https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifest ... ry-at-work
Die für mich wichtigsten Stellen:
[Das Coming Out] It went...fine? [...] I had nothing specific on my checklist to suggest that I was going to have to fight anyone, but despite that, I was very much ready to be demoralised and disappointed.
However, it was quite the opposite, my boss even offered support by asking my pronouns and asking if it would be appropriate to send an email around the office to avoid me being misgendered. I surprised myself by becoming very meek at this point, shrinking down and wishing I hadn"™t said anything, not wanting to be a bother and feeling very embarrassed by the support I was getting.
[...]
As I walked back to my office, I realised that what both my employer and my dad had offered was acceptance, but what I had received it as was permission. What"™s the difference between these two? For me, I ask for acceptance of something that already is; "This is who I am, accept it". It"™s something that comes from a place of established confidence and strength, and in this context, my boss and my dad were hearing what I was saying and responding with "OK". Permission is something that needs to be given in order to change, and so in this context, I heard "OK" as "we will allow you to do this".
Truthfully, in most cases, when LGBTQ+ people come out, we"™re asking for permission to be ourselves, and that can feel very humiliating. When I come out as trans or queer, it might seem as though I"™m asking for acceptance of who I am, but really I"™m asking that you recognise who I am and don"™t try to mess with me for it. It"™s about asking people not to try to change you, not to hurt you or reject you, and while coming out does get easier, that"™s always how it feels. That"™s the outcome you fear. When out in the world, we"™re constantly asking for that permission from the people around us. We"™re definitely being who we are and risking violence if someone declines us permission to live. I"™d love to never have to come out again, but it"™s really not up to me. I hate what coming out does to me and I resent having to do it at all. It"™s a weird paradox of not wanting to ask permission, but needing it to survive.
[...]
It is assumed that we"™ll all be straight, that we"™ll all be cisgender. It goes further than parental expectations, too. Parents can be open minded and welcoming to their children as they figure themselves out, but that doesn"™t change what we see further afield as we"™re coming into ourselves. The bigoted ideas of mass media can penetrate so deep that we pre-apply them to people around us, and begin to expect that they"™ll hate us like everyone else.
I want us to grow into a society that completely rejects these expectations. I think it"™s essential for queer people that we move past these and recognise that secrecy and solitude are being imposed onto our young people by holding onto these ideas, and allowing them to continue. Binary genders and heterosexual defaults are so ground in to our lives that it"™s tricky to extricate ourselves from them, but there has to be a point where we recognise the damage that they"™re doing to those of us who are inevitably going to have to contradict them.