Chef, author and business owner Brendan Pang shares his experience coming out publicly and the overwhelming support he received from the Australian community.
Transcript:
[Brendan Pang]: Quite early on in life, I really struggled with my mental health because of not being confident in who I was, in terms of my sexuality and sexual orientation.But as I grew and understood more about who I was and became proud of who I was, things started to change for me.
My name is Brendan Pang. I’m a Perth cook, author and business owner of Bumplings which is a dumpling kitchen. My personal journey as a Chinese-Mauritian-Australian gay man, has been quite complex. Very challenging actually.
I’ve always known that I was gay, but I think for me it’s more about when I was ready to share that with the rest of the world. I think the biggest thing for me was the pressure that I put on myself. I thought people would react differently to how they did. When I came out at around 24, mum was like, I’ve always known but I wanted it to come from you, and I support you no matter what.
Letting the public in on my journey was challenging, I mean I was on TV and a lot of it played out on social media. It’s quite a scary space but the support I’ve received from the community since coming out has been like overwhelming, to be honest.
Equal opportunity for all regardless of sexual orientation or gender resonates for me. Not being judged by how you act or who you are at school. Believe in being in a workplace that is open and inclusive of all people.
Just having that deep understanding that people can be different and regardless of their sexual orientation or gender, that it’s really important to accept who they are.
I know for me I had such a strong and supportive community, but for other young people out there they might not have that. But I think my biggest piece of advice is to reach out. There is a community out there that will support you.
Brendan Pang discusses why equality of opportunity for all regardless of sexual orientation or gender is an important Australian value.
Learn about the Australian values.
This post is also available in: 简体中文 (Chinese (Simplified)) 繁體中文 (Chinese (Traditional)) Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese) العربية (Arabic)