Why closet gay

He joined the Navy Reserve in On his first trip to Japan, he refused to visit the brothels with the men he worked with, and as a result, one of them began physically and verbally harassing him, he said.

Even after they both got out of the Navy, they stayed in the closet. Beginning in the late s, many states criminalized homosexuality through sodomy laws. And then when you get older you see the gay pride going on and people totally enjoying themselves. Sharing the stories of LGBTQ elders is especially important now, DaCosta said, as the Covid pandemic highlights disparities faced by older people and marginalized communities. Research published in the journal The Gerontologist last fall found that lesbian, gay and bisexual people have a higher risk of dementia and cognitive decline than heterosexual people as they grow older.

One of the elders featured in the exhibit, Lujira Cooper, 72, lived nearly her whole life as an openly gay woman. See Coronavirus Updates for information on returning to campus, and more. Results show that men wanted to avoid the stigma and homophobia they felt certain would lead to strong negative emotional reactions and profound changes in their relationships. Findings are published online in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.

Using a large, ethnically diverse sample, the researchers examined the reasons these behaviorally bisexual men offered for why they had not told—and frequently never planned to tell—their friends, family, and female partners about their sexual orientation. In-depth interviews were conducted with behaviorally bisexual men in New York City who had never disclosed their same-sex behavior to their female sexual partners.

It can be painful to keep significant aspects of the self hidden or to vigilantly separate aspects of the self from each other.

Constant hiding creates difficulties in accurately assessing other people's perceptions of oneself, as well as recognizing one's own strengths. Dissociation's impact on self-esteem can also make it difficult to feel one's actual accomplishments as reflections of one's own abilities. Transparency, invisibility, losing one's voice, and being stuck behind walls or other barriers are some of the terms used to describe the subjective experience of dissociative detachment Drescher, For some gay men, "Hiding and passing as heterosexual becomes a lifelong moral hatred of the self; a maze of corruptions, petty lies, and half truths that spoil social relations in family and friendship" Herdt and Boxer, There are many gay men who, before they came out, were either "gay-baiters" or "gay-bashers" themselves.

Attacking those perceived to be gay serves several functions. One penile plethysmography study indicated that men with strong antihomosexual beliefs actually had significant homosexual arousal patterns Adams et al.

Strong antihomosexual feelings may represent an effort to control perceptions of a gay-basher's own sexual identity. This might translate as, "If I attack gay people, no one will think I am gay. It may represent intrapsychic efforts to maintain a psychological distance from one's own homoerotic feelings. In other words, it is an effort to strengthen dissociative tendencies. Coming out may be the most commonly shared cultural experience that defines the modern gay identity.

Historically, the term was an ironic reference to debutantes "coming out into society" Chauncey, In contemporary usage, "coming out of the closet" means telling another person that one is gay. Years spent in the closet can make the prospect of revealing oneself an emotionally charged experience. However, the process is not just about revealing oneself to others--in coming out, gay people integrate, as best they can, dissociated aspects of the self.

Herdt and Boxer classified coming out as a ritual process of passage that requires a gay person to 1 unlearn the principles of natural or essentialist heterosexuality; 2 unlearn the stereotypes of homosexuality; and 3 learn the ways of the lesbian and gay culture they are entering. Finally, as gay people must decide on a daily basis whether to reveal and to whom they will reveal themselves, coming out is a process that never ends.

Coming out to oneself is a subjective experience of inner recognition. It is a moment that is sometimes charged with excitement and at other times with trepidation. It is a realization that previously unacceptable feelings or desires are part of one's self. It is, in part, a verbal process--putting into words previously inarticulated feelings and ideas. It is a recapturing of disavowed experiences. Coming out to oneself may precede any sexual contact. Sometimes, the moment of coming out to oneself is sexually exciting.

Some gay people describe it as a switch being turned on. In the language of Winnicott , it can be experienced as a moment in which they make contact with their true selves. Coming out to oneself may be followed by coming out to others. Such revelations are not always greeted with enthusiasm, and fear of rejection often plays a significant role in a gay person's decision about who to tell or whether to come out.

For those who cannot come out in their hometown, moving to another city offers opportunities to come out among strangers. It can be exhilarating to come out in new and faraway places where one is not known to either family or friends. After making such a move, gay people may completely and perhaps dissociatively sever relationships with their past lives. A therapist's recognition and respect for individual differences allows multiple possibilities in the coming out process.

There is no single way to come out, a fact sometimes overlooked by well-intentioned therapists trying to affirm a patient's homosexuality. Every coming out situation may be associated with anxiety, relief or both. As previously stated, being gay, in contrast to being homosexually self-aware, is to claim a normative identity. From this perspective, coming out to oneself is integrative and often serves to affirm a patient's sense of worth. It is a prerequisite of this work that therapists be able to accept their patients' homosexuality as a normal variation of human sexuality, and that they value and respect same-sex feelings and behaviors as well Drescher, A therapist fluent in the meanings of coming out can point out both obstacles to and inhibitions of the process.

However, patients may hear therapist fluency as tacit encouragement to "hurry up and come out," even rebuking a therapist for perceived efforts to force movement in that direction.

Therapists need to be aware they can be heard this way and treat it as grist for the psychotherapeutic mill. Therapists should recognize gay patients' struggles to define themselves as the important therapeutic focus--and that this is not a typical struggle for those who claim a heterosexual identity.

Gay patients face a whole set of decisions unlike anything heterosexuals face. Hiding from oneself depends upon dissociative defenses, while coming out to oneself holds the possibility of psychological integration. An implicit value of psychotherapy is that integration is more psychologically meaningful than dissociation.

Consequently, therapists cannot be neutral about coming out to the self.