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Grew up thinking I was straight
Having a disability makes life interesting for me, but being gay makes life extra interesting. When heteronormativity is all that exists in your world, it’s hard to imagine you can be anything else.
I grew up assuming I was straight, as most people do, because I didn’t think there was another option.
In my family, homosexuality was not a topic we spoke about openly. It was usually just brought up in jokes or in passing.
During the peak of faux-lesbian Russian band t.A.T.u’s fame, my mom sat my sister and me down and told us not to listen to their (ridiculously catchy) songs.
While that made me afraid to embrace my true feelings at first, it also emboldened me to find out more about why I was having these feelings.
I turned to books for guidance
In secondary school, I remember having tiny crushes on my female schoolmates and being very confused at feelings I thought were wrong—during a time when the word “gay” was still widely used as an insult, when there was little to no positive representation of LGBTQ+ people.
I remember one instance when I felt that my emotions must have been wrong: I was watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, an American television show, and noticed that the lesbian couple, Tara and Willow, had suspiciously little screen time.
I later realised that many of their scenes had been censored (by Singapore authorities) because of their homosexual content.
Even though the world around me only ever spoke about heterosexual attraction, I knew that it didn’t feel right to me. As I started to get more curious about the feelings I was having, I turned to books for guidance.
I started exploring the world of LGBTQ+ fiction and later discovered Strangers in Paradise, a graphic novel involving a love triangle with two women and one man.
As I explored more queer literature, my worldview got bigger and things started getting a lot clearer.
Parent told me that they would accept my partner, regardless of gender
My coming-out story to my parents is a little bit different from most.
We had stopped at a petrol kiosk and when my dad went out to pay, my mom turned to the back seat where I was and told me that my mom and dad wanted me to find someone who would take care of me, and it didn’t matter if they were a boy or a girl.
I remember sitting there, a little stunned but happy. I think I managed to squeak out an “okay” and gave my mom a hug. That incident made me feel like I was safe and free to be who I am.
Worrying that parents of children would react badly to me coming out in ST
In 2017, I came out as a lesbian in the national paper, the Straits Times. Even though I was never really in the closet, I still remember feeling a huge weight leave my shoulders.
With that new lightness also came some fears.
I used to train at Farrer Park Swimming Pool, and because there were always a lot of children and their parents at the pool during training sessions, I was particularly afraid of being at the pool for the first time after my article came out.
I was afraid that parents would react badly, that I’d be given nasty looks. But my fears were unfounded.
In fact, two different parents came up to tell me that they had read my article and express how brave they thought I was. I felt touched and incredibly lucky at the amount of love that surrounded me.
Amidst all the love, my family members remain my biggest and strongest pillars of support and they could not have been more supportive of me.
The past just shows how much we can learn and change if we open our hearts and minds.
Full article here :
https://mothership.sg/2019/09/theresa-goh-disability-homosexuality-reflection/
