Outing

What is outing?

Outing is revealing someone’s kink, sexual preference or scene identity, without their consent, to people who didn’t know about it. Outing is done by someone else, never by the person themselves: that last is a coming-out. The distinction lies entirely in who decides about it.

What outing looks like in practice

Rarely as an announcement. Usually as a remark someone didn’t think through: a name dropped at a birthday party, a screenshot forwarded, a profile shown to a colleague. No threat, no argument, and the damage is done anyway, because the information can’t be pulled back.

It also happens through people who ought to know better professionally. Tanya Bezreh and colleagues interviewed twenty adults with a BDSM interest and published it in American Journal of Sexuality Education. One of their participants was outed at age eleven by the counselor she was seeing over her parents’ divorce, after she’d said she liked the idea of being tied up.

Where the word comes from

From the English verb to out, and it’s younger than most people think.

Etymonline dates the sense “to expose as a closet homosexual” to 1990. The related to come out has existed since 1968, as a shortening of come out of the closet. Twenty-two years between the word for doing it yourself and the word for doing it to someone else.

In Dutch that separation is blurred: there you hear “he did his outing” where English says coming-out. So anyone who comes across the word has to work out who decided.

Why outing hits so hard

Because the damage isn’t in the information but in losing control over it.

Whoever tells something about themselves chooses the moment, the words and the recipient. With outing that choice is gone in one blow, and in the worst order: the people who take it worst hear it first, without context. Bezreh and colleagues list the risks people weigh because of this: rejection while dating, a negative judgment from friends, family or employers, and the criminality of some acts despite consent. They point to the research by Susan Wright, which documents cases where SM-identified people lost their jobs, their security clearance, an inheritance or custody of their children.

That fear has a medical price too. Waldura and colleagues spoke with 115 kink-active residents of the San Francisco area and published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine that most would want to inform their doctor, but that fewer than half had done so. Expected stigma was the most-named reason; participants feared above all that their kink would be confused with domestic violence.

The fear of a disclosure also keeps people away from conversations that would have done them good. Not every disclosure ends badly. The damage is in the absence of the choice, not in the reaction.

What the law does with it

Two tracks, and they work very differently.

The first is privacy law. Article 22, first paragraph, of the Uitvoeringswet AVG prohibits, in line with article 9 of the European regulation, the processing of “data concerning a person’s sexual behavior or sexual orientation”. That prohibition affects organizations and not your brother-in-law at a birthday party, but it shows how this data is classed: alongside medical data and political opinions.

The second is criminal law. Article 261 of the Wetboek van Strafrecht makes defamation punishable: deliberately attacking someone’s honor or good name “by alleging a specific fact, with the evident aim of giving it publicity”. Up to six months in prison, a year if it’s done in writing or with images. Note what it doesn’t say: that it has to be untrue. The third paragraph offers a way out only in the case of necessary defense or when someone could in good faith assume that the public interest required the allegation.

What outing is not

“It isn’t outing if it’s true.” Article 261 of the Criminal Code nowhere requires the allegation to be untrue; truth is no general defense against defamation. And for the person it happens to it makes no difference: the damage is in the disclosure.

“At a party or on FetLife you’re already open.” No. Being visible in a closed circle is something other than being visible to your employer, and carrying information from one circle to another is exactly what outing is. See FetLife for what a profile shields.

“It’s a joke.” Whoever doesn’t carry the consequences doesn’t decide whether something was a joke. Within BDSM there is a form of play in which disclosure is played with: blackmail play, and it works only with agreements beforehand.

“It’s the same as a coming-out.” The words resemble each other, the meaning is opposite. In a coming-out the person decides for themselves.

What I see of it myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years active in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. Discretion in my work is no extra but the basic condition, and that’s not because women are ashamed.

It’s because the people who come to me almost all have something to lose that has nothing to do with sex: a position, shared parenthood, a village where people talk. So I rarely hear “what exactly do you do” and often “who will know this later”.

Outing almost never comes from an enemy. It comes from an ex, from a friend who thought it was already known, from someone who was proud of their own openness. There’s little to secure against that except by saying beforehand what may be passed on about you.

What you can do yourself

• Say beforehand who may know about your appointment, even with people you trust, because silent discretion is no agreement.
• Assume that any photo can turn up somewhere else one day and make the choice on that basis whether you want to be recognizable in it.
• Keep your scene identity and your ordinary identity apart: a separate email address, a separate username, no work photos on a kink profile.
• If it happens to you anyway, first record what was shared, with a date and if possible a screenshot, before you approach anyone.
• With serious consequences, seek legal advice on defamation or slander and report it to the platform if it happened online.
• Then tell the people who need to hear it from you yourself. Whoever takes the story back loses less than whoever waits.

More reading on outing

On this site there’s the form of play that resembles it and is its opposite at blackmail play, and FetLife describes how visibility on a kink platform works. Anyone who wants to see how people deliberately let others notice what they’re after reads flagging and the hanky code.

Beyond this site, the research by Bezreh and colleagues is free to read and the best overview of what people weigh before they tell anything, and Waldura and colleagues show what that weighing costs in the consulting room.

Where this fits on this site

If you want to know how discretion is practically handled with an appointment, the page about contact explains how I can be reached and what isn’t recorded.

Sources

• BDSM Disclosure and Stigma Management: Identifying Opportunities for Sex Education. Tanya Bezreh, Thomas S. Weinberg & Timothy Edgar, American Journal of Sexuality Education 7(1), 37–61, 2012. Twenty semi-structured interviews with adults with a BDSM interest; provides the risks people weigh before they tell anything (rejection while dating, a negative judgment from friends, family or employers, unpredictable legal precedents around counselors, and the criminality of some acts despite consent), the case of a participant outed at age eleven by her counselor, and the summary of Wright’s documentation that SM-identified people could lose their job, security clearance, inheritance or custody of their children.
• Fifty Shades of Stigma: Exploring the Health Care Experiences of Kink-Oriented Patients. Jessica F. Waldura, Ishani Arora, Anna M. Randall, John Paul Farala & Richard A. Sprott, The Journal of Sexual Medicine 13(12), 1918–1929, 2016. Qualitative research among 115 kink-active residents of the San Francisco area; provides that most would want to inform their care provider but that fewer than half had done so with their current doctor, that expected stigma was the most-named reason not to, and that participants feared their kink would be confused with partner violence.
• Wetboek van Strafrecht, article 261. Wetten.overheid.nl. Provides the description of defamation as deliberately attacking someone’s honor or good name by alleging a specific fact with the evident aim of giving it publicity, the maximum penalty of six months (a year for writings or images), and the limited exception in the third paragraph for necessary defense or the good-faith assumption that the public interest required the allegation.
• Uitvoeringswet Algemene verordening gegevensbescherming, article 22. Wetten.overheid.nl. Provides the prohibition, in accordance with article 9, first paragraph, of the regulation, on processing of among other things “data concerning a person’s sexual behavior or sexual orientation”, in the same list as health data and political opinions.
• out (v.). Online Etymology Dictionary. Provides the dating of the sense “to expose as a closet homosexual” to 1990 and of to come out to 1968, as a shortening of come out of the closet.

Related terms

• Blackmail play. The form of play in which disclosure is played with, and which exists only with agreements beforehand.
• FetLife. The platform where most people keep their scene identity, and how visible that is.
• Kinky. The word people use for themselves and that outing sticks on them without their consent.
• Kinkster. The self-chosen identity that outing puts in other hands.
• Lifestyle. The degree to which someone lives BDSM outside the scene, and so how much there is to out.
• Consent violation. What outing within the scene is usually counted under.
• Scene name. The simplest measure against it, and where it stops working.
• Discretion. The behavior that outing is meant to prevent, with the four meanings the dictionary gives it.
• Duty of silence. The other side of the same subject: what it means when someone is actually obliged to keep quiet.