In part one of our Sex Plus Symposium session with Dr. Karen Rayne, we discussed sexual orientation and how it goes hand in hand with gender identity.

In part two, we cover the differences between knowing our sexual orientation versus our gender identity, and discuss what coming out looks like for the LGBTQ+ community.

When Do People Understand Gender Identity & Sexual Orientation?

We generally know our gender identities far younger than we know our sexual orientations. Many people know their gender identity as young as 2 or 3 years old.

When you understand sexual orientation is hugely variable. For some people, sexual orientation is just something theyknow. For many, it’s in high school, and for others, they don’t understand their sexual orientation until college or later. And it’s not necessarily something you know through sexual activity.

It’s very common to first meet someone who identifies as LGBTQ+ as a peer, such as a classmate or a friend at school. However, many don’t receive formal education on sexual orientation until college or later, even though they’re often first encountering it in high school or earlier in life.

Often, young adults don’t receive formal education about gender identity until after receiving education about sexual orientation. In this way, young people are left to grapple with the topic on their own.

The way we are educated about sexual orientation and gender identity also informs LGBTQ+ people’s experiences.

When they walk into a sex-education space, what kind of education are they receiving about themselves? What are they being told about their potential in life to find a partner and about their ability to achieve their relationship goals they want?

This can have an impact on them when they consider coming out.

What Does Coming Out Mean?

Coming out is taking into consideration who you are and what your identity is. It’s also considering what other people assume your identity is. This could be based on your behavior or based on something entirely unrelated to behavior.

The average age of coming out in the United States is 21 years old. This average takes into account people who are older who didn’t come out (or perhaps even fully realize their sexual orientation) until their 40s, 50s or later.

While this age is slowly moving younger as our cultural messaging around sexual orientation changes and people have more access to media representations of queer folks (including queer folks having long-term stable relationships), there are still going to be people who don’t come out until they’re older.

A Lifelong Process

For most queer people, coming out involves some level of trauma. By and large, it’s a shared trauma that the LGBTQ+ community as a whole understands. What’s more, this experience plays a role in their relationships for the rest of their lives.

We tend to think about coming out as a singular event. In reality, it’s something that will happen continuously for the rest of that person’s life. For example, a person may need to identify to their doctors, their coworkers when they start new jobs, to their children’s teachers, or any number of social situations.

Every time a queer person has to come out to someone new, it is a reminder of that first time. How that original event went — especially if that first coming out ended in rejection — plays into that person’s ability to trust and build new relationships.

Most people think that your first time coming out is to your parents, but that’s not often the case. Usually, people first come out to someone unimportant to them. This is because of one simple fact: it’s a much lower threshold of pain if that person rejects them.

Shame

Shame is also very common with the coming out process.

As we discussed in the last post, sexual orientation is built on three things: attraction, sexual identity, and behavior. When your behavior can’t be in alignment with the other two parts, it can be a problem.

For example, if you fear being ostracized at church, you may alter your behavior, which will most likely result in feelings of intense shame around it.

One thing to remember is that no one has an inherent right to your identity unless you grant it to them. Honor your feelings — all of them. They are an important and powerful thing.

If you are struggling with understanding sexual orientation or gender identity (either yours or someone else’s) and don’t have someone in your life who you can talk these things out with, contact us.