Guillaume Cizeron interview on coming out | Golden Skate

Guillaume Cizeron interview on coming out

peepsquick

Final Flight
Joined
Oct 26, 2016
ETA: Many thanks to Peepsquick for these translations originally posted in the Papadakis and Cizeron Fan Fest, and to Spot for providing the original text!
They have been copied here by staff as this news is also of interest for the wider skating community.

https://tetu.com/2020/05/26/guillau...-dans-le-patinage-mais-pas-autant-quon-croit/

Original Post:

Ok, everybody ... it took me longer than I thought it would. I translated quickly, so it is not perfect. Feel free to amend, if you want.
But most of all ... enjoy!

Têtu: So, you recently posted a photo of you with another man. Is this your coming out?

Guillaume: It was rather funny to see how people reacted to this photograph. Before this publication, I didn’t consider myself as being in the closet, so it is not a real coming out. I never took a public stance on my sexual orientation as I don’t think that it should be required that members of my community do so. Heterosexuals do not have to come out publicly as such. But there were certainly many people who didn’t wonder about my sexual orientation and who then learned about it. I did hesitate a bit before going ahead. Because I am not in the habit of talking about really intimate aspects of my life. I don’t really know what came over me, I just thought: “What do I have to lose really?” (missing some text here …)

Têtu: It was not random to post this on May 17th, was it?

Guillaume: True. I chose to publish it on the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia. I thought that because I live in Montreal, one of the best places to live as a member of the LGBT community, it is easy to forget that it is not as easy to fit in everywhere in Canada and in other countries, even in France. Taking a public stance is helping others. Over the last months I talked to a number of people of the LGBT community, some of them activists who told me in several instances how much of an impact my involvement could have.
What has been holding me back was that I had the conviction that I shouldn’t have to come out. It seems to me that gay athletes are well-known for being gay. I don’t want to be known as the ice skater who is gay but as the ice skater who wins medals. But I do think that there is still hard work to be done to help change behaviors in the right direction. I am considering being more involved in this cause in the future. May be simply by offering to be spokesperson for an association. Nothing definite for now.

Têtu: How did people react to your post?

Guillaume: I was rather surprised to see many positive comments, it was really nice. Still there were about 200 to 300 people who stopped following me out of 84 000.

Têtu: Were the people close to you in the know?

Guillaume: Of course, I had told all the people close to me already. Years ago. My family is very tolerant and accepting of me, have always been. Everybody who knows me is aware. So only the public at large wasn’t informed yet. My coming out to my parents was not a big deal at all. I didn’t invite them all together for this big reveal. I told my parents when I was 18 at a Christmas party. They were happy that I trusted them enough to confide in them. They were a little sad that they had not been able to support sooner. My two older sisters were told sooner as were some close friends, individually. Generally speaking, I never treated it as a coming out. It happened mostly on occasions where I would introduce a boyfriend. (…missing text)

Têtu: Basically, the way you finally did it on May 17. Does it mean you are in a serious relationship?

Guillaume: The most serious until now. Otherwise I would never have made a show of my private life. We live together. He is French but that’s about what I am willing to reveal about him as I want to respect his privacy. What I can say is that he is 33 and that we have now been together for more than three years.

Têtu: Did the Figure Skating world help you to come to your own?

Guillaume: It is probably easier for me than it would be for a hockey player or a football player because it is after all also an artistic environment which is generally speaking very open-minded. There are gays in Figure Skating, just not as many as clichés make it out to be. There is this cliché of the gay figure skater. Sure, there are some gay figure skaters but there are also a lot of heteros. This said, I always felt rather free and welcomed in my sport’s environment. I never encountered hate there. It was rather in the school environment that I would have trouble.

Têtu: You have been skating since you were a child. Were people on the ice with you aware of this part of you?

Guillaume: Gabriella (the other half of this illustrious duo) and I have skated together since we were 9, so she knew before anybody else. One of my coaches, Romain Hagenauer, who has been my trainer since I was 17, he knew in my opinion. He is also gay. He was always for me someone to look up to. He was the first gay adult in my closer circle. He has been an important person for me, a sort of compass, a role model. I have learned to accept and love my femininity, a big part of who I am. It was there for all to see, but I was never bullied for it in my Figure Skating environment.

Têtu: It was obviously different at school?

Guillaume: I was bullied a lot at school. For me, as for many others, school is unfortunately the place where I was hurt most. From beginning to end, up to highschool, I have been shoved, insulted, spat at. Some people were tolerant and others less so. Not many people fought for me, for sure. And neither did I fight for myself.

Têtu: You started collecting medals as soon as Middle School. Did it somehow help bolster your self-confidence?

Guillaume: It’s only always a small number of people who cause trouble. It did help incrementally because then I ended up winning the French Championship and then the European Championship and the World Championship. In Middle School there were some expressions of respect from certain people that balanced out the jibes. I was a very shy kid, lacking self-confidence, so it helped me to know that I was good at something. Thanks to Figure Skating and my success with my partner, I gained some recognition.

Têtu: Your programs with your partner, Gabriella Papadakis, often show hints of sensuality. Is it more complicated, when you are attracted to men?

Guillaume: It is a challenge in the sense that it requires a performing skill, a role that is part of the programs. For the longest time, the problem was that I could not endorse my femininity on the ice and be myself. This sport is after all very coded with ‘a man and a woman’. The judges are mostly older and not very progressive. You have to accept that. It is part of the game. But I slowly took the liberty to dance in programs that offered me other roles than the traditional macho one. Because very often the masculine role is that of the frame to showcase the woman. And to showcase her, you have to create a contrast, enhancing the macho side of masculinity. To change that is an uphill battle, and Gabriella was always a great support. We are both longing for freedom. She was just as annoyed as I was by the limitations. We still have programs where we play masculine and feminine roles. It doesn’t bother us, because it is also a performance. But I still want to play other roles than a man’s. For instance, roles that are more fraternal, contemporary, where we are simply two souls, interpreting love, from human being two human being. I managed to free myself of the constraint when I realized that it was just a role: I took the liberty to be myself and embrace my feminine side.

Têtu: Did well-known people have an impact on this feminine part of you, which we recognize when you dance?

Guillaume: I never really had LGBT role models, unlike the younger generations (even if I am only 25 years old), who have many more. When I was younger it was still taboo. There were nevertheless a few artists who inspired me, and I would look up to, like Yves St Laurent or Robert Mapplethorpe. But until I was 15, I didn’t know of many and didn’t own a laptop or a cell phone. And then, LGBT people had less visibility than today. Even if it’s just my own experience. Sure, there was Madonna, Lady Gaga: when I was about 15, I took comfort to hear people like them. My mother and both my sisters were dancing, so I never asked myself if I should dance or not. To me, it was vital. You know Billy Elliot? I had the same need to express myself. It was my favorite movie. It made me feel normal. But to see boys dance never struck me as forbidden. In my figure skating club, there were 3 boys for 50 girls. There are so few boys that it makes them special: you need 2 to dance and you need boys. As soon as there is one, he is fought over by the trainers.

Têtu: You took part in the 2018 Olympic Games where you won a silver medal. Does the atmosphere in the Olympic village live up to his sexy reputation?

Guillaume: I was already living with my chum (‘boyfriend’ in Québécois), so I didn’t experience it personally, but I witnessed it. It doesn’t happen as much as that. May be the Summer Games are hotter than the Winter Games. I didn’t witness much hanky panky, let’s say, but rumors are rampant in the French Team. Hundreds of athletes between 22 and 23 in the same place! But I won’t tattle tell.
 
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peepsquick

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Oct 26, 2016
Open letter from Guillaume

https://www.instagram.com/p/CAzbLFKj2ec/

“I had the feeling that I was different.”

“Are you a boy or a girl?”, my classmates used to ask me when I was a child. Followed usually by laughs and jibes from other students. Was I a girl or a boy? That question didn’t really strike me as outlandish. Very young, I remember wondering about my identity, my gender identity. I remember very clearly confronting my mother: “Mom, am I a girl or a boy?”
Of course, I was not yet able to understand my questioning or to put it into words, but I had the feeling that I was different. Different from the other boys. I was terrified by the idea of having been born with the wrong body, I didn’t learn until much later that I could be gay, I only thought that something was wrong with me. I don’t want to encourage stereotypes, but I was always more inclined to play with dolls, to play dress up and play with make-up. I quickly discovered that boys “should” not play with Barbie dolls. So, I stopped doing it. I would sit on the bed and watch my sisters dress their dolls.
In Elementary school, I was very often alone, I didn’t want to play soccer with the boys and some days, my friends who were girls wanted to stay among themselves. So, I sat in a corner, neither girl nor boy, somewhere in between, desperately wishing for the bell to announce the end of recess. In Middle School I spent many a recess in the restrooms, hiding from bullies or to avoid the humiliation of being alone. I was an extremely shy boy and terribly sensitive, I almost never reacted to slurs. (.... had to remove the slurs to be able to post in this forum) and many more. These slurs would punctuate my everyday life and soon became this little toxic litany in the back of my mind. The dark secret bred by intimidation is that you get used to it. You get used to violence. It becomes your new normal. And very often you end up thinking that you deserve it. Those like me who came to believe that they didn’t deserve it are forever in a battle with this version of themselves shaped by others.
At times, to this day, I catch myself suppressing some of my behaviors, mimics or words, out of embarrassment or fear to displease. I have now been working for several years on myself, trying to rediscover and accept the parts of me that I had to hide, bury, suppress. Every human being has a part of masculinity and femininity, like it or not. Personally, I cultivate and celebrate both, in life and on the ice. These two energies are very complementary, and I enjoy drawing from one or the other, depending on each specific role on the ice.
Why talk about it today, you will ask? I have been pondering that question for some months now, and after discussing it with some of the people closest to me, I came to realize that if talking about it were to make a difference, even for a single person, and help them love and accept who they are, then it would be worth it.
Today, in spite of huge advances on the road towards tolerance, the fight is far from over.
I consider that my silence would not help the cause and would be construed as indifference more than
taking a stance. Even if my conviction is that real tolerance would mean not having to come out, just as heterosexuals never have to talk about their sexual orientation.
In an ideal world, nobody would have to justify their sexual or romantic proclivities. As somebody I am very fond of once told me: “You deserve to be loved. Just because you exist.”
Everyone deserves love and dignity, independent of who they identify with, man, woman or neither, independent of who they are attracted to, a man, a woman or both. We just want to be able to live peacefully with the respect, love and rights that we deserve. But in the meantime, I would like that all those who recognize themselves in what I wrote, know that they are not alone. The way we are treated doesn’t have to define who we are going to be or the success we are going to encounter. Preserving one’s dignity and cultivating one’s inner richness are essential.
 
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el henry

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What a touching and thoughtful interview by Guillaume, as well as his Instagram post.

"These slurs would punctuate my everyday life and soon became this little toxic litany in the back of my mind. The dark secret bred by intimidation is that you get used to it. You get used to violence. It becomes your new normal. And very often you end up thinking that you deserve it":sad21:

and why he is now public:" I have been pondering that question for some months now, and after discussing it with some of the people closest to me, I came to realize that if talking about it were to make a difference, even for a single person, and help them love and accept who they are, then it would be worth it.":clap:

Bravo, Guillaume!
 

WeakAnkles

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And in other shocking news...Water Is Still Wet!

I mean, I'm glad he officially came out, but geez, took him long enough. And I say that as a gay man who came out at 17 during the height of the AIDS crisis.

And why is it that when anyone portrays a character who is of a different sexual orientation it's automatically newsworthy? I mean I got so sick and tired of hearing how 'brave" it was for straight actors to play gay (even though in most cases the roles were pure Oscar bait). Acting is acting is acting. The genders may be different, but the emotions are the same. Wouldn't it be a nice change of pace if people considered that we're human first, and everything else is secondary?

Ok, I'm done with this soap box if anyone needs it.
 

karne

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I mean, I'm glad he officially came out, but geez, took him long enough. And I say that as a gay man who came out at 17 during the height of the AIDS crisis.

All I read when I read this is "I did it this way, so it's the only right way, and anyone who doesn't do it that way is wrong."

I mean, good for you that you came out when you did at the age you did. Guillaume is not obligated to come out on your schedule. No-one is.

And saying things like "finally" or "took long enough" is playing to stereotypes.
 

Skatesocs

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I like how lyrical his writing is; it reflects his skating in a way. Or maybe it's the translator's way of showing appreciation for Cizeron ;)

All I read when I read this is "I did it this way, so it's the only right way, and anyone who doesn't do it that way is wrong."

I didn't take his age as the operative there, to me it was "height of the AIDS crisis". I don't care when Cizeron came out or if he should at all, but I can see why a gay man who grew up and came out in far less privileged circumstances than were afforded to Cizeron who has been a top athlete for years now would think that way.
 

kolyadafan2002

Fan of Kolyada
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And in other shocking news...Water Is Still Wet!

I mean, I'm glad he officially came out, but geez, took him long enough. And I say that as a gay man who came out at 17 during the height of the AIDS crisis.

And why is it that when anyone portrays a character who is of a different sexual orientation it's automatically newsworthy? I mean I got so sick and tired of hearing how 'brave" it was for straight actors to play gay (even though in most cases the roles were pure Oscar bait). Acting is acting is acting. The genders may be different, but the emotions are the same. Wouldn't it be a nice change of pace if people considered that we're human first, and everything else is secondary?

Ok, I'm done with this soap box if anyone needs it.

This is honestly malicious. I know you probably didn't intend for it to be, but it is very negative thing to comment. He is on the world stage and already disliked by many Russian officials (Not all, but a number) for having a different non-traditional ice dance style, and it was brave of him to come out (which the said people would dislike further - talking about certain Russian officials not Russians in general).
You thought it newsworthy to post that you came out at 17. Yet you judge this article. This article is an interview with a famous person - and would have been published regardless of the content.
I don't see any articles at all about how it was brave for a straight man to play gay, or vice versa. This was asking if it was difficult to get into character etc, not stating it was brave.

I am friends with people who are gay, and they are glad to see one of their Idols come out. It gives them confidence.

I don't think you should be jealous of Guillaume.
 

ladyjane

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Great interview with Guillaume. Courageous and it also shows him as a really nice person. I'm happy for him that he's in a serious relationship too.
 

WeakAnkles

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This is honestly malicious. I know you probably didn't intend for it to be, but it is very negative thing to comment. He is on the world stage and already disliked by many Russian officials (Not all, but a number) for having a different non-traditional ice dance style, and it was brave of him to come out (which the said people would dislike further - talking about certain Russian officials not Russians in general).
You thought it newsworthy to post that you came out at 17. Yet you judge this article. This article is an interview with a famous person - and would have been published regardless of the content.
I don't see any articles at all about how it was brave for a straight man to play gay, or vice versa. This was asking if it was difficult to get into character etc, not stating it was brave.

I am friends with people who are gay, and they are glad to see one of their Idols come out. It gives them confidence.

I don't think you should be jealous of Guillaume.


I don't think you should assume you know how I feel. That's horribly malicious. In fact, this entire post strikes me as nothing but malice.
 

kolyadafan2002

Fan of Kolyada
Final Flight
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I don't think you should assume you know how I feel. That's horribly malicious. In fact, this entire post strikes me as nothing but malice.

I think I should probably be honest.
"the friends" in this case refers to me. As a gay man, I am happy to have people like Guillueme "come out".

He was always my idol when I was skating, and it makes me feel good he came out. And then I see people complain that he didn't "come out earlier" or that their was no point to it, or that it is being featured in a magazine.
I personally don't feel comfortable coming out. And I'm sure Guillueme didn't. To see the articles like this feels encouraging. To see responses like yours feel the opposite. Saying things like "It took him long enough" is honestly a horrible thing to say. Everybody is ready at different points in their lives, and people should not feel bad remaining in the closet for any period of time.
 

icestorm

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Dec 23, 2019
I can't understand why is Russia mentioned 3 times in the post about Cizeron's coming out. Is he Russian now?
 

peepsquick

Final Flight
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Oct 26, 2016
And in other shocking news...Water Is Still Wet!

I mean, I'm glad he officially came out, but geez, took him long enough. And I say that as a gay man who came out at 17 during the height of the AIDS crisis.

And why is it that when anyone portrays a character who is of a different sexual orientation it's automatically newsworthy? I mean I got so sick and tired of hearing how 'brave" it was for straight actors to play gay (even though in most cases the roles were pure Oscar bait). Acting is acting is acting. The genders may be different, but the emotions are the same. Wouldn't it be a nice change of pace if people considered that we're human first, and everything else is secondary?

Ok, I'm done with this soap box if anyone needs it.

I don't think that Guillaume felt the need to come out officially. He's been out to the people who know him since he was 18 (Gabi knew even before). He was not hiding it by any means and was rather surprised that it was considered a coming out. He doesn't consider it as newsworthy but for the fact that it might help people struggling with what they are going through. He is a private man and considers that nobody should need to lay out their sexual identity because it shouldn't be a requirement for anyone. Like you (and Guillaume)say, people should be seen as human beings first. As for the acting, his struggle is with himself and in some way the somewhat narrow expectation in the sport to portray traditional roles.
And no ...:), I didn't make a "poetic" translation of Gui's words. He is pretty sensitive and like most individuals who made difficult experiences growing up, the "hurt" is never far away.
 

WeakAnkles

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I don't think that Guillaume felt the need to come out officially. He's been out to the people who know him since he was 18 (Gabi knew even before). He was not hiding it by any means and was rather surprised that it was considered a coming out. He doesn't consider it as newsworthy but for the fact that it might help people struggling with what they are going through. He is a private man and considers that nobody should need to lay out their sexual identity because it shouldn't be a requirement for anyone. Like you (and Guillaume)say, people should be seen as human beings first. As for the acting, his struggle is with himself and in some way the somewhat narrow expectation in the sport to portray traditional roles.
And no ...:), I didn't make a "poetic" translation of Gui's words. He is pretty sensitive and like most individuals who made difficult experiences growing up, the "hurt" is never far away.

Thank you. I also found his remarks about gender and gender expectations far far more interesting and on point than the fact that he "came out"--when he was never all that much "in" in the first place.

And thank you for the translation. He's very articulate.
 

Ulrica

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Good for him! That was very courageous of him, happy pride month everyone! ♡
 

4everchan

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Guillaume said he did come out to his peeps at 18....and for the rest, I feel exactly like him (rare I agree with him lol)... why the need to come out? sexuality is none of anyone's business, straight people do not flaunt their heterosexuality all over ... so why would we, gay people have to do so? and then... well, there you are : with all the racism, homophobia, discrimination this world is still filled with, people who have the opportunity to open minds should take it. As a Montreal guy, I don't really need to do anything as minds are open here and I don't reach an international crowd.. but he does... so why not?
 

jersey1302

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the most surprising is the 2-300 people that stopped following him.. I always just assumed he was gay because you can just tell. I find it a bit comedic that others thought he was straight to begin with. Its very bothersome that he was bullied in school and treated that way. I'm happy that he is in a place that is so supportive and he can be himself and not feel any regret, shame or that feeling that he cant be himself.
 
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