chavisory:

carnivalseb:

softheartedbutch:

it worries me so much that there’s been this (mostly unintentional) culture built up around coming out, to where young lgbt kids are putting themselves in danger at school and at home because they don’t want to “live a lie.” i just want to say, i came out when i was 15 and it created a lot of difficulties in my life that i could have avoided by waiting until i was older. it isolated me socially, it exposed me to homophobia from my parents, my family, my teachers, and my classmates at the most important developmental stages of my own confidence and sense of self… closeted people are not living a lie. closeted people are surviving. don’t let anyone pressure you to come out before you’re ready. don’t put yourself at risk when you don’t have to.

Historically, the importance of coming out was put forward by Harvey Milk as a tactic for normalization through representation; if your librarian, your postal worker and seven of the people in your local sports fanclub are all gay & you’ve been friends for years with no disasters, the rhetoric of queers as a monstrous unknown Other collapses.
The thing is, Milk was mainly talking to other adults who had their own means of survival; their own incomes, their own houses.

Yes, homophobia has been used & is being used to eject people from their apartments & that is monstrous, & yes there are vulnerabilities which can cause you terrible harm as an adult, but when you are so much more vulnerable, your job is surviving.
The closet is a survival tactic, & that’s all it’s ever been.
It is not your job right now to be on the front lines of queer representation. Ellen DeGeneres & Laverne Cox are taking care of that so that you can be safe, & we’re going to need you to still be with us in ten years, ok?

You can find people who are safe to be fully open with, and you deserve to be able to do that but you do not owe the intimate details of the way you fall in love to people who would not treat you with basic human dignity.

People who will put you in danger have no right to your privacy, and no right to honesty from you, if that’s the way you want to frame it.

Also, you don’t owe this information to anyone. Even if you’re not in danger. Even if you just don’t feel ready, or just don’t want to.

Nobody is entitled to this information and if you don’t know what you want to do with it yet, you don’t have to do anything.