Oh yes, out loud, loudly, with open hostility.Lexi wrote: So sorry to hear this - does not sound nice at all. But what exactly does it mean to be outed? Does that mean someone will actually say something out loud!?!?
In one instance, it was the peeping-Tom tenant in the upstairs of a duplex we lived in at the time. He had peeked under our drawn window-shades to see me dressed inside my own home. He came halfway down the inside stairway between our two units, to confront me. There was only an interior door separating our apartments. Yes, he said a lot. It qualified as simple assault. If I had had a firearm during that first encounter, it would have been drawn. He loudly expressed his feelings in no uncertain terms that I was a fag, a homo, a queer, etc, and that I had no right whatsoever to live my life. Over the next three weeks, he would spontaneously go into a rage and scream at me from outside our apartment. Then he moved out, after beating his girlfriend one too many times.
I could have called the police, though I had no physical evidence. It was in Iowa, and police there at that time were bigoted, and my landlord would have found out, and evicted me.
Yes, being outed can be brutal.
Hugs,
Bernice