want to not come out because I didn’t want everything that I did to be attributed to my sexuality. 

Our label-heavy culture can often be an unintentional microaggression in and of itself. We are almost obsessive about labels – we need to immediately know someone’s pronouns, sexuality, politics, etc. I believe that it is important to know these things if the person is willing to share them, for the simple reason of respect. I would never want to misgender someone or assume their sexuality if that can be avoided. However, I also understand that both gender and sexuality exist on a spectrum, and it is often hard to label oneself. I avoided labelling myself for years because I didn’t think it was important. That is until I started dating and realised that it might cause issues in my family if I brought a woman home. 

The treatment of ‘queer’ as a personality trait is like a new form of outing. We are so starved for labels that we have to make our own for others just so that they fit within our preconceived notions of what queerness should be. When I ended up coming out to my closest friends (two straight women), they were very accepting in a way that I liked; it really didn’t matter to them.

My bisexuality is part of my identity, but it’s not my entire identity. When June came around, and I received two “Happy Pride!” texts from friends, I felt slightly tokenised. I don’t ever want to be the ‘gay friend’. I would much rather be the funny friend or the smart friend – who also happens to be bisexual.  

The most disappointing response came from my family. When I came out to my mother, she was surprised that I had known that I was bisexual since the age of fourteen (she clearly hadn’t seen Kill Bill in the way that I had seen it). After I came out, she hugged me and never brought it up again. 

She would make passive comments like “You’re going to make some man a good wife someday” when I cooked her dinner, or she would constantly try to set me up with only the sons of her friends. I went on a few dates with a wonderful woman once things started opening after the second lockdown, but things didn’t work out. My mother always referred to her as my friend. After that, I started seeing a man, and my mom immediately referred to him as my date, or by his name. 

There are certain expectations that come from older generations, of course. You must get married traditionally and have children and live in a nice house. But it’s not like that anymore. My mum will always kind of understand. My grandparents never will. With this expectation of a traditional life comes implicit heteronormativity.

There is a difference between ‘how it was back then’ and willful ignorance. I truly believe that people can be set in their ways, but I also believe that people can change. The best advice that I can give to heterosexual people who may be reading this and want to know how to be true allies is to try and use inclusive language (like partner) when asking if your younger family members are seeing anyone. Never assume sexuality (this goes both ways – assuming a family member is gay because they haven’t dated for a while is NOT progressive), and always listen. It’s the easiest way to learn.

You never know who in your life could be queer and scared to talk about it, so the best step to take is to make sure that you have created a space for them to come out on their own terms. If my family had done that for me, I would have been comfortable in my own skin much, much sooner.