For USWNT star Tierna Davidson, coming out wasn’t that big of a deal.
Having an aunt who has a partner certainly helped, as having a girlfriend wasn’t something that needed explaining. It was just normal.
“That helped me in just not feeling like what I was was different,” Davidson explains on the most recent episode of Snacks. “It was just like, you’re with who you’re with and that’s it. I think that was a big help in me not making a big deal out of it.”
“That just makes it easier. That makes you feel less awkward and less unique, which you don’t want to feel unique in that way sometimes.”
“I love that,” co-host Lynn Williams says. “I think that is how it should be. Like, I didn’t have to come out as straight, so why does anybody else have to come out? We should just be who we are.”
At about 46 minutes in, Davidson, Williams and Sam Mewis get to talking about all of the coverage surrounding LGBTQ people coming out. When looking at all of the magazines and articles written about celebrities with their coming out stories, Davidson says she hopes that eventually those stories will go away, as hopefully someday people won’t have to have a special story about it.
“It’s really nice to have a coming out story that is not very fun, or not very exciting,” she said. “That’s the best kind of coming out story because it means that whoever you’re coming out to or wherever you live, your environment, it’s normal enough that you don’t need to make a big deal out of it.”
Earlier on in the podcast, the three discuss why there is still so much apprehension about coming out.
“Even though we are in this era where it is widely accepted, especially within our age group, there is still a lot of apprehension and nerves around doing that,” Davidson said. “So I think that, I know a lot of people that are now out but weren’t out when I first knew them and probably a lot of people who are still on that journey.”
“I think we as humans have this fear of anything that is different than us,” Mewis adds. “And so I think that when, as kids, we’re intimidated by something or something feels foreign we push it away.”
“Maybe it’s just that little bit of something that makes people different, alienates them to others and so we push it away and try to label it as something.”
“It’s the worst thing in the world to be different when you’re in middle school or high school,” Davidson says. “All you want to do is fit in and be normal.”
Listen to the rest of the conversation and the full podcast here.
