This week’s topic is very personal for me, and I want to begin by telling you a story. This is how it starts:

Girl meets girl. Girl gets confusing feelings for girl. Girl has a months-long identity crisis and comes out the other side scared and unsure, with a secret she can hardly admit to herself, let alone others.

She is bisexual.

Perhaps not the most interesting origin story but it is mine. I can’t tell you the name of the girl who triggered this realisation; I never knew it. I talked to her once for maybe thirty seconds, and now, years down the line, I have no idea what she looked like. I had no impact on her life, but she flipped mine upside down because for nearly 14 years I had believed one thing about myself and then, in an instant, all of that changed. I would think to myself, You’re wrong, you’re making it up, you’re faking it for attention.

Except… I slowly came to understand that I couldn’t be faking anything for anyone’s attention, because the fact remained that no one else knew. That secret was one I kept to myself, locked away as a constant lump in my throat for over a year. It would have been longer, I know, and in many ways it was. 

I came out for the first time to my best friend, the person I trust more than anyone else in the world. It was never a question for me; whenever I felt ready, she was always going to be the person I told first. I hadn’t exactly intended to do it early in the morning over text on a crowded bus, but it was a spur of the moment decision and I can’t say that I regret it.

That day meant so much to me. It was nerve-wracking and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking and the minutes spent waiting for a response can be called the tensest of my life. But my best friend is one of those people – you know the sort; you meet them and suddenly you can’t remember what life was like without them – and she has always supported me. 

Coming out to her was no different. What she said gave me more relief than anything else could have and, for the first time, I felt validated and happier about myself than I had been in a very long time. A big part of coming out is coming out to yourself and that conversation helped me to do it. 

So, my best friend was the first person I came out to. For a few years, she was also the last.

Coming out is a difficult process, one that I don’t believe can be fully understood without first-hand experience. Sometimes, I’m not entirely sure I understand it myself. It’s also long because, while you may be ready to tell one person, that doesn’t mean you’re ready to tell everyone. For me, the line was drawn at family.

I’ve done quite a few scary things in my life. I’ve hiked through a wood at night without a torch, I’ve flown planes and a helicopter, I’ve been cliff-diving in Anglesey, and I’ve come out as bisexual to my parents.

I’ll leave you to work out which was the hardest.

In September, it’ll be three years since I came out to my parents. I’m more open than I’ve ever been now and, though I still sometimes struggle with my identity, I am happy.

But here’s the thing. 

I am able to say that I have come out. Past tense. But I am also coming out. And I will come out. Past, present and future, all at the same time. That will never change, because there are always going to be new people that I am yet to tell. But I think – I hope – that someday it will get easier to say that word – bisexual – to a family member, or friend, or acquaintance. 

I don’t know, of course, if it ever will. But I think that this is a good way to start. 

I am bisexual. And I will not be scared anymore.

The article up to this point has been adapted from a piece I wrote in 2018, called ‘Getting Bi’, and I want to tell my seventeen-year old self that it does get easier. Not with everyone – there are still people who I still feel uncertain over when it comes to sexuality, and a lot of the time it feels like a war between wanting to bring it up so I know where I stand and not wanting to bring it up so the peace is kept. 

But I am lucky. In my life, I have only officially ‘come out’ to three people – that is, my best friend and my parents. Everyone else, either I have dropped enough hints for them to figure it out, or I have simply refused to hide who I am around them. And having that choice – that ability – not to hide makes me incredibly lucky.

Not too long ago, LGBTQ+ people were still fighting for the right to exist in peace, and, in several countries around the world, they still are. Even in ‘developed’ nations like the UK and the US, it has not been so long since queer people were granted their rights; I am not yet twenty, and I remember gay marriage being legalised in both countries. 

Of course, the fight for queer rights did not begin or end with gay marriage. What we know and celebrate as Pride today, we owe to so many brave people, especially women, and especially women of colour.

Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Stormé DeLarverie all participated in the Stonewall Uprising in 1969, and all were active in the liberation movement that followed. Johnson in particular is famous for her work in the community during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. She represented hope for young queer people in New York until her untimely death in 1992 and she never seemed to give up, even when the community turned on her.

Because Johnson and Rivera were trans women, the gay and lesbian committee banned them from the 1973 pride parade – in response they marched at the front. 

You can read more about Marsha P. Johnson on my blog, and there is a post on my Instagram about Stormé DeLarvarie.

Another woman I want to highlight is Brenda Howard – she is known as the ‘Mother of Pride’ for organising the first Pride march in 1970 and she was crucial to the establishment of a bisexual community. Howard was bi, as well as polyamorous, and she was always unapologetically herself.

“The next time someone asks you why LGBT Pride marches exist or why LGBT Pride Month is June tell them ‘A bisexual woman named Brenda Howard thought it should be.'”

bisexual Activist Tom Limoncelli about Brenda Howard

Thinking more recently, in 2009, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir became the world’s first openly queer head of government when she was sworn in as Prime Minister of Iceland. Further, in 2020, Sarah McBride became the first transgender state senator when she was elected to represent Delaware. It was a historic victory, though part of me is a little sad that we still have to celebrate moments like this as out of the ordinary.

I am, of course, painfully aware that all of the examples I have cited, bar one, are US American. The queer movement stretches all across the world, and it is important to learn about the struggles of people from every country. I myself am no exception – there is a lot that I don’t know about, and I know that there are glaring gaps in my awareness of both queer history and of the movement today.

There is a lot to be done, in every country and on an individual level. But we have also come a long way, even in just the last few years, which is undoubtedly something to be celebrated.