Note: I was raised in an extremely conservative hometown. One that Donald Trump visited at least twice during his campaign to speak at a certain Liberty University. Being gay there in the early ‘90s really wasn’t an option. But I came out slowly, but steadily. Things that I would have told my younger self probably…

Thanks ns, maybe next year’s National Coming Out Day. I still have a lot of physical changes to go through (facial/body hair removal, clothing acquisition, hormone effects) before I’m ready. Just hoping to survive the dysphoria until then.

I had the most atypical experience coming out In my late 20's/early 30's.

What annoys me is that people that make this argument are acting like there is some huge epidemic of trans girls wanting to play/do sports and thereby disadvantaging potential cis girl teammates and opponents. It’s alarmist.

And I guarantee that you can’t predict it. In the ‘80's, I saw 180's in both directions with my and friends’ families. Ultra-religious (literally talking-in-tongues Pentacostals, in one case) that embraced their butch dyke daughter and uber-liberals who were super-accepting with the gays socially until it was their…

See, I’ve actually been through the process. It’s not the light, breezy in-and-out you describe. Doctors don’t just hand out that note like they do for a sick day at work-you have to be in therapy or prescribed hormone therapy for them to write it, because if they don’t do due diligence, then it’s their professional…

Reverse: I would ask my future self how in the hell to go about coming out that might give me the best chance of success at my job/with friends, since its something I’m currently considering.

I don’t think I would tell my younger self anything. I think that many people just need that time. As much as I would have liked to feel the way I do about myself now back then, I also can recognize that it was a big part of who I am now and why I feel so free now.

“i know how badly you want to come out, how much you want to be yourself. i know it hurts every single day. And i know you think you aren’t brave. But you are. And you have to wait. Because you’re in a dangerous place. You’re surrounded by people who would rather hurt/fix/break you than you let be who you will become…

I would tell my young baby lesbian self that it’s okay to want to keep it to myself but being out normalizes it to others.

I would tell myself to spend more time building up a more solid Gay and Lesbian (hey, it was 1978, okay?) support network before trusting my parents with the truth. I truly underestimated their bigotry, and then it was too late to protect myself.

Having come out when I was 16 and now at the age of 42 I think I would have told myself not to give two fucks what people thought, to have been stronger in the face of bullies at high school and not let them destroy what little confidence I had at the time, which has taken years to turn around and even now those…

I’d tell my younger self not to even think about it, they’ll just get as gaslit as they think they will be. And don’t even bother with the whole agender thing. Just wait until you’re financially independent and forget, forget, forget.

This is what I’d say to myself:

I know this isn’t everyone’s experience but for me personally how little of a secret it was and how many people knew and were fine with it before I could deal with it emotionally myself.

as a bisexual man you are going to keep coming out. you are going to forget to come out before saying something in front of straight people, possibly related or lifelong friends, that refers to same sex stuff,that is going to cause the needle to skip on the record. at first this is dreaded, then it becomes funny over…

I would have told myself it’s never just one moment, and it would have to happen over and over, sometimes with more difficulty than when I first did it as a teen.

To do it sooner because my mom was actually okay with it. Or she pretends to be, we haven’t really spoken about my bisexuality since.

Coming out to family: Me to my High School self “Do it before senior year and that bitch Tanya decides to out you to your family on senior skip day” Lol. Coming out to everyone else: Me to my high school self “No-one is buying the Bi thing, just tell them your strictly into D already” It gets so much easier, there are…

-your queerness is the greatest gift you’ve ever received. let that keep you strong when the worst parts of this process come to pass.