Editing Coming out (section)

== In/out metaphors ==

=== Dichotomy ===
The closet narrative sets up an implicit dualism between being "in" or being "out", wherein those who are "in" are often stigmatized as living false, unhappy lives.<ref>Seidman, Meeks, and Traschen (1999)</ref> Likewise, philosopher and critical analyst [[Judith Butler]] (1991) states that the ''in/out'' metaphor creates a binary opposition which pretends that the closet is dark, marginal, and false, and that being out in the "light of illumination" reveals a true (or essential) identity. Nonetheless, Butler is willing to appear at events as a lesbian and maintains that "it is possible to argue that&nbsp;... there remains a political imperative to use these necessary errors or [[category mistake]]s&nbsp;... to rally and represent an oppressed political constituency".

=== Criticisms ===
[[Diana Fuss]] (1991) explains, "the problem of course with the inside/outside rhetoric&nbsp;... is that such polemics disguise the fact that most of us are both inside and outside at the same time". Further, "To be out, in common gay parlance, is precisely to be no longer out; to be out is to be finally outside of exteriority and all the exclusions and deprivations such outsiderhood imposes. Or, put another way, to be out is really to be in{{snd}}inside the realm of the visible, the speakable, the culturally intelligible." In other words, coming out constructs the closet it supposedly destroys and the self it supposedly reveals, "the first appearance of the homosexual as a 'species' rather than a 'temporary aberration' also marks the moment of the homosexual's disappearance{{snd}}into the closet".

Furthermore, Seidman, Meeks, and Traschen (1999) argue that "the closet" may be becoming an antiquated metaphor in the lives of modern-day Americans for two reasons.
# Homosexuality is becoming increasingly normalized, and the shame and secrecy often associated with it appears to be in decline.
# The metaphor of the closet hinges upon the notion that [[stigma management]] is a way of life, yet stigma management may increasingly be done according to varied situations.

However, when understood as an act of self-disclosure, coming out (like any self-disclosure) cannot be accomplished once, and for all. Eve Sedgwick writes in ''Epistemology of the Closet'': <blockquote>the deadly elasticity of heterosexist presumption means that … people find new walls springing up around them even as they drowse: every encounter with a new classful of students, to say nothing of a new boss, social worker, loan officer, landlord, doctor, erects new closets whose fraught and characteristic laws of optics and physics exact from at least gay people new surveys, new calculations, new draughts and requisitions of secrecy or disclosure.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sedgwick |first1=Eve Kosofsky |title=Epistemology of the Closet |date=1990 |publisher=University of California Press |location=Berkeley |isbn=0520070429 |page=68 |url=https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520254060/epistemology-of-the-closet-updated-with-a-new-preface}}</ref></blockquote>
As Tony Adams demonstrates in ''Narrating the Closet'', meeting new people makes for a new time to disclose one's sexuality.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Adams |first1=Tony E. |title=Narrating the Closet: An Autoethnography of Same-sex Attraction |date=2011 |publisher=Left Coast Press |location=Walnut Creek, CA |isbn=978-1-59874-620-4 |page=107 |url=https://www.routledge.com/Narrating-the-Closet-An-Autoethnography-of-Same-Sex-Attraction/Adams/p/book/9781598746204}}</ref>