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[–] 33 points 5 days ago (3 children)

If someone tells you to hide, you don't just go out to the kitchen and stand there.

People hid in closets.

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  • [–] 12 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    To add to that, phrases like "monster in the closet" or "cleaning out the closet" all relate back to this.

    The idea is a closet is a great way to hide things quickly but also not really the way to deal with things long term. You just stuffed it away, you didn't properly think about it and remedy the issues. That's why people who have something to hide metaphorically speaking stuff these things in their closet. And that's why when you're a child the closet is the big unknown, as in you might find things in there you didn't expect. For example, maybe there are monsters in there.

    I would also say there's a chance that's why to get to Narnia, in the books, they would go through the closet. But there might be other reasons too ofc.

    So yeah the closet has a deep connection with hiding secrets. And if that secret is your homosexuality, which is a common story that's why it said "coming out of the closet", which means finally addressing something publicly. And now we're shortening that to say "coming out".

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  • [–] 6 points 4 days ago

    Letting the other gay people know you're gay is a 19th century debutante coming out party, secret gay is a skeleton in the closet. Unrelated metaphors got merged together because they grammatically make sense that way.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

    Actually I am a historian at the university of Toulouse. The expression is originally French, and dates back to the 17th century, when gay men would indeed meet up in closets for the purpose of enjoying the inter course. Naturally back then, closest were bigger and more sturdy .

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  • [–] 4 points 5 days ago

    The closet is where Narnia is.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 days ago

    I think it has something to do with how paramours would "hide in the closet" when the spouse came back home.

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