Coming out
"Coming out of the closet" (very often shortened to "coming out" in winking reference to the public introduction of debutantes) describes the voluntary public announcement of one's (often homosexual or bisexual) sexual orientation, gender identity, or paraphilia.
Being "out" means not concealing these characteristics. Being "outed" refers to having these characteristics made public typically against one's wishes or without one's consent. "Outing" is the process of deliberately disclosing these characteristics of another who presumably wants to keep this information private.
People who stay in the closet
Some people who identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer, or who might prefer same-gender sexual activities or relationships, have engaged in heterosexual activities or have had long-term heterosexual relationships, including marriage. (Well known examples include Elton John and the late Leslie Cheung.) Such apparently "heterosexual" behavior by people who would otherwise consider themselves gay or lesbian has often been part of being "in the closet," to create an illusion for acceptance by heterosexual surroundings. (They are to be distinguished from "Out" bisexuals in long-term heterosexual relationships.)
Others who are "in the closet" have no heterosexual contact and simply want to protect themselves from discrimination or rejection by not revealing their sexual orientation or attractions (see pronoun game below). This practice may be becoming less common as acceptance of homosexuality increases, although there has been a recent and ongoing rise in the number of men on the "down-low" or "DL" (this means they may be straight, married, or simply gay but feel very strongly against anyone knowing about their business).
History
The idea of coming out was introduced in 1869 by the German homosexual rights advocate Karl Heinrich Ulrichs as a means of emancipation. Realizing that invisibility was a major obstacle toward changing public opinion, he urged homosexuals themselves to come out.
In his 1906 work Das Sexualleben unserer Zeit in seinen Beziehungen zur modernen Kultur (The Sexual Life of Our Time in its Relation to Modern Civilization) Iwan Bloch, a German-Jewish physician, besought elderly homosexuals to come out to their heterosexual family members and acquaintances.
Magnus Hirschfeld revisited the topic in his major work The Homosexuality of Men and Women (1914), discussing the social and legal potentials of several thousand men and women of rank coming out to the police in order to influence legislators and public opinion.
The first important American to come out was the poet Robert Duncan. In 1944, using his own name in the anarchist magazine Politics, he claimed that homosexuals were an oppressed minority.
In 1951, Donald Webster Cory published his landmark The Homosexual in America, exclaiming, "Society has handed me a mask to wear...Everywhere I go, at all times and before all sections of society, I pretend." Cory was a pseudonym, but his frank and openly subjective descriptions served as a stimulus to the emerging homosexual self-consciousness and the nascent homophile movement.
The decidedly clandestine Mattachine Society, founded by Harry Hay and other veterans of the Henry A. Wallace for President campaign in Los Angeles in 1950, also moved into the public eye with many gays emerging from the closet after Hal Call took over the group in San Francisco in 1953.
In the 1960's Frank Kameny came to the forefront of the struggle. Having been fired from his job as an astronomer for the Army Map service for homosexual behavior, Kameny refused to go quietly. He openly fought his dismissal, eventually appealing it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. As a vocal leader of the growing movement, Kameny argued for unapologetic public actions. The cornerstone of his conviction was that, "we must instill in the homosexual community a sense of worth to the individual homosexual," which could only be achieved through campaigns openly led by homosexuals themselves. His motto was "Gay is good."
Transgender and transsexual usage
Whilst most people try to live according to the gender to which they are assigned at birth (or, in many cases of intersexuality, later), many transgender or transsexual people eventually decide to live according to the gender role with which they more closely identify, and therefore choose to announce their gender identity and their intention of changing their gender role if they wish to transition. Unlike with sexual orientation, coming out as (for example) female-identified rather than male-identified is not optional if one wishes to transition from one sex to another. However, many transgender and especially transsexual people wish to hide their birth sex once they have transitioned. Thus a transsexual or transgender person can come out twice: once before the initial transition, and once afterward to those unfamiliar with their previous sex.
The coming out process
Coming out has an etiquette of its own, developed through the experiences of people who did it in a way they later decided was inappropriate and more stressful than it had to be. It is generally suggested to avoid coming out during holidays and at other stressful times, such as during an argument.
Coming out is a process, and often a gradual one. It is common to come out first to a trusted friend or family member, and wait to come out to others. Some people are out at work but not to their families, or vice-versa. Still, one does not typically "come out" and have it done with; they must continue to make the choice to out themself upon making every new acquaintance and in most new situations.
It is also common to hear the phrase coming out to oneself, meaning to acknowledge to oneself that one is gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. This is the very first step in the coming-out process; it often involves soul-searching or a personal epiphany of some sort. Many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people go through a period prior to coming out when they believe their sexual orientation or behavior, or their cross-gender feelings to be "a phase", to be malleable, or when they reject their own feelings for religious or moral reasons. Coming out to oneself ends that period of ambiguity and begins the process of self-acceptance.
Some studies have found that the degree to which a person can be out in a large number of life situations seems to strongly correlate with lack of stress and freedom from neurosis.
Outing
The act of revealing a closeted person's orientation against his or her wishes is known as outing them. Sometimes it is used to prove a political point, or demonstrate a contradiction between private lifestyle and public stance. Outing may be found to be libel by a court of law (for example, in 1957 the closeted Liberace successfully sued the Daily Mirror for merely insinuating that he was gay). Note, however, that the Daily Mirror's defence was that the words complained of, in a column written by `Cassandra', did not imply that Liberace was gay. They did not attempt to prove the accusation was true (justification): they attempted to prove that they had not made an accusation.
Pronoun Game
"Playing the pronoun game" is the act of concealing sexual orientation in conversation by not using a gender-specific pronoun for a partner or a lover, which would reveal the sexual orientation of the person speaking. Most often, LGBT people employ the pronoun game when conversing with people to whom they have not "come out". In some situations, where a LGBT person revealing their sexual orientation would have adverse consequences (such as the loss of their job), playing the pronoun game is seen to be a necessary act of concealment.
The pronoun game involves deception without lying, by letting the listener assume a sexual orientation that they would regard as inoffensive. It also involves not drawing the listener's attention to the fact that the sex of a pronoun's antecedent is not being specified. As such, playing the pronoun game involves:
- re-phrasing sentences such that they avoid the need for third-person singular sex-specific pronouns (e.g. "It was decided that we would eat out." rather than "She decided that we would eat out."), often using circumlocution;
- using gender-neutral language such as "firefighter" rather than "fireman", phrases such as "my other half" or "my significant other", or the person's name where it isn't sex or gender-specific; and
- using gender-neutral pronouns that have long since entered common usage, such as singular they, without employing unusual, and thus attention-calling, gender-neutral pronouns such as xe or sie or hir.
Often, people playing the pronoun game regard it as stressful. Often, the blatant concealment of pronoun-gender makes the sexual orientation of the player just as obvious as it would have been, had the game never been played.
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