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Notes & Queeries: Yes I Am

Sometimes it seems as though the only LGBT stories in the media are coming-out stories, and after writing about coming-out for what seems like the thousandth time, it can become a bit tedious. That’s why Milk was such an inspiration to me. The film wasn’t about coming out, and yet it showed me exactly why it is still so important.

As Harvey Milk argued in the film – and in real life – coming out is the way that we will make this LGBT movement a human one. When straight folks personally know gay people, they are less likely to discriminate against us.

I knew the bare bones of Milk’s story, but the movie brought it home to me. You know the feeling: When you are totally surrounded by the world in a movie or TV show or book, and there’s nothing between you and the story.

In Milk, the hard facts of history became a three-dimensional, lived-in world. Like any queer resident of San Francisco, I’m familiar with the Castro District, but seeing it on screen and dressed up in the 1970s gave me the feeling you get when looking at photos of a good friend in her youth. It’s a kind of double perspective: Here’s your friend now, and though time has changed her features, you can still recognize the younger person she was, there, in those photos.

Seeing the Castro peopled with Harvey Milk and his cohorts was both strange and familiar. His shop, Castro Camera, closed long before I ever came to San Francisco, but I have walked down the block it was on countless times. The corner where Milk stood on his soap box and exhorted others to join his cause is different now – it’s dominated by a Diesel store – but I recognized it with a lurch in my stomach. Oh, I thought. Here we are.

I was at first startled by how young Milk’s supporters were, and yet I shouldn’t have been. They possessed the same youthful passion that lighted up the feminist movement and the civil rights movement. Perhaps the most surprising element of Milk’s story is that he didn’t run for office until he was 43 years old.

Several critics have noted the parallels that Milk has to this fall’s heartbreaking loss of the right for same-sex couples to marry in California. But I think the clearest parallel might be the rise of a generation of young gay rights activists.

Right now we are at a moment in our struggle for equality where youthful voices and leadership are breaking through the ranks of what has become a somewhat entrenched LGBT movement. For everyone who has been involved in the post-Prop. 8 activism, Milk must surely be an inspiration and an eye-opener: We can do it.

The movie also made me feel a bit ashamed at how I have grumbled over having to write – again – about someone coming out. It’s understandable, of course, that those of us who have already come out might be more interested in what happens after coming out. But living in the bubble of San Francisco – or the online bubble of AfterEllen.com – allows us to forget that if we want to have the same rights that straight people have, we have to connect with straight people.

The only way to do that is to come out – all of us – so that they can see that LGBT people fill every category of human being. Every shape, every size, every age, every color – just like them.

That’s why Wanda Sykes’ recent coming out has been so meaningful. There has been a dearth of out lesbians of color – or out LGBT people of color, period – and we need more of them. We exist, too.

When Sykes was a guest on The Tonight Show on Dec. 10th, she told Jay Leno that she hadn’t planned to come out at that Las Vegas gay rights rally in November. But “once I got there in front of all these people … I felt like I had to say something,” she said.

She explained that she had been with her partner for a long time, and though she was out in her comedy, she hadn’t felt the need to speak publicly about her private life until Prop. 8 took away her rights to be like everyone else.

I would guess that many LGBT people feel like Sykes did; that their private life was nobody else’s business, and why should they talk about who they have sex with? Straight people don’t have to go around saying, “I’m straight.”

I do understand that feeling: that if it’s normal, we shouldn’t have to talk about it. But the fact is, one of the gay movement’s biggest stumbling blocks is that many of us can blend into the heterosexual world. Many of us are not markedly “gay.” Many of us pass as straight. And unless we come out, we remain invisible. As anybody who reads this site must know by now, visibility matters.

The last time I came out was at a recent panel discussion for children’s authors. Lately I’ve been poking around the kidlitosphere (yes, there are actually enough blogs about children’s and young adult books that it has its own name), trying to figure out how and where my novel is going to fit in when it is published next year.

Among the things I discovered was a group for young adult and children’s authors that meets every month at a local bookstore. When I went to my first meeting, I didn’t expect to be coming out to anybody. However, as soon as I opened my mouth to introduce myself, I realized, duh, here I go again. Because my novel is about a lesbian.

I got through a couple of people who said, in that politically correct, I-hope-I-don’t-make-a-mistake way, “Oh, how interesting,” when I told them that my book was a lesbian retelling of Cinderella. And then I met an enthusiastic older woman who asked brightly, “Are you a lesbian?”

It’s not like I haven’t been asked the question before. But I’ve found that most people, these days, don’t ask it quite so bluntly. Maybe it’s because in the Bay Area, there’s more of a tendency to assume that anyone you meet could be gay. Or maybe it’s because it’s actually a very personal question.

Whenever I’m asked, I always feel like the questioner is examining me a bit like a specimen – something unfamiliar and exotic. I feel the same way when someone asks, “Where are you from originally?” I know they want me to tell them that I’m from China, not that I grew up in Colorado.

So, when someone asks me if I’m gay, I always feel a rush of discomfort mingled with a defiant undercurrent of pride. There’s nothing to be ashamed of, I tell myself. But even after years of being out, after years of reporting and writing about lesbian entertainment, it’s still disconcerting to come out to strangers. It makes me feel like I’m in that old Sesame Street sketch: One of these things is not like the others. And who likes to feel like the one who doesn’t fit in?

I looked at the woman who asked me so eagerly – she didn’t know or understand that this question could feel like an invasion of privacy – and I said, “Yes, I am.”

I’m surprised the Melissa Etheridge song didn’t suddenly leap into my mind.

Every time I come out, right after I feel all those icky, why-should-I-tell-you feelings, that undercurrent of pride blooms into my own little Pride parade, especially if I’m coming out to a straight person I’ve never met before.

Suddenly, when I say the words “I’m gay,” it’s as if I can feel an army of gay people standing behind me. Here I am, at the tip of this throng. This is my moment to represent who we are. I know that it’s only one moment, and I’m only one person, but this is the moment when I am connected to everyone else who has said “I’m gay” before.

If I have felt uncomfortable before, I know that others have, too. If I have felt defiant before, I know that others have, too. If I have been rejected before, or separated out as one of those who don’t belong, I know that plenty of other gay folks have been, too.

Thirty years after Harvey Milk was elected to office, there is no question that his contributions have made an incredible difference to our lives as gay people. Yet the central strategy of his campaign for equal rights – coming out – should still be our strategy today. I know that coming out is a personal choice; that in some places it can indeed mean losing your job or your family. But that can only change by breaking down the barriers that separate the straights from the gays, and that barrier can only come down if we give straight people a window to see who we really are.

The next time you’re in a situation where you have the opportunity to come out, remember this: There are millions behind you. Every one of us who has come out before and will have to come out again and again, is standing with you. None of us comes out alone.

For more on Malinda Lo, visit her website.

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