ABSTRACT
On October 11 each year, GLBTQ people around the country celebrate National Coming Out Day, a day to celebrate their own choices to publicly proclaim their sexualities. This annual celebration, begun in 1988 to mark the anniversary of the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, holds up what has become for many in the GLBTQ community a rite of passage. Coming out is equated with being true to one’s identity, being honest with others, finding connection and support within the GLBTQ community, and ultimately liberating oneself from the oppression of the closet. In fact, the metaphor of the closet and related coming-out narratives have been central to Western culture’s understanding of homosexuality for the past half-century. Media have played an important role in upholding the closet as a structuring device that frames the way people-gay and straight, transgender and cisgender-think about the social and political oppression of sexual minorities. However, some scholars question the logic of the closet, suggesting that, at best, it is an outdated concept that no longer reflects the lived realities of GLBTQ people and, at worst, reinforces a heteronormative worldview.
