Coming out

Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor mostly used to describe LGBTQ people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity. While mostly used in contexts involving sexual orientation or gender identity, it is sometimes used as a shorthand in other identity self-disclosure contexts, such as the revelation of atheism or irreligion, or of one's political affiliations.
LGBTQ self-disclosure is often framed and debated as a privacy issue because the consequences may be very different for different individuals, some of whom may have their job security or personal security threatened by such disclosure. The act may be viewed as a psychological process or journey; decision-making or risk-taking; a strategy or plan; a mass or public event; a speech act and a matter of personal identity; a rite of passage; liberation or emancipation from oppression; an ordeal; a means toward feeling LGBTQ pride instead of shame and social stigma; or a career-threatening act.
The term coming out of the [|closet] is the source of other gay slang expressions related to voluntary disclosure or lack thereof. LGBTQ people who have already revealed or no longer conceal their sexual orientation or gender identity are out of the closet or simply out, i.e., openly LGBTQ. By contrast, LGBTQ people who have yet to come out or have opted not to do so are labelled as closeted or being in the closet. Outing is the deliberate or accidental disclosure of an LGBTQ person's sexual orientation or gender identity by someone else, without the first individual's consent. By extension, outing oneself is self-disclosure. Glass closet refers to the open secret of a public figure widely thought to be LGBTQ even though the person has not officially come out.

History

Between 1864 and 1869, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs wrote a series of pamphletsas well as giving a lecture to the Association of German Jurists in 1867advocating decriminalization of sex acts between men, in which he was candid about his own homosexuality. Historian Robert Beachy has said of him, "I think it is reasonable to describe as the first gay person to publicly out himself."
In early 20th-century Germany, "coming out" was labeled as "self-denunciation" and entailed serious legal and reputational risks. In his 1906 work, Das Sexualleben unserer Zeit in seinen Beziehungen zur modernen Kultur, Iwan Bloch, a German-Jewish physician, entreated elderly homosexuals to self-disclose to their family members and acquaintances. In 1914, Magnus Hirschfeld revisited the topic in his major work The Homosexuality of Men and Women, discussing the social and legal potential of several thousand homosexual men and women of rank, revealing their sexual orientation to the police in order to influence legislators and public opinion. Hirschfeld did not support 'self-denunciation' and dismissed the possibilities of a political movement based on open homosexuals.
The first prominent American to reveal his homosexuality was the poet Robert Duncan. In 1944, using his own name in the anarchist magazine Politics, he wrote that homosexuals were an oppressed minority. The decidedly clandestine Mattachine Society, founded by Harry Hay and other veterans of the Wallace for President campaign in Los Angeles in 1950, moved into the public eye after Hal Call took over the group in San Francisco in 1953. Many gays emerged from the closet there.
In 1951, Donald Webster Cory published his landmark The Homosexual in America, saying, "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-awareness and the nascent homophile movement.
In the 1960s, Frank Kameny came to the forefront of the struggle. Having been fired from his job as an astronomer for the Army Map service in 1957 for homosexual behavior, because it was considered to make people vulnerable to blackmail pressure and endanger secure positions, Kameny refused to go quietly. He openly fought his dismissal, eventually appealing it to the US 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.
With the spread of consciousness raising in the late 1960s, coming out became a key strategy of the gay liberation movement to raise political consciousness to counter heterosexism and homophobia. At the same time and continuing into the 1980s, gay and lesbian social support discussion groups, some of which were called "coming-out groups", focused on sharing coming-out "stories" with the goal of reducing isolation and increasing LGBTQ visibility and pride.

Etymology

The present-day expression "coming out" is understood to have originated in the early 20th century from an analogy that likens homosexuals' introduction into gay subculture to a débutante's coming-out party. This is a celebration for a young upper-class woman who is making her début – her formal presentation to society – because she has reached adult age or has become eligible for marriage. As historian George Chauncey points out:

Gay people in the pre-war years ... did not speak of coming out of what we call "the gay closet" but rather of coming out into what they called "homosexual society" or the "gay world", a world neither so small, nor so isolated, nor, often, so hidden as "closet" implies.

In fact, as Elizabeth Kennedy observes, "using the term 'closet' to refer to" previous times such as "the 1920s and 1930s might be anachronistic".
An article on coming out in the online encyclopedia glbtq.com states that sexologist Evelyn Hooker's observations introduced the use of "coming out" to the academic community in the 1950s. The article continues by echoing Chauncey's observation that a subsequent shift in connotation occurred later on. The pre-1950s focus was on entrance into "a new world of hope and communal solidarity", whereas the post-Stonewall Riots overtone was an exit from the oppression of the closet. This change in focus suggests that "coming out of the closet" is a mixed metaphor that joins "coming out" with the closet metaphor: an evolution of "skeleton in the closet" specifically referring to living a life of denial and secrecy by concealing one's sexual orientation. The closet metaphor, in turn, is extended to the forces and pressures of heterosexist society and its institutions.

Identity issues

When coming out is described as a gradual process or a journey, it is meant to include becoming aware of and acknowledging one's gender identity, gender expression, or non-hetero-normative sexual orientation or attraction. This preliminary stage, which involves soul-searching or a personal epiphany, is often called "coming out to oneself" and constitutes the start of self-acceptance. Many LGBTQ people say that this stage began for them during adolescence or childhood, when they first became aware of their sexual orientation toward members of the same sex.
Coming out has also been described as a process because of a recurring need or desire to come out in new situations in which LGBTQ people are assumed to be heterosexual or cisgender, such as at a new job or with new acquaintances. A major frame of reference for those coming out has included using an inside/outside perspective, where some assume that the person can keep their identity or orientation a secret and separate from their outside appearance. This is not as simple as often thought, as Diana Fuss argues, "the problem of course with the inside/outside rhetoric ... is that such polemics disguise the fact that most of us are both inside and outside at the same time".

LGBTQ identity development

Every coming out story is the person trying to come to terms with who they are and their sexual orientation. Several models have been created to describe coming out as a process for gay and lesbian identity development, e.g., Dank, 1971; Cass, 1984; Coleman, 1989; Troiden, 1989. Of these models, the most widely accepted is the Cass identity model established by Vivienne Cass. This model outlines six discrete stages transited by individuals who successfully come out: identity confusion, identity comparison, identity tolerance, identity acceptance, identity pride, and identity synthesis. However, not every LGBTQ person follows such a model. For example, some LGBTQ youth become aware of and accept their same-sex desires or gender identity at puberty in a way similar to which heterosexual teens become aware of their sexuality, i.e., free of any notion of difference, stigma or shame in terms of the gender of the people to whom they are attracted. Regardless of whether LGBTQ youth develop their identity based on a model, the typical age at which youth in the United States come out has been dropping. High school students and even middle school students are coming out.
Emerging research suggests that gay men from religious backgrounds are likely to come out online via Facebook and other social networks, such as blogs, as they offer a protective interpersonal distance. This largely contradicts the growing movement in social media research indicating that online use, particularly Facebook, can lead to negative mental health outcomes such as increased levels of anxiety. While further research is needed to assess whether these results generalize to a larger sample, these recent findings open the door to the possibility that gay men's online experiences may differ from those of heterosexuals in that these may be more likely to provide mental health benefits rather than consequences.