What Is National Coming Out Day?

As the American LGBTQ+ suicide-prevention nonprofit The Trevor Project notes, coming out means different things to different people, and there’s no right or wrong way to do it, nor should an LGBTQ+ individual feel pressure to come out to everyone in their life. There are very real reasons, including personal safety, employment considerations, and family dynamics, that someone may choose not to come out at all. The Trevor Project also says coming out can sometimes be a step people take at different times and in different ways as they grow and change.

On that note, in her 1980 essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Lesbian Existence” feminist poet Adrienne Rich (pictured) — who came out as a lesbian in 1976, per The Times — suggests the notion of “coming out” implies heterosexuality as a default setting. Also, in 2013, Preston Mitchum wrote in The Atlantic, “The danger in over-emphasizing coming out is that the act, at least in the short term, benefits the group sometimes more than the individual,” especially for those who may belong to multiple marginalized communities, he said. 

Mitchum added, “The last thing a closeted LGBT individual needs, faced with a hostile social environment, is to feel like those individuals most accepting of his or her identity won’t support him or her unless that identity is publicly proclaimed.”