Cheryl VanDeKerkhove: ‘Coming out’ is never ending

(The author is a longtime LGBTQ+ community activist, currently co-leading the LGBTQ+ and allies community group the Crowded Table Coalition.)

My coming out story? Which one? I’ve come out literally thousands of times. I’ve come out in job interviews, to my parents, to the greeter guy at the hardware store exit who saw the snow shovel I was buying and said, “Something for your husband?” to which I replied, “It would be my girlfriend, but I’ll likely be the one using it,” and even in Mexico and Costa Rica, when introducing my partner as “mi novia” (my girlfriend, romantic) rather than “mi amiga” (friend). 

Sometimes it’s easy to come out, when I know I’m in a friendly space. Other times, it takes a varying amount of courage. One that surprised me with how much courage it took was when I was working for an IT company, where I came out in the job interview. I did that specifically because in a prior job, I had come out to someone after working there for almost three months. They immediately fired me for it, so I didn’t want to make that mistake again. There’s no point being hired by a company that will fire me when they know one simple thing about who I am as a person. 

So, I came out in my interview at this IT company and worked for about a year in a cube farm with folks who all knew about me. Then I began working on a different, global account, which meant working 100% remotely, over voice calls, with my team. During almost two years of remote work, the subject never came up. I didn’t dodge it or avoid it, there just was never a question or conversation about personal lives in a remote context. When I began actually meeting in person with a subset of these colleagues almost two years into working together, it felt very awkward, yet necessary, to work it into the conversation somehow.

By this time, I had been an editor at Lesbian Connection magazine and had been the co-owner of an LGBT community store in Old Town, Lansing, The Real World Emporium. I’d also been the co-chair of the Lansing Equal Rights Task Force, and a very public voice for what was dubbed the “Gay Rights Ordinance” — actually a comprehensive civil rights ordinance, banning discrimination on a long list of categories that should be irrelevant to where you live, work or shop. A quick Google search would have shown any of my colleagues who they were working with. 

I’ve also always been androgynous in my gender presentation. We used to call it being a tomboy. I suppose now I’d be more properly considered nonbinary, though I am strongly woman-identified. In any case, in 2001, when I showed up for the first time to meet these colleagues in person in my suitcoat and tie, that was a pretty good clue. Nonetheless, it was important for me to address the elephant in the room and establish a comfort level with my colleagues so that they could feel free to talk with me about it, and integrate the person before them with the voice they’d been working with — and respecting — all this time.

I’ll never forget the very butch-looking coworker who walked up on a group conversation in which she learned that I was a lesbian, because we were talking about my LGBT bookstore. I could see the panic on her face when she realized she was meeting her first, real, live, in-the-flesh lesbian. I could almost hear her thoughts, like, “What do I say? What do I say?” The statement she landed on was perhaps not the best option: “So, it was an LGBT store? Well… did you sell… ‘normal’ stuff, too?”

I certainly know people who would have vilified her right then and there, shamed her for her poor choice of words, or schooled her on how it definitely is “normal” to be lesbian, gay, bi or trans. But I’ve always found it’s best to assume good intent and give some grace, and this woman was clearly floundering and trying her best, so I just responded with a long list of the kinds of things we did sell in the store and gave her a chance to recover.

I specifically use the word lesbian as often as I can now. I’ve been deeply dismayed at some of the more recent politics that have cast “lesbian” as somehow equating to “anti-trans.” In my opinion, the TERF wars are misogynist and anti-lesbian at their core, so it feels once again important for me to be out and proud as the lesbian I am, and to be an example for young lesbians that they can be who they are as well.

I’ve also got to mention my mixed feelings about the proliferation of flags for the seemingly countless variations on queer identity that we can name now.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m super happy about the nuance, and having words for very specific sub-communities where one can find their people.  It’s just that the rainbow flag was intended to include ALL of us, as one beautiful rainbow across all spectrums of race, religion, ability, age, gender identity, sexual orientation, etc. We have so many flags now that even the folks staffing the table at the Pride March couldn’t tell me which flag sticker meant which identity. We used to be able to easily identify each other with the rainbow flag; now it’s not so clear.

I’m still a civil rights activist, and lately I’ve been coming out as a lesbian when speaking at protest rallies. I get cheers and applause for it. That’s great for me, but even more important for the other young lesbians who see it.  I recently ran into a woman who was a 19-year-old in my orbit over 20 years ago (when I was about 40), and she thanked me profusely, and said that just seeing an older, out lesbian, who was happy and successful, saved her life and many others. That’s the real importance behind coming out: being fully seen for your authentic self and finding — and being found by — others like you.