My coming out experience will forever be etched into my memory. It was 2012 and I was 16, sitting at a friend’s house watching The Hills. Formspring (a platform where you could publicly answer anonymous questions asked privately) was all the rage, and my inbox was constantly full of people asking if I was gay. Instead of deleting them like I usually did, my fingers shook as I answered one with a simple ‘Yes :)’ before I went back to distracting myself with an argument between Lauren Conrad and Heidi Montag.
I was finally ready for the world to know that I was gay. I’d told my close friends beforehand, but I was ready for the years of whispers, questions and teasing around my sexuality at school to end, which for the most part, it did. Although I came out to my mum shortly after (and eventually to my Muslim dad when I got into a serious relationship years later), for me, my ‘coming out’ happened through a screen.
Whether you say it out loud, via text, or even in your head, the term ‘coming out’ means something different to all of us. It can refer to the act of self-realisation and acceptance, a way of intimately sharing a part of your identity with your loved ones, or it could be broadcasting this information at school, work, or online – PSA-style – like me. But how did we get here? How has the meaning of ‘coming out’ evolved
