Anthony Bowens is talking coming out for the second time.
Back in March of 2017, the professional wrestler came out as bisexual. Then earlier this month, the athlete and YouTuber came out again. This time, as gay.
“It’s on to a new year, a new journey and, apparently, a new label,” says the hunky 28-year-old.
“The main purpose of this video is to tell everybody that I prefer to be labeled now as gay,” he begins. In advance of the reactions he’s bracing for, Bowens admits, “There’s going to be ‘thank you, it’s great that you’re being open and honest and we love you,’ there’s going to be the ‘well, we knew that,’ and there’s going to be the ‘bi now gay later’ people.”
Now in an interview with Gay Times Magazine, Bowens is talking about where his mind and heart were when he made that second announcement.
“Around six or seven months ago, I was developing a new wrestling character, so I started to go over all the media work I’ve done over the past couple of years, and each article would describe me as ‘the bisexual pro wrestler’ and at the time, when I first came out two years ago, I felt that label was what closest represented me,” says Bowens. “Reading it in the current day, it just didn’t seem to fit anymore. As the months went on, I started to feel a lot stronger about that label.”
Bowens admits that he was worried how the public would feel about him after knowing him for so long as a bisexual man.
“I didn’t want them to think I was turning my back on anything, but I did want people to understand that as you get older your views of the world and your views of yourself change,” he said. “I’m sure anybody who’s looked back on their younger self, they can all recognize a difference in the way they think, and I definitely notice a difference. The closest thing that I want to be referred to as now is gay.”
Now, Bowens says that he’s happy and has been treated well by friends and strangers who heard the announcement.
“They like the fact that I can openly be myself,” he adds. “I’m not gonna sit here and say that homophobia is completely gone, because I’m sure it still exists, but it’s kind of contained now because people know if they are to say something they shouldn’t there will be a lot of negative backlash. We have a lot of support in this industry.”
He then added:
“There needs to be more openly LGBTQ athletes so we can normalize everything,” says the handsome jock. “And as time goes on I think that will slowly happen, but only if we have more representation.”
You can read the entire Gay Times Magazine interview with Anthony Bowens here.
h/t: Gay Times Magazine
Wow. Really handsome!
Wow. Really handsome!