By now, you know the story: Having festered in the dark ages for decades, suffocated by its own bro-eyness, skating has, finally, started catching up with the rest of the world, and includes more and more gay, lesbian, and trans skaters. I’m hesitant to call it a sea change, as there’s still plenty to do, but where once only Tim Von Werne and Jarrett Berry stood, we’ve now got Leo Baker, Brian Anderson, Elissa Steamer, Hillary Thompson, and Forrest Kirby, to name just a few of the notables.
Given that every LGBTQ+ person that stands up to be counted inspires countless others to do the same, we thought it was time to take stock and to celebrate that skateboarding has reached something of a tipping point over the last few years in terms of queer visibility. With that in mind, for this issue, we hit up a bunch of different people, from pros to filmers, magazine heads and self-identified skate rats, and asked them to write about their coming out experiences: the good, the bad and the extremely ugly.
The stories that follow are heartwarming, horrifying and fascinating. All of them linked by a universal truth: terrifying as it is, no one ever regrets coming out.
By Patrick Welch
Photo by Norma Ibarra
Published in June 2019
Angie Crum
Angie is a skater, activist and educator based in Seattle
I honestly don’t remember the first person I came out to but I suppose the definition of coming out is a bit fuzzy around the edges – for me at least. I just got lazy. I stopped caring about who knew because it’s too much effort trying to keep track of who knows or doesn’t know. It was exhausting worrying about the effect there might be if certain people around me knew. I have more important shit to do than worry about being disliked by homophobic scumbags
There was a time when it seemed like coming out on social media was kind of a trend and that to be an ‘official gay’ you had to make this big long heartfelt post about it and I remember feeling some social pressure and thinking “Am I supposed to do that too?” But I didn’t. I prefer to stick with the Instagram basics: skate clips and stealing memes from Alex White’s page. [Ed. Note: Alex White – a ripping female pro and hilarious person – is currently on a quest to be NBC’s official skate commentator for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Sign her petition at https://bigfootskatemag/alexwhite]
I often assume that others assume my sexuality because I do seem gay and I don’t mind it, only because it’s better than some fucker named Brenda asking about “any special boys in my life.” I’ll pass on that heteronormative bullshit and gender role bullshit. Gender is over! I really like that phrase, I saw it on a pin. What I’m getting at is that I never had an official coming out moment, I guess. Again, I just didn’t really care. But I do know it’s important to many people. So I’ll do it now: HEY I’M A SUPER GAY HOMOSEXUAL FAG! But you already knew that.
Moving on. Okay, what else? Being gay is really fun. 10/10 would recommend. I used to try to be straight. For a long time. I grew up in Ohio, so enough said there. That was my excuse. Being straight sucked, but I didn’t know that until I actually tried getting my gay on and then it was like, “Wow what a waste of time my whole life has been until the dawn of the gay!” I definitely always was gay though, but growing up where I did, queer folks were like a myth. You never really saw many of them and when they were spoken about it was all negative whispering or kids calling each other fags and describing everything bad as being gay. So I could not be gay growing up. Was not an option.
I grew up with a bunch of boys. They were my best friends and I was just like them. I dressed like them and I liked to do all the same things as them. I wish someone had just told me it was okay to be myself. As I got older I got bullied so much by boys and girls at school and so I tried really hard to change what I wore and what I did. Even though I didn’t feel good in any of it, it was better than being ashamed of myself.
Anyway, here’s the thing I want to say the most here: SKATEBOARDING MADE ME GAY. I hate 99% of the men who skate. I hate 99% of men on the planet. Men are not held accountable and so they just keep being awful to everyone else who isn’t a cis man and they don’t even know it. In fact they think they are doing really well at being ‘good guys.’ I’ve never felt comfortable around men because, like all women, I’ve had so many bad experiences with men.
That was magnified 100 times when I got really into skating. It didn’t matter whether I sucked at skating or was skating my best, whether I was busy teaching kids, whether I was working in the skatepark or skating during the women’s practice at a contest, or whether I dressed masculine or femme – the amount of negative interactions I’ve had with men while skating is sickening. Those are stories for another time. But I can assure you that I decided I never wanted to see a cis man’s penis ever again after experiencing the way they’ve treated me and my queer and/or female friends in skateboarding.
Follow Angie @angiecrum
