Coming out was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I was terrified to tell my friends and family I was gay, because it felt wrong, like I wasn’t normal. I was scared of how the world would treat me once it knew.
Eventually, I ripped the Band-Aid off. I told my sisters in a jacuzzi, and the love I got from them, and from everyone else in my life, was incredible. And yet, there was still a part of me that couldn’t fully accept it as normal.
Even with all that love, I felt the need to minimize myself so no one would feel uncomfortable with the idea of me being gay. So I said what a lot of gay men say: Don’t worry, I won’t make it my entire personality.
What I was really trying to say was, I’m not going to be the kind of gay that straight people don’t like. Not to call him out, but I was essentially saying I wouldn’t become a “Frankie Grande” gay.
What makes me sad looking back is how much I was reinforcing harmful stereotypes about gay men in that moment. The people I said this to would respond with things like, “Thank God,” or “Okay, good.” I was trying to be the cool gay. Not too flamboyant, not too sexual, not too loud. Not too gay. Just gay enough.
It’s almost funny now, looking back at that version of myself and how deeply rooted my people-pleasing was. Because after deconstructing so many of the maladaptive beliefs I held, especially around sex and sexuality, I’ve become the exact gay I once promised I wouldn’t be. I’ve become Frankie Grande. Not in the way where I act and look like him, but in the way I express my sexuality authentically.
In the past, I was still holding onto a heteronormative belief that gay men have to shrink themselves to be accepted as “normal.” That we have to edit ourselves to earn comfort. But the truth is, the problem was never that being gay would become my entire personality. It was that I was taught parts of myself were too much in the first place. That I needed to mask my true self in order to be accepted by the world. Honestly though, why would I want to be accepted by a world that isn’t ready to accept me as a whole? (ironically the world that did accept me as a whole was the one where I was accepted as a hole 😉).
And this mindset didn’t just live inside me. I started seeing it reflected back at me.
I’ve had conversation after conversation with gay men, typically older gay men, who say they don’t feel the need to bring up their sexuality in every conversation. That there is more to their personality than just being gay. I want to include a comment from an older gay man I received on TikTok so you can see the kinds of responses some of these men leave me. I only bring up his age because I do think this idea of minimizing ourselves and our identities can come from older generations of gay men, many of whom were forced to do so out of survival.
“Gay man here. You know there’s a whole world outside of being gay or straight right?. How about just live your life as a human and don’t get so consumed with gay vs. straight, etc. It’s exhausting to hear so many people talk about this subject every day on social media. Respectfully, I think your life will be happier if you don’t make it such an issue in everyday life.”
Let’s start with the irony. The very first thing this man said to me, while telling me not to bring sexuality into every conversation, was “gay man here.”
For context, I was discussing the invasion of straight men into queer spaces, an issue that directly involves my queer identity. So why wouldn’t I name that part of myself? What he’s really suggesting is that I’d be happier if I minimized this part of who I am. If I didn’t make it my entire personality.
But the truth is, problems don’t start existing when you acknowledge them. They just stop being invisible. Staying quiet or detached doesn’t make things better, it just makes them easier for some people to ignore. My identity isn’t the problem. It’s the lens that lets me recognize a real one.
And that’s the same narrative my younger self lived by, that life gets easier when you consciously downplay the parts of your identity that don’t fit into the dominant culture. It was easier for me to come out into the world as gay if I made sure everyone knew I’d be the kind of gay that people accepted. And for that man, it’s easier to live his life by treating queerness as something safest when it stays quiet, contained, and out of the way. Something society can accept.
My response to him and to countless others who bring up this idea is always the same. Being gay is an integral part of my identity. It has shaped the way I interact with the world and with people. It is my whole world, not because it’s the only thing I am, but because it touches everything that I am. I can’t just shut off my queerness when it’s convenient, and I don’t think we should have to. If a straight man openly expresses his sexuality the way I do, he’s just living his life. But when I do it, I’m suddenly forcing my sexuality down everyone’s throat? I’m suddenly at fault for creating issues that supposedly aren’t there?
It’s completely understandable why a lot of people hold this belief. Growing up in an environment where certain parts of yourself are considered excessive or unsafe to express, minimization becomes a survival tool. Self-editing becomes the new norm out of fear that unedited versions of yourself could be harmed. It’s the idea behind masking, the process of consciously or unconsciously suppressing aspects of yourself to fit social expectations and reduce risk. A term I’m sure a lot of us are familiar with, and probably have first-hand experience with.
There’s a big issue with masking, though. The issue is that it works. At least at first. It helps you fit in. It creates a false sense of safety. In the short run, you feel protected, safe from outside threat because you’re limiting how much of your true self you expose to the world. But in the long run, you become disconnected from yourself, distant from who you are and who you want to be. And eventually, you can turn into a man commenting on a guy’s TikTok half his age, telling him he’ll be happier once he diminishes his queer identity and stops making it his entire personality.
No shame. Just Questions