“coming out”
Image Description: caption in orange-golden hue reads: Women Lovin’ Women: An Exploration of Identities, Belonging, and Communities in Urban and Rural Guyana.
“In the Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Sedgwick (1990) pointed out the ways in which Western knowledge of sexuality is premised on a binary and oppositional framework that marks heterosexuality as superior to homosexuality, where queer politics hinges on the practice of “coming-out” of the “closet.” The “closet” is an analytic, a metaphor, and practice where one conceals their sexual identity and orientation, especially if one’s sexuality deviates from heterosexuality. “Coming out” of the “closet” refers to the process of self-disclosure, the naming and marking of one’s sexuality and identity. This act of ‘naming’ and admission has become an everyday practice in Western queer politics and movements, that it is taken as an inherent and natural ‘truth’ of one’s sexuality.
In contrast to this discourse of the “closet” and “coming out” stories, working-class women in Berbice do not engage in a politics of disclosing their sexual practices with their family, friends and extended community, thereby calling into question the viability and applicability of the ‘closet’ and ‘coming-out’ in rural spaces. The analogy of the closet and the practice of coming out does apply to this particular context of Berbice. What if there was never a closet for some people? What if there is a closet, but choosing to remain in the closet is a safer option? What are the risks and consequences of being hailed into this Western paradigm of self-discourse, confession and admission? What if we do not relegate sexuality to the geographic location of the closet within the home? The actions of working-class women in Berbice calls us to re-frame sexuality as a praxis, a state of being, a “tekking up or dehing”; it is an act of resistance by choosing to live a life by self-design rather than conforming to the idea of “coming out” by Western standards.
The lives and same-sex practices of the women in rural #Berbice, challenge the Western discourse of “coming out” and the “closet”, I suggest this action can be understood as “dehing” to “deh” a verb: to be in a sexual or romantic relation; to move in and out of relationships. To deh represents a type of relationality outside of the confines of the state-institutions and a linear trajectory of marriage and children. To some extent, the term signals the fluidity and movement that is granted to individuals as they transition from one relationship to another or between multiple relationships. It contests labels—whether heterosexual or homosexual categories. Unlike the closet which is dependent upon the idea of concealing one’s sexuality and relationship, dehing does not require a concealment or confession, there is no verbal disclosure that is required in this practice as it is an unspoken or implicit type of knowing that belies the paradigm of the closet. In this sense, this knowing does not fit into Western modes of relationships. Dehing as a praxis departs from Western queer modalities or existence as it moves beyond a queer temporality and the urgency embedded in “coming out”.”
-Women Lovin’ Women: An Exploration of Identities, Belonging, and Communities in Urban and Rural Guyana, Preity R. Kumar (2018)