By Mike Wong–
Having grown up with a gay older brother in the Bay Area, I have an immediate family that fairly quickly embraced my identity as a gay man, though I had reservations with coming out to my mother’s Catholic family and my father’s conservative Chinese family. I remember having crushes on other boys back in 1984 as a 6-year-old, but I didn’t begin to realize what that meant until I was in sixth grade, and didn’t identify it for myself until I was in high school. I first came out to my best friend in high school, and eventually outed myself to my immediate family and my friends as I started college at UC Berkeley in 1996. This is when my coming out story truly begins.
In a speech a few weeks before he was assassinated, and a few months after I was born, Harvey Milk said: “Every gay person must come out. As difficult as it is, you must tell your immediate family. You must tell your relatives. You must tell your friends if indeed they are your friends. You must tell your neighbors. You must tell the people you work with. You must tell the people in the stores you shop in. And once they realize that we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and for all. And once you do, you will feel so much better.”
I saw that speech in a documentary early on in my college years, but didn’t realize at the time what it would mean personally to me. Sure, I came out to my immediate friends, and went to college groups centered on being queer and the coming out process, in spaces designed for people to be “safely queer.” But I struggled to find my community, as being gay was the only thing many of us had in common. I quickly found myself, as a physics and music double major, living a double life. In my music classes, where being a gay man was almost normative, there were many role models and it was easy to be my more authentic self. But in the physics department, the classic heteronormative and straight-male dominated environment kept me in the closet. Depression hit in, and I began to doubt whether I could be a physics major.
About that time, I joined the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band, as a horn player, and I found a chosen family. Playing music with the first openly-gay musical organization in the world gave me a confidence in my identity that had been sorely lacking. Here was a group of queer people from all walks of life, coming together once a week to cultivate their inner band-geek. This gave me the resolve to continue pursuing my passions, because I had a safe space that supported me.
At this point, it would have been easy to drop the physics major. My physics grades began to suffer, as I self-segregated myself from the toxic masculinity rampant in the study groups of my peers in the physics department, to the point where I dropped out of the major. This turned around when I came out, as a would-be physicist, to one of my gay friends. He remarked, “Wow, having you as a physicist totally makes me break my idea of who could be a physicist.” As I became surer of myself, I began to push back in those physics’ spaces. When someone would say, “That’s so gay!” I would respond, “Thanks!” As my career in the department developed, I became a respected physics student-teacher, and my being an out gay man became part of a culture shift within the department. By the time I graduated, many other gay physicists came out, and we even had a department chair who was a gay man.
My coming out story continues after graduation. Having moved up the ranks to become Drum Major in the Freedom Band, I found myself at another crossroads. My conservative Chinese family had no clue about me being gay, and my first parade as Drum Major was the Chinese New Year Parade. Apprehensive that my father’s cousin, the Rev. Norman Fong, emcees the viewing stand at the parade, I decided to look him in the eye, perform my salute, and boldly march by the viewing stand.
I admittedly don’t know if he recognized me then, but after that, I decided that the Band was the perfect way to come out to the rest of my family. I began to arrange traditional Chinese music for the parade, and prominently put my name in the script for the emcees to read. One of the proudest moments came the next year, when Norman, who energetically read the script, excitedly pronounced, “That’s my relative! Mike Wong, leading the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band,” further pronouncing to the conservative Chinatown crowd how being gay is nothing to be ashamed of, and that he was honored to have the Band under my leadership representing the intersection of our communities.
Now, as Director of the Mathematics and Statistics Program at UC Berkeley’s Student Learning Center, I see how important it is to be my authentic self, to serve as a role model for students coming to the university and exploring their passions and their identities. And, as Artistic Director of the Freedom Band’s Marching and Pep Programs, I find it so important to bring our message to communities that have not as traditionally embraced the LGBTQ+ community. This culminated in participating in Choy Sun Doe Day in Chinatown in 2020, where an older Chinese gentleman, with tears in his eyes, came up to me and remarked how he never thought a gay group would be so prominent in Chinatown. It’s why it is so important for me to be out and gay in every aspect of my life, because you never know when being your authentic self can be so important to the lives of others.
Mike Wong is the Director of the Mathematics and Statistics Program at UC Berkeley’s Student Learning Center and is the Artistic Director of the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band’s Marching and Pep Programs.
Published on June 10, 2021
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