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Coming Out Videos On YouTube Are Entering A New Era

This article is more than 4 years old.

In 2013, YouTube celebrated Pride Month for the first time with a video called "Show your pride. Share your love. #ProudToLove." This video featured content from LGBTQ creators on the platform, including coming out videos. This type of video has been essential in helping LGBTQ people come to terms with their identity and foster acceptance for queer people, and at their essence is the same. The coming out video an incredibly emotional and personal experience, but by being on a public platform, its stories are in service of the larger goal of helping those struggling with their gender identity and/or sexuality.

Last week, two YouTubers continued this tradition. Daniel Howell released a 45-minute long YouTube video entitled "Basically I'm Gay." Two days later, Eugene Lee Yang, from the Try Guys YouTube channel, released a five-minute long choreographed video entitled "I'm Gay." These announcements have been positively received by the internet, and join the compendium of coming out videos on YouTube that has been expanding since the platform's beginnings. While they remain true to the heart of the coming out video, their greater message diverges from earlier videos in response to a new reality for LGBTQ people.

They both come from creators who have already confirmed that they are queer. Howell confirmed that he was queer on social media. Yang has been active in a number of LGBTQ causes. Their videos go beyond the traditional coming out video. They address the factors that made coming out difficult for them and most importantly highlight that these factors are still present for many within the LGBTQ community and don't go away after coming out. After a violent backlash against LGBTQ people following the expansion of marriage equality and same-sex decriminalization, Yang and Howell are the start of a new era of coming out videos, one that does not rest on its laurels but sees that more progress needs to be made and current progress can be taken away.

The first coming out video appeared only a year after YouTube's inception. In August of 2006, French-Canadian YouTuber TG15 announced that she was transgender in a YouTube video. The reasons for her video were not just to come out to her family and friends but to explain that she would be documenting her transition from male to female to serve as a source of support and knowledge for others seeking to transition. After over a decade, the channel only has fourteen thousand subscribers, and the pioneering video has less than 100,000 views, but it started the trend of creators using YouTube to come out and be sources for people struggling with their gender identity and/or sexuality. For the early coming out videos, the nature of YouTube as a public platform made coming out more than a milestone for the creator but offered the LGBTQ community something it definitely needed— visibility. These simple talks with creators in front of a webcam proved to many that there were others out there just like them.

In the 2010s, coming out videos shifted from webcam YouTubers coming out to their audiences to emotional videos of them coming out to their family like the Rhodes Brothers' "Twins Come Out To Dad" or Davey Wavey's "Coming Out to Grandma" or reflections and tips on how to come out like Jamie Raines "Ways to come out as transgender." These videos went beyond showing viewers that LGBTQ people were out there. They showed that LGBTQ people were out there thriving, being loved and accepted. Most all of them ended with their family or friends accepting the person for the whole person that they were.

They came at a time when LGBTQ people were increasingly being accepted within society. The Defense of Marriage Act was ruled unconstitutional in 2013, and marriage was equalized in 2015. Shows featuring LGBTQ people like Glee and Misfits were popular. Stars in traditional media and YouTubers with larger followings were coming out. The It Gets Better Project was trending on YouTube, sending messages of hope and love to queer youth. In 2008, the U.S. public was tied at 48% on whether same-sex relationships were moral, disregarding legality. In 2019, 63% believe that these relationships are moral and an equal number support marriage equality. Things improved, and the rose-tinted lenses of coming out videos at that time reflected this.

But Howell's "Basically I'm Gay" and Yang's "I'm Gay" are fundamentally different from these other 2010s coming out videos. They aren't as rosy. They delve into the struggle of self-acceptance, never mind getting acceptance from friends and family. They discuss how childhood trauma and pressure to conform prevented them from fully expressing themselves. They don't even have a happy ending. Yang's enthralling movement piece takes the viewer on a roller coaster. Yang starts repressed by his family and society, but eventually finds his community, only to have it violently taken away from him. In a follow up-video, "Why I'm Coming Out As Gay," Yang questions whether happiness was truly attainable.

Howell's video is as much a coming out story as a guided journey through how homosexuality was weaponized as an insult and a source of internalized oppression for young Howell, which made the process of coming to terms with his sexuality all the more difficult. He draws attention to the Sophie's choice between career or coming out for those in the closet. The retellings of these personal stories are at times difficult and exhausting for both the viewer and creator. These aren't bright fairytales, they're realistic insights into the emotional complexities of coming out. And they are needed.

Although the acceptance of LGBTQ people is at an all-time high, it's not perfect, and that's what Yang and Howell draw attention to in their coming out videos. Just as shocking as the recent gains of LGBTQ acceptance is its violent backlash. On June 12th, 2016, less than a year after marriage equality in the U.S, 43 people were killed and 53 were injured at Pulse, a gay Orlando nightclub. Homophobic and transphobic hate crimes have risen in Britain. For all this surveyed acceptance, life is still dangerous and confusing for LGBTQ people, and maybe that's what these new coming out videos reflect.

As Howell states in his video, "Some people grow up in supportive environments, and it's a positive experience, but more likely, especially around the world outside of the big cities, it isn't." Yang, when questioned about his complex and authentic portray of coming out in his follow up video said "Everything [is usually] positivity. You're someone people look up to and you shouldn't talk about having this toxic, emotional, complex relationship with your race or identity. I wish I could be in that place.... I wish I could ride an Asian rainbow into the distance.... In truth, I'm just as broken, as weird, as f***ed up, if not more in a lot of ways." The 2010s gave a number of political and public opinion victories to the LGBTQ community, as we approach 2020, we're starting to see that these victories are not enough and can be taken away. Coming out videos are beginning to reflect this.

At its core, the coming out video has not changed. It's an intensely personal and draining experience for creators that aims to be a larger encouraging message about being LGBTQ for their audiences. However, this message has changed in tandem with the queer experience, shifting from visibility to societal acceptance. Now, it's changing again. LGBTQ people find themselves in the confusing and uncertain position of being accepted and loved by one half of society and detested and preyed upon by the other. Marriage equality was a battle, and there are yet more battles in the war of reaching full LGBTQ equality in society. This is the world that Yang and Howell have come out in, and their videos reflect this reality. At the end of "I'm Gay," Yang is not so much celebrating as he is trembling, trying to be proud and love himself in front of a crowd of people fighting and arguing among themselves about his right to be himself just like many LGBTQ people today.

I had to tell my story so people would understand me and these things— why coming out is still a big deal because queer people are often invisible and suffering until they have to do it.

Daniel Howell ("Basically I'm Gay")

Yes, the message of Yang and Howell's coming out videos is "being queer is okay!" but they also draw attention to the continued societal circumstances that obfuscate this fact. Transphobia and homophobia didn't disappear with marriage equality, and Yang and Howell don't espouse this illusion. LGBTQ people are still fighting for their rights, fighting against societal bigotry, and fighting to be visible, and that's why coming out videos continue to be important and diverge from their predecessors. Coming out videos are no longer about the LGBTQ people just being visible or accepted. It's about recognizing the trauma of the past and taking the steps forward to make sure it doesn't return.

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