Coming Out

Coming out is a pretty nerve wracking experience, having to tell the people you love most something about yourself that may challenge their love for you is absolutely terrifying. Having to come out and then also explain your identity to a society than denies you even exist, much much worse.

Arlo and I had been talking about them coming out to their immediate family for some time before we realised we it had gotten to the time where we had to. We had booked an appointment at a gender identity clinic the minute we returned from a big family holiday and needed to explain why we weren’t coming home and were instead swanning off to London.

I convinced Arlo to delay the coming out until they had finished their degree and handed in all their final work – because I didn’t think it right to put them under even more stress. I also didn’t believe their family would understand the concept straight off the bat, so I created a pdf that explained the concept of being non-binary. I know as a cis person I will never understand what being non-binary is like for Arlo, and therefore their cis family won’t either; so the pdf was a sort of ‘how to understand non-binary identities if you’re cis’ and detailed the ways I understand Arlo’s gender identity (all double checked with them of course.)

We sent a letter written by Arlo about their gender identity and my pdf to their mum in the morning before work, we figured giving her the whole day to process it was the best idea.

Arlo and I had already had multiple conversations about what happens if coming out goes badly, and that was a very real possibility. A month previous I had shared a Facebook post about ‘they’ being valid as a singular pronoun (to test the waters so to speak) which Arlo’s mum had taken great opposition to, she believed anything other than male or female was a sort of leftist liberal creation. Arlo and I unfortunately needed to have the very difficult conversation that there was a possibility we might be cut off from the family. Arlo and I have our own house and are financially self-sufficient so we would be able to survive on our own, but we are both very close to Arlo’s family. We FaceTime their mum almost daily and visit every other weekend, the loss of that would be huge to both of us.

Thankfully that never happened, to our relief Arlo’s mum took it very well. She asked quite a few questions, as we expected she would, and didn’t completely understand but was overall very supportive.

For the past 3 years Arlo has had their binders delivered to my house and has worn sports bra around their family. Now they are able to wear their binder freely, their family is adjusting to their new name (we’re working on pronouns), and we can openly talk about our plans for top surgery. Arlo waited 3 years to come out to their family but it was the right time to do it now.

Arlo’s mum has been wonderful, I would even say she took it better than I did. She was originally upset because she felt like she was losing a daughter but Arlo and I explained to her that she was losing a sad daughter and gaining a happy non-binary child. I think often we have prejudices and opinions about other groups of people until those types of people are in my lives. My parents were casually homophobic before I came out as queer, Arlo’s family were casually transphobic before they came out as non-binary; but thankfully opinions and attitudes shift overtime and I am very grateful theirs have.