How Social Networking Makes Coming Out Easier

Remember that girl in high school who sat next to you in homeroom, who you used to joke with during morning announcements?  Or that guy in physics class who sat in front of you, who despite the Pantera stickers all over his notebook, was still kind of cool?  Or your next-door neighbor when you were seven, who you were kind of best friends with at the time, but lost touch with as you grew older?

So maybe it's been years since you've seen these people (or people like them), and you're wondering...do these people know that I'm gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender?

Whether or not it matters whether people from your past know your sexual orientation is perhaps a separate question.  But as this Time magazine article points out, there's one thing that social networking sites have done that many might not have imagined: it's made coming out to long-lost friends, acquaintances, classmates and others virtually as easy as clicking a button.

The article, "How to Come Out on Facebook," is a good, quick read that points out that coming out ain't what it used to be.  I can remember sitting down almost all of my friends the summer after my senior year in high school, and telling each of them individually, over lots of coffee and dinners.  And while that still happens for some, the vast majority are starting to let their "friends" know their sexual orientation simply thru Facebook, MySpace, or perhaps even change.org :)  Hell, it's probably just a matter of time before someone comes up with the perfect 140-character coming out line for Twitter.  (Maybe we should start a contest?)

As one person is quoted in the Time article about his coming out process via Facebook, "I didn't have to have the same conversation a thousand times.  Plus, there's a radical empowerment that comes from declaring your identity in the public sphere."

The Internet really does make everything faster.  But is this a good thing?

I'm mixed.  I remember my coming out process being funny, messy, emotional, stressful, heart-breaking, joyous, and eventually, celebratory.  Do those same set of emotions come just by updating your "I'm interested in" status on Facebook?  It's hard to say.  To me it's also a question of what changes hearts and minds faster: having your friends on Facebook see that you're LGBT, or having your friends hear over the phone or over a beer that you're LGBT?

As Ramon Johnson wrote over at About.com, "Your sexuality should be revealed when you are ready and under your own circumstances if possible, not when Google updates its algorithm."  That definitely remains true no matter which way people are coming out.  From where I stand, it just seems to be that the personal nature of coming out deserves a little more face time, and a little less Facebook.

(Photo from cliffardo2001's photostream at Flickr.)