They’re called BeauTubers now, which I didn’t know – words arrive in the world as required, rarely announcing themselves in advance, and we adapt alongside them. Previously known as beauty vloggers, these are people whose dramas in life and lipstick attract hundreds of thousands of YouTube viewers daily. An hour can easily be lost in meditation upon a teenager’s application of CC cream.

Nikkie de Jager is one such vlogger, a Dutch makeup artist who, in a recent video, came out to her many millions of subscribers as a trans woman. “I want to inspire little Nikkies around the world who feel insecure… I hope by me standing up and being free that it inspires others to do the same.” It is 2020, she said. “It’s time for us to understand, accept, hear and respect.”

The reaction was buoyant and celebratory, her fans congratulating her for “living her truth”, and for sharing intimate details of her childhood (such as the fact she started socially transitioning at six, long before starting hormones in her teens) that illuminate the longstanding and quiet reality of young trans kids, too often used only as pawns in scaremongering debates. No, “debates”.

But what was lost in the celebration was the reason de Jager chose to talk about it now. “I wanted [to share my story] under my conditions… It looks like that chance has been taken away from me. So today, I am taking back my own power.” She was being blackmailed by people threatening to leak her transition story to the press. To them, she added, “I know you’re watching this.”

Perhaps it should come as no surprise to me that outing is still a common shaming tactic and still has the power to unravel a life in 2020, a time when identity politics lead us all into battle, whether in the streets or at the dinner table. But somehow it does. It does surprise me that such information about a person’s body or sexuality can be weaponised, hurled back as if it undermines them, their honesty, their achievements. And then, how it sours any positive gains each case makes.

When former rugby player Gareth Thomas made his HIV status public, what could have been a welcome revelation about the modern reality of living with such a diagnosis (he wanted to show how people with HIV were misrepresented as “close to dying”, the following day completing an Ironman in just over 12 hours) was stained by the fact he was forced to do so. He was compelled to make the announcement after threats were made to him by “evils”. He hadn’t yet told his parents.

And while it’s one thing to be outed by the tabloids, with their rich history of fear and hatred of minorities, it’s quite another to be outed by a government that claims to be an ally of LGBT people. In 2018, Downing Street outed Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Shahmir Sanni to the public and to his mother. After they publicised his sexuality, his family in Pakistan had to have security put in place.

There is a case to be made for outing. It’s a thin case, today, more of a card wallet, but 30 years ago, there was an argument that closeted public figures should be outed to illuminate the Aids epidemic. One of my heroes, the author Armistead Maupin, stands by his decision to posthumously out his friend Rock Hudson, claiming he had a moral obligation to lift the stigma of homosexuality by being truthful.

And yes, even today, when a person’s sexuality is relevant to a larger story – if they’re a politician voting in anti-gay legislation for example – there remains a case to be made that the media has a responsibility to report on it. But the politics of outing evolve and devolve in seconds, according to the changing social and economic implications of being out – in the 1980s and 90s, being outed as gay was often a matter of life or death. Today, outing a person as transgender, as a member of a community forced to deal with loss and harassment daily – in the UK there’s been an 81% increase in recorded hate crime towards transgender people since 2017, and, (according to an albeit small 2017 survey by Stonewall) almost half of young trans people have attempted to kill themselves – is similarly dangerous.

De Jager should never have been pressured to come out, when “out” is still a sharp and sticky place, at worst a place where her gender identity puts her at risk. But her announcement has forced many people, people used, perhaps, to seeing trans lives discussed only in theoretical terms, as characters in a story about prisons, children or sport, to acknowledge the many-layered experiences of a trans person navigating the world.

This, perhaps, is the most heartening thing about de Jager coming out – that the many millions of people who followed her story might find new empathies within their mascara tutorials. That we might continue to adapt alongside each other, with words, with actions. “BeauTuber” – it has a ring to it.

• This article was amended on 20 February 2020 to include a reference to a 2017 Stonewall survey.

Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman