OVERVIEW
Coming out to friends and family is a long process that involves lots of uncertainty, strategy, and a bit of luck. We discuss Jake’s process of coming out as a trans man and Meaghan Ray’s experience of that process as his partner, including how this process went for us, what methods we used to come out to people, what emotions we experienced, and what responses we got.
We also discuss Meaghan Ray’s experiences of coming out as non-binary so far (still early on in the process), Jake’s experience of being their partner, and how their two experiences are similar or different.
You can find the audio for the episode at the bottom of the page or subscribe to Let’s Talk Gender in your favourite podcast app.
SHOW NOTES
The following is Jake’s coming out process and Meaghan Ray’s experience as his partner.
Who to come out to first?
- Friends, then close family, then work, then extended /more questionable family, then strangers
- Everyone’s process will be different
- Start with the people that will be most likely to be supportive and work your way up to the least supportive people
Partner Experience during closeted and early coming out phase
- Various pronouns depending on the situation and who was present – female, male, neutral, avoiding pronouns altogether
- Still trying to get used to his new identity so using female pronouns made that harder
- Lasted about 4 months
- Didn’t realize the toll that this took until about 8 months later (caused fairly severe burnout)
- Got used to doing a quick check in before each social situation of who’s going to be there, who are you out to, is it worth going out, which name and pronouns are we using?
Coming out to family
- Thought it would be similar to coming out as gay but it really wasn’t
- Being trans is about who you are and requires them to do a lot more work – change how they think of you and how they refer to you
- Started with the first few people who were most likely to have a positive to neutral response and who had less direct impact
- Didn’t judge all of those correctly but overall it went ok
- Be open to any response they have
- Keep safety in mind
- First part felt like it went really slow
- Few people know and if they’re hanging out with people who don’t know it gets very stressful
- Asking people to hold back on gendering you correctly which slows down their process of coming to terms with it
- Eventually there is a tipping point where it’s easier just to have everyone know
Coming out to partner’s family/long distance family
- Multiple conversations
- Expecting close family to come out to other members of the family for you does not work – you end up having to do it yourself
- Mostly done through email with generally positive, supportive responses
- Follow up conversations at face-to-face gatherings
- Took them longer to adjust but generally had less impact on us
- Partner can do more of the work, especially with the follow up conversations
Methods for coming out
- Face-to-face is the hardest, tended to avoid that if possible
- Sent lots of emails in the early stages
- Wrote a letter and read it out face-to-face
- Sent lots of shorter emails to the more extended family
- Facebook/social media for general public, past friends, far extended family
Responses to coming out conversations
- Told close family early on that he was thinking about it/working on it as a warning that transition might be coming
- Told them a while later that he for sure was trans but they didn’t seem to understand that there was much difference from the first convo
- No change in pronouns or name
- Had a family wedding coming up that necessitated telling Jake’s brother
- First person to appropriately change pronouns, name, and referents (brother) and introduced him that way at the wedding
- His family realized that they were the only ones referring to him with female name and pronouns and suddenly was making it more unsafe for him
- Kick started their use of proper name and pronouns in an unexpected way
- Positive effect of strangers getting name/pronouns correct around family that is getting it incorrect
- Was a high risk, high reward situation
- Realized afterwards that family had been reluctant to change likely out of fear for his safety (when he wasn’t passing yet)
- What they didn’t realize (and what we didn’t understand early enough to explain to them) was that the toll on his psychological safety was worse than the physical safety risk that they perceived
Partner experience during early stages of being out to family
- At the beginning, tried to hang out with them and refer to Jake in third person as much as possible to set a good example
- Complete opposite from previous stage where we tried to use second person or no pronouns as much as possible
- Really enjoyed being able to refer to Jake correctly, felt good about setting a good example and trying to help
- When they were not getting it at all, it got very difficult to hang out with them
- Jake wanted them to figure it out at their own pace and didn’t want to correct them
- Started getting angry with them too easily and had to not hang out with them as much (until they suddenly figured it out at the wedding)
- Once they figured it out, it was much easier to hang out with them again
- Started correcting themselves, correcting each other
Correcting others when you get misgendered
- Often happens in larger groups or in the middle of a conversation
- Don’t want to derail a conversation or become the center of attention
- Will remind them via text message later if they do it repeatedly without correcting themselves
- Much better if someone else corrects them for you because you automatically have an ally and don’t have to make yourself vulnerable in order to stand up for yourself
- Always takes emotional energy so it’s a balance of how much pain it’s causing you vs how much energy you have to spend to correct them
Emotions during coming out to family
- Transition from questioning stage to coming out stage was the hardest
- Fear, nervousness, what if someone becomes vengeful, actively negative
- Questions about which family would chose to never talk to me again
- Can’t base people’s reactions to you being trans on how they reacted to you being gay
- Eventually reached a tipping point of it is more difficult to live in the closet than the fear of how people would react
- Realization of how many people you actually have in your family
- Exhaustion, frustration, unending
- False urgency to tell everyone as soon as he started hormones because changes would be happening and people would notice
- Didn’t happen nearly as fast as he felt like it would
- Wanted changes to happen faster to help people have an external reference for changing name and pronouns
Mental vs physical image and adjusting to new identity
- Lots of detailed conversations between us where Jake explained how he saw himself and would feel most comfortable which helped Meaghan Ray change their mental image of him earlier than anyone else would be able to
- Made it easy for me to use correct pronouns well before any physical changes
- Other people don’t get to have those detailed conversations and therefore can’t change their mental image because they don’t know what to change it to
- Often do much better after physical changes start happening
- Family have known you longest and will have the strongest mental image of you pre-transition
- 5% rule: people will take up to 5% of the time they have known you to get used to new name and pronouns
Partner emotions during coming out to family
- Fear, mostly for psychological well-being as he was having lots of difficult conversations
- Kept my phone on me at all times
- Tried to provide lots of validation and support so he had at least one positive influence
- Offered to go with him when he would be having those conversations
- Still didn’t really understand how hard those conversations were and how things were going
- Had to ask really specific questions in order to find out because he didn’t want to make it harder for me and did not have any more energy to spend on another gender based conversation
Burnout lasts a long time
- Still nervous about talking about gender and transition because there is a conditioned response that those conversations will lead to something huge and exhausting
- Reviewing past experiences is much easier than talking about current ones
- If you are the second person to transition in your immediate family or even within your relationship, those around you might have a hard time as a result of the residual burnout from past experiences with it
Meaghan Ray’s experience of coming out as non-binary
- Even harder than coming out as binary trans
- The person you are coming out to already has an idea of what you mean by ‘male’ or ‘female’
- Most people do not have that reference for ‘nonbinary’
- Requires a lot more sex and gender 101 education to work up to getting them to understand which puts them in information overload
- Really, all I’d be asking is for them to use they/them pronouns and maybe a different name and even that seems to be extremely hard for people to do
- We use they/them automatically all the time but when people are asked to do it consciously, apparently it messes with their brain and they can’t do it
- Takes so much energy that I haven’t done a lot of coming out to family yet
- Something else always seems more important to talk about when visiting with family
- Sent an email with an explanation but haven’t talked about it since
- Good sibling support, will likely help my family come around but want to have those conversations with my parents first
- Will likely have those conversations with close family once I’m pregnant/having a kid and have more extended visits with them and potentially more gender-based discomfort
Jake’s experience as Meaghan Ray’s partner
- Trying to avoid pronouns at all costs
- Awkward pauses, reorganizing sentences
- Being supportive while Meaghan Ray is slowly working up to coming out
- Spending a long time in limbo
- Can’t be fully invested because limbo causes burnout and limbo will last much longer
The coming out equation
- Deciding when you’re ready to come out will be different for everyone
- How uncomfortable it is to be misgendered vs how hard it will be to come out and how much benefit you will get
- Very different answers to this equation for each of us
Every coming out process is different and personal but inevitably affects and involves the people around you.
Join us next week when we talk about coming out at work.
RELATED POSTS
- The Coming Out Equation
- Being Supportive Without Self-Sacrifice
- Talking About Your Gender Identity: When, Why, and How
- They/Them Pronouns
- My Husband’s Transition – A Partner’s Perspective (Part 2 – Social Transition)
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