In Chapter 37 of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, part of the section we'll discuss tomorrow night, James Kirchick discusses what he calls "outage": disclosing the homosexuality of individuals without their consent. We know that practice much better today as "outing," so I find it strange that Kirchick never uses that term in this chapter. (I haven't looked ahead yet to determine whether he does so later in the book; neither term appears in his index.)
The Wikipedia entry on the subject goes into more detail about the history, but here is the "money quote": "It is hard to pinpoint the first use of outing in the modern sense. In a 1982 issue of Harper's, Taylor Branch predicted that "outage" would become a political tactic in which the closeted would find themselves trapped in a crossfire. The article "Forcing Gays Out of the Closet" by William A. Henry III in Time (January 29, 1990) introduced the term "outing" to the general public."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment