Fri. September 18, 2026
CHICAGO, ILL. -
By Michael Oboza, Special to GoPride.com
During my last year as a volunteer photojournalist, I made it my intention to help recognize everyday legends in our intersectional LGBTQ community. I am grateful to acknowledge a changemaker, history maker, and founding member.
Thank you, Jed Dulanas, for your time, legacy, and wisdom about the Japanese proverb of the three faces.
According to this wisdom, the first face is the public persona you show to "coworkers, neighbors, and society." Your second face is reserved for "close friends, confidants, family, and chosen family." Finally, your third face represents "your inner, true self that only we know and no one else sees."
For many queer people, the concept of the three faces is not merely an abstract metaphor, but a lived experience shaped by survival.
"I spent childhood and early teens learning about myself and eventually coming out to myself in high school," Dulanas recalled. "This is my Third Face coming out."
Taking that step internally was only the beginning of a cautious journey toward sharing himself with others. As a high school junior, he took a tentative first step into the outside world.
"I told two friends I could trust with this secret in my junior year," he said. "It was kind of a relief, but it was also stressful worrying that other people would find out. I was worried about the social and economic repercussions that would happen if I came out. I wasn't financially independent."
That balance began to shift as he reached young adulthood, influenced by culture and media that made queer joy visible.
"Eventually, in my third year of college, I came out to more friends," he explained. "I watched 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,' 'Will & Grace,' and other shows that portrayed happy, confident gay men, and I wanted that happiness for myself. Eventually I told some family members."
Yet even as he shared his identity with loved ones, the workplace demanded a separate mask.
"This is my Second Face coming out," he said. "At work, I never really came out. I passed for straight and I let coworkers treat me as that so that I could achieve financial independence. It felt like a double life. I had to keep coming up with half-truths every Monday to make small talk. I had to remember what lies about my personal life I told to keep my financial stability safe."
Protecting that stability meant keeping walls firmly in place until he transitioned out of that corporate career entirely.
"My First Face never really came out to coworkers until I left that career and was working in the gay bars," Dulanas said. "I just didn't think my main career was entitled to know my full, real self. Also, a lot of time had passed and I just didn't have the mental energy to do this work with them if it could create a hostile work environment. I would suffer, not them."
The psychological toll of maintaining those separate personas was exhausting.
"So yeah, life before coming out was lots of secrets, anxiety, aspirational desires, and compartmentalization of identities," he said. "I used to joke with coworkers in the gay bars that I was living double, triple lives with different identities. A Double Agent, Double Asian. It was kind of hard to keep track of. It was a lot of mental and emotional work!"
Stepping behind the bar brought a refreshing sense of alignment where his public and private selves could finally meet.
"The First Face was definitely out at the gay bars," he remembered. "I didn't have to do all that mental work of keeping track of all the stories and professional personas. I could be more myself, I could let more of that inner self be outward facing. That inner face could be all the faces I show."
That desire for belonging and genuine self-expression fueled his community organizing. In 2005, Dulanas became a co-founder of Invisible to Invincible, an organization created to support Asian and Pacific Islander LGBTQ individuals.
"That was one of my goals for being a founding member of Invisible to Invincible (i2i) in 2005," he said. "I wanted to help create a community for queer Asians to be themselves. When I met other queer Asians, I didn't feel so alone. There are some similarities in our experiences that we can bond over and support each other in. I also wanted a space where queer Asians could meet each other and organize around social justice issues that affected them."
Chicago had social gathering spots, but Dulanas saw the need for an intentional, politically engaged community.
"At the time, there wasn't really a safe space or community for Asians to do that," he explained. "We had the bars and Asians and Friends Chicago (AFC), but on their own it wasn't enough of what I wanted. So I helped steer the creation of i2i into this type of community that I wanted to exist."
The collective impact went beyond local fellowship, building solidarity with wider civil rights movements.
"I'm so proud and happy that the organization had capacity to support the struggle for Black lives for a time," he said. "It's what I had hoped for."
Looking back across decades of progress and backlash, Dulanas noted that wisdom is often forged in the midst of ongoing challenges.
"It's very easy to take rights and privileges for granted," he said. "In hindsight, I see that lots of environmental conditions made it easier to come out. Laws, court decisions, and societal norms changed to destigmatize being queer. Sure, I also took initiative to demand a better life and create community that I wanted, but I did take it all for granted."
Today, the political landscape feels much harsher and more precarious.
"But now we're going backwards," he warned. "The Trump era has reminded me that we have to constantly demand a better life and continuously fight for it. Society won't just give you rights and freedoms because you exist; you have to take it. You have to create and make the family and community you want in life. And once you have it, you have to continuously fight to keep it. Unfortunately, most of us queer people don't get a chance to relax and live that soft life we see on our screens."
Despite those hurdles, Dulanas finds purpose in community resilience.
"But I think that a lot of joy, happiness, and meaning can be found in the struggle," he said. "We can learn a lot from the Black struggle to survive in America. I really like this concept from the Black Panthers of Survival Pending Revolution: Prioritize survival while building community and laying the groundwork to accomplish the structural changes in society to finally be free. It's kind of how I've been living lately."
That reality has required a familiar armor to return in day-to-day professional life.
"It's sad, since Trump got back into office, I've kind of let myself go back into the closet in the professional space," Dulanas shared. "I let coworkers and other people think that I'm straight. I tell half-truths about my personal life again. I pass to survive while quietly building community."
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