Who came up with the phrase "coming out of the closet" to describe homosexuals admitting they are gay? Why not coming out of the kitchen or coming out of the bedroom?

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• bitteroldcoot@piefed.social ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  If someone tells you to hide, you don’t just go out to the kitchen and stand there.

  People hid in closets.

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  • hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    To add to that, phrases like “monster in the closet” or “cleaning out the closet” all relate back to this.

    The idea is a closet is a great way to hide things quickly but also not really the way to deal with things long term. You just stuffed it away, you didn’t properly think about it and remedy the issues. That’s why people who have something to hide metaphorically speaking stuff these things in their closet. And that’s why when you’re a child the closet is the big unknown, as in you might find things in there you didn’t expect. For example, maybe there are monsters in there.

    I would also say there’s a chance that’s why to get to Narnia, in the books, they would go through the closet. But there might be other reasons too ofc.

    So yeah the closet has a deep connection with hiding secrets. And if that secret is your homosexuality, which is a common story that’s why it said “coming out of the closet”, which means finally addressing something publicly. And now we’re shortening that to say “coming out”.

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    • someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Also skeletons in the closet.

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• yogurt@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Letting the other gay people know you’re gay is a 19th century debutante coming out party, secret gay is a skeleton in the closet. Unrelated metaphors got merged together because they grammatically make sense that way.

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• rumschlumpel@feddit.org ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  cause people hide they don’t want anyone to see in the closet, not their kitchen

  imagine you had a big fat dildo, would you put it on your kitchen counter, or shove it in some drawer?

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  • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I prefer to keep mine as a centerpiece on the dining room table.

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    • palordrolap@fedia.io ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      If you combine it with the mechanism from one of those novelty dancing flowers, you'll have a heck of a talking point when you put the music on.

      Or maybe a really good time if you're on your own.

      (For legal reasons, I accept no responsibility for injury or death from enacting any part of this comment, kthx.)

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• TrackenDaKracken@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The closet is where Narnia is.

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• ICastFist@programming.dev ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I think it has something to do with how paramours would “hide in the closet” when the spouse came back home.

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