Bowen Yang Had Conversion Therapy As A Teenager

You probably know that Bowen is openly gay, but when he was young there were some early struggles in coming out in his family.

in Interview and todayWillie Geist, the comedian and actor, scheduled to air tomorrow, revealed that his parents had received conversion therapy for him as a teenager. Conversion therapy is Currently prohibited In 23 US states, including Colorado, the state he grew up in, and in Washington, DC.

Bowen explained that his parents gave him an ultimatum. If he received conversion therapy, he would be allowed to attend New York University and live with his sister in New York. “These poor people didn’t realize it was one of the most gay schools in the country,” he laughed. “I knew I had to live there.”

“And I humored the humour to see what it was, without knowing that playing together was extremely painful and harmful,” he said. “And there was a lot of healing that happened afterwards.”

Bowen also explained that he hadn’t come out that directly to his parents. It just happened to be “stumbling over something and “Oh, I didn’t realize that this was something we were dealing with. “It was like their concept. And I give them a lot of grace because I don’t have a context for it.”

Bowen also described his identity as a strange person as “really making him work” before his parents knew. “I probably didn’t have the courage to express it or package it in a way that they could understand,” he explained. It was It’s completely alien to them. ”

“Identity is really a whimsical thing,” he added. “It’s not something you reached until you reached far after life. I really didn’t know who I was two years ago.”