Coming Out. Coming out of the closet, often shortened to “coming out,” is a metaphor used to describe LGBT people’s self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity.
This 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.
Author Steven Seidman writes that “it is the power of the closet to shape the core of an individual’s life that has made homosexuality into a significant personal, social, and political drama in twentieth-century America.”
Coming out of the closet is the source of other gay slang expressions related to voluntary disclosure or lack thereof. LGBT 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 LGBT.
By contrast, LGBT 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 LGBT 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 LGBT even though the person has not officially come out.
See: Outing
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