Like any other fellow member, I still remember when I first started having questions about my sexuality. I was 13 years old and watching Amazing Spider-Man with my family, and when I saw Emma Stone on the screen for the first time, I remember feeling insanely attracted to her just like I was attracted to Andrew Garfield. Firstly, I ignored that feeling thinking it was nothing but then I started noticing how awkward and nervous I get around some girls just like how I get around boys I had a crush on, and that was the weirdest feeling because I didn’t know what was happening with me. Due to a lack of awareness and knowledge about this, I felt abnormal, but most of all I was confused, because I still had heard about people who were interested in the same gender, but I had never heard about a person interested in both genders. After fighting with myself on this issue for a long time, at the age of 15, I finally accepted myself as a person who does not define herself straight. It terrified me, as being born into an Indian family, I wasn’t sure if my family would accept me, but I still started researching what I might be. After long and intense research of I don’t know how many weeks, I finally found a label that suited me and most of all I felt comfortable with, “Bisexual".

My real journey began after that as now I had to decide which path I should choose, the first one where I suppress who I was forever and live my life according to society’s standard or the second one, where I accept that part of me just like other parts and not care about what anyone thinks about me, because I love who I am and fight with society for there unrealistic standards and as you guessed I chose the second path and to say it was difficult would be an understatement, I struggled a lot throughout that time and I still do. And I often wonder about how it isn’t fair that only we have to come out. Why is being straight the default setting? Why don’t straight people have to go to their parents and say, ‘sorry mom and dad, I am straight.’ Or why they don’t have to spend most of their life convincing people that they are still themselves, they are the same ward their parents loved or came to seeking help for small tasks, or they are the same sibling whose siblings loved to tease them. Why only we have to be terrified about being ourselves because society finds it hard to accept them.

I recently found out that according to statistics, over 50% of youngsters who come out face a negative reaction from their families. While some parents openly berate their wards, others ask them to keep mum or explore conversion therapy which can cause lasting psychological damage to the kids. Young kids hesitate to come out because they fear rejection from their parents and community. In this department, I can proudly say that I am lucky. One day I decided that I wanted to come out to my mother and by that time I had already come out to my best friend and my brother and they were very supportive, to say the least. So, I was very terrified to come out to my mom but one day I gathered up m courage and I went to her and told her, ‘mom I am Bisexual.’ After I waited for her to shout at me or at least be shocked but she just shrugged and said, ‘okay.’ I couldn’t believe my ears so I repeated but again her reaction was the same. I then asked her did she knew who bisexuals were and she said she had an idea, so I explained the whole concept to her and then also she said nothing and continued her work, by that time I couldn’t control so I asked her if she was okay with this and she said that of course, I was her daughter, and she will always love and support me no matter what, and the parents who abandon their children because one tiny detail doesn’t earn the right to call themselves parents and that made me tear up and I remembered I cried hugging her for half an hour.

Unfortunately, unprivileged people from this community cannot be realistically themselves as society has biases that suppress them whereas it is to be understood that gender is not the choice of a person, they are what nature deemed them to be as we revere nature, then we should accept what nature makes a person out to be.

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