'Teen Wolf's Charlie Carver Comes Out As Gay

On Monday, Teen Wolf star Charlie Carver came out as gay in a five-part Instagram post series. The actor shared a photograph of the quote “Be who you needed when you were younger” five times and used the caption space to share a different piece of an extensive personal essay. This Instagram post series is the first time the actor has discussed his sexual orientation.

"When it came to this differentiation of public/private, I was of the opinion that my sexuality could stay off the table," the 27-year-old actor explained in the third part of the series. "While my Coming Out was very important for me, I wanted to believe in a world where one’s sexuality was for the most part irrelevant. That it didn’t 'matter,' or that at least it was something that didn’t need to or ideally shouldn’t ever have to be announced to a stranger, a new colleague, an interviewer."

"Even the words 'Coming Out' bothered me," he continued. "I took issue with them insofar as that 'Coming Out' implied being greeted with attention, attention for something I would prefer to be implicitly just Human, an attribute or adjective that was only part of how I saw my whole self. I did not want to be defined by my sexuality. Sure, I am a proud gay man, but I don’t identify as a Gay man, or a GAY man, or just gay. I identify as a lot of things, these various identifications and identities taking up equal space and making up an ever-fluid sense of Self."

The Desperate Housewives actor added that his family has always been supportive of who he is.

“I now believe that by omitting this part of myself from the record, I am complicit in perpetuating the suffering, fear, and shame cast upon so many in the world," he wrote the final post. "In my silence, I’ve helped decide for to you too that to be gay is to be, as a young man (or young woman, young anyone), inappropriate for a professional career in the Arts (WHAAA???) So now, let the record show this- I self-identify as gay. And does that really matter anymore? As a young man, I needed a young man in Hollywood to say that- and without being a d*** about it, I owe it to myself, more than anything, to be who I needed when I was younger."

You can read the moving essay in its entirety on Carver's Instagram page.