fandom has always framed the end-all-be-all as this big coming out, but I've never found that useful. I still think that there is a large possibility that will never happen. If Harry or Louis ever come out, it would not be to confirm "Larry is real" and this also negates the fact that so many celebs go their whole life without ever coming out of the closet, and I don't think it's against their will. I just find people in the fandom love to speculate on when they will come out and how they 2/3

will do it as if it's inevitable, and I just don't see it that way at all. I'm not sure if you've discussed your thoughts on if/how HL would ever come out, but I would love to hear them if you have any. 3/3

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There’s a lot here anon - and I’ll try and say a little bit about what I think.

The first thing to understand the current environment for celebrities coming out.  Celebrities are coming out more than they used to, but they tend to be younger and not to have actively performed heterosexuality as part of being in the closet.  The effect of this has been to erase any structural elements of the closet.  Coming out is presented as an individual choice, as opposed to something that is mandated by structures of power within the industries involved.

The last person I can think of who publicly performed heterosexuality and then came out was Kristen Stewart.  But she’s never denied her past - it just sits there and people can believe what they want about it.  

What hasn’t happened for a while (and I’d be interested if anyone can think of any examples) is someone saying ‘I’m gay and the story I was telling about myself before was a lie’.  Ricky Martin is the last person I can think about who came out, and made it clear that the relatioship history he had told publicly wasn’t true (this is leaving out people who were clearly outted like Phillip Schofield).

That’s a very tricky envrionment for Harry and Louis to navigate if they’re together and want to come out.  It would be possible I think for them to tell a story that didn’t present everything about their dating life as a lie (definitely possible for Harry and with enough lead time also possible for Louis). But trying to do that would be high risk, because lots of people won’t believe it - and will talk about how they don’t believe it - and there’s a risk of journalists runnig aritcles about why they won’t believe it.

But things won’t necessarily stay as they are now.  Celebrity changes and the experieces of being a public LGBTQ person change.  It maybe that in five years time celebrities are much more able to expose the nature of the celebrity closet in the 2010s. We live in an incredibly unstable time - the idea that we can predict what will happen in the short term is absurd - the medium term is unthinkable.  And there are all sorts of ways that current events could ricochet and create a different environment for LGBTQ celebrities.

We don’t know what they want, we don’t know how they see this, and I try really hard not to pretend that I do know.  But when thinking about whether they might come out - it’s useful to think about things that they might want that would be difficult if they remained in the closet.

First, I may be wrong about this, but I think Louis will struggle to be an interesting popstar in the closet.  And in the current environment you gotta be interesting to get any traction.  

Second, I think it’s very difficult for them to have children together, if they don’t come out.  If either of them were with someone non famous, or even someone famous where the relationship was under a little bit less surveillance, then there are all sorts of possibilities to have kids. But if they stayed together long term, I think they’d have to choose (certainly if either of them was living a public life of any sort).  

Finally, it may be the circles we move in (I have quite a restricted dash), but I don’t see a lot of discussion of coming out on my dash.  What I saw instead - was large parts of fandom turning on a dime.  When it became untenable for those with a grasp on music industry contracts to argue that they were closeted entirely because of their contracts.  I suddenly saw lots of arguments about privacy and their desire for privacy across my dash.  I think it’s very obvious that they have reclaimed a lot of privacy.  But I think it’s a huge leap to claim that that’s the reason that they haven’t come out, partiucularly when there’s a much more obvious answer.

I’m a materialist girl, and so I am going to look at what’s going on financially first, and there’s a huge amount of money on the line for Harry’s career.  I think it’s unfortunate that fandom refuses to discuss that, because I think the implications of that refusal are quite fucked up.  I think there’s a reasonably strong belief that it wouldn’t be OK that Harry is closeted, because a huge part of his audience is invested in a romantic fantasy boyfriend version of him.  And that’s why people don’t talk about the extremely obvious, because they don’t want to acknowledge it.  But I think that ends up blaming LGBTQ people for their oppression. If society cuts off opportunities for queer entertainers if they come out (which it does), the problem there is society.  And I think it’s really homophobic to suggest that there are wrong ways of navigating the closet.