The Immaterial Filter of Coming Out

11th of October.  The annually celebrated date for the LGBT community, to express their true sexual orientation with colourful pride and universal love.  An international demonstration for human rights, equality and social acceptance.

'Coming Out' is the act of revealing your actual sexual orientation, a proclamation or confirmation, that you are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual or even one of the many other explored, and potential, sexual orientations.  To come out takes great confidence and braver, it takes trust and honest, and it is an excellent knowledge that the people around you are, hopefully, accepting and open-minded about your sexual orientation.  It is a healthy practice which aims for a much more progressive attitude of societal acceptance, and it is also a very international ritual, defying the totalitarian inequality of dictatorial government - especially nations within African in recent news.

Undoubtedly, however, to 'come out' is a burden.  A stress that arises during adolescence, where the exploration of sexual identity commonly takes place, and the pressure to publicly announce your private sexual orientation becomes a depressing weight.  Media flourish and faint when a celebrity comes out, and although this is a very public demonstration of social equality, it is also an undying demand for some hidden homosexuals to come out or face the lonely repercussions when one can merely turn to themselves in times when we feel as if we are very much alone.

I - through experience - know of such unnecessary troubles.

To come out is a good thing.  But there is constant and merciless pressure from media and Internet broadcasting, which determinedly fuel and drag the truth out of you.  To come out is a good thing.  But it has become a cultural ritual for the adolescents to categorise themselves and conform to their new identity.  An immaterial filter for people to use to separate the LGBT from the heterosexual.

Although to come out is a good thing, it exercises the belief that you are heterosexual until said otherwise.  And this is a dangerous mind-set.  It is a practice of inequality when the LGBT are expected to come out while all those born heterosexual are not.  By publicly announcing the necessity for Coming Out through influential Internet media and channels, we are neutering new generations to subconciously conform to these rituals and practice them in school enviroments where some are struggling to come to terms with their own sexuality, but believe that their right of privacy and sexual orientation is no longer their own property, but that of the media who monetise it.  It is a dangerous field to demand and expect and require that everyone who is rightfully part of the LGBT, do so through speech or public asseveration.

Rather, I believe that sexuality should not have to be categorised.  In fact it should not have to be so thoroughly inspected, I believe nature has better guidance over the course of sexual discussion.  Not the scheduled rituals of public proclamation or declaration.  I believe sexual orientation is something that needn't be a burden, needn't be an immaterial filter for those who want to know.

11th of October - It is your choice to announce your sexuality.  Neither do you have to hide it nor express it.  Let nature's hands manage the information of your sexual orientation, and you will not have to endure the crippling burden many do, nor will you conform or celebrate the unequal laws of society's expectations of the LGBT community.  Through the practice of coming out, we initially try to campaign for equality, but in the act of doing so, we contradict our primary objective.

 

James Moir - Richmond Upon Thames College