Part I
Understanding Gay Identity
1
âWhy Do I Have to Hide It?â
Forming a Gay Identity
Itâs a warm day in early fall, and I am sitting with Imani in the living room of the house he shares with his parents. His cousin Rose is also there, as is the toddler of another one of their cousins who needed a babysitter while she ran some errands. Imani is telling me about his gender presentation, and how he modifies it when necessary, especially to avoid trouble in public. He says, âHold on, Iâm finna1 [gonna] show you a real masculine picture of me.â He finds a picture of him in dark pants, a leather jacket, and a baseball hat, leaning away from the camera, face emotionless. I actually donât recognize him at first, but the man in the picture does look stereotypically masculine: reserved, tough, and confident. I ask, âThatâs you?â He replies, âSee? You wouldnât even know.â He turns to Rose. He asks her the same thing.
âRose, does this look like me?â
âWhat?â
âGuess who that is.â
âYou.â
âDonât I look so hood?â
âNo.â
Rose denies Imaniâs request that she authenticate his realness and hoodness with a totally straight face, but he doesnât take it very seriously. I chuckle.
Imani continues by talking to the baby who is visiting. âTheyâre mean. They cainât take my manliness!â He turns back to me. âIâm mad you asked me was that me, oh my God! That donât look like me, or somethinâ?â
I offer that since we were talking about a number of people today, I wasnât sure if it was his boyfriend or him. That is the truth. But I confirm that it does look like him, just that I thought he was trying to show me a really masculine picture of the boyfriend. Imani is delighted.
âShe thought I was masculine! Oh! Come on! Come on. My picture serves realness. I cainât wait to call my momma and talk to her. Like, âGurl, my friend thought I was a MAN!ââ He shows me several more pictures, asking me to confirm that he looks masculine in each one. He pokes fun at himself by flipping his long, dreaded hair behind his shoulders and saying, âI am a whole lady.â He has clarified to me several times that he doesnât actually want to be a woman, though he claims he sometimes can be âfishierâ (more feminine) than women; he describes this as being âreal cunt.â He also maintains, âCunt is cute.â However, he explains that he canât be feminine most of the time or heâll run into problems with his family, his neighbors, and his clique. Sometimes, he says, he has to be âa whole man.â
I think back to being in Kingâs bedroom over a year ago. He had pictures of Prada and Gucci purses and shoes taped to the wall above his bed, as if their location there would produce nothing but luxurious dreams. Even his pets were named after famous designers. King lamented that neither his financial situation nor his living arrangements would permit him to explore his passion for high-end fashion, typically marketed to affluent female customers: âItâs mostly only models and rich white ladies who really get to wear that stuff.â He went through his closet and gave me a fashion show of sorts, demonstrating how he wears solid colored or patterned scarves around his head in his neighborhood or when his gang would meet, but draped around his neck in downtown Columbus when he went to gay clubs; or a flashy leather jacket that was made by one of his âclientâs peoplesâ that doubled as a status piece on the streets and garnered positive attention in gay circlesâflexible pieces for the multifaceted urban gay man who described himself as âfashion forward.â
King added, âNow, I like the Gucci scarves too, but I will not do the man purse.â
* * *
Both Imani and King suggested that despite a preference for gender fluidity in their daily lives, their public gender presentation was more on the masculine end of the spectrum, sometimes out of necessity or in response to expectations imposed on them. There is an expressed contempt in modern society for âfeminineâ behavior.2 Misogynistic and homophobic cultural messages provide motivation for gender patrolling of boys and men, where members of society seek to change the behaviors of gender non-conforming males through informal social sanctions such as name-calling and physical harassment. Such actions are intended to punish transgression in an attempt to ensure malesâ conformity to traditional masculinity and sexuality. Men who refuse to fight or otherwise assert their dominance in aggressive ways may be scolded with epithets that allude to femininity or gayness, such as âpunk,â âsissy,â and âfag.â3 Unsurprisingly, homophobic epithets are more often used by males4 in an attempt to control or challenge another maleâs masculinity. They might even call other males âfagsâ preemptivelyâto reduce the likelihood that they themselves will be insulted in that way.5 Political organizer Suzanne Pharr argues that homophobia and heterosexism are âweaponsâ of sexism. Gay men, especially visible gay men, are seen as a threat to male dominance and control because they are perceived as âtraitorsâ to their sex.6
Cultural messages that glorify masculinity and heterosexuality pervade many young peopleâs lives, starting long before they have formed or disclosed their sexual and gender identities. These messages can also be affected by salient social characteristics like gender, race, and religious affiliation. Expectations imposed onto participants influenced how they understood their sexual identities, but also affected how they disclosed those identities to others and the reactions of other people. Imani was delighted to be read as masculine, and King found it necessary to present as a typical urban Black male when going out in public, all because not being masculine enough would attract negative attention from family, peers, and strangers.
This chapter explores how identifying as a gay man has been understood by participants and by others in their lives. Following a mostly chronological progression, I begin by discussing early perceptions of participantsâ gender presentations as expressed by their families, peers, and themselves, followed by their behavior to conceal (at least strategically) their same-sex attractions. In addition to their experiences of gay identity formation, I also describe their coming out processes, including when and how they revealed their sexual identities to valued others in their lives, the reactions to these disclosures, and the social statuses that might explain such reactions. I focus primarily on familial and community dynamics here, and discuss peer interactions more in depth in subsequent chapters.
Early Experiences
As noted, the use of homophobic and misogynistic epithets can be used to âpatrolâ the behaviors of other males, especially gender atypical ones, in an attempt to ensure their conformity to masculinity and heterosexuality.7 Nearly two-thirds of my participants had been teased in school because of their sexuality or perceived sexuality, sometimes leading to fights. Their perceived gayness was usually linked with gender-atypical behavior, though often, participants couldnât quite put their finger on what other children sensed. Those with gender-atypical behaviors or âfeminine sidesâ identified these as the reasons they were targeted for homophobic teasing, even before they began to identify as gay.8 Oz remembered, âI really didnât realize that [I] was gay until I was around 12 or 13, and people were sayinâ, I was really really feminine when I was in schoo[l]. And they was like, âOh, Oz, youâre gonna be gay, youâre gay,â and Iâm like, âNo, Iâm not gonna be gay.â . . . But I always had a feeling, like, âMaybe I am!ââ Ricky recalled that he was called âgay-gayâ growing up, because âthey said I had a switch, I never knew what a switch was.â Participants typically used the word âswitchâ to mean swishing their hips while walking. Similarly, people asked JD if he was gay because of âthe way I carried myself,â and Hurricane stated, âI was always picked with, growinâ up through school because people saw my feminine side.â Joe explained that while he was questioning his sexuality, everyone had assumptions about him because of the way he dressed; his frustration with constant teasing even led him to bring an aerosol can and lighter to school and start spraying it at classmates.
Casper, Raphael, Jordan, and Kevin all specifically mentioned that their hanging around with girls more than guys resulted in problems in school with classmates or suspicions from their parents. DJ explicitly stated, âSome people say if you have a lot of girls in your life, then you tend to turn feminine, and thatâs what makes you turn gay.â Imani joked that maybe he was supposed to have been âborn a womanâ since he bonds with his girl cousins more than his boy cousins. He said this to me in front of his cousin Rose, who thought it was quite entertaining.
Jordan articulated a number of reasons why participants were teased for being gay, nearly all of which hinged on societal expectations for boys, laced with moral meanings:
I didnât really like high school, cuz it was a really awkward time for me, because I didnât really identify as gay, even though I knew I was, and I was still pretty religious, and just, a lot of conflict, and I felt like a freak, and I didnât really fit in with people. . . . I think [I knew I was gay] way back, when I was in, like, kindergarten, because I feel like I was always very influenced by females growing up, I always liked, like I guess, like, girl things, and I always hung out with girls, all the time. And then whenever weâd play something, Iâd want to be, like, the girl in it. . . . I got teased a lot, because I was pretty feminine, and into really girly things, so theyâd be like, âOh, youâre gay,â and Iâd just be like, âOh, shut up, no Iâm not,â or something.
This excerpt illustrates the tension in conceptualizing gender-atypical behavior: Jordan hesitates to call such activities âgirl thingsâ or âbeing the girl,â since he identifies as male and is not ashamed to engage in such behaviors. All of the pressure he felt to conform was external. By contrast, because his gender presentation was normative for a boy, King thought his high school classmates perceived him to be âweird,â âodd,â or âjust youngâ because of his âsorta feminineâ behavior, but not necessarily gay. For boys whose feminine behaviors or styles were visible, assumptions were made about their sexual orientation, and they were teased as a result.
Despite the fact that the majority of participants knew before their teen years that they were attracted to males, they felt pressure to conceal their sexual interests from schoolmates for a period of time. Otherwise, they thought they would face ridicule or actual physical violence. Rashad remembered, âI thought it was bad to be gay, cuz thatâs how everybody was where I was living, if you were gay, you either had to be quiet about it, or itâd be problems.â Rocc explained, âGrowinâ up, it was always, âThis fag that,â and âFaggot thisâ and âFaggot that,â so, I guess thatâs kinda the attitude I carried, like, âShit, I canât do this, this shit is wrong, beinâ a fag.ââ Max said he spent time with âstraight peopleâ in high school because he did not want to be âknownâ as gay, or for his mother to find out. In a striking comment on his behavior despite saying he was âborn gay,â he stated, âbefore I knew what it was, I knew how to hide it.â That comment resonated particularly strongly with me on a personal level, since I had the exact same feeling as early as first grade. Tony remembered,
I always been like this since I was little. I remember in fourth grade, I used to look at lil boys, I used to think they was cute and stuff. I never said that out loud, and I would always hang with the girls, and I already knew somethinâ wasnât right. . . . I didnât figure [being gay] out âtil 10th grade. I knew, okay, this is set in stone. I was just like, this is what it is. But earlier, I used to just fight it like, âI gotta get over this lil thing,â I used to always try to look at girls, females, in the way Iâm (wiggles fingers in air as air quotes) âsupposed to,â I guess. Quotations! So, it just didnât work out.
Participants knew precisely what was expected of them and that they were âdifferent,â sometimes using precisely that word to categorize themselves before they knew what âgayâ meant: when I asked Reese when he started to think of himself as gay, he answered back, âAs different?â before telling me about his same-sex attractions dating back to kindergarten. Eric remembered, âIâve obviously had these feelings since I was a kid, I was always different, and my mom, sheâll tell you that now, she likes to go through pictures of me when I was a kid, like, âOh, look at you! You were so gay! Why didnât I know?ââ Interestingly, some research on sexual identity formation actually utilizes this framework in its data collection instruments, first asking when someone âfelt differentâ and why.9 Narratives about feeling âdifferentâ further underscore a push for participants to eventually construct respectable gay identities to reduce ostracism, but explain why they first felt it necessary to obscure their gay identity.
Cover-Ups and âHoldinâ In That Big Secretâ
In order to counteract assumptions about their sexuality that they knew might be difficult for them to deal with, participants enacted a number of strategies. One such strategy was attempting to âpassâ10 as straight by using girls as âcover-ups,â which some people might call âbeards.â Kevin started off by saying, âIâve always been the princess of the girls, which is so stupid, because Iâm a boy, but Iâve always been very princess-y.â Before he came out, Kevin dated a girl as a âcover-up,â even though he didnât like her romantically: âI knew that I only wanted to be with dudes, but so people would not say, âOh, youâre a fag,â or, âOh, youâre gay,â or, âYou like guys,â or you know, shit like that. I said, âOkay, Iâm straight. I have a girlfriend. Do you see her? Sheâs right here.ââ Dollars dated a âcover-upâ because he feared more than name-calling once his classmates âstarted to suspectâ his gayness; he claimed that at âthe school I went to, the kids there didnât believe in homosexuality. . . . You get beat up, and thatâs it, every day after school.â Jordan also suggested that in his school career, the only time he heard about gay people was when he was admonished, âDonât be gay,â and âDonât be a fag or youâll get your ass kicked.â Ricky articulated that having crushes on girls was a way to hide being gay from âregular society.â And Max said, âWhen I was hidinâ it, I felt horrible, because there was girls that liked me and stuff, and I had to act like I liked them back.â
These efforts extended beyond school and into the family. Commenting on a multi-year relationship he had with a young woman which made him unhappy, Steve said, âIt was pretty much a cover-up with my family, to get them to shut up, and quit asking me if I was gay.â Tony also admitted to having girlfriends just to avoid the subject with his older brothers, despite declaring, âI already knew all along what I likedâ; the same went for Jeremy, who knew he ânever liked femalesâ but dated one to get his brothers off his back. Tony also explained that once his dad got custody of him, he intentionally acted like he was straight so that his dad wouldnât suspect he was gay and be disappointed in him. Such efforts reiterate the expectation of heterosexuality that young people face, particularly young men.
There also was the option of outright denial if one was asked directly. Dariusâs mother asked him several times if he was gay, and he denied it each time until he finally told her. When JD was confronted about being gay and denied it, people claimed that he must at least be bisexual, which he also denied until he became an adult. Other participants denied being gay to their classmates; some like Reese waited until completing school to come out. Strategies for obfuscation also existed, such as Javier and Josh telling their moms that the boys they brought around were friends when they were really boyfriends, or D.C. and Dollars letting parents think that the boyfriends they were going to see were male friends from sports or school. Though lying did take its toll. JD said, âHoldinâ in that big secret, like, âOh, Iâm not gay,â I feel like that turned me into a big liar, you know, just holdinâ back that one lie, you start lyinâ about everything else!â
These suppressions of the self had negative psychic consequences for many. Reese stated that from ages 13 to 18, âI was always real angry because I wanted to come out but I was afraid to, because I didnât know how people would react,â and because he didnât know many gay people, he didnât want to be âthe oddball.â Although Steve wasnât technically out to his family, he felt like the âoutcastâ because he believed his family already knew about him. Max recounted, âI was so uncomfortable with the fact that I was gay myself, so I couldnât be [around my family], because I felt like I had to lie to them, so I didnât wanna be around them.â Greg suggested that the fear of negative reaction is what stops many people from coming out, primarily because âa lot of people will look down on it.â
Most of the participants who were not out to their parents stayed hidden not because they knew definitive...