17 Social Text 131 • Vol. 35, No. 2 • June 2017 DOI 10.1215/01642472-3820533 © 2017 Duke University Press My cousin and I came out to our respective parents about ten years apart from one another. Our parents are good friends. They regularly share meals and celebrate holidays together. In the early 2000s, however, in Montreal, Québec, my announcement was met with horror and panic. It was seen as premature and limiting: “What if your lifestyle turns away a guy who might otherwise make a pass at you?” 1 In comparison, although we both came out at roughly the same age, my cousin was framed as a “late bloomer.” Her announcement was greeted by relief. She had, a fam- ily member called to tell me, “fnally accepted hersel f.” Thus, in just ten years, parental response had transformed. Disapproval morphed into its opposite: not simply acceptance but approval — at least, so it seemed. This essay investigates contemporary lesbian and gay coming out narratives in contexts where the public expression of homophobia is often viewed as unenlightened. Drawing on a broad archive, I track a repeated, transnational dynamic that has become increasingly widespread, though certainly not evenly either domestically or transnationally. Over and again, the “problem” with gay and lesbian identities is fgured not as one’s queerness but, rather, one’s (potential) lack of self-acceptance. In fact, this “lack” might be understood as a new form of queerness, one that is tied not necessarily to the breaching of gender and sexual norms but to the breaching of a new set of norms concerning self-assertion and transpar- ency, norms whose performance is especially valued in neoliberal culture. I argue that the new coming out narrative at once both disavows and points to the continued presence of heteronormativity and queer oppres- sion in everyday life. It also indexes widespread adherence to a model of the self as transparent and naturally self-interested, a model that is deeply “Finally, She’s Accepted Herself!” Coming Out in Neoliberal Times Stephanie D. Clare Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/social-text/article-pdf/35/2 (131)/17/475416/0350017.pdf by guest on 28 May 2020