Coming Out Day 2021: Wisconsin LGBTQ residents share their stories – Post-Crescent

WISCONSIN – Monday is National Coming Out Day, an annual day of LGBTQ awareness first celebrated in 1988. Created as a day of activism, members of the LGBTQ community viewed coming out to friends and family as the most powerful form of political advocacy. It represents a period of pride and sometimes solemn reflection.

In the spirit of the day, members from our Wisconsin LGBTQ communities have shared their coming out stories. For some, the journey was a smooth transition, filled with love and support. For others, the journey continues, having lost friends and family members along the way.

They all agree coming out was the best way — the only way — they could live their true lives. Here are their stories. 

‘I don’t just like him. I like like him’: Keaton Duffeck (he/him)

Keaton Duffeck remembers the day his heart felt lighter.

He was outside with his siblings, and his father — who he had come out to several months prior — waved him over. He then pointed to a big, beautiful rainbow in the sky. 

“You like those, right?” his dad asked smiling. It was a moment of acceptance. Duffeck had been apprehensive about coming out to his dad, waiting three years after telling his mom when he was 14.

Now an 18-year-old student at UW-Oshkosh’s Fox Cities campus, Duffeck first began to question his sexuality at a summer camp before eighth grade. For the first time, someone caught his eye, a boy. 

After that, he couldn’t turn his feelings off. These new feelings weren’t easy to manage. He became self-conscious of all his mannerismshow he talked and acted.

“I felt like I was like bullying myself constantly,” Duffeck said. “It was relentless.”

That was when Duffeck decided to come out to his mom; the person he thought would be most accepting of him. 

He recalls sitting in silence with her for “a good two minutes.”

“Then I whispered, ‘I’m gay,'” he said. “She threw her arms around me.”

Within days, Duffeck’s mom was looking up resources for LGBTQ kids in the Fox Valley. She found an LGBT Partnership program at Goodwill North Central Wisconsin. Duffeck was nervous about joining, but his mom urged him to go.

Seeing other kids confidently proclaim their identity gave him courage and a sense of community.

The Partnership was a local gathering of young LGBT folk. However, it no longer exists. Goodwill decided to stop hosting it because of COVID-19. Diverse and Resilient, which opened its Appleton chapter in 2019, began hosting youth programs in the Goodwill Partnership’s absence.

For three years, Duffeck attended meeting. After the first few months though, he still wasn’t out to the rest of his family. When he went to meeting, he and his mom told the rest of the family he was going to an art club.

Eventually his family found out.

Duffeck had gone on a retreat with other gay youth. His dad wandered into his room while he was gone and found a flier that had “Gay Camp” printed on it.

When Duffeck returned to the Fox Valley and checked his phone, he had a message from his mom to call her immediately. She had talked to his dad, but told him she didn’t know anything about the camp.

Duffeck and his mom went to Diverse and Resilient that night to figure out how to deal with the situation. They stayed until midnight going over potential ways to tell his dad. He was worried because his dad is African and subscribes to traditional gender roles. 

When he finally told his dad he was gay, his dad’s immediate reaction was one of disbelief. He told Duffeck he would deal with a lifetime of struggles, and it would be much harder to be successful. His dad begged Duffeck not to choose to be gay.

Duffeck replied that it wasn’t a choice.

Duffeck said his dad was concerned about his safety and how other people would look at him or think about him. But as a Black person who went to majority white schools, he already had experienced or felt those things.

“I always felt different. Because of my race … because of a lot of other things,” he said. “When I realized I was gay, I felt completely different than everyone there (at school).”

Now, Keaton has gotten to a point where he’s much more comfortable in his sexuality.

“I feel like I’ve grown a lot,” he said. “I still struggle with telling people. But, since I’ve been able to tell more people, I have more friends who relate to my experience in one way or another.”

— Roshaun Higgins

‘I couldn’t hide it anymore’: E.J. Miller-Larson (they/them/theirs)

If a teenager’s bedroom ever had the writings on the wall, E.J. Miller-Larson’s walls blared the lifestyle they hoped to assume once they moved out of their parent’s home.

Posters of alternative pin-up model Masuimi Max and magazine cut-outs from The L Word adorned Miller-Larson’s bedroom walls. Coloring their bookshelf was literature by lesbian author Minnie Bruce Pratt, Essential Guide to Lesbian Relationships by columnists known in the zeitgeist as “Lipstick and Dipstick,” and a smattering of Curve magazines, a monthly dedicated to queer, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women and non-binary people.

Their brother covertly ordered them a subscription, but the magazines, mailed to Miller-Larson’s home address, didn’t exactly smack of secrecy.

Miller-Larson said that they didn’t come out so much as they “couldn’t hide it anymore.”

Miller-Larson, 31, is a member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. They’re an artist, illustrator and bead worker living in Green Bay. They identify as queer and non-binary.

They came out as bisexual when they were a teenager, but they only came out as non-binary a year and a half ago.

While Miller-Larson came out to their parents when they were a teenager, they also noted that coming out is not a one-and-done deal.

“I read somewhere that you never stop coming out, that you come out for the rest of your life,” Miller-Larson said. “That’s particularly true (for me). I have a couple of coming out stories because, you know, your gender and your sexual identity are two different things.”

They never had to worry about the effects of coming out at their high school, though. That’s because they were homeschooled — a result of mistrust in the education system’s Western approach to Indigenous history — and were particularly close with their parents, whom they described as “friends and family simultaneously.”

But that didn’t mean the Miller-Larson household was necessarily a refuge. Growing up, Miller-Larson recalled “deep-seated homophobia” that they all “had to work through.”

“When I told my mom, she cried — but she specified right away. She was like ‘I’m not upset that you’re not straight. I’m scared for you,” Miller-Larson said. “Unfortunately, that’s valid.”

Miller-Larson expressed disappointment that few resources in the greater Green Bay area exist for young LGBTQ+ beyond going to queer bars, an off-limits venue for a teenager hoping to learn about and gain solidarity in their community.

Once Miller-Larson was out to their parents, their parents attempted to find queer-friendly arenas. Miller-Larson’s father inquired with Napalese Lounge and Grille, an infamous LGBTQ+ venue in Green Bay, to ascertain whether they ever hosted 18 and younger events. He was told that you have to travel to Appleton for that kind of place.

“As a teenager, you can’t just go to Appleton,” Miller-Larson said.

But that didn’t bar Miller-Larson from expressing their needs and wants. Being artistically inclined, they wrote zines and applied their experience as queer and non-binary to a visual expanse. 

In one zine, Miller-Larson described the sensation of being misgendered as a sock slipping beneath the heel of your shoe. 

“You can’t fix it, it’s there constantly, and eventually it goes from being uncomfortable to being painful,” Miller-Larson said. “It goes from being uncomfortable to being painful to feeling like you’re being deliberately ignored.”

In terms of advice, Miller-Larson said that it’s important to not rush the process.

“I didn’t hide who I was, but I didn’t come out until I was ready to say it. The reality is, sometimes the reaction you get is not the reaction you need,” Miller-Larson said. “And that’s OK, so long as you know who are you — that’s the most important thing.”

— Natalie Eilbert

‘I’m happier than I’ve ever been’: Theresa Tanner (she/her)

Theresa Tanner remembers sitting in her highchair when she was about 3 years old. Her brother was playing nearby, but she had no interest in the toys he was playing with. As she got older, she preferred to sneak up to the attic to play with her grandma’s porcelain doll collection.

A fur stole was another item of interest in the attic. She would toss it around her shoulders, then twist and turn like Marilyn Monroe as she admired herself in the mirror. 

She also remembers that much younger version of herself sitting around the dinner table every Sunday with her large, Catholic family. Catholic themes and religious events dominated her world. 

So did an abusive upbringing. Her alcoholic father beat her. Looking back, she thinks it was because she was “too nice.”

“He would call me a wimp. I don’t think he knew or thought I was gay or trans. I just think he thought I wasn’t tough enough,” Tanner said. “He thought I was too nice.”

The “be-a-tough-guy” beatings got the results her father desired. She signed up for the U.S. Coast Guard in 1979 and served until 1992. She taught self-defense training during those years, adding to the tough-guy image, continuing to keep her true self hidden from the world.

Then she met her future husband, Edward Medeiros, and everything changed. She came out as gay to her parents. She and Medeiros got married. 

“The only reason I was hanging out with a gay man is I didn’t feel a straight man would accept me because I didn’t have the biology of a woman yet,” she said. “I knew I needed love from someone.”

Her mom took the news well. Her dad was silent. She recalls the four going out for dinner while she and Medeiros still lived on the East Coast. Her dad didn’t say a word to her or her husband, but her mom “loved talking with Edward.”

“Edward would throw me under the bus and tell her if I hadn’t been following my diabetes diet. And she loved it,” Tanner said. “She’d tell him to keep telling her everything. I think she liked the idea that someone was looking out for me.”

But something still wasn’t quite right.

She had no interest in a physical, sexual relationship with a man. 

“Edward sat me down and said, ‘Tim, if you are transgender, I will support you,’” she said. 

This conversation occurred while the couple was separated but still close friends. At age 59, she began her transformation into Theresa. 

“I just got tired of it, tired of being the macho guy and all the violence. That’s not me,” she said. “I’m the gentle little person sitting in that chair way back when who just wanted to live life in a beautiful world.”

She said she is happier now than she has ever been in life.

“I could be sad. I could be crying all the time seeing how much of my life was lost. But I’m not. I’m moving forward,” she said.

The happiness brought to her by coming out as a transwoman is prompting her to become an advocate to help others who find themselves in similar situations. In the past year, she has met with staff in the offices of Sens. Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson to advocate for The Equality Act. She also is involved with the Wausau Transfam Alliance.

“I am trying to help others who are going through what I went through,” she said. “For the rest of my life, I plan to help people.”

— Jessica VanEgeren

‘You don’t have to decide anything’: L Brinks (they/them) 

Their sophomore year of college, L Brinks was affectionately called an “egg,” a term in the trans community for somebody amid their gender transition. For L Brinks, this transition amounted to announcing their non-binary identity.

“Gender isn’t something that’s given to you,” Brinks said. “It can be something you claim for yourself.”

Brinks, 23, grew up in Pardeeville, the oldest of four siblings, and was the first of them to go to college at UW-Green Bay. After five years of living here, they can call Green Bay their home. For Brinks, college, in all its permutations of growth and transition, also meant a new kind of thriving.

“Graduating from high school, I was really excited to go to college, because I was ready to be openly bisexual,” Brinks said. “People didn’t know me beforehand, so it was less about coming out as bi. It was more like ‘This is who I am.’”

They came out as bisexual when they were 18 years old—in 2016—and a year later, they came out as non-binary, at 19.

Brinks said they’re proud of who they are, but they sometimes wish they could go back to 2017 and tell their younger version, “You don’t have to decide anything.”

It’s a challenge, Brinks said, because the moment of identifying yourself as non-binary assumes you have answers to a bevy of questions. Often, coming out drums up this overwhelming obligation to respond to the complex, prismatic ideologies behind gender.

Instead, Brinks said there’s power in being able to say “I don’t know.” For anybody on the heels of coming out, there’s no need to rush it, Brinks said.

“You don’t have to decide anything right now,”  they said.

Brinks recalled their experience in 2017 when they were the only person they knew who had come out as non-binary. They knew trans people, sure, but all they knew was they neither identified as a boy nor a girl.

“I felt like I needed to roll up with a PowerPoint and a handout,” Brinks said. “I felt I needed to have my shit together. Like, yes this name is OK, these pronouns are OK, no I’m not transitioning, no I don’t want this or that.”

Admittedly, they were quite young when they came out, but they said that there’s no reason to have to “explain every nuance of your center.”

Still, the obligation to spell out your pronouns on every Zoom call and before every professional and social interaction can get exhausting. They even felt bad for “inconveniencing” friends and partners in the beginning by presenting their pronouns.

If they could go back in time, they would tell their younger self, “You don’t need to do that. You don’t need to center other people’s feelings.”

Small moments of conscientiousness helped Brinks feel safe, as when a colleague corrected someone who misgendered them when they weren’t in the room.

Over the last year, Brinks found a paper they’d written in a human development class in college, in which they introduced themselves for one of the first times as they/them. When they got to the end of the paper, they read their younger self’s wish for the future: to be surrounded by folks not tied to any one gender.

“In reading that now, where my friends group and my chosen community is non-binary and queer and trans and gender-nonconforming, I cried,” Brinks said. “At a time in my life when I didn’t have that and I was hurting because I didn’t have community and I felt so isolated, reading that now was so profound.”

—Natalie Eilbert

‘You transition for you, not society’: Hadassah Curtis (she/her)               

Sometimes coming out is a lifelong journey.

“Coming out for me is something that I’ve done a lot of times,” Hadassah Curtis, 27, said. “Understanding my identity has taken many years to understand.”

Her journey started when she was a 14-year-old Texas teen who came out as gay while living in a Dallas suburb. The next came when she was 19 and found out she was HIV-positive. The third milestone was at 22 when she told her family and friends she was transgender, something she realized after performing in drag shows throughout college.

At 23, she moved to Wausau after nearly becoming homeless in Texas, a result of her family members shunning her. At 24, she came out as bisexual.

Through her journey over the last 13 years, each coming out moment led to greater self-acceptance.

“It’s interesting how coming out isn’t simple and it might take a couple tries. The great thing about the LGBTQ community is that you can be wrong too,” said Curtis, who works as a server in Wausau and is a member of the transgender support group Wausau Transfam Alliance. “We accept people who are questioning their identity.”

The response from her parents was mixed. 

Curtis’ father didn’t acknowledge or want to talk about it. Her mother put her in so-called conversion therapy where her therapist would weaponize her faith to convince her she wasn’t gay.

It would be some years before she was able to reconcile her faith and her queer identity because of the ordeal, she said.

“My mom said ‘Don’t think about it and maybe it’ll go away.’ She was trying to be helpful and she didn’t want me to go through the difficulties that LGBTQ people go through in Texas,” she said. “It put a lot of barriers in my way of understanding who I am as well as spiritual barriers. I have my own journey with faith just as anyone does.”

She would continue to wrangle with her faith, sexuality and gender identity through high school and college, but first the blood clinic she frequented would tell her she was HIV-positive. She was undetectable, however, meaning she had no symptoms and could not transmit the virus to others through sex.

Still, she wouldn’t tell her family until she was 20. Her dad would later leave out key details of her diagnosis when he outed her to the rest of her family and describe it as though she were about to die.

“People’s unwillingness to engage with HIV at all, let alone think about it and understand where we are in 2021, as opposed to 1987, makes this disease all that much harder for everyone,” Curtis said. “We’re not talking about it logically.”

Curtis began to perform in drag shows in college to express her queerness and criticize gender norms around the same time as her HIV diagnosis. She came alive when she put on a wig and entered the stage.

“It was just a performance at first but then I started to like that more. I remember doing a drag performance and wishing I could just not take this off, but I had to,” she said. “I didn’t want people to think of it as a performance that made fun of gender.”

Quietly, she realized she identified as a woman. It wasn’t until a close friend died suddenly from a drug interaction that she knew she had to tell everyone who she was.

“He was pansexual. As far as I knew, I was the only person he ever told. This person literally died with this secret,” she said. 

The response from her family wasn’t any easier than when she first came out.

She gave her mother an ultimatum.

“You’re going to use my pronouns, you’re going to use my name or you’re not going to be a part of my life anymore,” she said.

 Looking back, she saw how her mom grew with her while her father drifted away from her.

“I sent her books on spirituality and LGBTQ experiences. It really helped her understand things in the context of faith.

“We then had a day together. She broke down and cried and apologized, saying ‘I’m sorry for all the things I put you through. I don’t want to lose you and I love you. You are my daughter and I love you. I don’t want you to think this is wrong and I want you to know that God made you the person you were meant to be.’”

Her mom’s response when she came out a year later as bisexual was “OK.” Her mother would later encourage Curtis’ sister to open up to her about her bisexuality and her girlfriend.

The response from her father’s side was worse. They shunned her and refused to acknowledge her for who she was.

But each time she came out to her family and friends, it became easier.

“You transition for you, not society,” she said.

— Alan Hovorka

‘Trans isn’t binary’: Reggie Eaton (they/them/theirs)

Like most people in the pandemic, Reggie Eaton had a lot of time at home to think about their life. Some people changed careers. Others questioned their identities.

“It’s been nice to experiment with gender and pronouns. I’ve been able to fluctuate with my identity and experiment how I want people to see me,” the 18-year-old Stevens Point resident said. “I feel like my identity is ever-evolving.”

During the early months of the pandemic, Eaton identified as a transgender man but began questioning that identity during the months of isolation.

“I spent a few nights up crying in anguish. It was actually really early on in the pandemic that I noticed changes in my identity. I had a lot of time with myself. I had time to talk with people who are currently questioning their identity. I got to talk to and ask them specific questions,” Eaton said.

“Trans isn’t binary. Being trans means defying gender norms and gender binaries,” they said. “I don’t necessarily fit in the binary. I’m just truly a fluid person, present more feminine or masculine depends on the day.”

Eaton, who also identifies as queer and asexual, said they realized they weren’t straight when they were 6 or 7 years old. But they didn’t mention it to anyone until the summer of 2014 when they were going into sixth grade.

“I just knew something was up. I told my best friend at the time I was bi,” they said. “I feel like it’s kind of a blessing that I was queer early on. I can feel most like myself and that this person I’m becoming is for myself.”

Eaton moved to Stevens Point four years ago from Hawaii. They said their school experience was “generally pleasant.” They found support in the Gender & Sexual Alliance (GSA) and Stevens Point Area Senior High (SPASH) clubs. In these clubs, they came out. In other classes and places, they didn’t.

“It takes time. You don’t have to tell people who you are,” Eaton said. “They should just accept you for who you are in the moment.”

— Alan Hovorka

‘I learned how to empower them to be strong and use their own voices’: Jesus Gregorio-Smith (he/him)

When Gregorio-Smith came out to his parents, he had just moved out to attend the University of Texas – El Paso. He was already out to his roommates, his best friend and cousin. 

“We were sitting in the room together. I think I just talked about people I have crushes on,” he said. “When I was listing men, they were stunned that it just rolled off my tongue.”

Gregorio-Smith grew up in a home that he described as conservative. He felt by coming out, his parents would think that meant he wanted to wear dresses and be a woman. 

“My mom is from Mexico, my dad is from the States,” Gregorio-Smith said. “Both my Black and Mexican sides have very traditional gender expectations. I thought that would clash with what they presumed a gay man was.”

He thinks it went rather smoothly, in part, because he had a masculine gender presentation. He played football and worked at a Discount Tire.

His family now is supportive and loving of both him and his partner of more than six years.

“It’s a dramatic difference. If I go out of town with friends for a weekend and I don’t have any pictures, (my mother) will call me worried that I’m not with my partner Michael,” he said. “Even my father gave me a Black gay men’s romance novel once.”

Gregorio-Smith first started questioning his sexuality in eighth grade. He had a journal that he wrote in, trying to supplant his feelings that no one would accept him for his whole self.

Trying to forego a formal coming out, he created a Myspace page his senior year of high school including rainbows, flowers and songs from artists he called “gay icons.”

In college, Gregorio-Smith threw himself into queer organizations that promoted activism. He joined the Rainbow Minor Initiative, was president of his campus’ Queer Student Alliance, and was a founding brother for a gay and bisexual progressive fraternity on his campus, Delta Lambda Phi.

“That stuff, deeply, deeply influenced me. It was super influencing on my student development, on my identity,” he said. “I learned how to organize with other folks and empower them to be strong and use their own voices.”

He attended Texas A&M for graduate school, studying race and sexuality. From there, he came to be a tenure-track professor at Lawrence University.

When asked what advice he had about coming out, Gregorio-Smith said each person should decide what they want to do. He said someone who is homophobic, but has a gay child, might alter their views. Having your sibling say it for you is also an option.

“I had a friend whose mother was a pastor. He wasn’t going to come out until she passed away,” Gregorio-Smith said. “I know lots of people in Appleton, who are really closeted who would never come out about their bisexuality or their queerness at all.”

He stressed that coming out to yourself is an important step . Once you do that, prioritize your own safety, and physical and mental wellness afterwards.

— Roshaun Higgins

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Contact Roshaun Higgins at rhiggins@gannett.com, Natalie Eilbert at NEilbert@greenbay.gannett.com, Jessica VanEgeren at jvanegeren@gannett.com and Alan Hovorka at AHovorka@stevenspoint.gannett.com

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