Top Tips for Allies Who Want to Help LGBTQ+ People Come Out

“Learn about what LGBTQ+ people go through daily worldwide to know the struggles so you can empathise with what they go through.” RM from Wise spoke to myGwork about their top tips for people who are in the closet and struggling to come out. With advice for those who are nervous, as well as tips for allies who want to help their LGBTQ+ friends and colleagues, they discussed how the internet can help further educate people on such topics.

What advice would you give to someone nervous about coming out?

You do not have to come out if you don’t want to. Straight cis people never have to come out. Same as you. If you feel like you are safe to reveal your identity, you can do it first within your friendship circles with people you feel safe with. And then expand it. But this is not expected of you if you are trans/queer. As your safety is of utmost importance.

If you need to grieve for lost time (like me), please take the time to acknowledge that there is a need for that grieving and slowly reclaim the time you have lost to try to be who you weren’t (which applies to me). Sending you so much love and grace.

List of tips that a workplace can do to create a welcoming environment where employees will feel comfortable coming out: 
 

Rather than feeling comfortable coming out, I would much rather have a safe and inclusive workplace.

- Definitely to ensure staff, team leaders, managers have a SOGIE (Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression) training.

- To ensure that pronouns are always used in meetings/ titles.

- To allow staff to change their name without revealing their deadname to the other staff. 

Tell us your tips on how LGBTQ+ allies can support their colleagues coming out 
  

Please do not misgender people if you made a mistake, just apologize and try to do better. It's not ok to misgender, however, it takes time to call people with a pronoun you aren’t used to.

Please, please do not rely on LGBTQ+ folks as the source of all knowledge for LGBTQ+ resources- there is Google, Wikipedia and YouTube for this.

Learn about what LGBTQ+ people go through daily worldwide to know the struggles so you can empathise with what they go through.