If there is an excruciatingly annoying quote I hear every Pride Month, it would be: “Someone else’s closet isn’t yours to open.” It’s the headline of every infographic, it’s tweeted by companies that are so-called “allies,” and it really is the buzzword of the month. While it is undeniably said in good faith, I can’t help but wonder: isn’t “coming out” just another piece of bullshit straight people enforced? A gay kid wouldn’t be pressured into “coming out of the closet” if there wasn’t one built for him by the very people screaming that quote.

The history of the "closet" is a relatively new cultural concept, tracing back only to the early 1950s. Media scholar D. Travers Scott notes that the phrase "coming out of the closet" was a historical combination of two distinct metaphors: the elite social ritual of "coming out" and the secrecy of being "closeted." But sometime during the 1960s, the phrase eventually evolved as a direct play on the older idiom, "skeleton in the closet," which historically referred to hiding a shameful, guilty secret. In this twisted new light, our society began viewing queer individuals as the sinister skeletons lurking in the dark. As such, to reveal yourself through a queer lens was framed as allowing a shameful skeleton to step out of the closet.

By the 1970s, the Gay Liberation Movement intentionally took this toxic metaphor and weaponized it. In a post-Stonewall world that sought to completely eradicate us, activists turned "coming out" into a loud, mandatory political duty. Visibility was a shield, a megaphone, and a matter of survival.

But as time ticks into a new horizon, our definitions of progress must also evolve. “Coming out” seems like a liberating concept, but you know what’s more liberating? No longer needing to “come out” of any closet at all. We deserve a world that no longer demands a formal declaration pamphlet explaining why a boy likes his “pre” or why a girl loves her “beh.”

Being inside a “closet” is not a natural state of being; it is a cage built entirely by a heteronormative system. Coined by social critic and queer theorist Michael Warner in 1991, heteronormativity describes how social, legal, and cultural institutions are fundamentally hardwired to privilege straightness as the natural order of life, automatically marginalizing anyone who falls outside of it. His theory explains exactly why queer people are expected to "come out" of an artificial space to begin with: because society treats heterosexuality as the absolute, unquestioned default setting for a human being—hence the pervasive "factory reset" trend we see on social media.

Straight people never have to sit their parents down to announce that they like the opposite sex. Their love just exists. They bring a date home, and the world moves on. Queer people, however, are forced to perform intense emotional labor just to correct an assumption society made about them in the first place. Why should anyone have to issue a formal press release just to live their life?

But of course, just existing as who you are is a privilege not everyone can walk with. There is a brutal real-world caveat. In many places across the globe, "just being" is a luxury that carries a death sentence. In hostile environments, staying in the closet is a smart and necessary survival tactic. But let’s be clear about who manufactured that danger: straight-dominated legal and cultural systems. The survival tactic isn't the problem; the heteronormative system forcing the choice is.

As the rainbow slowly fades into obscurity at the end of the month, it’s time to flip the script and dismantle the architecture of the closet entirely. We need to trade the outdated concept of "coming out" for something far more powerful: “inviting people in.”

Originally coined in 2007 by narrative therapist Sekneh Hammoud—and later popularized by Karamo Brown—the "inviting in" framework radically shifts the power dynamic. “Coming out” forces queer people to stand before a straight audience, waiting to see if their visibility will be accepted or rejected. However, “inviting people in” reclaims personal agency. It recognizes that our lives are not a shameful secret requiring a public confession, but a private sanctuary. Through this new lens, we do not give people the right to accept or deny us; we give them the honor of being a part of our world.

Admittedly, navigating the mundane, bureaucratic structures of a straight world makes this a daily grind. You cannot always "invite" a homophobic landlord, a health insurance provider, or a government tax form into your sacred personal space; often, you are still forced to explicitly correct the record just to get by. But the philosophy of inviting people in isn't about altering bureaucratic paperwork—it is about reclaiming your mindset.

Queer people are not trapped in a dark, shameful room waiting for permission to step into a straight world's light. We are already living in our own kaleidoscope of light. We do not owe the world an explanation, a performance, or a public confession. You—we don't need to come out; "coming out" is straight people’s bullshit. We just need to live, and choose exactly who earns the privilege of being invited into our world.

The Frontman