A personal announcement, emphatic thank-you, and cheers to Fedora.

Rubb Ed wrote:

Welcome, Blondish! Trust me, as another openly gay member of the board, this is a great community to be yourself. And as tuffalobuffalo said, happy 30! This was my 40th b-day year, and 30 is a great starter for things to come.

Just so everyone is clear, though we have lots of gay people here and I'm straight (Ally), I'm still the most fabulous.

That's right, Quintin, you just keep on walking.

Coldstream wrote:
Rubb Ed wrote:

Welcome, Blondish! Trust me, as another openly gay member of the board, this is a great community to be yourself. And as tuffalobuffalo said, happy 30! This was my 40th b-day year, and 30 is a great starter for things to come.

Just so everyone is clear, though we have lots of gay people here and I'm straight (Ally), I'm still the most fabulous.

That's right, Quintin, you just keep on walking.

Hey, I (also a straight ally) got a shout-out for my cat-ears from Senator Schumer at the most recent NYC Pride parade!

blondish,

Wow. I'm sorry anything like that happened at a convention or anywhere else for that matter. You seem to have kept your resolve through all of it in an admirable way -- overall.

I'm also glad that you are finding places to be happy and be yourself. A lot of people here are nothing short of wonderful about encouraging others. Congratulations on your personal happiness, and wishes of more happiness to follow.

Coldstream wrote:
Rubb Ed wrote:

Welcome, Blondish! Trust me, as another openly gay member of the board, this is a great community to be yourself. And as tuffalobuffalo said, happy 30! This was my 40th b-day year, and 30 is a great starter for things to come.

Just so everyone is clear, though we have lots of gay people here and I'm straight (Ally), I'm still the most fabulous.

That's right, Quintin, you just keep on walking.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Coldstream wrote:
Rubb Ed wrote:

Welcome, Blondish! Trust me, as another openly gay member of the board, this is a great community to be yourself. And as tuffalobuffalo said, happy 30! This was my 40th b-day year, and 30 is a great starter for things to come.

Just so everyone is clear, though we have lots of gay people here and I'm straight (Ally), I'm still the most fabulous.

That's right, Quintin, you just keep on walking.

Awh, I love you guys. I'm really glad there's a community where you trust us enough to be yourselves.

(Straight fem, here, but seriously Coldstream, you do not want to battle me for the fabulous crown. I own my own tiaras. I'm just sayin...)

Not fabulous and I know it. Whatever!

Terrible con story, Blondish. Bit of an indictment of the gamer community that you feel more comfortable being "out" IRL than in the gaming scene. Gamers can be pretty insular. This is the place!

Coldstream wrote:
Rubb Ed wrote:

Welcome, Blondish! Trust me, as another openly gay member of the board, this is a great community to be yourself. And as tuffalobuffalo said, happy 30! This was my 40th b-day year, and 30 is a great starter for things to come.

Just so everyone is clear, though we have lots of gay people here and I'm straight (Ally), I'm still the most fabulous.

That's right, Quintin, you just keep on walking.

So, tell us about your sparkle ponies.

Mixolyde wrote:
Coldstream wrote:
Rubb Ed wrote:

Welcome, Blondish! Trust me, as another openly gay member of the board, this is a great community to be yourself. And as tuffalobuffalo said, happy 30! This was my 40th b-day year, and 30 is a great starter for things to come.

Just so everyone is clear, though we have lots of gay people here and I'm straight (Ally), I'm still the most fabulous.

That's right, Quintin, you just keep on walking.

So, tell us about your sparkle ponies. ;-)

I liked sparkle ponies before they were cool.

::hipster::

Coldstream wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:
Coldstream wrote:
Rubb Ed wrote:

Welcome, Blondish! Trust me, as another openly gay member of the board, this is a great community to be yourself. And as tuffalobuffalo said, happy 30! This was my 40th b-day year, and 30 is a great starter for things to come.

Just so everyone is clear, though we have lots of gay people here and I'm straight (Ally), I'm still the most fabulous.

That's right, Quintin, you just keep on walking.

So, tell us about your sparkle ponies. ;-)

I liked sparkle ponies before they were cool.

::hipster::

We need to get together and drink more, in honor of our relocated comrade, Paleocon.

Mixolyde wrote:
Coldstream wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:
Coldstream wrote:
Rubb Ed wrote:

Welcome, Blondish! Trust me, as another openly gay member of the board, this is a great community to be yourself. And as tuffalobuffalo said, happy 30! This was my 40th b-day year, and 30 is a great starter for things to come.

Just so everyone is clear, though we have lots of gay people here and I'm straight (Ally), I'm still the most fabulous.

That's right, Quintin, you just keep on walking.

So, tell us about your sparkle ponies. ;-)

I liked sparkle ponies before they were cool.

::hipster::

We need to get together and drink more, in honor of our relocated comrade, Paleocon.

Would love to. Alas, I'm now a relocated comrade: I was transferred from DC down to FL about three weeks ago.

ccesarano wrote:

My mind is genuinely blown that you encountered such a group at Otakon. I just never expected to see such behavior coming out of that place.

It only takes one or two jerks. The important thing is for everyone else to make it clear that we won't tolerate such behavior — not confronting it can make it seem like the crowd doesn't think it's a problem.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

I sure hope you continue to feel welcome here, Blondish. Your post made me sad and happy at the same time, and I don't really know how to respond because it sounds like you figured everything out. Happy 30! I just turned 30 this year, too.

Same, all around.

Blondish, if you ever want to hit a con that I'm at, you're welcome to roll with any crew I'm in.

Goodjers roll deep.

wordsmythe wrote:
ccesarano wrote:

My mind is genuinely blown that you encountered such a group at Otakon. I just never expected to see such behavior coming out of that place.

It only takes one or two jerks. The important thing is for everyone else to make it clear that we won't tolerate such behavior — not confronting it can make it seem like the crowd doesn't think it's a problem.

Super true! Take note, non-confrontational types.

Thanks for all the support. It further validates my decision opening up to this group. Keep in mind this was in 2002 which was 11 years ago. This was also right after Bush had been elected along with a large number of state amendments banning gay marriage including my home state of Kansas passing their own defense of marriage act. Attitudes have changed so much since then and even more so since when I came out openly in my home town in 1998; the same year that Matthew Shephard was murdered in the hate crime in Wyoming.

So much in my life has taught me to be cautious but unafraid in how I live my daily life. I live within a 2 hour drive of the Westboro Baptist Church who is famous for holding up the signs, "God Hates Fags" but love the state I live in. I know so many people here that are open and excepting and they out number that vocal minority that is filled with bigotry and hatred. I have experienced that being myself and letting my sexuality be at best a secondary trait of what defines me is the best way to protect myself and change the opinions of those around me. I personally look forward to a day when my sexuality is a mundane issue and we all wonder why this was anything to worry about.

I hope to go to another convention in the next year or so. I'd love to go to GenCon with a co-worker. It seems like it has a festival kind of atmosphere and get to meet some GWJ members as well. I'm always envious when the podcast group has their episode at the Con and they talk about all the wonderful experiences.

Blondish83 wrote:

Thanks for all the support. It further validates my decision opening up to this group. Keep in mind this was in 2002 which was 11 years ago. This was also right after Bush had been elected along with a large number of state amendments banning gay marriage including my home state of Kansas passing their own defense of marriage act. Attitudes have changed so much since then and even more so since when I came out openly in my home town in 1998; the same year that Matthew Shephard was murdered in the hate crime in Wyoming.

So much in my life has taught me to be cautious but unafraid in how I live my daily life. I live within a 2 hour drive of the Westboro Baptist Church who is famous for holding up the signs, "God Hates Fags" but love the state I live in. I know so many people here that are open and excepting and they out number that vocal minority that is filled with bigotry and hatred. I have experienced that being myself and letting my sexuality be at best a secondary trait of what defines me is the best way to protect myself and change the opinions of those around me. I personally look forward to a day when my sexuality is a mundane issue and we all wonder why this was anything to worry about.

I hope to go to another convention in the next year or so. I'd love to go to GenCon with a co-worker. It seems like it has a festival kind of atmosphere and get to meet some GWJ members as well. I'm always envious when the podcast group has their episode at the Con and they talk about all the wonderful experiences.

They do some cons over in Overland Park (where I work). If you ever head over that way I will buy you a beer:)

Blondish83 wrote:

This was also right after Bush had been elected

I don't know if this is healing or deteriorating, but I first interpreted that as the band fronted by Gavin Rossdale getting elected to something.

wordsmythe wrote:
Blondish83 wrote:

This was also right after Bush had been elected

I don't know if this is healing or deteriorating, but I first interpreted that as the band fronted by Gavin Rossdale getting elected to something.

Vote for Bush! Better than the rest!

wordsmythe wrote:
Blondish83 wrote:

This was also right after Bush had been elected

I don't know if this is healing or deteriorating, but I first interpreted that as the band fronted by Gavin Rossdale getting elected to something.

This made me laugh and disturb people near my desk at work. Thanks to you sir.

On a side note I've been told I perform an acceptable version of Glycerine at Karaoke. I freaking love the cello in that song and I let the natural scratch in my singing voice go crazy.

Blondish83 wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
Blondish83 wrote:

This was also right after Bush had been elected

I don't know if this is healing or deteriorating, but I first interpreted that as the band fronted by Gavin Rossdale getting elected to something.

This made me laugh and disturb people near my desk at work. Thanks to you sir.

On a side note I've been told I perform an acceptable version of Glycerine at Karaoke. I freaking love the cello in that song and I let the natural scratch in my singing voice go crazy.

Yeah, that's one of those songs that cuts right into me, cliched as it might be.

Blondish83 wrote:

Thanks for all the support. It further validates my decision opening up to this group.

I have shared more with these Good(jer) people than I ever thought I could/would, and I have never ever been hurt or let down by any of them. There is so much love and respect on these forums, I sometimes forget I am on the Internet.

Thanks for giving us your trust, and congrats on the 30th too!

So Friday was my one year anniversary of having come out as trans in this thread.

Just wanted to thank everybody again for being completely and utterly awesome.

Woot! Happy anniversary!

Happy Anniversary, Hypatian! A very courageous thing you did. Kudos!

This is still one of my favorite threads on the internet.

Happy anniversary Hypatian, thank you for continuing to share your journey with us.

Yeah, what they all said. Happy anniversary!

Hypatia, I wish you nothing but the best as you continue your journey. I'm in the Pittsburgh area on occasion. We should get you, RadicalAns, SuperDave, and Bombsfall together at some point and have lunch sometime.

To the topic of coming out, I had an interesting weekend with some struggles of my own. It was the weekend of our family reunion that we have every two years or so. It inspired a bit of an essay that I posted over on reddit, but I figured I'd post it here, too.

I wrote:

It's August 16, 2013, and I'm driving. The highway I'm on will take me to the home of my childhood, and most of my adulthood; the home of my parents. Like many of my generation, after college, I returned to my parents' home, and stayed for a while. In my case, though, I got comfortable. I had enough income to be financially independent. But I remained in that house. Even now, two years after moving out, I still feel mixed feelings about returning. I'm nervous enough that I can feel my pulse through my neck.

It's November 14, 2011. I'm in the kitchen of that house, returning a dirty dish or looking for a snack. My parents had been away for the weekend, visiting my sister on the other side of the state. My father asks if I had attended church while they were away. I say no. The first domino falls.

That evening, I came out to them. They were the last in this particular chain of people I was coming out to. But I had planned on waiting a bit, until I was fully prepared to move. That afternoon, a PFLAG-recommended book had come in from Amazon. I had actually just started reading it when my mother came down to the basement (yes, I lived in my parents' basement) and started questioning why I hadn't gone to church. This would ultimately lead to a much bigger fight over my rejection of Catholicism and theism in general. As it turns out, my coming out as gay overshadowed my coming out as an atheist, until about a week later. But that's a story for another time.

It's October 15, 2011. About to roll over to October 16. I'm at a Holiday Inn, in Westlake, Ohio, in a large banquet hall, filled with people my age, mostly men, but unified in one thing: games. We all love games. Video games, card games, board games. Well, two things. We were all members of the same online gaming forum, which is why we're gathered here. Most of us had just met each other in person the day before, even if we'd been acquainted through this forum for years prior. The man I had worked with all year to help make this happen is sitting next to me, while I play a fighting game on an old Sega Genesis. Beer had been consumed. I had just won a match, and was ready to be done, when my friend hands off the controller to one of the few women present, with some kind of teasing remark. I brush off the offer of a new opponent and stand up, off to grab another beer. Surprised at my complete failure to recognize an opportunity to flirt, my friend pulls me aside.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but... Are you... Heterosexual?"

"No."

That's it, I thought. I was out. To one person, but I was out.

The weeks that followed, between that coming out and my parents, included coming out to the online gaming forum, where I received the strongest outpouring of support I could have hoped for, two cousins, and an aunt and uncle. I was testing the waters. Stumbled over awkward language (using the phrase "I am a homosexual" is NOT the best way to come out). Gauging reactions, and my own capacity to deal with them. Ultimately, though, I knew none of them were the same as telling my parents.

It's November 20, 2011. I am coming back from a weekend of liberation and celebration. I had found myself among friends in Columbus, Ohio, going to my first gay bar, then to Cincinnati, to see the musical Wicked. Going back was an agonizing three hour drive, thinking of returning to an awkward home, with distraught parents, struggling to understand a son they thought they knew. When I pulled up to the house, though, I proceeded as though nothing had really changed.

In the past month, I had been working on moving out. Friends in Akron, Ohio had recently rented a house. There was room for me. I was throwing things away that I didn't want to bother moving, and packing everything else. But this evening, I wasn't quite ready to start moving out. That didn't really matter. My mother began talking with me, asking me the typical questions you'd expect from a shocked, in-denial parent about their gay child. It was at this point that things exploded, and the question of my atheism came to the fore. I left the house that night, to stay in a hotel. I stayed there for the next three days, returned home for an awkward Thanksgiving, and moved out the next day.

That was it, right? I was out, now. Independent again for the first time since college. No scrutiny, no obligation to attend mass to keep the family in peace, no denial of who I was. The people I cared about knew, and I was done coming out. Right?

It's August 17, 2013. I'm wearing two rainbow-colored bracelets, in the middle of a family reunion, with people who I mostly don't really know, and I struggle to remember their names. These people aren't that important, right? They don't need to know.

"What's going on in your life these days?"

"Hey, Michael, haven't seen you for years! What's new?"

"We need to get you a wife!"

There are people here who know, but nobody talks about it. Not even me. Mostly, I've actively chosen when and where to be out, but it's here that I truly realize, I'm not really out.

I'm in a complicated closet. The list of people I'm out to has grown steadily. But after I worked to tear down the closet I was familiar with, I started building a new one. One that I had voluntarily constructed. My first closet formed around me, and I barely noticed. I denied it was even there. I'm watching myself build this one, and it's worse than before, by far.

It started with my mother's request that I not tell a few specific family members. My great aunt, in her 90's, whom she insisted wouldn't understand. An uncle on my father's side, who is also my godfather. Why I listened, I'm not sure, but I did. I let their discomfort become mine.

A gay friend of mine who has been out for more than a decade helped me through a lot of things shortly after coming out myself. More than a year ago, he warned me against this. The only way that I can change someone's comfort level with my homosexuality is to show that I am comfortable with it.

This doesn't mean shouting from the rooftops, or making every introduction, "Hi, I'm Michael, I'm gay." It means not being afraid to correct someone when they say, "We need to get you a wife!" with, "You mean husband." It means not holding back when your family members are swapping funny stories about weird sleepwalking occurrences when you have one to share about your former boyfriend. It means that you shouldn't avoid talking about the cute Québécois guy you met recently as the motivation for starting to learn French. It means that when you're at a family reunion and someone proposes a simple icebreaker, to share five things about yourself that the rest of the family doesn't know so they get to know you better, you don't grab your car keys and run. Whatever the other four things are, on my turn, without a doubt, one of them should be to say, "I am gay."

*hugs* Good luck to you, NSMike. Family can be very very rough when you care for them and yet they don't understand.

And yeah, we should totally do lunch some time. Let me know when you're going to be in town, and I'm totally up for it. I'm still sad that I begged off that one time with the Dave and Busters meet-up thing. That was deep in the bad years, and I was just so terrified of knowing people. (Which is so weird to look back on.)

We forgive so much of our families. It's hard. They are our family.

Thank you, all of you, for sharing stories about your bravery and your struggles. Ultimately I have far simpler challenges but I can look here for inspiration on living a fuller life.

Hypatian, congratulations on all of the progress you're making. You've come a long way in the last year, and I hope all the best for you.

NSMike, your insight and resolve are inspiring. I do mean that sincerely. Hopefully you, too, have a lot of real happiness ahead of you.

Thanks for sharing that story NSMike. I came out young and having been out for half of my life (15 years) I can share that I have not stopped coming out. You only come out once for each person but there are hundreds and thousands of people in your life. I just came out to this gaming community 12 years after an assault I suffered at a convention for my suspected orientation that forced me to closet myself in all my gaming activities.

Even today I am being considered for a promotion and am not sure how to reveal my orientation to my new peers. I will likely follow my usual mention of my 'partner' when discussing weekend plans. I let them connect the dots and ask me. It saddens me that me and the love of my life have been together 7 years and I have to pretend he is a long term roommate for fear of workplace bias. We have been together longer than many I work with have been married (some with multiple marriages in the 7 years). However, I am always touched by the warmth and caring I get from nearly all I tell and after one of our legendary dinner parties any uncertainty is passed with regard to their support for me or my husband.

I dream of the day when I can discuss my weekend plans with my husband openly at work and abroad and its so mundane they talk about our room remodel instead his gender. We are getting there and I can't help but feel its happening one quiet 'outing' at a time.