How Stories Make Us Feel Safe (Or Not Safe) to Come Out
Happy Pride Month! Through June, Author Accelerator will be featuring stories and blog posts from our LGBTQ+ certified book coaches and their allies. Today’s blog post comes to us from Sandra Postma.
I can recall how it made me feel so easily.
The knot in my stomach. The feeling of dread that came with unexpectedly being cast out by a community that was supposed to include me.
It was only a couple of years ago. I still struggled to accept that I was bi. There was such a stigma attached to it. Bi was synonymous with promiscuity, curiosity and denial.
I was watching the Will & Grace revival. The show for gay representation, and the only one for decades that embraced being gay as I grew up. For years, Karen had alluded to being bisexual and finally in the revival she entered into a relationship with a woman. No more alluding to being bisexual; she was with this woman!
A couple of episodes later and Karen says: “I’m sorry. I was just confused.”
And with that line, I broke.
I felt cheated and so deeply betrayed. Betrayed by the show that gave us the only representation on TV for so long. The show that allegedly stood for queer rights. And right in front of me this show told me Karen was not bi but ‘confused’ because she ‘was going through a tough time’.
I’ve not been able to come back from that appalling decision on the part of the Will & Grace writers. I had felt embraced by this show since I was a teenager when I wasn’t particularly sure if I was bi or straight, but at least I felt included and seen.
That feeling shattered.
Not long after, I read a British mystery novel. In it a bisexual woman seduces a woman for a one night stand after which she dumps and bullies her. The bully is murdered by her one-time lover. Both victim and murderer were bi. The writer made the murderer look crazy and the murder victim come across as a seductive bi woman using her sexuality to lure an innocent woman into a trap. Sadly, it wasn’t the first time this author used bi characters as wrong-doers.
When you rarely see yourself back in the art and media you consume, but when you do and the result is either ‘sorry I was confused’ or ‘bisexual woman gets murdered by fellow crazy bi woman for being a sexual predator’ you’re not strengthened; you feel you’re being pushed back into the closet.
Being gay or lesbian is clear. Either men or women. But both? Make up your mind, please. You can’t have both. And when you want both, it must be purely for sexual reasons. Because falling in love with men, women and all humans in between? Surely impossible! Choose already!
Enter Rosa Diaz, played by Stephanie Beatriz, on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, a TV show about a group of police officers in NYC. A TV show with two Latina leads, two black men, one of whom is gay and happens to be the station’s boss, and four white guys of which two were the most lazy men around. The show was a breath of fresh air (still salty it got cancelled) amid so much white male-ness. And Rosa is bi. The writers dedicated a beautiful episode to her coming out, relating to Stephanie Beatriz own coming out as a bi woman.
For the very first time in my life I felt seen. And I was 30 at the time. Thirty years old.
Thirty years on this planet, feeling completely unsure because I saw no examples of bi people in my books or on my screen. Was I confused? Was it just sexual? And even if it was, was that a problem?
Rosa wiped all that uncertainty off the table. I was bi. I could fall in love with all genders. And that was okay.
Seeing that episode was the beginning of my own coming out.
It proves the importance of representation across all media. All I needed was one fictional character daring to be honest about who they were, without backtracking or evil motives. All I needed was one bi person being written as a human being.
I am a prime example of the power of representation. It gives people the courage to be themselves and consequently to imbue the world with their truth, their heart and their soul.
We need more representation like this. So much more. Thankfully things are changing but as long as being bi is still synonymous with ‘bicurious’ and ‘in denial’ or ‘confused’ we still have a long way to go.
Only through writing stories in which bi people are humans like anyone else, who simply happen to fall in love with people without their gender playing a part, can we lift the divide. That is the true power of stories. We need to utilize that power and offer a place for bi writers to tell their truth.
To feel ready to tell my loved ones, I needed a fictional character to tell me that it was perfectly fine to be bi. I hope in the future kids growing up have bucketloads of stories to tell them this. I hope there are plentiful stories with bi characters to inspire them from a very young age that being bi is awesome and that falling in love with all kinds of people is nothing to be ashamed of but instead is actually a beautiful thing.
You can find Sandra online at her website or connect with her on Twitter to learn more about her book coaching services.
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