Alice A. Kuzniar

Nowadays the terms "to out" and "to come out" are fight-
ing words used to defy a straight culture that would curb alternative
sexualities to its perceived norm. Outing a celebrity, revealing his or
her homosexuality to the media, flagrantly exhibits not only details
about an individual's personal life but also the societal assumptions
about sexual preference that have allowed and abetted idolization:
outing takes sardonic revenge on the sexual status quo. Similarly,
when gays and lesbians come out of the closet to claim entry into
society, they force it to challenge its presuppositions regarding
gender.

But working against the agonistic, dualistic premise that governs
current gay usage of the word "out" is the performative, transi-
tional, processual aspect to outing and coming out or, as Shane
Phelan puts it, "becoming out." She writes: "That stability [of what
it means to be lesbian or gay] is not given by discovery of deep truth;
one realizes one is lesbian or gay by participating in particular his-
torical communities and discourses. Coming out is partially a pro-
cess of revealing something kept hidden, but it is more than that. It
is a process of fashioning a self -- a lesbian or gay self -- that did
not exist before coming out began" (774). The dichotomies in/out,
straight/gay, and heterosexual/homosexual, as Eve Sedgwick has
shown in Epistemology of the Closet, operate on the premise that we
know what the opposite terms signify in relation to each other; their
very duality lends them a deceptive clarity. But if the boundary divid-
ing these terms blurs, if coming out is seen to be a continual process,
an ongoing discussion with one's family and ever changing circle of

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