First of all, why is it called “coming out”? In his 1994 book, Gay New York, George Chauncey explains, “The expression used to refer to the ritual of a debutante’s being formally introduced to, or ‘coming out’ into, the society of her cultural peers.”1 So “coming out” was a play on the language of upper-class women’s culture of the 1930s, with all the femininity and sophistication that debutantes embodied.
