Coming Out As Zoosexual The Other Day
Hi readers! I've come out to a lot of people over the years, as bi and as zoosexual. The thing is, even after you've come out for the first time, you don't instantly get a magical tattoo on your forehead that says "BISEXUAL." Maybe word gets around, but you'll always be meeting new people who haven't heard the word. Or, maybe others actually are good at treating it as a secret if it's supposed to be a secret, and word doesn't get around very much at all outside of who you spread it to. So, either which way, coming out is something that I'm still doing, even as someone who has been openly zoosexual to at least some people for over a decade.
Personally, there are some things that are really important to me, that I would say really define myself. Things that, if you *hate* X Y or Z, then you hate me apparently. A lot of them are pretty mundane, and unlikely to make someone stop talking to me--like, if someone I was chatting with learned that I have A ot of thoughts about object oriented programming, it's probably not going to be a dealbreaker to them. But on the other paw, if someone I was chatting with learned that like half of my social circles consist of trans or nonbinary folks, that *might* become an issue, it depends on the person. And for me, ifwith they/thems is a dealbreaker to someone, then them being a bigoted loser is probably a dealbreaker to me too. We can still leave off the conversation with a smile and a goodbye, but I'm probably not going to save their number in my phone so that we can pick up the convo again later.
So, when I come out as zoo to someone, telling them about my late canine husband and all of the activism work I do by editing for this magazine and by schmoozing with influencers, a lot hinges on their reaction. That's a BIG, important, fundamental part of my life. He was my *husband,* you understand: I don't take disrespect towards him or us lightly.
If I come out to someone and they say that they have a problem with the fact that I've given a dog a homie handjob, then me and the person I've come out to will probably find our way out of each other's lives very quickly. Conversely though, if they say that my relationship with my dog husband sounds like it was very sweet, and that the editing work for a queer activism project sounds interesting, now me and them have so much more to talk about, I get to be my authentic self with them, it's a big win on a personal level, on a social level, and even arguably on an activism level.
Like, seriously: I've known people who vote republican and kinda give a suspicious squint at trans folks, but gave a sincere thumbs up to zoophilia after they learned that me and my dog were together. Not to make it sound like this is me wringing my hands together as I invent ways to advance the zoo agenda, but it really just happens to be true that personal, individual, boots on the ground visibility is a huge tool to leverage for winning hearts and minds.
In this article, I wanted to share an example of me coming out as zoosexual that happened just a week or two ago.
As a codename for this article, let's name this person "Ganymede."
To provide a little bit of context, I want to say first of all that Ganymede is someone I've been talking to in a mutual chatroom for about seven or eight years. Ganymede primarily uses it/its pronouns, and identifies with a variety of non-heteronormative labels. Me and it have had a lot of really interesting conversations about gender and art, and I think it's fair to say that we've enjoyed talking with each other over the years, we've learned a lot, we've had a lot of fun times. I had tested the waters on zoosexuality a couple of times, offhandedly mentioning to it that I know zoophiles and that I don't mind if someone is a zoophile, and I didn't really get a reaction one way or the other on that, the conversations just kind of moved on to other topics.
And, as one more piece of context, I'll share the thing that made me feel inclined to finally come out to this person, after seven or eight years of avoiding bringing it up. Basically I was having a little too much fun one night and accidentally smashed a bottle of wine on my personal phone and then left it there all night smashed and with wine on it, oopsie daisy happens to the best of us, but I also didn't have my backups in order on that phone, and so I lost access to the account that I usually talked to Ganymede on. So, my options here were to stop talking to Ganymede forever because I broke my phone via wine attack crit success, or I could get back in touch on a work account with my work phone, or I could get back in touch on a zoo account with my activism phone, or I could spin up a new account when I get a new personal phone. (The people at the phone store love me by the way, shout out to Jerry and Trish.)
So now, let's analyze the situation. What I'd *like* to do is get back in touch with a zoo account, because those accounts are where I'm socializing more than on my work accounts. And if I come out on a zoo account, I'm not going to obscure or lie about what the account is. So, what do Ganymede and I stand to gain if coming out goes well? What is the risk to me if coming out goes badly? What information do I have to work with as to whether or not this is a good idea?
Like I said earlier, Ganymede and I have had a lot of great conversations about gender, music, writing, identity, memes. We had plenty to talk about without ever bringing animals up, but the fact that I was keeping my core identity a secret was actually kind of a huge omission from these conversations too. If I come out as a zoo and it is accepting and wants my perspective as a zoo to be part of these conversations, that would be really nice! I could share so many more authentic anecdotes about what me and my four legged compadres have gotten up to, if we're talking about hooking up or talking about what different genitals are like. I can share so many memes (I already did share some memes that were from zooey sources, I like to throw those around to all and sundry under the radar when there's a banger that transcends needing to be a zoo to get it, but, anyways I could share the more overt memes too.) I can share my zoo articles that it might find interesting, I can share zoo music that I like. Basically I can let my hair down, stop having to be careful to avoid talking about this thing that I am, these things that I do.
Now, what about the risk? If I want to catastrophize and come up with the worst-worst case scenario, I can certainly come up with it: Ganymede thinks that being a zoo makes me a despicable abuser, it talks to the others in our mutual chatroom and they all piece together my home address, and hire an assassin to come to my door and kill my dogs and me, or they call the police on me and the police kill my dogs and put me in prison for the rest of my life on some trumped up bullshit charges. It's certainly *possible.* Likely? I don't think so.
In my own life, usually the worst that happens is someone is personally uncomfortable with learning that I'm a zoophile, and they ghost me. It kinda sucks if we were already vibing with each other for a long time, but, c'est la vie, which is French for "Fuck them then I guess." Pardon my French. When I was coming out to Ganymede, my read on the most likely outcome *if* it went badly, was that it would tell everyone in our mutual chatroom about me being a zoo, I would be banned from there before having a chance to talk with the mods, and I would lose out on continuing to be in one of the spaces that I like being in, plus that old mundane name would get connected to my Alissa name which would be a little embarrassing, just cuz that was the name I had when I was a dumb kid on the internet so I'm sure I had just the dumbest hot takes that people could get the receipts on.
To be honest, even that outcome is catastrophizing a little bit. I think that I would get the chance to talk to the mods and have decent odds of being accepted there. I mean, they like me, I've been there for a long time, and it's not like that chatroom is really trying to be famous as the best and squeakiest-clean place on the entire internet; it's just a chatroom where a few people from the internet happen to have ended up hanging out. It's possible that they hear about my dog husband and go, "Oh, kind of surprised but I assume she took good care of him?" But, it is also a possibility that they go, "Oh, zoophilia is one of the forbidden things to be, banned forever."
Basically, the good outcome here, the good possibility, is that Ganymede and I can have even realer conversations with each other, and I can be my authentic self, which is increasingly important to me in my life. the bad outcome here, the bad possibility, is that I don't get to talk to Ganymede anymore and add another tally to people who had a thumbs down reaction, coin toss on if I lose out on the chatroom too, and 1/10,000 odds that I get doxed. Losing out on those relationships would be a bummer, although again c'est la vie if that's how it is, but, still.
So there are some stakes here, it's probably not going to be the best thing that ever happens to me or the worst thing that ever happens to me, but it is a gamble. What information can I work with to know whether this is a good idea?
Well for one thing, Ganymede is LGBTQIA+, using it/its pronouns and being aromantic and other things. In my own experience, this is not a strong indicator one way or the other. It might actually be slightly negative, I think everyone who has ghosted me for being zoo was gay, but I also hang with a lot of gay people so, maybe that's a coincidence. On the one hand, you could say that gay people should be more accepting of unexpected orientations, because they know what it's like to be looked down on. But, on the other hand, you could say that gay people have more to prove that they are good people, and so they can't be seen to be accepting anything that anyone could see as abuse, even if it doesn't really seem like it is abuse, the optics matter. So, Ganymede being LGBTQIA+, not actually relevant to whether I come out or not.
Ganymede not reacting to my pervious mentions of me being okay with zoophilia and knowing zoophiles: this is pretty neutral to me too, maybe a slightly positive sign. If I had brought up zoophilia and the response was "that's gross, and animals can't consent," that would probably be a hard fail. If someone can have a sense of humor about bestiality, that would be a really positive sign. No reaction is, an *interesting* lack of data, but the main thing that I guess I can take away from it is that me hanging with zoos wasn't a dealbreaker, we kept talking just fine after that, so, maybe that's a positive sign.
Here's what I ultimately based my decision on. Ganymede has seen me talk a lot about animal rights and empathizing with animals: it knows that I am very strongly animal-positive. And I also know that Ganymede is very into uncommon identities being accepted and represented and seen more. And lastly, the downside is probably not the end of the world, again, c'est la vie, and I'm always coming out to more people anyways and this one was honestly overdue, I felt that it was time to put it out there and find out, and breaking my phone was a good kick that I apparently needed for this one, a good excuse.
So, I asked someone else who knows both of us to give Ganymede my Telegram, and here's how it went.
Alissa: hiiiiiiGanymede: Oh Hi!Alissa: Okay, so, lore drop because I'm not really meaning to hide what this account is if I shared it. I'm on a break at work so if I disappear soon I gotta get back.For a number of great years, my life partner was this huge beautiful charming smart fun huge canine. I'm really proud of the hours and hours and hours we got to share on walks or snuggling in bed.This account is my zoo alt, which has kind of become my main for online stuff. I do activism work a blog-style online magazine, I proof basically all of the articles before they go out and write a lot of them myself. [Person who shared my Tele with Ganymede] knows and we are still great friends. [Other person we both know] knows and we are no longer friends. But, I am increasingly sick of being closeted to people I care about, so, hi :3Ganymede: Oh fair!Alissa: [Picture of my dog husband being serene in the sunlight.]Ganymede: awww
Success! And then we went on talking from there. I told it about all of the ways I spend my time helping out the zoo community, we also went on talking about things unrelated to zoogender and memes and just kind of what we've been up to recently. I shared one of my wholesome articles with it, and it said the article was very sweet, and then I shared some more raunchy writing I've done (go try to find my feral writing on SoFurry if you're over 18), and Ganymede admitted that it was actually super relieved to see this side of the writing, because, hi, oops, Ganymede is aromantic and stuff, I had kinda forgotten about that. Turns out that not being into romance extended to animals too, so, anyways it liked seeing the crude side and the humor side more than that initial wholesome article I had sent.
And yeah, we've still been talking, and I am super pleased to have another person who I can discuss zoo with, and super pleased to get to keep having the kinds of conversations we had already been having to.
Coming out can be scary, and it does have risks. I always try to tread really carefully when I'm writing the "here are the takeaways of all of this" part of articles that are about coming out.
Because, in my own life, coming out to a lot of people has overwhelmingly been a positive thing. I have been more happy the more people I can be my authentic self with, and I've yet to ever have it go badly in a way that wasn't secretly a good thing after all (getting people out of my life who suck anyways, c'est la vie, etc etc.) I think that if being a zoo is important to who you are, then having to keep it a secret all the time forever from everyone can be really damaging to your emotional wellbeing, and I would wish for closet zoos to be able to talk to people. Hey even if you can't do it in person, maybe fire up an alt and swing by the magazine's Discord, I hear it's really fun.
But, I do know people have been outed and were forced into therapy, had their animals taken away, got exiled from all of their friends, it can be a harsh world out there for sure. So I never want to make the advice, "Just come out to everyone and you'll be happier." Apparently that isn't true for all people, some people are in worse situations than I am.
Mainly, I just wanted to share this experience as an example. It happened, and if anything in here has helped you learn anything, or if it was just interesting to see, then I'm glad to have gotten to share :3
Thanks for ruling, Ganymede!
Article written by Alissa Dogchurch (July 2024)
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