Everything You Need to Know About National Coming Out Day

Miley Cyrus

During an interview with Paper magazine, Miley Cyrus shared a conversation between her and her mother Tish Cyrus about coming to terms with her sexuality at age 14. "I remember telling her I admire women in a different way. And she asked me what that meant. And I said 'I love them. I love them like I love boys.' And it was so hard for her to understand," She went on to say that while both her parents did not understand her at first, they came around. Cyrus, who identifies as pansexual, admitted that her journey was not always so clear cut.

"My whole life, I didn't understand my own gender and my own sexuality. I always hated the word bisexual because that's even putting me in a box. I don't ever think about someone being a boy or someone being a girl. I think the LGBTQ alphabet could continue forever. But there’s a “P” that should happen, for ‘pansexual’…once I understood my gender more, which was unassigned, then I understood my sexuality more.” 

Laverne Cox

Our next celeb had to come out not once, but twice! In a video titled “One Stride, Many Journey’s" created by Barefoot and Out, Cox recalled her rollercoaster ride by saying: “I have kind of two coming outs. I came out to my mom first as gay my sophomore year, and she freaked out. And then, when I came out to my mother as trans a few years later, it was after I started my medical transition, she took that easier," Cox said. "This time I was living in NY, I was supporting myself, and so she never said, ‘I don’t want you in my life.' It was just that she didn’t understand and she had issues with the pronoun thing and the name change; it was just like, ‘Girl, you gotta get this together.'" With time, Cox’s mother came to show her support by gifting her a plate with "No. 1 Daughter" written on it. 

Jonathan Van Ness

In an interview with Out Magazine, Jonathan Van Ness got candid about his identity. “The older I get, the more I think that I’m non-binary — I’m gender nonconforming. Like, some days I feel like a man, but then other days I feel like a woman.” He went on to say, “I think that a lot of times gender is used to separate and divide. It’s this social construct that I don’t really feel like I fit into the way I used to.” 

Although he prefers the pronouns he/him, Van Ness identifies as “genderqueer.” It is important to him that anyone struggling with their identity feels that they can express themselves the way he has learned to.