spoken by francis gallego on february 2002 at university of california lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth conference
from left out to coming out, my life has been a continuous experience of a variety of emotions. the reason why i use this term "left out to coming out" is the variety of emotions i felt and the time i spent growing up in search of finding a safe place for myself. i adopted strategies and avioded situations in order to come in terms with who I am. i was the little kid who looked up faggot in the dictionary and was wondering why i was being called a bundle of sticks that were bounded together. i was also the little kid who begged his cousins to play with their barbies so he could style their hair and dress them up in their evening gowns to play "miss universe'. Instead of "the voltrons" and "the transfomers" i watched the "golden girls" , "facts of life" and "she ra". my favorite story growing up was "the ugly duckling" because i felt that I can relate to this odd fellow who was hatched into a family of birds that makes fun of him for being different. in the end, he evolved into a handsome swan and goes sailing off into the sunset comfrotable in his own skin.
if you had me to define coming out, i would define it as an affirmation. as an affirmation of self identity and who you are despite what society may want you to be. i believe that coming out is a continuous and fluid experience that i have learned to appropriate. i appropriate my own definition in terms of how i identify and the roles that i play. as mixed, as filipino, as queer, as a survivor, as gay, as a brother, son, friend and as a young man.
the most harmful F word in the english language doesn't have four letters, but three, and it is spelled F-A-G. Nothing hurts a boy more when he is growing up and is being teased and called this name. When i was called a fag, my first impulse was to pretend that i didnt hear the word at all or ignore it. if i heard it again, i was hoping that the word was a substitute for being called a nerd or a geek and it didn't mean that i was gay. i hated this word and was wondering why someone would accuse me of being something that i knew nothing about at the time. to this day, whenever i hear the word "FAGGOT!" i get scared and nervous. i remember kids would riducule me because i wanted to read such books as "the babysitters club" or "are you there god, its me margaret"-and it was wrong to do that. being labled and called a fag was something that i learned to quickly ignore or avoid. growing up as a mixed filipino american, i internalized a lot of things on homosexuality and sexuality in general. culturally, i knew that being gay was one of the worst things anyone can be-it meant that you would die alone, and if you were a man you were destined to be a hairdresser or a fashion designer-your worth would be determined on how you cut hair or made dresses. in the philippines, being gay or lesbian is parallelled with being a transgender. the roles of gender and sexuality are mixed up. if you are a gay man, you are supposed to be feminine and play the roles of the female and are called bakla. if you are a lesbian, you would be called tomboy and be expected to be butch and more manly. other then those stereotypes, others existed. one was that if you are gay you will eventually get AIDS and die alone. after coming out, i had to assure my mom that i would be careful, that i would not get HIV. her fears lied in her lack of knowledge of gay people and HIV/AIDS. she also feared that i would be alone, and lead a lonely existence. it wasn't that she hated me being gay-she loves me so much, and i love her-she is the best mother anyone can ask for. it was the fact that she was scared, she was scared on how i would be treated as a gay man of color-of how less doors would be open to be and how i would experience racism and homophobia. she was also scared that i would end up alone, and that i wouldn't be complete-i would be like her. you see, my mother raised my brother and i alone. i understood her fears, and these fears were culturally and socially ingrained.
many of us experience the worlds of asian america and gay america as seperate spaces, emotionally, physically, and intellectually. while i was first discovering my own identity as a 19 year old queer male, i was also discovering what it meant to be mixed, to be filipino and what it meant to be politicized. to be politicized as an advocate not only for LGBTQ rights, but for HIV/AIDS education and prevention. i first felt that being a mixed filipino american who was gay was contradictory. coming out was impossible at that time in my life because i was the youngest son and my role in my family, among my friends would change. i didn't know if i wanted to take that risk. i also felt that coming out would make me feel more isolated and add to the isolation i felt from being both being mixed and gay. coming out was risky and once you came out, you couldn't take it back. i also wanted to make sure i was really, queer, really gay. i delved into a journey of self discovery and healing, healing from the lies that were told to me about homosexuality and how negative being gay was and i was healing from being a survivor of sexual violence and abuse.
i eventually resolved my multiple identities in a variety of ways. one was approaching mainstream culture as an empowered gay man of color who was motivated to improve discriminatory conditions that were experienced by the various communities i belonged to. by doing so, by coming out and taking a risk, i can help my other api brothers and sisters who have experienced the same feelings i have experienced-loneliness, shame and fear, etc. another way was just educating and trying to teach my family about who i was. that i was not going to be a stereotype nor a statistic-i would be educated and empowered. my multiple identites allowed me to see things from different perspectives. i felt that i had the power to float between the various communities i belonged to, the queer community, the api community, the hapa community, the filipino community and mainstream culture. by floating through various communities and spaces, i drew my strength.
as i look back to the past four years, i have learned a lot of who i am and where i belong. i learned that the coming out experience is different per each individual. my story is among the thousands of stories of many queer apis living in the united states. when i was an asian american studies major, one of the things that i learned was that "talking story" was very important. it allowed us to vent, it allowed us to pass history from generation to generation, and most important it allowed us to heal. for far to long, mainstream asian america culture has been constantly cut and dry, heterosexually based. when we often talk about diversity within the api community or culture, we tend to forget about subcultures sorrounding sexuality. in many of my asian american classes, we never talked about queer people, women, or the many marginalized communities within the api community as a whole. queer apis often feel that they are in the margins of the community, never fully integrated in the mainstream api community. many of us still aren't out, and there is nothing wrong with that. there are subtle ways to come out. i no longer want to be silenced, i no longer want to feel that my story is not valid. my story, and other api queer coming out stories or stories in general are stories of our journeys, discovery and affirmation. when i look back in the past 23 years of my life, i know that a few things are certain. i developed a thick skin from all my experiences, and by accepting and coming in terms with my multiple identities, it has allowed me to accept all of my life, from its extreme suffering to intense joy.
