'But you don't look gay!'

First of all, happy National Coming Out Day! This is an awareness-raising day for people who feel comfortable doing so to be visible and proud of who their are, regardless of sexuality or gender-identity. In the spirit of the day, I thought I'd share one of my experiences recently of being a visible LGBT+ presence on campus.

I'm not the campest of men and so I often can 'pass' for straight, which has made the past few weeks interesting when introducing myself to new people as the LGBT+ officer. The reactions are either positive ('Ah, cool!') confused ('What does that mean?') or, what's been most shocking, surprised. I've been told on at least 3 occasions 'Oh, but you don't look gay!' or 'You're the straightest gay man I know!' I've found this a very odd reaction, but not wholly incomprehensible.

Even now most people's perception of what LGBT+ people are (or should be) is coloured by the long-standing stereotypes of dandies and butches. Non-het(erosexual) men are assumed to be femmes, like Quentin Crisp, one of the "stately homos of England"; whilst our women counterparts are assumed to be short, spiky-haired, pierced kings.

I thought at least in a place which has had 40 years since legalisation and some of the most vibrant LGBT+ communities in the world would have moved pass the antique stereotypes. We now have a (fairly) diverse group of out celebrities (from Neil Patrick Harris and Ellen DeGeneres to Derren Brown and Freddie Mercury). The days have passed when the only portrayals of gay and lesbian (never bi or trans) characters were as caricatures. Surely it's time to move on and accept that LGBT+ identities do not necessitate crude pastiches of long worn-out clichés.

So, happy Coming Out Day, whatever your identities and whoever you are.