Closet Republic is a nation with no borders, no army and no border guards. It is a playful online republic for everyone who has ever hidden who they are to stay safe, to keep a job, to keep a family, or simply to get through the day.
We have a constitution, a gazette, ministries and passports. None of them will get you through an airport. All of them are meant seriously anyway.
The closet, reconsidered
Most stories treat the closet as a place of exile: somewhere you are pushed into, somewhere you are supposed to escape from as fast as possible, and somewhere you should feel ashamed of having lived.
We see it differently.
The closet is armour. People have hidden in plain sight for as long as there have been people who were punished for being themselves. Choosing what to show, and to whom, is a survival skill. It is strategy, not cowardice.
The closet is shelter. A closet is a room you can close from the inside. It holds what you value until the weather outside changes. Many of us have built whole lives, careers and communities while keeping a door shut, and that work counts.
The door is yours. You decide when it opens, how wide, and for whom. Some of our citizens are out to everyone. Some are out to no one. Some are out on Tuesdays. Closet Republic treats every one of those choices as legitimate and none of them as a test.
So the Republic is not a parade you have to march in. It is a place you can enter at your own pace, under any name you like, and leave whenever you want.
Radical self-possession
You belong to yourself. That is the founding principle of the Republic.
- No gatekeeping. We don't ask for proof of who you are, how you identify, what your documents say, or whether you have "really" been through enough. Nobody here issues certificates of queerness.
- No paperwork for your identity. Your name, your pronouns and your story are yours to state and to change. We will never ask a doctor, a court, a government office or a family member to confirm them.
- Pseudonyms are welcome. Citizenship needs no legal name. Our passport is generated entirely in your own browser; the details you put in it never reach our server.
- Allies are welcome too. Closet Republic is for anyone who has hidden part of themselves to fit in and avoid discrimination, and for the people who stand with them.
The Republic's own constitution sets out the fundamental rights of its citizens and how its government, the GCR, is chosen. It is a living document, and it can only be changed by the community it governs.
The Public Treasury
Closet Republic is funded entirely by voluntary contributions, which our lore calls an "unfair and entirely optional tax". Every rupee and dollar is recorded in a public ledger, and the balances on the funding page are live. The treasury has four funds:
- The monthly budget pays for running the Republic, and starts again from zero on the 1st of every month.
- The legal fund is set aside for challenging laws that try to put people back in boxes.
- The welfare fund is the heart of the treasury. It is split in two:
- 80% funds independent queer developers, artists, writers and interns who build the Republic: its code, its constitution, its gazette and its art. We believe creative and technical labour should be paid, especially when it is done by people who are routinely shut out of paid work.
- 20% goes to direct mutual aid: need-based help for queer people facing hardship, given privately and without asking anyone to prove they "deserve" it.
- The infrastructure fund buys the computers, tablets, accessories and servers that keep the Republic standing.
Closet Republic is not a registered charity, so contributions are not tax-deductible. We publish what comes in and what goes out because trust has to be earned in public.
Digital resilience
Communities like ours get taken down. Platforms change their rules, hosts receive complaints, laws change overnight. We build as if that could happen tomorrow.
- Open source. All of the Republic's code is public on GitHub. Anyone can read it, check it, copy it and run it. If this site disappears, the Republic can be rebuilt from the repository.
- Counter-infrastructure. We run on our own server, keep our own small database, and depend on as few large platforms as possible. No ad networks, no trackers, no analytics companies.
- The Lifeline. If closetrepublic.com is ever taken down, everyone on the Lifeline gets one email with the new address, the code and the way to keep supporting us. It is the Republic's emergency broadcast system, and it is used for nothing else.
- Data minimisation as a safety practice. The safest data is the data we never collect. We ask for as little as possible, keep it for as short a time as possible, and never sell or share it. Our Privacy Policy lists everything we store.
Solidarity, in public
Ideas, debates and decisions happen in public community spaces: GitHub issues and discussions, and our community forums. That is deliberate. Work shared in the open belongs to everyone, can be credited properly, and can't be quietly taken by one person.
Private help is the exception, and it is kept truly private: mutual aid requests, safety reports and personal details stay between you and the smallest possible number of trusted volunteers.
Everyone in our spaces agrees to the Community Guidelines. They come down to one rule: nobody gets pushed back into a box here.
Join the Republic
- Read the Constitution and the Gazette.
- Print your own passport.
- Build with us as a developer, writer, artist or constitution drafter on Public Works.
- Fund the treasury on the funding page.
- Stay reachable by joining the Lifeline.
Closet Republic: naturally exceptional.
Closet Republic is a parody micronation and an online community. It is not a state, government, political party or registered charity, and it does not issue legal documents. See the Terms and Conditions.