On National Coming Out Day

Around this time last year, I was asked to contribute to a lovely self-help guide called The Strange is Beautiful. The advice I gave there feels more relevant than ever in a post-Orlando world. 

If you hear nothing else today, I hope you hear that there is no one way to be queer and you never have to come out to anyone.  Sure, visibility is important and it has been hard won for queer folks. Still, there is something about the narrative of coming out that doesn't sit well with me and never has. It feels very boring, stale and often not very relevant to this mixed-race queer femme.

The problem is that the dominant narrative around coming out just doesn't speak to the complexities of identity that many of us carry with us.  It speaks to inclusion in a system has never been for us or about us. 

So with that, an offering, given with love, for the complexity of today.