This article looks at the “coming out” category in a broad political sense as the work of making the particular subject positions of LGBT minorities legible to those subjects them‑selves and to the public at large. Coming out thus understood includes, but is not limited to, the rhetorical act of announcing one’s sexual identity; it likewise includes aesthetic representations such as memoirs and films. This broad definition of coming out, based on Jacques Rancière’s political philosophy, enables a comparison between the political‑cum‑aesthetic work of sexual minorities in the US, especially after the Stonewall Inn riots and up to the AIDS epidemic and its aftermath, and some developments in post‑1989 Poland.
During „the long 1970s” in Poland homosexuality began to be thematized in public and semi-public discourse, enabling a sense of community among people who were not personally acquainted. The discursive emergence of homosexuality was gradually eroding an unspoken pact of silence which had prevailed before. Early selforganizing relied heavily on private networking, in which forms of proto-political sociality supported and enabled the emergence of properly political activism. The paper draws on oral history interviews and on letters which men in Poland sent to the Austrian organization HOSI Wien in the mid-1980s.