My Coming Out Story
Time to become "unburdened from all that has been" and make entertainment fun again.
I’m no stranger to coming out stories. Over the years, I’ve listened to friends, clients, and loved ones wrestle with their personal truths, particularly when it comes to sexuality. Once they’d admit their truth to themselves and others, they were free. To paraphrase Kamala Harris, they instantly became “unburdened by what has been.” Whether they came out in their teens, twenties, or forties, life outside the metaphorical closet was just better.
In my mid-twenties, I had a Mormon friend group and one of us was gay. We all sensed it, but operated by an unspoken rule that until he said otherwise, he was just an active church going Mormon like us. He grappled with feelings of judgement and shame for years worrying that if anyone knew his secret, he might not be accepted. One day, he risked rejection from friends, family and an organization that isn’t exactly hospitable to homosexuality and came out. Can you guess what happened? We accepted him and the Mormon church continued to exist….just without him in it.
I have another friend who sent a mass email to hundreds (maybe thousands) of agents, managers, accountants, lawyers, executives, writers, and actors coming out as transgender. Her email included a new headshot, a new (decidedly female) name, and a brief note about living as her authentic self. Not only was she not rejected from the entertainment industry in her early 50s, she was celebrated and embraced. Rightly so. She is a phenomenal person and it took great courage to express herself. Our professional relationship grew into a personal friendship of tremendous respect. Her business got better and her heart was free. She is happy, continues to get hired in the entertainment business and lives a vibrant life. I actually shared my truth with her several weeks ago and her love and support gave me strength.
While I’m not gay or trans, my truth carries its own stigma, particularly in the entertainment industry, and it’s impacted me in ways that are no longer tolerable. My truth ignites fear, anger, and even rage among people in my personal and professional circles. But before I share my truth, I would ask that you treat me with the same respect you would treat our gay, lesbian and transgendered brothers and sisters. I’m asking you to put away your labels and judgements and just hear me out. Please withhold your offer to convert or change me. Please remember that I am the same person you have always known.
I am Krista Parkinson, and I identify as politically non-binary. I’m guessing you might not have voted the same way I did.
Testing the Waters
I’ve spent months tiptoeing toward this moment, testing the waters with friends and acquaintances. The term “political non-binary” didn’t even come to me until about 9 months ago, which I guess is the appropriate gestation period to bring forth a new life. As I’ve sprinkled it into various conversation, the response has been...mixed. Let’s just say that political non-binary doesn’t receive the same warm embrace as other forms of coming out.
A few months ago, I posted a seemingly benign statement on my Instagram story and the response left me in tears:
“I don’t easily fit into red or blue on many issues. I’m deeply concerned that our system has produced two very flawed candidates. Strange as it sounds, I’m actually undecided.
Uncomfortable cackling from a candidate that never got one electoral vote the first time she ran doesn’t inspire confidence. Blaming problems on “childless cat ladies” is unnecessarily petty and unproductive. Trump has a track record of no wars during his term. I take him seriously, not literally. Hillary was never locked up.
I get my news from The Free Press and The All in Pod and Real Time with Bill Maher. There’s a lot of noise, I just want to focus on the signal”
The backlash from this IG story was private, yet swift and forceful. Friends called, texted, and DM’d their disappointment. They sent articles for me to read hoping to change my clearly deranged mind. One even screamed at me and threatened to take away our friendship. I was shocked. These are people who know me in real life, not just “followers” on a digital platform.
I’m sensitive and crying was all I could do. I merely said I was “undecided” but I could only imagine that in their minds, they replaced “undecided” with “Trumper” and punished me accordingly. The negativity I receive was uniformly from people who openly vote blue. Aren’t democrats the party of inclusivity and diversity? Why is the definition of diversity limited to race, age, country of origin, sexuality, culture and gender yet not afforded to those with another point of view?
Years ago, I heard a story about someone not from this country talking about the style of American politics. “In my country, discussing politics is like a racket sport, where you toss an idea up in the air like a ball and everyone gets a shot to hit it. In America, it seems like you toss up an idea and use the racket to hit the people next to you.”
I’m not a racist, a homophobe, or any other mean-spirited “-ist” or “-phobe” you might imagine. I’m not dumb, uneducated or heartless. I think for myself and I read. My beliefs are informed by my lived experiences and I learn from those who are closest to me.
A former boyfriend moved to the US when he was 17 years old. In ten years he mastered English, became a citizen and built a thriving business. His political opinions were based on his first hand experiences as a legal immigrant in the United States and how life here compared to his country of origin. During the last election cycle, he expressed his truth. “Democrats tell me I’m oppressed because I’m brown. I’m not oppressed, I’m American.” With that attitude, he put on a red hat and voted.
How could I argue with that? I’ll tell you how…I didn’t. I respected his opinion, got curious and learned from him. I broadened my news content to include podcasts and digital accounts. I watched political debates and speeches on YouTube (free of opinion or commentary from a slanted network bias.) I opened my mind to another point of view. As my diet for information changed, I became an omnivore and some of my opinions shifted too.
Media that I trust
I trust Bari Weiss and her publication The Free Press. I love her podcast Honestly, where facts lead the story, and nuance isn’t sacrificed for clickbait. If you’re not familiar, I highly recommend them both. TFP is approaching a one million subscriber milestone and if you’d like to subscribe for free, please do so with this link.
I listen to The All-In Podcast, hosted by four brilliant tech minds who happen to be best friends and play poker (hence the name of the show.) They challenge conventional thinking and see politics through the lens of business. Watching one of the hosts evolve his views over time, guided by facts, has been fascinating.
And for some humor served with a side of news & smart commentary, I turn to Bill Maher. His HBO show Real Time and podcast Club Random offer a blend of serious conversation and lighthearted relief. If you want to understand my politics, Bill Maher is often where I land.
Although I’m pretty new to it, I can get both sides of the news in one place with The Tangle News. When I want to focus on what’s going right with the world, I check out The Nice News and start my days with a 30 min happy sermon from Joel Osteen.
If you have any other positive suggestions for information sites that are good for the brain and soul, please tell me in the comments.
Why Now?
I’ve been feeling unsettled for a couple of years and I’ve self censored in Hollywood social settings and held back on publishing my thoughts on topics where I have an informed opinion, particularly as it comes to hiring practices in Hollywood. I have contrarian opinions about the limits of DEI (does it extend to conservatives? Church goers? Anyone from a small rural town?) workplace protests (NFL, Netflix etc.), the downside of paid internships, toxic femininity, why I would never use “they” as a pronoun on a resume, and why President Biden should have taken a prominent role in the Hollywood strikes to preserve American culture in the world are just a few topics that remain in my draft file.
I see what our current cultural climate is doing to men and their employment prospects in entertainment, particularly young white men who have done nothing wrong except be born at the wrong time, in the wrong body and the wrong gender. They have a much harder time getting hired today. I should have spoken up about this a couple of years ago when I first noticed it, but I didn’t. Things are changing but people like me who are seeing it first hand, should have said something about it when it’s happening.
Political fear tactics ultimately didn’t work. The election results do not scare me. In fact, I exhaled. Democracy is not over, in fact, the people have spoken and democracy is alive and well. Change is here. Some change will be good, some change will be challenging but staying the same was no longer an option.
I’m operating with that same mindset. Rather than screaming from the red and blue corners of the country, can we remember there is another color in the flag we are under? Let’s wave that white flag of peace. I’m not looking for fights on the left or right, I’m looking forward to what’s next and keeping my spirits up. The business of creativity should be fun. Can we make entertainment fun again? #MEFA anyone?
So that’s my story. If this makes you uncomfortable, I understand. If it means losing some of you, so be it. I’m not leaving you, but rather leaning into publishing articles on my Substack with regularity again. I have to live authentically and independent from fear and self-censorship. That’s what America and the creative community of Hollywood is all about.
Reading Politically non-binary has given me a liberation of mind around politics, thank you so much for writing and sharing your thoughts, feelings and experiences in this wonderful article. I have always felt an aversion to politics as quite frankly it makes me feel ill listening to so much BS from politicians so I avoid it. However, I don’t want to avoid it anymore but needed to find away I can be with it and you have given me that opportunity with the term politically non-binary.
God bless you, thank you.
Krista, this is wonderful, genuinely brave and feels empowering to me, personally. I'm glad we found one another among friends, in the wilderness – you know I understand how profoundly lonely this search for an authentic political home can be, and I've appreciated knowing that other good people in similar circles have managed to intuit the profound imbalance and moral contradictions of the strange social contract that's been imposed upon us in the past decade.
I take heart in knowing that most of the finger wagging and tsk tsking aimed at those of us who *cannot* abide by the absurd prescribed woke worldview but who are also obviously not racist, reactionary, hate-mongering troglodytes come either from 1) a place of innocent, well-meaning misunderstanding or 2) performative narcissism. The vast majority falls into the former camp, and if this election has taught us anything, it's that it is high time we all aggressively tune out those in the latter camp, regardless of their political orientation. Marjorie Taylor Greene (and legions of others like her) and Rashida Tlaib (and legions of others like her), to take two egregious examples, are both sloppy, awful, hateful, ugly extremists who should never, ever be taken seriously as voices of political wisdom. Deplorable is deplorable, and to believe you must support one because you hate the other fails to recognize that they are simply opposing sides of a rusty, bent up old coin devoid of value that just needs to go in the trash.
As a man, as a white person, as a Hispanic person, as a gay dude, as an American who's lived much of his adult life abroad, as a Millennial, I've always believed that my own reputation and worth would/should be directly predicated on my character, my attempt at fundamental goodness (however flawed), and my impact—emphatically NOT on some prepackaged notion of what any of those things automatically imply about me. Once you realize that every last one of those laundry list boxes the left is obsessed with sticking everyone into are superficial, artificial, and only marginally consequential, the entire edifice crumbles—and it's shockingly easy to use that short-circuited "As a (insert characteristic here), I believe..." rhetoric against itself. This deeply anti-human obsession serves nobody aside from the shadowy cabal of dark financial interests who are well-served by declining social cohesion, labor markets that depend on suffering and human trafficking, and constant finger wagging by those in the upper middle who have no concept of how ugly, impoverished and indifferent a world they are unwittingly creating via the policies they vote for—it is impossible to really appreciate from inside a safe, affluent blue bubble the sociocultural, economic and geopolitical catastrophes that ideas like unfettered borders, permissive drug policy and a castrated police force actually create in the less protected parts of the country. The second-order suffering unleashed by ivory tower good intentions is almost incalculable! There is simply no legitimate discussion of any bedrock issue most Americans care about, from human rights to civil rights and women's rights, that can derive from a worldview that reduces everyone to adversarial avatars.
In no small way, this trip through the political wilderness (and the wild, incongruous social situations it's put me in!) has taught me more about empathy than I ever knew—it's a paradox I have come to treasure. If you're worried about the response people may have to this piece, take heart knowing that the fever of smugness seems to be breaking: this is simply not a conversation we could have even had a few years ago. Our burden, at this point, is to keep voraciously learning, seeking out uncomfortable perspectives, and sharing them with our friends and neighbors—they know we're good humans, and maybe that will be enough to have better conversations that might just lead to positive change.
A toast to your bravery, Krista!