If you are openly gay: Out of the closet
not openly gay:in the closet
straight:???
so i guess my question is… if i am not gay, then where am i?
On the couch.
…in denial.
The way the term is usually used, if you’re open about your sexuality/religious beliefs/whatever, you’re out of the closet. Otherwise, you’re closeted.
So if you don’t make a secret of being straight, you’re out of the closet, I guess. But I’m thinking it’s not that a big deal for you, and if you go around proclaiming that you’re an out-of-the-closet straight guy, some people will probably get offended, and I’d take their side in an argument about it.
[QUOTE=ultrafilter if you go around proclaiming that you’re an out-of-the-closet straight guy, some people will probably get offended, and I’d take their side in an argument about it.[/QUOTE]
I would think, if I heard someone say the above, that they were more conflicted than they would admit to themselves. Either that, or they have an obnoxious sense of humor.
One of my favorite tv comedy scenes was on the old Ellen, when her parents (I think it was) came to visit and she literally came out of the (hall) closet to greet them.
This was just before she officially announced that she was indeed a lesbian.
ultrafilter right. Being closeted isn’t limited to only homosexuality. But saying one is “out” almost means one is openly gay.
There was that episode of Friends where Phoebe’s first husband, a gay figure skater who she married so that he could stay in the US (or something – I’m not quite sure), came out as straight…
I guess he would qualify as a straight guy in the closet…
I’ve heard the term “out of the den” suggested…
To be honest and in the gentlest non-Pit terms I can muster, the question itself is insulting. Hetero is the default setting for people in our society; there’s no question of a hetero coming out because hetero is what everyone expects you to be. Being open about one’s gayness requires courage in the face of the organized bigotry being fostered today by the government and by influential religious groups. One risks rejection by one’s family and friends when one comes out; the OP’s treating the decision so lightly is belittling.
So is there in fact a connection between the term “coming out” and the old-fashioned “coming out party”, in which teenaged girls of genteel birth and upbringing would be presented to the likewise genteel families as marriageable prospects?
If so, that would seem a tad ironic.
And this topic brings us to the problem of homeless gays…
drum roll, please
They have no closets to come out off!!!
And from www.etymonline.com :
closet
c.1340, from O.Fr. closet “small enclosure,” dim. of clos, from L. clausum “closed space,” from neut. pp. of claudere “to shut” (see close (v.)). In Matt. vi:6 used to render L. cubiculum, Gk. tamieion; originally in Eng. “a private room for study or prayer;” modern sense of “small side-room for storage” is first recorded 1616. The adjective meaning “secret, unknown” recorded from 1952, first of alcoholism, but by 1970s used principally of homosexuality; the phrase come out of the closet “admit something openly” first recorded 1963, and led to new meanings for the word out.
That’s nice. I hear the phrase, and use it, for a lot of situations.
Closet redneck.
Closet country music fan.
Closet rock & roll fan.
Closet feminist.
Closet liberal.
And just about anything someone might not want everyone to know.
Neither here nor there: I have heard of witches being in the broom closet.
But wouldn’t you agree that it shouldn’t be like that?
That is to say, if we can’t even conceive of how things would be were heterosexuality not regarded as the “best” choice, how can we hope for anything better?
Yes, in practice, most people are assumed by most people to be straight (thought I wouldn’t call that a “default setting” – “default assumption” would probably be better, since we’re really characterizing other people’s expectations). Are you saying that “coming out”, etc. can only refer to an unexpected relevation? Fair enough, but it seems a tad harsh to label it “insulting” not to have the same understanding of these terms, especially since the whole purpose of the OP was to clarify what they mean and how they are used. I don’t see anything offensive about how MSUbulldogs101 expressed his/her/its* lack of understanding. How does the wording of the OP imply that the choice of whether to come out of the closet is not a serious one, or otherwise “treat the decision lightly”?
Now, personally, I haven’t told anyone what my sexual orientation is, but I haven’t tried to keep it a secret either. It’s really just never been relevant to anything being discussed. (I don’t date; I’m not what I’d call particularly sociable, but let’s not get into that right now.) I suppose that someone in such a position could be said not to even have a closet (though whether it would even count in the case of assumed “defaults” depends on the interpretation, as mentioned above). In my case that’s literally true as well – I had to install a clothes rack in my apartment to have somewhere to hang my shirts. Not only that, I didn’t even make that particular connection until I read this thread. Life’s funny, no?
- I prefer not to assume. Although I may have taken that a bit far in this case.
[another vaguely relevant friends episode]
There was another episode where some guy was pretending to be gay so that he could be in a gay men’s choir that Jack was in. Jack could tell that the guy was straight, but he couldn’t prove it. He asked one of the women in the show (Phoebe, I think? I don’t know the characters that well) to seduce the guy. She replied, “You want me to in him?”
[/avrfe]
Actually, that was Will & Grace. The straight-guy-pretending-to-be-gay was played by Matt Damon and Jack asked Grace to try and seduce him.
Not sure if this a hijack. If so, uh, sorry…
There has been a fair amount of attention paid to being “on the down low” due to a book of the same name by J.L. King. These are men (black in the book, but presumably men of other colors are similiar) who lead straight lives but sleep with men. It seems that the first closet one must come out of is in one’s mind. There are lots of men out there who honestly think, “I’m not gay, I just enjoy having sex with men.” and go on with their lives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down-low
There’s quite a lot out there for women to help them decide if their husbands are gay. Including the support web site: http://www.gayhusbands.com/MainSite/MainHome.htm
Yeah. That’s really funny.
Perhaps that joke would be funnier if:
- It weren’t so damn cold outside or;
- Some of us didn’t know at least one person who had been homeless because s/he was openly gay.