LGBT Foundation's video: Lesbian and Bisexual Women on Coming-Out: When and Where We Want - Elaine

Welcome to our vlog series on coming-out, when and where we want. This is part of the Lesbian and Bisexual Women’s Confidence Movement 2017, hosted by LGBT Foundation’s Women’s Programme We will amplify our voices, our experiences and our struggles. We will celebrate the ways in which we find confidence in ourselves and our communities. We will reclaim our identities and stories, recognising the differences between them. For more information about this campaign, visit: www.lgbt.foundation/confidence17 Follow across social media for the latest updates. The transcriptions for these vlogs are below. If you have any questions or feedback about this Confidence Movement, please email women@lgbt.foundation For media enquiries, please email media@lgbt.foundation -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Elaine Vlog [00:00:00] START [00:00:01 – 00:03:01] Hello, my name is Elaine McKenzie and I am here to share my coming out experience with you. I first came out erm to my mother when I was 21/22, she found a postcard I forgotten to send to a then girlfriend and it was a picture of two women intimate embrace sitting in sun. And on the back it just simply said, Ali I hope you can do more of this. She said, ‘who’s Ali?’ And I said she’s my girlfriend. And she said ‘girlfriend.’ And I said, yes mum I am gay. At which point she said, ‘okay do you want to be a man’ and I said ‘no, why do I want to be the weaker species?’ And she said, well men aren’t all that bad Elaine, don’t look at your dad, he’s a bad example. Now I’m very close to my dad so I thought that was a bit hard but that’s her experience. Then she said to me ‘Elaine, you’re black and female. Why do the gay thing?’ And I said to my mum, I didn’t choose to black, I didn’t choose to be female and I certainly choose to be gay. So my mum’s workplace, she works in the NHS, she’s surrounded by a lot of gay males and erm, not a lot of lesbians. And she was just concerned that it is another battle that I had to fight. And my experience is that coming out to my friends was a breeze, that didn’t really care. Erm, coming out at work, well I’m self-employed so that was easy as I run events for gay women, it’s even easier. So my experience has been very, very easy. Very little challenge, apart from the odd God squad, particularly the Afro-Caribbean born again Christians who still think being gay is a white disease. And people like that, I just don’t bother with. I don’t bother arguing with them anymore, I just say, yeah it’s a white disease and I got it, I’m so happy. So it’s about for me, my fight is mainly to do with racism and sexism. I have very, very little fight with homophobia. And whatever fight I do have I use the same tools that I use to deal with sexism and racism, to fight homophobia and to keep my coming out experience a positive and healthy one. [00:03:02] FINISH