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Concept
Coming out
Summary
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.
Framed and debated as a privacy issue, coming out of the closet is experienced variously 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 LGBT pride instead of shame and social stigma; or even 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. Oppositely, 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 their consent. By extension, outing oneself is self-disclosure. Glass closet means the open secret of when public figures' being LGBT is considered a widely accepted fact even though they have not officially come out.
Between 1864 and 1869, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs wrote a series of pamphlets—as well as giving a lecture to the Association of German Jurists in 1867—advocating 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 [Ulrichs] as the first gay person to publicly out himself."
In early 20th-century Germany, "coming out" was called "self-denunciation" and entailed serious legal and reputational risks.
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