Written by Angel Leelasorn
Graphic by Laudine Cao
CW: Experiences of homophobia.
This piece was originally published in ‘Vestige’, Bossy’s 2023 print edition.
I identify as bisexual and queer.
No, I am not confused. I happened to have fallen in love with my partner who is male-presenting and was assigned male at birth but no, it has not prevented me from also finding girls attractive. Cate Blanchett and Keanu Reeves have always been my top celebrity crushes. No, I have never cheated on my partner, because I do not engage in infidelity, and not because I am attracted to more than one gender. And no, queer representation in the media will not make your kids queer, if they do not identify as being queer. I constantly grew up being bombarded with heteronormative media, including Disney cartoons, and yet I am queer. Instead, what you should be worried about is the fact that in Sleeping Beauty, Disney romanticised Prince Phillip approaching Princess Aurora for the first time, by grabbing her from behind when they are essentially strangers. He even claims that they met each other in a dream once, and Aurora completely buys his nonsense. If a complete stranger did the same thing to you, would you not find it creepy?
But I digress.
I was born, and spent most of the formative years of my life in Thailand. Your first thought to that statement might be, “Thailand? It’s such a paradise for the queer community!” My apologies for being a party pooper, but the truth is not as pleasant as you might believe. To rub even more salt into the wound, the only queer representation in the media I used to grow up watching, were transgender women (“kathoey” in Thai), and they were often portrayed as comical—something for the audience to laugh at and mock. The Marriage Equality Bill has been shot down by out-of-touch politicians in parliament, time and time again. In Thai culture, you are expected to get married and have children, much more so than in Anglo culture, let alone identify yourself as anything other than cisgender and heterosexual. Parents might be accepting when someone else’s child turns out to be queer, but they go completely bonkers when it happens to be one of their own.
When I was younger, there were often moments when I would be attracted to girls. Boys could be attractive too, but they were very few and far between. But yes, both girls and boys were attractive to me. I started questioning my sexual orientation when I was around 16, after making friends with a Mexican girl online, and she told me she was bisexual. That was the first time I had ever heard of the term. I was absolutely clueless that other sexual orientations or identities also existed outside of heterosexuality, until that point.
A year or two later, I decided to test the water by coming out to my mother. That did not go as planned. I started the conversation by hinting to her that I might, or might not also be into girls. She was shocked and her first reaction was: “Are you sure? If you are, you have to tell me right away so we can get this sorted out”, as if I had some kind of disease that needed to be treated. So, I passed it off as being a joke and my mother took the knowledge that I was supposedly heterosexual to her grave. Strangely enough, when I came out seven years later to her older sister, my aunt (who ended up being somewhat of a parent figure and a guardian to me after my mother’s passing), whom I had always believed to be much, much more conservative, she was surprisingly accepting. She only asked me the classic question: “How did you know?” I simply asked her the same question about her and her male partner, and she understood my point right away. Also, thanks to my aunt, who indirectly paved the way forward, I was not pressured into marrying or having any children, since she also had a partner whom she had already been with for over 40 years, and not had any children. My partner does not want any, and neither do I at this point in time, so at least it works out perfectly in that regard.
I first came out publicly on Facebook when I was 24, with many friends and relatives giving me their best wishes and lauding my courage for coming out. A cousin even told me that she knew it all along, and was only waiting for the day I embraced it. There was only one appalling incident, where someone I became acquainted with through a social club that I used to go to, messaged me afterward and asked how I realised I was bisexual, when I had never slept with anyone before. I did not mention my sexual experience in the Facebook post. It was purely their speculation. I talked to them a little while longer, and came to the conclusion that they wanted to sleep with me since they had just broken up with their significant other. Well, I have never blocked anyone on social media as quickly as that time! But overall, the reactions I received were very positive, and I am happy that was the case.
Initially, I was sad and disappointed to witness my mother not being able to accept who I am, and I still often wonder if her thoughts and beliefs would have changed had she been alive to this day. However, having at least one other family member who accepts you as yourself is such a breath of fresh air. Keeping my sexual orientation secret was not pleasant, as I used to be constantly worried about how my family (apart from my mother) and friends would react if they found out. It was so liberating to embrace, accept, and finally be open about who I am. But as many people in the queer community would say, you never come out just once, but it will happen again and again whenever you meet new people. I do not know if I will see it in my lifetime, but I wish that someday, people of the LGBTQ+ community will never feel the necessity to come out, similar to how people who identify as cisgender and heterosexual never need to. It would bring me immense joy to see various types of sexual orientations and sexual identities becoming the social norm. Even more importantly, no one should be punished either by law or society for being in love with another soul or embracing the identity they truly are.
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