It's National Coming Out Day in some parts of the world

[icon_uk]

...which has been an event since 1988, in the USA, UK and, for some reason, Switzerland.

Initially for coming out as gay, but since extended to include coming out as being anywhere on the LGBTQA+ spectrum.

Now, some people find they come come out without effort, and that's fine, some people put it off, or never come out for whatever reason, and that's fine too (and of course, in some cases it's just not safe to do so), so there is no pressure to come out, but if the focus helps some people, then more power to them!

So how do the comics handle such things?

In recent times it's been a lot more straightforward, as identifying as nonstraight is not automatically the social outcast but 26 years ago... not so easy.

From the dim and distant mists of time, 1991 in fact, in Flash #53 where Wally is shooting the breeze with the now reformed Pied Piper....







Smooth West, reaaaaaal smooth!

This was actually pretty daring back then, Northstar wouldn't come ontil until 1992 (and then in a not so great story) and there were almost no confirmed-on-page-as-anything-other-than-straight characters around... lot's of subtext, or veiled references (Claremont referencing Destiny as Mystique's "leman") but nothing direct.

Just to make it clear, it's obvious (and elaborated on elsewhere in the issue) that Hartley knows full well that Wally is NOT going to be against hm for coming out, but it may take him a little while to process the news, and there are no hard feelings when they talk it over later!

So if today IS the day you come out, congratulations, and if it's not then there's nothing wrong with that either, and you are welcome on scans_daily regardless
 

Comments

[riddler13]

To be honest, I thought it wasn't badly done back then. Too much on the face, obviously.

[locuatico]

I remember last year when the reality show "Survivor" had a trans contestant be forcefully outed by another contestant and every other contestant came to the defense of the trans contestant because what he had done was way beyond boundary lines (and so was unanimously voted out of the show).

the days following that episode's airing, I read someone who pointed out that, just 10 years ago, that same scene may have gone a very diferent direction and that it says something about the progress of trans-rights activism in recent time that everyone there treated forcefully outing someone as such an awful thing.

[balbanes]

I think it's difficult for younger people to understand how different things were back then. When I was growing up, to the extent any movies or TV shows included a gay or lesbian character, it was as a one-note offensive stereotype to be openly mocked by the main cast. And I do mean offensive stereotypes, like "joking" about gay men being pedophiles, or about lesbians being too ugly to get a man but eager to "switch" if a man showed interest (as a cruel joke, natch).

I recall being perplexed at my parents' description of the blatant racism of the 50s and 60s. "How could things be so different such a short time ago?" I thought. And I now find myself in the same position as them, with regard to describing the rampant homophobia I remember in the 80s and early 90s.

[crinos]

I just love that shit eating grin on Piper's face in that second to last panel.

I mean, Piper may be an overall decent guy, and reformed, but he's still a Flash Rogue, so he has to take some amusement in Wally's obvious awkwardness at the situation.

Of course, we also have Piper from the Flash TV series, but the only real indication of him being Gay there is that his asshole parents disowned him over it.

[crabby_lioness]

"No problem. I always wanted to be picked up by a hot guy in leather." Hartley has been criminally underused.

[kamino_neko]

I loved this scene (and Piper's kind of adorable, though I don't like the art as a whole).

[kamino_neko]

Yeah. It was...yeah. Having grown up with that, I still get giddy whenever a LGBT person is represented in a not-terrible way in media, no matter how common it gets.

[janegray]

Yeah. Like when I see people say that JKR is horrible because she only revealed that Dumbledore is gay in an interview instead of the actual books. Guys... it was illegal to write gay characters in kids' books. Thatcher's Section 28 was only repealed in 2003.

These days kids grow up with openly gay characters in mainstream cartoons, like Steven Universe, and have no idea that just a very short time ago something like that wouldn't even have been possible in our wildest dreams.

[cainofdreaming]

I... don't hate the art. But Piper's face does keep changing from panel to panel.

[icon_uk]

Only if you're doing it really, REALLY badly...

Oh, wait, what were we talking about?

[icon_uk]

I'm old enough to remember when the mere hint of homosexuality in a politicians life would literally destroy their career. (Allegedly because it would leave them singularly open to blackmail by enemy spies. Though of course... #koff#koff#ProfumoAffair#koff#koff#)

Nowadays we have openly gay MP' and Cabinet Ministers, and the leader of the Scottish Conservatives is engaged to her same-sex partner. (Imagining Margaret Thatcher's probable reaction to those situations is the sort of thought that gives me a warm, happy feeling)

[icon_uk]

That was a delightful moment! :)

And I've never quite forgiven the show for naming him the Pied Piper when

A) He's never used pipes as a gimmick, he used some sort of sonic gauntlet things.
B) He's never used his abilities to entrance others (The only other Pied Piper reference that would work)

Cisco was obviously having a naming the villain day.

[icon_uk]

Not quite that straightforward as far as I know.

It wasn't illegal to write gay characters in books in the UK, and Clause 28 didn't cover authors, only local authorities (and schools could still discuss homosexuality, they just couldn't been seen as promoting it). In short it was a shit law, badly written and luckily for some, pretty hard to enforce as they were arguing about who it covered for YEARS.

[janegray]

The way it was explained to me, it wasn't that people who wrote gay characters in books would be arrested, but that the books in question would be thrown out of libraries.

Plus, as you said, the law was incredibly vague: what exactly constitutes as "promoting" homosexuality? Used to be, even so much as giving gay characters a happy ending was seen as "encouraging" it. In Putin's Russia, comforting a gay kid by telling them that there is nothing wrong with them counts as "promoting homosexuality," and I have little doubt that our own conservatives agree.

So publishers were scared out of doing anything with gay characters because they had no idea what could trigger the ban.

[riddler13]

LOL

[goattoucher]

Harrumph!

[goattoucher]

Though I rage and fume and spit fire on ultimately pointless social media arguments, in the end I am soothed by the fact that, despite the machinations of reactionaries who either try to evangelize their faith or romanticize the past (ignoring the flaws and inequality), our society -always- moves forward. Not quickly enough by half, but those who oppose progress are invariably on the wrong side of history in the long run.

Here's a bit of fun: Whenever somebody you know goes on a rant about how the world has gone to hell, and how things were better in their day (an argument that is literally three thousand years old), let them go on unchallenged. Then, when they have finished, punctuate their screed with the following statement:

[TRIGGER WARNING: Pejorative epithets]

"...and the darkies and the homos knew their place!"

The reaction you get will be so wonderful that it will approach spiritual transcendence. When they lionize the past, either A: they are forgetting about how bad things were for racial minorities and non cis-hetero people, or B: the above statement is what they were -really- talking about all along without having the onions to say so explicitly.

I have done this several times, and each time it reduced the speaker to a sputtering mess of clumsy backpedaling. It was glorious.

[liliaeth]

I just really wish they brought him back, made him friends with Wally or something...

[every_spiegel]

That's the first time I see this Hartley guy and I like him already. So chill, much smug!

[dustbunny105]

I do enjoy Wally in the scene after this patting himself on the back for being smooth enough not to tip Hartley off to how uncomfortable he was.

[kamino_neko]

I've seen that tactic used and...well...the guy pretty much leaned into it. In the 50s, said he, the blacks and the women loved their place in society, which he knew because none of them ever complained to the little white boy. (That we queer folk would have had a shit time was a feature, not a bug.) It was the hippies, he confidently informed us, that made them unhappy.

[thezmage]

In all fairness, when has Cisco ever not sucked at naming?

[goattoucher]

Even that is a victory, because it thrushes the -real- dickheads out of hiding. Now you and everyone listening to that conversation knows that guy's true colors.

[icon_uk]

They ran something similar at the last republican Convention before the Election. They asked those who supported Trump when WAS the last time America had been great.

Answers ranged from the Bush Administration, to the 50's, or the 1930's, or in some bizarre cases, the 19th century.

The follow up question was usually highlighting one of the major issues prevalent at the time.

So the 1950's was when the Jim Crow laws were still in effect, anything before 1920 was before women got the vote and so on...

At least of them had the decency to be caught short by the revelations and reassessed their answers.

[bruinsfan]

I'm sure they're showing them to her A Clockwork Orange style right now in whatever circle of Hell she ended up in...

[bruinsfan]

Making Andy Mientus a regular is the only way the show could get me back as a viewer at this point.