Request for Closet Experiences/Resources

[SL-1]

Hey howdy,

I've finally been allowing myself to question my sexuality (in the past, I usually dismissed or suppressed it). However, since the last thing that people who identify as bisexual need is someone who is unsure to take and then discard the label, I've been trying to make sure that this is accurate for me with a very small margin of error. This functionally means that I'm up past midnight scrolling through internet page after internet page about bisexuality and worrying about when/where/why/how to come out. Not that I would know what to do when out, but that's an issue for another day.

That said, I would welcome 1) any and all credible resources about sexual identity/bisexual interest 2) any stories about other's time in the closet 3) any advice on how/when/who to talk to about this.

Thanks in advance,
SL-1

[Heather]

Glad to hear you are looking to care for yourself better around this.

Are print books something you can access? And, if you have looked through all our content on the site about bisexuality as well as orientation, can you fill me in on what gaps you would like to have better filled from those additional resources?

[SL-1]

Thanks for your reply...

I'm reasonably sure that I can't access books in print only (if it's PDF'd I should be able to dig it up). I want to know more about societal risks of being out. This could be personal experiences, studies of how people treat LGBTQUA-identified people in terms of crime and in the workplace...anything that would let me apply a quasi-Monte Carlo method to determine my risk.

I mean, what I really want is to stop obsessing over this, have some sort of third-party come in to affix a label, and then table the topic indefinitely. I understand that's never going to happen.

[Heather]

The thing with that is that that is highly individual, rather than general, and depends on things like the time in history. Where someone is living, what their general community is like, what their individual community and support is like, etc. Even when you do study all of this, I do not think anything, save a study done about your OWN community, now, and someone just like you, could give you that information.

Then there is the matter of who we are out TO. For example, someone like me, who is widely out because I am a very publicly visible person in a lot of ways who someone can google and find out I am queer with an easy click is in a very different position than someone who chooses to be out to say, their family members, some friends and partners, and maybe one or two people at work.

Too, I think the best resource when that is something we want to know is often our own gut feelings. They are not always right, for sure, but we usually can get a pretty good sense of where we are likely to be more or less safe, and when we are or may be in a situation where we are going to be at risk of danger or supported.

I would add that I personally do not think it does anyone any harm to have someone use a term for themself they find out is not a fit. You seem to be concerned about that, but I do not think you have to worry about that impacting the rest of us, I really don't. If this whole business were such that there were not any room for people not always being sure, or trying one term or identity on and finding iut that is not the right one, the problem would be that lack of allowance for how this often goes for many, if not most, people, not someone being unsure and trying something on.

That all said, this was written in the UK, and is a fantastically comprehensive report:
http://www.open.ac.uk/ccig/files/ccig/T ... b.2012.pdf

Might be somewhere to start for you?

[Redskies]

(I realise I'm about to cross-post with Heather here and we're saying some of the same things, but I think we're different enough to make both posts worthwhile, and hopefully not overwhelming you!)

I think you might be taking some weight on your shoulders about this that really isn't yours to carry. From your first post, it sounds like you're familiar with some of the issues around bisexuality, or rather, the denial or disbelief some people have about bisexuality. Yep, that exists. But it's so, so not your burden to carry. If you or anyone else thinks they might be bisexual and says so, and then later they think something different or flow into something different, you are not creating or supporting these societal attitudes that bisexuality isn't "real". The problem is those attitudes themselves, not people simply living their own lives. If those attitudes didn't exist, then no-one would bat an eyelid about people questioning or flowing from or to any orientation at any point in their lives. None of us have to be the "perfect bisexual" or the "perfect queer" in order to keep rubbish attitudes away from bisexuality, queerness or any other "alphabet identity" . Of course, I very much understand if you feel you need to be certain for your own self, and that's absolutely fine. I just wanted you to know that you don't owe the world, the LGBTQ+ world, or bisexuals, anything.

There are a range of studies about LGBTQ+ people's exeriences, but I'm not sure how helpful they'll be to you about what you want them for. Different people's experiences vary very much depending on their own personal context - for example, how accepting or not their family or cultural group is, what the general culture is in the professional field they're in or wanting to go into. For making your own decisions about your own life, might it be better to think about your own circumstances - for example, what do you know about your family's attitudes, your social circle's attitudes? For sure, there are still prejudices and difficulties in the world, and too many of them, but there are increasingly legal protections against harassment and discrimination - including workplace discrimination - on grounds including orientation. Less and less people consider such discrimination acceptable, too. Obviously that doesn't cure everything, but it helps.

Something you didn't mention that often comes up as significant is the impact of Not living as one wants to live. Studies overall seem to show pretty consistently that people who are not living as they wish to with regard to their orientation or gender, whose lives are very different from their self-image, have worse mental and physical health and lower general well-being. (I want to be clear that "living as one wants to live" does not = "coming out". Some people can have the life they want and which fits their self-image without being vocal about their orientation to large parts of the world; and sometimes "coming out" is not a concept that fits a particular person's life at all, especially some bisexuals.) If you're asking about the downsides of living your life as who you are, or living openly, or of coming out, then I think it's good to also have potential downsides of Not doing those things in the picture, too.

[SL-1]

It's nice to be able to talk things through and get help from experts such as yourselves. Thank you both for your enlightening and kind comments.

[Heather]

Any one person's experiences are merely anecdotal, but if you feel like it would help you to hear from others who are bisexual per our individual experiences with some of the things you are asking about, I would be happy to share some of my own experience with you as someone who has identified that way for decades now and has been out for nearly as long.

Too, if it would be helpful to find some info about bisexuality, culture and Denmark, specifically, as that at least narrows the focus some when it comes to your own environment, I would be glad to see what study, research or online information there is in that regard for you.