National Coming Out Day
http://www.birdofparadox.net/blog/?p=8581Labels. Human beings do seem to like attaching labels to, well, pretty much everything. While that can be useful, a basic part of communicating, it's modified by the old truism that "words have meanings". It can cause problems when those labels are given negative meanings, and used to reinforce particular power imbalances. And whilst the idea of a National Coming Out Day might appear, at first glance, to be A Good Thing, the more I think about it, the more reservations I have about it.
snip
In a perfect world, of course, coming out – voluntarily disclosing one's sexual orientation and/or gender identity to family, friends, co-workers, classmates, etc – simply wouldn't matter. But this isn't a perfect world and the process of coming out can be not only stressful, but downright dangerous for some of us whose sexual orientation and/or gender identity might not match the dominant paradigms of cis/het normativity.
