Are you in the Facebook closet?
November 9th, 2009
So you’re Out, writes Kathryn Schneider. You summoned all your courage and you kicked the closet door open with your Converse-clad foot. Mum knows, Dad knows, your hair stylist knows, even the neighbour’s dog knows. So why do you still leave the ‘Interested In’ category on your Facebook profile blank?
Facebook Angst is a condition we’ve become familiar with. You know the feeling: that little pang you get as the camera flash goes off and you wonder who will see this photo of you wearing a rainbow flag as a cape, groping the boob of a drag queen outside an inappropriately named gay bar.
As social networking sites gain more users and become part of our daily interaction, (more than 2 billion photos are uploaded onto Facebook each month) it’s getting harder to control our own content and the content associated with us.
Why is it that we can be totally out in our everyday personal interactions, and still be hiding in the Facebook closet?
“Coming out is not necessarily a one-off event” advises the Stonewall website, “people may have to come out many times during their lives.”
We know it all too well. Coming out is something we do on a daily basis, not just by telling people directly, but also through the way we act, talk, dress and communicate.
Sometimes it’s easy and others times it’s not, the difference is that when you let someone know you are gay during face-to-face conversation, you can gauge their response and adjust accordingly. Ultimately, you can choose how much you reveal about yourself; you can be ‘more gay’ messing around with your mates than you can at Sunday tea with your gran.
Lisa, an open lesbian from a conservative background, believes coming out on Facebook is sharing too much information. “I don’t like people knowing anything too personal about me, so I tend to leave ‘relationship status’, ‘interested in’ and ‘religious views’ open,” she explains. “Facebook is for chatting and sharing photos, not for telling my whole life story.”
The amount of information flowing freely through social networking sites means that you lose the power to control exactly who knows what about what you’re doing with whom.
Despite certain privacy controls, it’s often the case that someone you used to steal wax crayons from when you were six can see the same amount of information as your best friend. Do you really want Little Suzie (by this time, Big Suzie) to start questioning what your intentions were when you stole her crayons?
This loss of control can be unsettling, especially if you can’t immediately judge how people react, leaving you with that open-ended fear of rejection. Even bad feedback is better than no feedback. Or is it?
An important part of the coming out process is accepting that you can no longer control who knows about your sexual orientation, which can be a liberating experience. Outing yourself via Facebook can be a relatively pain free shortcut for coming out to acquaintances; you don’t mind if they know that you’re gay, but you just don’t want to have the same conversation over and over.
Lindsay, who has an openly gay Facebook profile, believes that coming out in a public sphere like a social network is not just a personal choice, but a political act.
“By stating openly that I’m interested in women, it makes it easier for other women in my position to do the same,” Lindsay says. “It also makes lesbians more visible to the public instead of a group that hides behind closed doors.”
Deciding to come out on Facebook is the same as deciding to come out anywhere. Whichever way you see it, social networking sites have brought along new pitfalls with their digitised interaction; it’s the same old issue taking place in a new space.
And while you’re sitting on the fence, you could always join a group called The Facebook Closet: “If you conveniently avoided filling out the “Interested in:” part of your profile, then this group is for you! We realize that by joining this group you are completely contradicting yourself and thus… no one will join this group.”
I haven’t got a facebook account. I’ve got a lot of concerns about privacy and how facebook use personal information (ask any internet security geek, and they’ll say that facebook is “evil”). But I also have concerns about how gender and orientation are presented there. They provide only “male” and “female” as options for people signing up, when most of us now recognise that sex and gender and gender identity are more complex than that. I’m confused by the whole “interested in…” thing, too - I’m in a long-term monogamous relationship, so am I supposed to be signalling orientation or availability with this? And if they only recognise 2 genders, how am I to accurately express my orientation? Complicated stuff.
K ∼ November 9th, 2009 10:15 amI’ve never had a facebook but I used to have a bebo. I always had my girlfriend listed as my ‘other half’ with some cutesy comment next to it!
I actually found this helpful in the coming out process. When I added someone for the first time who I hadn’t told they could just look at my profile and know I way gay. Avoided the whole awkward face to face thing where they’re desperately trying to control their expression to make them seem ‘cool with it’. lol!
Bex ∼ November 9th, 2009 10:50 amI have always had the interest field filled in, right from the start. (http://grab.by/nPH) This without giving much thought to the people I accept as my friends.
My opinion is that you will have to take a good look at your friends list. If you don’t feel like telling them about it, while you do tell people in real life about it, ask yourself whether they should be a Facebook friend.
I don’t think the problem is coming out on internet, but coming out to unrelated people. This is accompanied by the problem of people on Facebook simply accepting every single person that wants to be a friend.
You DO have control over your Facebook account information and your friend list. I’d like to see more people TAKE this control.
Martijn ∼ November 9th, 2009 5:36 pmRe K: “…I also have concerns about how gender and orientation are presented there. They provide only “male” and “female” as options … if they only recognise 2 genders, how am I to accurately express my orientation?”
I agree with K all around.
I am confused by so much emphasis being put on check-box profile information. There are loads of ways to be out on social networking sites whilst not using restrictive, predetermined categories that many of us just don’t fit.
Nik ∼ November 13th, 2009 3:20 amI have recently started a blog called Les Be Real. Ironically, I have not explicitly identified myself on this blog, and I set up separate Facebook and Twitter accounts for it. So I am not being 100% real yet!
I am sure my identity will be revealed over time, but I am not overly explicit on my main facebook profile - I am in the Facebook closet. Most of my “friends” on FB are Christians I have known my whole life.. many know, suspect, or have heard rumours, but I am not ready to paint GAY all over my main FB profile, as it will not be understood properly.
That is the reason I started my blog.. it’s part of my coming out process and hopefully an eye opener to Christians and other straight people.
LBR.
LesBeReal ∼ November 13th, 2009 2:59 pmhttp://www.lesbereal.com
* South African * Christian * Gay *
After this article was posted, I decided to gay-out my FB profile, and put up a photo of me and a few girls at London Pride, but I still couldn;t get myself to change ‘interested in’! Something about it just fills me with dread!
Kathryn ∼ November 17th, 2009 5:33 pmUnless you’re specifically using it for dating, I don’t personally see any point in filling out the ‘Interested In’ field on Facebook. If your Facebook friends are people close to you, they should already know or you should be able to tell them personally. If some of them are not close to you (say, business associates or distant relatives) then they have no need of knowing about your relationships unless they become close to you, in which case the same thing applies.
Maxine ∼ November 27th, 2009 8:25 pmI found out i was gay a few years ago when i was watching samantha fox sing touch me plus i felt an attraction to a girl i worked with and im not afraid to let people know, yesi do have facebook and the interested in part has been filled in the only people that dont know yet are my parents. people can be judgemental about gay people but really I believe we are entitled to the same respect and treatment as straight people are.
Kelly ∼ November 28th, 2009 6:16 amWellllll…I think this article is quite interesting….for a long time I myself left this field blank…until this year - I “courageously” changed it. For me it was personal. Only this year I felt I had totally come out and felt comfortable - me against the homophobic world - so it felt good to enter INTERESTED in WOMEN. However, I did have a few pangs on uncertainty for a few brief moments - like omg my extended family might see…cousins etc…but then it evaporated - as for me being me came No.1.
Luce ∼ November 29th, 2009 12:51 pmI am a lesbian teen who is in the closet. People I know suspect me to be gay because I leave my “interested in” section blank. It seems as though you either have an established “interest” on facebook, or people suspect you to be hiding something because it’s blank. I don’t like having my business out there, and yet it is out there by leaving a section blank… lose-lose situation
Lizzie ∼ December 1st, 2009 4:33 amThanks for this. Having recently suffered massive panic attacks over online ID fraud after some interesting discussions on an ‘English and proud’ Facebook group as a first-generation immigrant pick-pocketed thrice since then, it was a very necessary read indeed.
Bug ∼ December 2nd, 2009 11:51 amI am also delighted to report that your site is now no longer blocked on Orange mobile broadband.