#(​secure in the knowledge that Daniel doesn’t know tumblr exists because he didn’t know what quora is)

[rickybaby]

Daniel during the drivers’ press conference | Spanish Grand Prix 2024 | Photo by Andrea Diodato/NurPhoto

[mooksie01]

So Daniel Howell just came out...

....and I’ve cried three separate times since I finished the video.

I found Dan and Phil in 2013 when I was just barely figuring out that I was queer. I was young and stupid and scared to death by the prospect that I wasn’t straight after being raised in a conservative Christian household. I didn’t experience bullying to the same degree as Dan did (likely because I’m female, and although sexism is shit, that is one area in which we are more privileged), but I was very familiar with microaggressions, and my first experiences with the word “gay” were also negative, despite growing up a decade later than Dan, and, like Dan, I spent many nights staying up, pleading with God to fix whatever was wrong with me, to give me guidance, or, at the very least, not to send me to Hell for being the way that I was afraid to be, but that I knew I was. 

It was almost Christmas when I found the pinof videos, and I watched them all, then watched them all again, and my mom called up to make sure that I was okay, because my laughing has always sounded suspiciously like crying, and I was laughing so hard that they basically became one in the same. From there, I immersed myself deeply in the phandom with a single-minded sort-of obsession. I was a young queer with no community to speak of. I was extremely new to tumblr. I hadn’t been connected with anyone in the LGBTQ+ community. When I later started presenting as openly queer at my school, I was the first one I knew who had. The phan shipping community was honestly the first time I ever interacted with other queer folks and other people who were accepting of queer folks (though I do now know that that community was, unfortunately, rather evenly divided between young queers projecting and straight women fetishizing, but that’s a whole other issue), and while I now know that that community did a lot of stuff that was problematic, I was also impressionable and desperate for ANY KIND of representation--even representation that wasn’t real. It’s a reason a lot of people got into that community.

Dan and Phil gave young, queer, baby me people to look up to. Of course, neither of them were out as anything, but their community was LGBTQ+ friendly, and I joined their phandom at a time when some past drama was calming down. As far as I or anyone else knew, Dan and Phil were straight (shout-out to the heteronormative society), but their attitudes and opinions toward LGBTQ+ issues and gender issues were welcoming, and their brand of masculinity was something I had never encountered--their security, even as underdeveloped as it was at the time (it would only get better and more safe-feeling from there) was awe-inspiring to me. They may not have been queer to my knowledge, but they made me and other queers feel safe. Their community exposed me to other LGBTQ+ people for the first time. 

I don’t know where I’d be today if I’d never found Dan and Phil. While I now look back on some of the shit that the phan shipping community did, and the things that I did, and I cringe pretty hard, I also acknowledge that finding that community was a landmark moment. Finding Dan and Phil was a monument on my life’s path. Because, without them, I don’t know if I would be open and happy now. I came out to my parents this past summer. I’ve been open in school since the eighth grade. I graduated recently and I bought and wore a rainbow cord. Maybe all of those things still would have happened without them, but I can never know that. What I do know is that, in this timeline where I found Dan and Phil when I did, those things happened, on a fundamental, over-simplified level, because I found Dan and Phil. They weren’t out, but neither was I, and they were welcoming and warm and new and they made me feel safe to explore my queer identity, and it is because of that safe exploration that I am who I am today, six years later. 

I literally cannot express what an impact Dan and Phil have had on my life. It seems odd that two random internet celebrities likely changed my existence. It doesn’t seem like something that should happen. But it did. I live in America, and my financial situation is of the sort where I will likely go my entire life without meeting Dan or Phil, but if I did, I don’t know how I’d ever be able to tell them all that I feel like I need to--all that I want to. 

Dan just came out. Phil low-key did the same in a retweet. And it shouldn’t matter, because they’re just two random dudes on the internet whom I’ll likely never meet, and Dan has a good point when he says that the fact that he needs to talk about it is disappointing, but, and I’m sorry for saying this, it does matter. It matters so much to me. Because it would have mattered so much to a young, queer version of myself--praying to God to fix her, worrying that her parents would hate her if they knew--if only she could see this moment, six years later, when the people who would end up being partially responsible for her comfort in her sexuality would also be out and visible in the world. 

Dan is right. Sexuality shouldn’t matter, and knowing someone’s sexuality shouldn’t be such a big deal, but because of the way the world is, it is. My experience wasn’t great. Dan’s was worse. And it is because of visible queer people in the world that my pain was lessened as compared to Dan’s about a decade earlier. And with every queer person that comes out--every person that other young queers find comfort in or see themselves in--that’s another role model. Visibility breeds safety. Visibility breeds change and progress and social reform, and yes. Coming out shouldn’t have to matter. But it does. It matters so much. Dan’s video will likely be another defining moment in my life, and it’s weird, because he’s a stranger. But he’s a stranger that I looked up to when I was little and scared and so, so gay. And the fact that he is where he is now, working on improving his life and overcoming his trauma, and also simultaneously so, so queer, and improving the world through his visibility... what that means to me is something I’ll never be able to fully express. 

So, to Dan, if he ever reads this, and to Phil as well, because his coming-out was much quieter, but still there: thank you. You’ve both changed my life in ways you couldn’t imagine, and I’m sure you hear that all of the time, but if I never meet you, I just need you to know. 

Daniel Howell just came out, I’ve now cried four times since I saw the video, and I am also so, so glad that he didn’t make an irreversible decision when he was also young and scared, because I don’t know where I’d be without him, and he deserves the happiness he has now.