"There is no universal coming out process, so far as I know"
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Against the tidy narratives culture loves to sell, Weinberg’s line is a small act of rebellion. Coming out gets packaged as a three-act story with a triumphant ending: private confusion, public declaration, social liberation. A psychologist who helped coin and popularize the term "homophobia", Weinberg knew how easily institutions turn lived complexity into a checklist. "There is no universal coming out process" punctures the therapeutic-industrial temptation to standardize identity into stages, milestones, and measurable progress.
The phrase "so far as I know" is doing quiet but important work. It’s scientific humility, but it’s also a defense against dogma: even experts don’t get to dictate how disclosure should look. In the hands of clinicians, “coming out” can become prescriptive - a moralized intervention where the patient is subtly coached toward the “healthy” script: tell your parents, claim pride, cut off the unsupportive, arrive at authenticity on schedule. Weinberg is warning that this script can reproduce the very coercion therapy is meant to resist.
Context matters: Weinberg worked through decades when LGBTQ people were pathologized by default, when visibility carried real costs - losing family, jobs, custody, safety. By refusing a universal process, he acknowledges that risk, class, race, religion, geography, and mental health all change what “possible” looks like. The subtext is permission: you don’t owe anyone a narrative arc, not activists, not clinicians, not social media. You owe yourself a life that can be lived.
The phrase "so far as I know" is doing quiet but important work. It’s scientific humility, but it’s also a defense against dogma: even experts don’t get to dictate how disclosure should look. In the hands of clinicians, “coming out” can become prescriptive - a moralized intervention where the patient is subtly coached toward the “healthy” script: tell your parents, claim pride, cut off the unsupportive, arrive at authenticity on schedule. Weinberg is warning that this script can reproduce the very coercion therapy is meant to resist.
Context matters: Weinberg worked through decades when LGBTQ people were pathologized by default, when visibility carried real costs - losing family, jobs, custody, safety. By refusing a universal process, he acknowledges that risk, class, race, religion, geography, and mental health all change what “possible” looks like. The subtext is permission: you don’t owe anyone a narrative arc, not activists, not clinicians, not social media. You owe yourself a life that can be lived.
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