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COMING OUT - Printable Version

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COMING OUT - gayprojectforum - 05-14-2018

Homophobia and homologation reaction 

As we have already observed, guys who recognize their sexuality as homosexuality inevitably feel, in many countries over the world, that for others their sexuality is object of jokes or at least that to others it seems strange and that the judgment that others give it is negative. These guys, since very young are fully aware that in order not to incur reactions of intolerance or homophobia, both at the level of friendships and social ambition, one must keep his homosexuality hidden. Since, generally, seeing the behavior of a gay guy it’s not practically possible to understand what is his sexual orientation, and therefore gay guys can be identified as such only if they speak specifically of their own sexuality, in the great majority of cases these guys don’t publicly declare themselves gay and don’t show any behavior that can allow others to identify them as gays but rather tend to conform externally to generally shared hetero behaviors. Therefore, gay guys not only do not talk about guys with their friends or in the environments they attend but sometimes they act as heterosexuals so as not to be identified as gay and to be integrated into the peer group.
 
Familial homophobia and defense strategies

As often the speeches heard in the family contain homophobic messages, a gay boy realizes the need not to reveal anything of his homosexuality even in the family or rather especially in the family. But since a gay boy lives and must continue to live with his family, at this point he takes the worry not to leave traces and therefore, for example, to erase the chronology on the computer, not to buy books or newspapers that talk about homosexuality, to erase the memory of the phone or to memorize the numbers using acronyms and not the real names of his friends and to avoid watching TV broadcasts such as films or debates on the theme of homosexuality, together with his parents. 

In the rare case in which parents exert an explicit pressure towards heterosexuality with classic questions like: "Do you have a girlfriend?", A gay boy is led to elaborate a strategy that allows him to circumvent the question without attracting attention. Probably, however, for a gay boy the most serious discomfort  resulting from the homophobia of his parents, consists in not being able to attend the boys who he would like to know. To indicate the condition of gay boys who don't declare themselves gay, it's commonly used  the expression "being in the closet",  that is, being closed in the closet and well protected.
 
Coming out and outing

For a gay boy it is not easy to keep everything for himself and not to confide completely with anyone, in fact, a gay boy often perceives by intuition, right from the speeches made with friends, that a male friend or a female friend of his probably would not react badly after learning that their friend is gay. The gay boy then enters a difficult phase of transition in which the emotional and communicative needs, related to being able to talk freely about oneself, collide with the need to avoid becoming an object of ridicule and of other people's gossip. So he gradually matures the idea of being able to confide at least with a person he trusts a lot, it is used to say that he matures the idea of making "coming out". 

Almost all gay boys, sooner or later, come to a coming out limited to one or a very few people chosen with the utmost caution. Obviously if a gay guy does not trust anyone and carefully monitors all his behavior, no one can come to understand that he is gay, while if he confides, even only with a person, he runs the risk that the person who is aware of his homosexuality can spread the news even without realizing it. When this happens, we are faced with what we call "outing" (which could be translated as "being pulled out" of course from the closet). A gay who comes out, even with only one person, therefore runs a risk of outing, but if that person is a serious and reliable person the risk is minimal even if it is never completely null. A young person, therefore, carefully choosing the recipient or the recipients of his coming out, can minimize the risk of "outing" very effectively.
 
Declared and undeclared

It is commonly used the distinction between "not publicly declared" gays and "publicly declared" gays, very often most synthetic expressions are used: "declared" and "undeclared", implying the adverb "publicly", because it is assumed that all gay boys, sooner or later, make a limited coming out with people they totally trust. As we have observed, the overwhelming majority of gay boys donot declare themselves gay publicly, it is estimated that in Italy the gays publicly declared are about 4% of the gay population, in other countries the estimated percentages are very variable because of the social sanction against homosexuality. In countries where homosexuality entails the death penalty no one declares gay, in those in which gays are entitled to marriage with people of the same sex and to adoption of children, gays publicly declared are certainly a fraction consistent of the gay population. 

In general, between a declared gay and an undeclared gay there are strong differences in the interpretation of the concept of "being gay". However, these great differences are largely due to the cultural environments that can be very different. In essence, declaring oneself or not is a choice strongly influenced by the social environment precisely because the level of riskiness of declaring oneself is enormously variable from situation to situation. Often, undeclared gays are led to think that the declared ones have declared themselves in order to have easier access to sex by attending gay-labeled environments, while the gays declared are led to think that the undeclared are essentially cowards who don't have the courage of their actions. In both cases these are biases that have no basis, precisely because they don't not take into account that the environments around the guys can be and are in fact very different. 

The family environments, even before the social ones, in which gays live are so radically different and so influential on the choice whether to "come out" or not that it makes no sense to compare individual situations related to non-comparable contexts. Today, in Italy, that is in a country where homophobia is still deeply rooted (the parliamentary path of the anti-homophobia law, which has not been approved, is enough to realize it), except for exceptionally favorable situations, the generalized "coming out" is not advisable. Many boys are led to think, and sometimes they are even led to think so by gay associations, that the generalized coming out is a moral duty, a demonstration of courage and in some way a due act. In reality we must never forget that coming out is in itself a risky act. 

Homophobia at school, at university and in the workplace is evident from many episodes of chronicle and moreover many homophobic discriminations are carefully hidden behind other motivations just to avoid them appearing as homophobic discrimination. It should never be forgotten that the generalized coming out is a gesture from which one can not go back, no matter what consequence it may derive from it, and therefore it is essential to reflect very carefully on the risks that must be faced before declaring oneself publicly gay.
 
Coming out with parents

A very particular type of coming out is the coming out with parents. In this regard, many variables must be considered with the utmost care. It must be taken into account that, if and when it arrives, the coming out with the parents is the last chronologically. Parents, however good parents they may be in other respects, can be absolutely unprepared for a son's coming out and radically incapable of evaluating things in a realistic way because they are influenced by various conditioning and preconceptions. Taking for granted the ability of parents to understand and accept the homosexuality of the son is very imprudent. 

If a coming out with a friend is not taken in the right way, it is possible to interrupt relations with that friend, but when it is the coming out with the parents not to be taken in the right way, cohabitation must continue and can definitely become unpleasant. There are still situations in which parents come to deny their son economic assistance during his studies (two parents who had a gay son who was studying in another city, had  rented a mini-apartment for the son and payed monthly the rent for him, once they knew that their son was gay, they stopped paying the rent and forced their son to give up his studies). In some cases, an adult gay son has been removed from home to separate him from the brothers because the parents thought it could be a danger for the brothers.
 
The situations of radical rejection are actually quite rare. In most cases, however, to the coming out with the parents follows the establishment of a cold climate, the homosexuality is censored and removed and parents pretend that nothing has happened or get behind the classic negationism with phrases like: "You will see that it will pass! It's just a phase" or "You just say it to provoke me!"
 
The medicalization reaction is quite common: "Tomorrow we'll look for a good doctor and we’ll see if we can do something" or refer to the psychologist, usually a psychologist indicated by parents. In all these situations it is evident that parents are unable to understand and accept and that the coming out was a hasty choice. Often the parent feels guilty and attributes the homosexuality of the son to an educational error or considers the homosexuality of the son as a kind of condemnation resulting from some fault of the parent himself.
 
Sometimes, over time, the situation improves and when the parents realize that their son's gay friends are boys like everyone else and that being gay is not synonymous with getting into trouble, they end up getting over their fears and accept the homosexuality of the son. It should be borne in mind that seeing parents talking quietly about homosexuality and maybe even seeing that they have gay friends, doesn't offer any guarantee in relation to their ability to accept their son's homosexuality. Speaking of homosexuality in general, considering homosexuality as something foreign and far away, and accept to have a gay son are two absolutely different situations.
 
Often gay boys, who have not explicitly declared themselves with their parents, think that parents have nevertheless come to understand that they have a gay son from some of behaviors of the son himself and from some of his speeches that the son himself considers as implicit declarations of homosexuality. These are generally presumptions that don't correspond to reality, because a parent, in front of his son's explicit discourses, puts the so-called "defensive interpretation" into play, that is, he interprets the implicit discourse according to the direction that minimizes the problems from his point of view. In this case the parent tends to avoid the interpretations that would lead to the hypothesis of the homosexuality of the son. Classic is the example of the interpretation of the fact that the son doesn't have a girlfriend:
 
"My son didn't have a girlfriend but he had some female friends and went out with them too, he had nothing against girls, girls frequently courted him but he has always been very serious and always put his studies in the first place. He had to graduate and couldn’t waste too much time. He studied every day with a friend and then they took exams and passed them and I was happy. Those very rare times I tried to talk to him about girls he told me that at the time he had other problems for his head and that he wanted to finish his studies first. I didn’t see anything strange in this whole speech.
Later when my son told me that he was gay I just fell from the clouds and he didn't know how to explain it because he thought I had already understood everything because he had made me half a speech, but I hadn't understood anything from that speech."
 
Unintentional Coming Out

So far we have talked about a coming out as a result of a more or less meditated and conscious decision but as a result of a decision. It happens, unfortunately quite frequently, that the strategies adopted by a gay boy to protect his own privacy don't work because of unforeseen events, in these cases the boy incurs, when he least expects it, in the unpleasant experience of an involuntary coming out, in which to the classic problems of the coming out must be added the fact that it is an absolutely unwanted event of which the guy becomes aware when the damage is already done. Classic examples of involuntary coming out consist of leaving the computer open on a gay site or leaving a chat conversation visible on a gay topic or not realizing that a gay-themed book has slipped under the bed. In these situations the coming out results from factual data and denying it is something completely meaningless. The boy who has stumbled into an involuntary coming out (very often with his parents) can blame only his own carelessness.
 
Privacy violations and forced coming out

When a gay boy who does not want to declare himself publicly gay behaves imprudently, especially in the family, and gives no explanation of behaviors such as going out and returning at any time, neglecting old friends, passing a lot of time on the internet, parents can start to suspect and can begin to cautiously investigate their son's behavior. In some cases, parents arrive to secretly read the text messages of the son stored in the phone, to listen to his conversations, to enter their son's computer to read his e-mails and the texts of his dialogues in chat.
 
Sometimes from these investigations the homosexuality of the son clearly emerges and all his acquaintances also emerge. In these cases we come to a showdown in which it seems that the guy is forced to declare his own homosexuality, but in fact the parents are already fully aware of it. Situations of this kind, precisely because they are preceded by an intrusive investigation in violation of the privacy of the son, lead to the definitive collapse of any possibility of dialogue between parents and sons and are very heavy for the boys.
 
However, if a boy foresees a possible investigation by his parents, he usually manages to take adequate measures, such as entering password protection, calling friends on the phone only from outside the home and other similar measures. In these cases it often happens that the suspicion of the parents doesn't lead to anything concrete, but a parent, arrived at this point, is not led to think of the possible homosexuality of the son but of objectively dangerous situations such as the use of drugs and the involvement of the son in unreliable friendships. When it comes to the showdown, the gay boy must face the so-called forced out coming that, while being unpleasant, is generally welcomed by parents as a release from much larger fears.
 
Coverage relationships and defensive coming out

When a gay boy, to avoid being identified as gay, comes, more or less consciously, to have a girl for reasons of coverage and slowly pushes himself to delude that girl, as if it were a real love story, it is not uncommon for the boy to end up being a victim of his own defensive game, that is to say he ends up feeling trapped in the story with the girl, a story that inevitably, sooner or later families will come to know and almost always accept and that will start to raise expectations of various kinds and therefore to create ties gradually closer. In this way a gay boy is very likely to go progressively, step by step, towards the official engagement and long-term marriage. When these situations become too tight, it sometimes happens, as an extreme choice, that the boy resorts to the so-called defensive coming out, that is, to telling the girl that he is gay and that things cannot go on just for this reason.
 
Obviously the families, both of the girl and the boy, are immediately aware of the thing but, paradoxically, the outcome of the defensive coming out is very often incredulity, in this case the gay boy, who had managed too well to convince the others that he was hetero, will struggle hard to make understand that his coming out is authentic and is not a vulgar pretext invented by a hetero to save himself from an unwelcome marriage.
 
Coming out addressed to a guy with whom one is in love
 
A very particular type of coming out is that addressed to a guy with whom one has fallen in love in the presumption that he too is gay and can respond with the desired phrase: "I'm gay me too!" If in general it is difficult to evaluate "in advance" the possible consequences of a coming out with friends and family, it is much more difficult to evaluate the consequences of a coming out addressed to a guy with whom one has fallen in love because here the judgment is easily distorted by the fact that there is a deep sexual and emotional involvement that leads us to see things as we would like them to be more than as they really are.
 
I would like to emphasize in this connection a very particular aspect, which is clarified by the following example.
 
"My boyfriend and I started dating only as friends, then everything came naturally, he never told me he was gay nor I told it him, there was absolutely no need, I never asked myself nor he asked himself,the classic question : "But is he gay?"  or rather I have asked myself and maybe even he asked himself but we never had the idea of coming to a forcing, that is to force spontaneity to know immediately, or at least soon, how things were, and then there are two facts, first of all I didn't want to lose him, even if he was just a friend, and then he is very shy and I didn't want any forcing, because he would have taken it as a "if you're not gay I don't care of you" while it was not like that. I knew that he was gay from the fact that being together was fundamental both for him and for me, there was total reciprocity from the beginning."
 
In practice the coming out towards a boy with whom one is in love, means forcing the other to come out in turn. Apart from the fact that the odds of being in front of a straight guy are still high, even when you are actually facing a gay guy, in the context of a truly mutual relationship, there is no need for any explicit coming  out because in these situations a gay boy comes very easily to decode the behavior of the other that goes in the desired direction. I must stress, however, that presuming that, if the other is gay, certainly a beautiful couple relationship will be born is quite unrealistic, because the well-known theorem "gay + gay = love" has nothing to do with reality.