How To Come Out As Trans/Nonbinary

Hey y'all, I've had people ask multiple times over the years if I could give them some advice on how to come out, so I asked for feedback on Twitter and came up with some tips on how to come out to parents, intimate partners, and other types of folks. I also talk about when NOT to come out!

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00:00 Introduction
00:29 Things CAN Go Badly!
02:37 It's Not All Bad Though!
03:12 General Tips/Coming Out To Family
08:30 Other Queer People
11:04 Anti-Science/Conspiracy Theorists
13:26 Intimate Partners
21:10 It's a Continuous Process (Practice Makes Perfect)
24:49 Outro/Patron Credits

[wellingtonsmith]

if you are unsure about coming out, consider this - it is okay to lie or practice deception to keep yourself safe. transphobes do not deserve your truth. stay safe

[asper_maybe]

I've been putting of coming out to my family for months, how dare you call me out like this. In other news: I've successfully convinced my mom that a binder is just a weird sportsbra.

9/20/21 Update: I came out and they're accepting : )

[HuskySIVA]

I came out as trans (MtF) a week ago, got kicked out and am now living with a friend. I am okay and doing well, just shocked as my parents promised me from since I was young I would always be theirs and they would always love me.

[Secret.acc]

Im a kid (ftm) and I have asked my friend if I can go to her house if it backfires and her parents have agreed, aaaa I love those people 😭😭😭😭

[Staarchild]

i'm 25 and only just coming to terms with being transmasculine. i'm disabled and have high support needs so i'm absolutely terrified of coming out to my family in case they take it badly, but i don't know how much longer i can live like this. i think the closet has been glass for years but putting it into words for them is a scary process. this video has helped a lot in how i could maybe go around this, but it is unbelievably scary for me. i know though that i can't begin to even socially transition until my family knows i'm trans.

i'm already out to my friends though and thankfully they've all been supportive <3

[hopebgood]

I'm just a gay (seemingly straight) male who had his first bf at 16. Most of my male cousins are gay. Our (UK) family never had a problem with it. Neither did any of my straight friends. I have no horror stories about coming out. I'm very happy right now and I wish everyone else (here or otherwise) could be too. ;) xx

[allien]

if i hadn’t been so worried about my family and becoming a complete outcast i wouldn’t’ve gone through multiple repression cycles and could’ve at least accepted myself years ago. advice like this would’ve been a life saver for little 12 year old me all those years ago

[thatonesdani]

I’m a 17-year-old non-binary person and this video gave me a lot of hope for when I inevitably come out! Thank you so much!!
💛🤍💜🖤

[derocax]

I never even heard of that example about Scythians, and now I’m just fascinated that such an old culture essentially figured out a form of HRT centuries before modern medicine.

[TheKingTheory]

Sending this to my trans masc husband who's just now starting this process. This couldn't have come at a better time, thank you. ❤️❤️

[nor]

Thank you, this was really helpful. One thing I'm personally struggling with currently is figuring out if I want to medically transition in a relationship that might potentially break if I choose to do so. It just adds another layer to questioning if I want to transition, as if figuring that out isn't already hard enough. It's really difficult to find out you're trans and realize that it ends up affecting a lot more of your life than you initially expected, losing people being a big one ofc. But I really appreciated you saying that your wellbeing as a trans person and being true to yourself is, in the end, the most important thing, and will make you happier than forcing yourself to stay in a relationship or friendship. I will definitely have to think about that one for a while

[webba]

That necklace is so pretty to look at
So shiny

[nateisawesome]

I just came out as non-binary to my friend and she accepted me. I always felt extremely uncomfortable when I was a child in school whenever the teacher divided the class into the binary genders and I never understood why. I kept pretending to be a boy and thought that if I kept telling myself I was a boy that i wouldn't feel so uncomfortable. But no matter how many times I told myself I was a boy, I kept feeling as if I wasn't a boy. But now I'm too scared to ask people to use they/them because I'm afraid I'll become invalidated. I guess I have to keep pretending as if I'm ok with he/him in public because I'm not sure if I'm ready to tell the world yet.

[Miss_Lexisaurus]

You always have such amazing advice, I'm sending this to a few of my friends who have been figuring themselves out lately and might want to come out to people other than me.

Also the horse piss for tiddies example was both incredibly powerful and hilarious the way you phrased it!

[Lol-cqeu]

I knew I was trans when I was 13. I’m 17 now and I’ve still yet to come out 🙃

[ArielVHarloff]

My ex partner accused me of pretending to be trans in order to have an excuse to break up with him ... That was fun ... At least all my other coming outs so far went ok. I also socially transitioned when I started college without telling anyone in my family for another year and a half so I had a lot of practice explaining stuff to people by that time.

[majorlycunningham]

Your advice is line with what the Trevor Project suggests. I came out to my family by writing a letter. It was best option available to me. It ended out being ok in the end. My family isn’t happy about it, but I shrug it off since I can’t make everyone happy and it’s not my job to anyway.

[joycelinlgbtq]

Very true about the point that coming out never really stops. As we meet & interact with new people (friends, colleagues, lovers) we come out again & again. And it does get easier. Im now way more comfortable asking that people use they/them pronouns for me than i was two years ago before i started my current job.

[ChristianCatboy]

Thanks for mentioning the Scythians. I was an intensely queer-phobic Conservative Evangelical for 30 years before coming out to myself, and it actually helped me process the idea to find that the Scythians are mentioned in the New Testament as a particularly "barbarous" heathen tribe, whose culture has now been blessed and accepted by God (Col 3:11). That passage is closely parallel to another one that explicitly says "there is no male and female" (Gal 3:28), so that really hit home to me that Paul may have been obliquely referring to the "scandalous" reputation of the Scythians among the hypo-patriarchal Greeks, for socially recognizing female warriors and trans-femme eunuchs. Anyway... that broke through some of my mental block, as a Bible-thumper.

[SCruz-wiwd]

I’ve lived four years in my house in the closet and I’m really tired of it. I’m trans(genderqueer) and panromantic, I wanna come out so bad!! But my parents are religiously homophobic, and there’s no hope there. Currently I’m fighting the urge to come out and promptly leave, I’m eighteen, and I’m tired of being here as someone I’m not. But at the same time I know it’s not a smart idea even tho I have friends whose doors are open for me. Inside me there are two wolves.

btw im open to advice^^