reverence for the term "coming out" has been a hot button in furry circles since i joined the fandom 16 or 17 years ago. it's an ugly accessory to the age old "are you a hobbyist or a lifestyler?" discussion that would sneak it's way into forums and irc channels roughly once a month. sadly twitter has done it's thing to this conversation over the years. but where the latter question tends to be met majoratively with a concensus that the furry fandom comfortably muddies the line between a "hobby" and a "lifestyle", the consensus about whether one can "come out" as a furry is different: "you cannot 'come out of the closet' about your hobby."
fair enough. for the record, "furry" is very much a lifestyle for me, but i'm not willing to die on the semantic hill of "coming out". i will use whatever language people agree to be respectful. but saying "coming out" as a furry would be the same as "coming out" as a golfer is disingenuous and i think everybody knows it.
one argument i saw claimed "coming out" should be reserved for opening up about being queer and opening up about leaving your family's ancestral religion. i've come out of both of these closets. i get to come out of the former of those closets a half dozen times a year as i explain the dynamics of romantic asexuality and polyamory to people who haven't heard much about them. leaving the church i was raised in was devastating for my family in ways being a furry obviously never could be.
perhaps the devastation is the closet. maybe for a room to be a closet it must be made of irreconcilable differences. if that's the case, the furry fandom is not a closet for me. but it is, at least, a secret.
i bring this up because my parents have changed their hearts since the last closet i came out of. i recently learned that my father lead a discussion at church in which he encouraged members of the congregation not only support their queer children when they got married, but to "show up early. set tables. participate in the planning and the photographs and celebrate their joy". my mom works at a university and she drove an impassioned argument in favor of providing gender affirming care at the university clinic all the way to the president of the institution. my parents have been living this way for the past few years and never once bragged about it to me. i had to learn these things from my younger brother. these are not the people i came out to. i'm no longer interested in keeping secrets from them.
i've been invited to visit one of my queerplatonic partners for thanksgiving weekend. this would represent the first time i ever spent that time away from my parents. i expect them to be understanding, but also i think they're going to be stuck wondering why they know so little about the other people in my life that i consider my family, and the answer is... because we're furries!
that's obviously not a devastating revelation, but i've been keeping it from them for over half my life! i told them about my sexuality and my religion, but not this. to tell them about my relationships in a meaningful way means to open up to them about the fact that i have an entire identity that i've held onto for decades and never once explained to them. i have to tell them that 90% of the people who matter to me call me a name they have never heard, and that i don't even know the government name of one of the people i love most in this world. i once learned it from sending him money over venmo, but lacking utility, my mind gave itself permission to forget it. there's a whole other "me" (multiple, even) that they have never met, and that they must not look too deeply into for the sake of my privacy. it contains unique rituals, colloquial language, material and immaterial culture, and history. it's links to my sexuality and my neurotype can't be decoupled. it's not trivial to me.
it's a lot to reveal. it's uncomfortable to talk about, especially compared to my hobbies. it probably doesn't matter, and i know this is a lot of pomp and circumstance for a hill i profess not to die on, but would it be disrespectful to name this confession?
the question is more interesting than the answer.
