Pardon please any misunderstanding on my part, and help me out? I think it is fairly common for people that are gay or lesbian to take some time as they mature before they settle into a gay or lesbian identity, at least from the point of view of others who know them, and perhaps for themselves. But I would like to know what is the conventional wisdom about this and what is a proper way to refer to the process.
There is an issue of when, and how, and to whom, people come out. I don’t think I am referring to this issue, though - I think there is a different, or at least partly different, issue of coming to the realization for one’s own self, or of experimenting before being sure, or of settling into a gay or lesbian identity.
Like I say, “I think”. But this thought is unenlightened and uninformed. Can anyone follow what I am asking about and explain this more correctly? Can anyone give me the right vocabulary to refer to this?
For example, my first wife went through this evolution (for lack of a better term) and has since our divorce lived as a lesbian. If I want to describe this well, do I say “she decided”, or “she discovered”, or “she acknowledged”, or “she finally told everyone”, or what?
Or is this something that varies from person to person, without any typical pattern? And is there a preferred way of naming what happens without asserting which particular process somebody has gone through?
As much as anything else, without necessarily understanding it myself, I would at least like to be able to talk about it without saying anything dumb or offensive.
I don’t think there is a commonly-accepted slang term or a pithy phrase, but I would say something like “She came to realize that she was gay.” One of my best friends was in college before he realized he was gay, and came out.
I don’t think there’s a word for it, and I don’t think there will be. Nor should there if you think about it. Obviously we don’t live in a perfect world, but as it becomes more and more accepted its just a matter of maturing and self-discovery. IOW being gay doesn’t (or shouldn’t) make it a special case with a special word.
The answer is dependent on the perspective of person expressing the viewpoint. A conservative christian might simple say, “she chose to be gay”, or “she rejected the word of God”.
I have also heard, “She found herself”, “She stopped being in denial”, and any number of variations. There is no pat phrase.
LGBTQQIA stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Ally - so I suppose Questioning covers what you are referring to.