Culture

Reimagining the Closet


 

Since the dawn of the LGBTQ+ liberation movement in the United States, the closet — and coming out of it — have been central to the mainstream queer political agenda. Coming out, the thinking goes, will help more people realize that their sisters, mothers, closest friends, and coworkers are not, in fact, straight — and if you’re close with someone who is queer, how could you discriminate against them? That’s part of the thesis behind gay liberation slogans like “We’re Here, We’re Queer, Get Used to It” and “Gay is Good,” and many of the mainstream LGBTQ+ rights movement’s greatest political gains, including same-sex marriage or the cultural acceptance driven by Pride celebrations nationwide, have been propelled by the idea that all queer people want to be out, loud, and proud.

Yet the past decade has shown us that many people can (and do) discriminate against queer people, even when queer people are among their closest companions. And as our society continues to move beyond a European and white-centered notion of what being queer means and how it functions, it’s become increasingly evident that many for queer people with multilayered identities, the closet is not a binary, and “being out” does not secure one’s safety, self-preservation, or self-determinism.

Visibility, in fact, can be quite dangerous: 2020 has already seen 26 murders of transgender or gender-nonconforming people, according to the Human Rights Campaign. For writer Jing Jing Wang, being Chinese-American and queer means facing the stigma and exhaustion of having to explain one’s identity to his traditional Chinese community who associate queerness with shame. Nazim Mahmood, a gay Muslim man, jumped to his death from a balcony in 2015 after coming out to his homophobic parents. Countless stories like these prove that the closet isn’t a monolith, and can sometimes be perilous to navigate.

Reframing the narrative about the closet allows people to complicate their experiences on their own terms and strategically invite others to their spaces of comfort. Below, we asked five individuals to reimagine their “closets” in light of the nuances of their identity.

Moréna Espiritual, Afro-Taíno educator, organizer & performance artist (they/them/elle)

To pick apart and undo the narrative around coming out of the closet, as a Black native person, is to acknowledge my history and the blood running through my veins. It’s a history that not only honors the fluidity of gender, sexuality, and identity, but makes space for the multiple lineages I carry within me (and in extension, my community). Before colonization, there wouldn’t have been much of a need to come out of “the closet” in the first place, since homophobia, transphobia, and all these other isms (fatphobia, ableism, etc.) have been implemented as control tactics closely tied to racism.

I am genderqueer, nonbinary, gender non-confirming, trans, queer, pansexual, asexual, and demisexual. How? Because we don’t welcome binaries here. Identity is not the end game when all you know how to speak and use are the colonizer’s tools and language. It is simply the vehicle driving you closer to who you are and what you want to become. It should involve a certain level of discomfort and undoing. Like a shapeshifter, one day I awake and I feel that I am a man; another day, a woman; another day, both, and so on. I’d probably have to come out every day to acknowledge every part of me.

In the streets, code-switching can mean life or death; being followed to my doorstep, having something thrown at me, or having access to safety. In formal spaces, it can mean avoiding emotional and physiological violence like gaslighting and my identity being up for question. Culturally, as someone who forms part of the Dominican diaspora, and actively organizes and is in conversation with Black people in places like Colombia and Peru, I must also reckon with and honor the nuances of each culture — how not everyone is at the same place or timeline.



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