44 TheEconomistAugust 8th 2020
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ropped up byhis Union flag pillows,
Tom Daley was at last ready to unburden
himself. As the camera wobbled about, the
then 19-year-old British diver—who the
year before had won a bronze medal at the
Olympics in London—told his fans he was
ready to talk about his private life, though
his darting eyes seemed to belie that asser-
tion. After two minutes of build-up, he got
to the point. “Come spring this year my life
changed—massively—when I met some-
one and it made me feel so happy, so safe,”he confided. “And everything just feels
great, and well that someone”—long pause,
looking everywhere but at the camera—“is
a guy.”
He told that camera in his bedroom, and
YouTube told everyone else. There were
some nasty comments, but thousands of
strangers chipped in to offer congratula-
tions, support and, sometimes, slightly
odd queries. “Is it just me or are all of the
gay guys really handsome and attractive?”
one viewer wondered. Six years on, the vid-eo has been viewed more than 12m times.
Mr Daley is now married to that “guy”, Dus-
tin Lance Black, a screenwriter. They have a
two-year-old son, Robbie.
Some lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgen-
der (lgbt) people never tell their friends
and families about this aspect of their
identities. A few don’t feel the need. In 2013
interviewers from the Pew Research Cen-
tre, a think-tank, spoke to a 54-year-old
American woman about her bisexuality.
“This is not a subject to discuss or tell any-
one about,” she said. “It is an activity—like
bowling, or gardening.”
But most want to open up. The same
Pew study found that more than three-
quarters of American gay men had confid-
ed in all or most of the important people in
their lives. So universal is that first mo-
ment of disclosure that several languages
use variations on the same phrase. Kore-
ans, Japanese, French and Spanish people
all talk of “coming out”. The Chinese and
Russians also borrow the English meta-
phor of “the closet”, the dark and constrain-
ing place from which lgbt people are said
to emerge. “Boys Like Us”, a compendium
of coming-out experiences published in
1996, argued that this was “the central event
of a gay man’s life”. For many, it still is. A
sixth of calls to Switchboard, a British lgbt
helpline, concern coming out. It is the sin-
gle biggest category.
Yet though the metaphor remains con-
stant, the process is changing rapidly,
thanks to the internet. Two big shifts are
under way. People are coming out earlier
than ever before. And the closet door is
opening in an increasingly broad range of
countries. Stark disparities remain: in lib-
eral countries, such declarations are ac-
cepted or even—as in Mr Daley’s case—cel-
ebrated. But gay sex remains illegal in 68
countries, and openly lgbt people often
face stigma or violence even where it is not.
Transgender people often experience even
greater prejudice, and so need extra cour-
age to tell others how they feel.
Nonetheless, the International Lesbian,
Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Associa-
tion (ilga), a lobby group, has members in
164 countries (up from eight in 1978). “That
means there are people in those countries
who are coming out,” says André du Ples-
sis, its executive director. “We are every-
where. It’s been a joyful and sometimes
painful unmasking of who we are.”
That unmasking happens at different
times. About four in ten American gay men
first begin to question their sexuality be-
fore they leave elementary school, reports
Pew. Others only realise later in life. A
handful come out in their 70s. But on aver-
age Americans are coming out earlier than
in previous generations, mostly in their
teenage years. In 2018 the Williams Insti-
tute at the University of California, Los An-Coming outQueer, there and everywhere
BOGOTÁ, NAIROBI AND NEW YORK
The internet is reshaping a milestone for gay teenagersInternational