By Cory Hutchinson
I think to get this story started appropriately, I’d like to start with some facts. First and foremost, my name is Cory Hutchinson and I’ve come a very long way from where I started in life. I never would’ve imagined working in digital marketing on world-renowned brands after graduating from college in three years, but it’s all a labor of love for me. Second and probably most obvious in any physical interaction, I’m a gay cisgender white male. Finally, I was born & raised in Palm Springs, California, which says quite a bit when you’re a gay white male. I know a lot of people hear that and think, “Oh my God, what an ideal place to grow up. It’s so nice & quaint, resort town vibes, this, that, and the other,” and when people that I meet now learn that I’m gay, they’re like, “Ah, what a great place to grow up gay,” and it’s really interesting because it’s actually not a great place to grow up gay, at least in the community & circle that I grew up in.
Where I grew up was pretty conservative, so I went to a Catholic school for the majority of my young life. It was that kind of school where they slapped you on the knuckles for being left-handed, so I didn’t really even know what gay meant until I was in 8th grade and that’s when I developed feelings for a guy in my French class — but seeing as he was straight, he and I were just good friends all throughout high school. Freshman year of high school, I was seeing a therapist because I was moody and angsty as every teenager gets and my mother was supportive in my intention to talk to someone objective by nature. Within few sessions, my therapist figured out that I was gay as we delved into the type of people I was connecting with. I told her about how difficult it was for me to connect with the guys at my school because of how immature they were, except for that guy from my French class, and she had asked me if my feelings were more than just connection there — and she was spot on.
While she was talking about my sexuality with me and trying to help me rationalize it, she also did the one thing I never thought a therapist could do. In a family session, she outed me to my parents as I sat there in horror and shock. It was such a weird experience for everyone because my mom probably thought that I was on drugs or something, but no, it’s that I was gay and I wasn’t talking to anybody because I didn’t know how to say it. So, I thought to myself when it happened, “How does everything change now?” Was I going to change in my fundamental values and beliefs? I’d never been with a guy or had a boyfriend, but I just knew that every time I was with a guy, I got nervous, I got butterflies, I got all the movie feelings that everyone talks about. My parents at first didn’t really have the reaction I’d hoped for because it was a reality shift for them — they had planned my life out which probably included marrying a woman. They were never disappointed in me, but just needed time to adjust to the new reality, and we’re stronger than ever now in our relationship.
Not too soon after that experience, one of my friends had Tweeted to the entire freshman class about my sexuality because I told her in confidence, and I underestimated her desire for popularity by being the center of gossip and attention. Going to school after that was like that horrible dream you have where you’re walking through campus and everyone’s just staring you down and lots of people said horrible things, asked me questions about it, and it just wasn’t a great experience. Both my therapist and my friend were very lucky that I had good people in my life and that I didn’t get beat to death or kicked out of my childhood home because that’s the reality a lot of young LGBTQIA+ people face when they come out in an environment that is so vehemently against who we are. As a result of my privilege in having a solid support system and not being terrorized, even though I did experience many homophobic slurs and glares from the straight jocks like I was their demise, I ended up forgiving my friend for it because young people do stupid shit like that. Although it’s not okay to out somebody ever, I personally felt this sense of relief because everyone just knew now.
So, before I could even understand how I felt with men, I had to already embrace this identity and this sexuality and kind of figure out what it all meant at 14 years old — which is just crazy if you ask me. Eventually, I did just embrace it and I did just go with it without embracing too many stereotypes that everyone had already set up for me because of one simple thought, “What other choice do I have?” As I was looking at the various facets of my life, which friends turned their backs on me after I was outed, which people decided to judge me without knowing me, and what my options were in terms of the dating pool — which were incredibly slim pickings — I just kind of was filled with this sensation of disbelief and decided to channel it into this energy of, “Fuck it, here I am, this is who I am, if I have to be combative just to get through high school, then fine, that’s what I’m going to do.” Embracing this was difficult because, when I was 14 and growing up in a conservative area, there was no such thing as a gay role model in media or movies — at least no one that I would know about given the cultural limitations in my environment. Gay men in entertainment had always been the sassy sidekick, never the lead confronting a powerful inner struggle of determining and accepting sexuality. In this sense, I had to be my own role model by defining the type of person I wanted to be, no matter what my sexuality was, and I used myself as a moral compass to define which battles were worth fighting for when it came to defending who I am.
It wasn’t until college, when I came to L.A. to attend LMU, that I was around people who didn’t ask me what my sexuality was. They didn’t really care what it was, they just were curious about what I was interested in academically and socially and it was truly wonderful to have the chance to sort of reclaim my coming out. Everything was totally organic in my interactions, I would make a new friend or acquaintance and they’d ask me — because we’re all freshmen and curious about who is going to date in the first year — “Well, who are you into,” and I could say “Oh well, I’m into this guy,” with zero questions asked. Instead of just being the token gay in the room like I had been for the last four years, I was suddenly this intellectual who was valued for his difference, opinions, and interests.
It was really powerful to have this moment where I got to say it for once in my life, but I think back on it and feel sort of cheated in it because I was 18 years old, I’d already been so comfortable with it that it wasn’t even hard to say. So, in my head, I would think & even say sometimes, “I’m gay and if you don’t like it, then tough shit, sorry, this is who I am,” obviously in a more polite & eloquent way than that, but that was the theme. I did this because I grew up around a bunch of people who didn’t appreciate it and I’d already lived a lie and “de-gayed” myself to make straight people feel comfortable.
It wasn’t really until my first relationship in college where I got comfortable with myself and with another man in my life and thought, “Wow I don’t really have anxiety about this anymore, my feelings for this person make me feel comfortable just walking down the street holding hands and I don’t care who knows, who doesn’t know, who sees it and freaks out,” because what I learned in my life is that the people who have a problem with it are the people I probably shouldn’t surround myself with — and that’s something that I had learned while I was making friends in college and understood the difference between people who valued my difference and those who saw my difference as an opportunity to “other” me.
When I started to meet other gay people in college, a lot of people that I met were actually outed as well in some way, shape, or form — not necessarily across their entire social circles like mine, but essentially they were outed. It was like, “Wait, I thought that was my thing,” because the few times being gay was addressed in media, they always made it seem so easy and like those characters were happy & free. I always just kind of laughed at the idea of coming out being anything other than miserable because I always thought, “God, if only those writers knew how it really went for some of us.”
Shifting into my work experience as a gay man, I found myself incredibly lucky since I was surrounded by diverse & open-minded individuals. I worked in retail, I did an internship at Variety Magazine, I even did a weird tech stint at ZipRecruiter, and pretty much everyone I worked with was fine with it and it was relieving to not have to confront this dread of, “Oh God, what if I have to turn down a job I want because somebody is a homophobe, because somebody doesn’t like something that I can’t help, this is just who I am,” and that was an unfortunate thought to process at the age of 19.
So, that kind of brings me here to working in media. When I was interviewing for this job, I said to the interviewer, who is now my direct report, “One of the things I’m most proud of in life is that I wrote an article for MTV News about coming out and I published it nationally and I didn’t really care who saw it and I didn’t really care who I exposed or roasted in the article because I wanted people to know about the effect they had on me as a young man,” and luckily for me, he was really supportive and he told me, “You know, this is definitely a place where, if you want to share something like that with everyone, go for it, if you don’t, you don’t have to.”
Yet, with my first six months in media, it wasn’t really something that I just offered up. I would never walk into a room and say, “Oh hi, I’m Cory, I’m new, I’m also gay, nice to meet you.” It’s not something that we should have to say in our conversations where we meet somebody, but you know, definitely meeting a bunch of new people, you can kind of see it in someone’s eyes where they’re looking you up and down, pondering, “Is he…gay” which made me so self-conscious when I started working here. As a result, I found myself a lot of times just dropping a hint so that no one had to ask me what my sexuality was, such as, “Oh yeah this guy I dated…” and I could see them mentally process, “Oh okay got it, gay.”
Luckily, some co-workers I became close with were amazing allies to me, but also just great friends outside of the office. However, there were moments with other co-workers where I had these uncomfortable interactions and I’d find myself thinking, “Is this your first interaction with a gay person or are you genuinely just bad at interacting with people who aren’t straight?” I never had someone say anything outwardly offensive or homophobic, but sometimes the ignorance in the interactions genuinely surprised me, like when someone who I barely knew would say “I bet being gay is why your style is so on point” or “Wow, dating men as a guy must be so easy because you already understand how a man works.” Like, no, my style comes from my mother’s amazing professional and stylish wardrobe and dating men is as confusing whether you’re gay or straight — seriously, what’s up with these men? However, I had to realize that they probably weren’t aware of this slip up and I didn’t quite know how to call it out at the time. I think, now, if it were to happen, I’d be much quicker and more equipped to call it out in a polite and professional way or maybe even playfully tease them and say, “I bet it was so easy for you to get promoted because you’re straight, how fun!”
With my clients, it’s not something that has been discussed since I don’t really share that with my clients outright, but I would if it ever came up. However, I think being part of an employee resource group dedicated to the LGBTQIA+ community, Plus+ as we like to call the group, and getting to know more humans in media that are also out has been really powerful for me because everyone has different stories and that’s why we’re here, able to tell this kind of story. I think it’s beautiful to be able to work in a place where I meet people with like-minded stories and like-minded interests and just feel like I finally belong to a community. I think that longing to belong to a group of people is something I’ve felt my entire life, I always kind of felt like the outsider not only in the heterosexual world, but in the gay world as well. My life consisted heavily of moments where I thought, “Well, fuck, where do I even go from here, I don’t fit in with this gay clubbing scene, I don’t fit in with this theatre crowd. I’m just this weird mix of a surfer, car enthusiast, literature nerd, experimental chef, romance & horror movie binger, and David Lynch fanatic. Where do I end up?”
To round this all out, I feel like coming out and being myself, not only in my personal life, but in my professional life as well, and just being fearless in my identity has really helped me find a place of belonging in multiple areas of my life. Everything related to my coming out goes back to this thing I had heard a lot growing up which was “Why would you choose this for yourself?” When I was younger, I would say, “Why would I choose this for myself, I wouldn’t, I really wouldn’t,” but as I got older and met people who truly cared about me and helped me grow I realized that I would choose this, that this is who I am and I have to learn how to love that. So, I’m learning and loving more with each day that I get.
