Coming Out to…the Little Brother
Posted inagnosticism bisexuality coming out english family

Coming Out to…the Little Brother

My Thoughts



Growing up, I was always aware that my parents wanted me to respect certain Bangladeshi cultural boundaries. I had no interest in doing this, but I toed the party line nevertheless for fear of the consequences. Whenever I did do anything against their wishes, it was either done in a clandestine manner or accompanied by lots of cajoling and placating. My little brother, on the other hand, has always taken a different approach to the parents – pretending that he is completely unaware of their expectations, culturally or otherwise. This has let him go and do whatever he wants, and feign ignorance later to avoid the consequences.


Given the directions I have seen him take socially, culturally and religiously – he's liberal, practical and agnostic – I've never really thought that he'd have a problem with my bisexuality. I'd wondered if he'd find the gay sex part of it a little icky, but nothing more than that. I believed he was a product of his time – educated enough via contemporary narrative to know that there is nothing wrong, morally or medically, with same-sex attractions. Additionally, his agnosticism assured me that he wouldn't espouse any Islamic prejudice. My concerns had actually always skewed towards the more circumstantial side of the situation. He still lives with my parents, and back when I told him, he was going to be doing so for another 2 years before leaving. He was and still is preparing for university, which is hard work. On top of this, he has major ideological differences with the parents, and this makes his living situation even more stressful. I didn't want to add to his burden by telling him about my bisexuality and the issues it brought up. And of course, there was the tiny, tiny worry of what would happen if he did end up reacting negatively. My brother is one of the closest people to me in the world, so even the slightest possibility of rejection made me doubt myself.


However, I've become quite the expert at swallowing my doubts and ploughing on. During a winter holiday we were both spending with the best friend, I hinted at my desire to 'experiment' with a man in casual conversation. He's quite close to the best friend so I knew she could create a buffer if he reacted badly. His reaction was mostly bewilderment though, and I left it at that. The following summer holiday was when I next mentioned my bisexuality. I broached the subject of attractions with him while we were gaming in the den, but backtracked because of the concerns I voiced in the last paragraph. I told myself I was building him up to it, so I should see this as yet another small step in the right direction. But within a few hours I got annoyed at the dithering so I changed my mind, went into his room and told him. And that was it. There was a very minimal reaction. He said he wasn't surprised, that the hints had worked and he had no issue with it. The fact that the parents wouldn't take it too well was discussed. I informed him that I was slowly telling other friends and family at a pace comfortable to me, and hoped eventually to tell them too. He shrugged. I didn't mind - his support was always implied. Don't mistake his apparent apathy for an actual lack of empathy. He's probably the most pro-LGBTQ friend/family member I have created by the way of my coming out. I've discovered him challenging the prejudice of random people in various situations, more so than anyone else I've discussed my sexuality with. 

My coming out has made us closer, and now I can include him in all the aspects of my life. That positive energy has more than anything offset any burden my 'secret' would have left on him, and I am immensely lucky to have someone like him in my life.

His Thoughts


When my brother came out to me, the situation was as follows: I was in my room sitting on my bed, reading or looking at something, I can’t really remember. My brother comes and says, without further ceremony, “The person I’m going to be dating this summer is a guy.”  I look up with a bland face and say “I see.” A moment’s pause. “So you’re bisexual then?” to which my brother responds with a simple “Yup.”

I can’t imagine the scenario in any other way. I tend to take these emotional things with a degree of apathy that some might consider borderline offensive. It’s not malice, it’s just that sexuality to me has never been a big issue. To me, homosexual relationships aren’t wrong, weird, or unnatural, it’s just different. So what if a guy gets turned on by another guy? Or if he gets turned on by both men and women? What’s it to me? It doesn’t harm me, and don’t tell me it results in less children because the last thing the planet needs is more people – certainly not people that think we need even more babies, the wretched creatures. It results in people being happier, as they are able to enjoy a relationship with a person they truly want to be with. Life is hard as it is; let’s not make it harder by enforcing outdated social rules. There are enough fake couples in school.

I first suspected, or considered, as “suspected” implies different sexual orientations are crimes, that my brother was gay or at least partially fancied men by his acute ability to distinguish whether they were attractive or not. I couldn’t do it, not because I felt that trying to distinguish attractive men would make me gay, I simply couldn’t do it, yet my brother could, without fail. The second time I considered his sexual orientation was during a trip with his best friend. We were huddled in a room, eating cupcakes and talking about…I can’t remember, something to do with sex? It’s always to do with sex. Anyways, my brother announced that he’d like sleep with a guy, and that it’d something cool to try out, to which I responded “If you want to be bisexual, then you are bisexual! Haha!” but nothing never truly came of it. The last instance, for which I actually now feel bad, is when we were in the house’s den, playing PS3 maybe? He asked me “Hey, can I tell you something? It’s a big issue and I hope you won’t be weighed down by it.” I simply looked in his direction and mumbled something along the lines of “Um, it’s fine by me…”. It was at that moment my thoughts solidified regarding my brother’s sexuality and looking back, I was an insensitive little cunt for brushing it off the way I did.

Now however, I try to play a more active role regarding these issues. When I see the absolutely stupid reasons for which the LGBT community is oppressed, I cringe inside. I make it point to drive in the fact I fully support the LGBT community despite being straight; as to me it’s a slap in the face for those who try deem them as freaks.
Coming Out to…the Youngest Aunt
Posted inbangladesh bisexuality coming out english family islam

Coming Out to…the Youngest Aunt


I've always worried about coming out to older Bangladeshis. LGBTQ issues don't even seem to exist for them, so how can they be understanding of my sexuality? But I guess you never know till you try.

This post is about my aunt who lives in the States. Earlier this year I flew over to hers as I'd not seen her in half a decade, and I came out to her while I was there. It was unlikely I'd be able to do it face to face any other time in the near future, so I thought I should take the chance. She is the first and currently only Bangladeshi over a certain age to whom I have revealed my bisexuality to. She doesn't know about this blog, and so right now I can only write about my point of view. Hopefully one day that'll change, and I'll be able to share her thoughts as well.


My aunt was born and brought up in Bangladesh. She is a religious Muslim woman in her late thirties who prays five times a day. Make of that what you will. She is also a thinking woman, a scientist and a person who relies on logic and reason in a manner that the world could learn from. We were close while I was growing up. She was still at university when I was in school and this made her feel young and approachable. She is openly liberal, and accepting of the fact that my peripatetic upbringing has made me different. She always acknowledged that said upbringing meant I was not the traditional Bangladeshi son my parents once wanted me to be. Most importantly, she also asserted that this was completely fine. This made me feel that there was someone in my corner, something that was often missing during my childhood.

She eventually left Bangladesh to live, study and work across Asia and America. These experiences have made her, in her own words, different now – although I would personally argue she has always been different. All of this made me think she would be the ideal first candidate to come out to amongst my older relatives. If things went well, she could become an ally. If things went badly, I couldn’t imagine her telling my parents or setting out to harm me in any way. Nevertheless, the actual act of explaining my bisexuality to her was a daunting experience. I was planning to spend almost ten days with her family, and I had already decided to let the first half go by as a normal holiday. The day I eventually did decide to tell her, the baby cousin got sick. The day after my uncle decided to come home early and take us out to dinner. The day after that my aunt decided to have a massive migraine, but by now I was going crazy so I decided to hell with the headache.

I told her we needed to talk, and so we sat down and talked. Same-sex marriage had actually come up a few days earlier on the news, and her own commentary on it had left me a little nervous. She had said that physical pleasure had many forms, which was no big deal, but had questioned its need to be validated through marriage. I made the point about the emotional aspect of a same-sex relationship, she hmm-ed and didn’t press the argument further. Now, we had the entire conversation. Hours of it. In a way, it helped that I was bisexual. I can be emotionally and physically attracted to a woman in the same way I can be attracted to man. This duality actually seemed to make it easier for her to understand. I put it to her in other ways too. I can be attracted to a man a same way she can – we experience the same spectrum of feelings and emotions.

She accepted that a variety of attractions can exist. She didn’t need the cliched question of “when did you choose to be straight” posed to her. But she did want an explanation of the origins of sexuality, biologically speaking. I didn’t have an exact answer and frankly I don't think anyone definitively does at this time. I mentioned various studies that I had read of, including one relating to higher female fertility being directly proportional to a greater number of gay men in a family. She countered that these studies ultimately proved nothing as correlation does not prove causation. She offered the explanation espoused by her friends in Bangladeshi medical circles – the idea that same-sex attraction was a mental disorder. I questioned their qualification to comment on mental health given that this was not their specialisation. I also asked her if she thought I had a mental disorder. I don’t think she believed I had, but was rather setting me up for what I’d face in Bangladesh. I was glad that she was willing to communicate openly and unflinchingly.

We even briefly covered the thorny issue of Islam and its stance on non-heterosexuality. The conversation was actually quite tentative on both sides. Neither of us could claim any great amount Islamic knowledge, me even less so than her. My aunt admitted that she was becoming less certain of what is sold to us by the status quo, from an Islamic perspective at least, as right and wrong. She mentioned the usual obstacles to seeking more knowledge, like her inability to speak Arabic and the need to rely on translations of the Quran and questionable Hadith. She expressed her frustration with not being able to question the validity of scripture others quoted to her, or indeed quote scripture back. To this end, she asked me about a rather popular 'Hadith' used to condemn homosexuality and usually worded as: “when a man mounts a man, the throne of Allah shakes.” Now, I haven't ever been able to find a chain of transmission for this Hadith. Not that the internet knows everything, but I've never seen it backed up with thorough references and contextual information. This is scary given how commonly it's touted online, even to the point that my aunt would ask me about it.

She set about asking a few more practical questions. Who else knew that I was bisexual? Did I talk about it a lot? Did people in Bangladesh know? Her tone implied that she thought I should keep it quiet. I think this was partly because she wasn't completely comfortable with it herself, although she maintained it was because it could put me in harm's way. But I've left behind that phase of hiding for a long time now. All of my close friends know, in Bangladesh and elsewhere. Younger members of the family know, as do many colleagues and acquaintances in the UK and around the world. I told her as much, and she pursed her lips and glared at me. This made me laugh a little. I knew that look – she was annoyed with me. But I knew she would help me deal with things, if things were to ever happen.

The conversation then took a lighter and bizarrely amusing turn. She asked me if sexuality was indeed genetic, who did I think were the other queer folk in our extended family? And then she rattled through all the possibilities. Was it the cousin who'd not gotten herself a boyfriend yet? Or was it the uncle who's marriage had broken down in divorce? Or was it was the one who'd resisted getting married for years on end? Or maybe it was the other cousin who'd never gotten married at all! All of this speculation really did make me laugh. But I had to wonder, with such a large extended family, surely someone else out there isn't heterosexual?
She asked me about my relationships, and if I was dating. When I said yes, she asked me if I slept with everyone I dated, being carefully gender neutral with the word “everyone” in Bengali. This I loved. At the same time, I wondered where she was coming from. Was she uncomfortable with the idea of promiscuity, or the idea of gay sex specifically? Did she think I was dating, or just hooking up? I thought it would be better to clarify my approach to dating – which really meant meeting someone to hopefully establish a meaningful relationship with. That meant a lot of forgettable first dates, or even second and third dates that went nowhere. I was honest about how I did things – I wouldn't jump into bed with someone if I didn't think things were headed somewhere. So no, no promiscuity, but yes, gay sex is implied. Trying to gauge her feelings, I asked her if it mattered to her who I brought home. She was frank. She said she needed time to get used to my bisexuality. For now, she'd encourage me to bring a girl home. It would make my life easier, and it would be easier for her to accept at present. But what if I brought a guy home? Well, she was sure one day she would accept him too. Which is all I needed to hear really, as one day I may be counting on her to be a stand in for my parents.