Due Diligence, when I first saw the promo for Nicky Goldstein’s exit interview I raised an eyebrow. Not for the sake of “it was clear” that I will discuss it soon, but out of a question whether leaving the closet as gay is still sensational news in 2022? Exactly 20 years have passed since the well-publicized departure of Ivri Lider in an interview with the man I will not mention his name, and the question arises – are we still there?
Compared to Sapir Berman, whose great complexity in coming out of the closet as a transgender is self-evident, coming out of the closet as a homosexual is sometimes seen as banal. Coming out of the closet is a traumatic event for everyone. For some it is more traumatic and for some less so. In fact, as long as the concept of “coming out of the closet” exists, it will always be accompanied by complexity, repression, and a short or long period of concealment and low self-worth. After the process is over, many of us are grateful for the present and leave the difficulties we went through in the past. The same is true for those who came from enlightened and more accepting homes, and this is all the more true for those from conservative homes.
So is getting out of a gay celeb’s closet still news? Absolutely yes. Dana Weiss’s interview with Nicky Goldstein last night on Channel 12 is not aimed at the ears of cynical Tel Aviv gays who treated the story with contempt, and allowed themselves to “get carried away” about Goldstein as if homosexuality was a matter of seniority. Goldstein’s remarks should be heard by those who are still discovering themselves and those who are facing or may be facing an exit from the closet of their relatives.
As part of the shower of venomous reactions, Goldstein’s archive footage of women imitating or appearing to the sounds of Eurovision songs was pulled out as if it were “evidence” that he had always been repressed gay. This discussion seemed particularly ridiculous when it took place in parallel with the well-justified attack against Tal Gilboa’s remarks last week, which claimed that “we (the women) do not want men playing with dolls and puppets.” Gender and sexual orientations can manifest in countless ways. The attempt to paint a picture according to which Goldstein has always lived in a lie as a repressed gay, in stark contrast to what he himself testifies, is bullying and mostly irrelevant.
In contrast to the exit interviews from the closet a decade and two decades ago, last night’s interview evokes a more complex discourse. It sparked a debate about a late exit from the closet, an exit in front of a woman and children, a transition between friendships and falling in love and an escape from tronormativity. Most of all, the importance was in what was almost non-existent and that is the need for definition. Nicki Goldstein and his new partner Eyal Shalom did not unequivocally define their sexual orientation nor were they stubbornly required to do so by the interviewer. They bravely told their story as men who truly and sincerely loved women for many years, until one day they fell in love with each other.
From the article about Nicki Goldstein, last night on News 12
Are they repressed gays? Bisexuals? Fluids? A convincing proof that sexual orientation is a spectrum? It just does not matter. Let’s hope we hear a host of other such and such stories, varied and different, that will shake us all from cynicism and fixed perceptions. And especially longing for the distant day when the concept of “coming out of the closet” would be meaningless in the first place. Good luck and a big hug to Nikki and Eyal.