SOMETIMES even
I get tired of looking at aggregate data, so I asked a psychiatrist in
Mississippi who specializes in helping closeted gay men if any of his patients
might want to talk to me. One man contacted me. He told me he was a retired
professor, in his 60s, married to the same woman for more than 40 years.
About 10 years
ago, overwhelmed with stress, he saw the therapist and finally acknowledged his
sexuality. He has always known he was attracted to men, he says, but thought
that that was normal and something that men hid. Shortly after beginning
therapy, he had his first, and only, gay sexual encounter, with a student of
his in his late 20s, an experience he describes as “wonderful.”
He and his
wife do not have sex. He says that he would feel guilty ever ending his
marriage or openly dating a man. He regrets virtually every one of his major
life decisions.
The
retired professor and his wife will go another night without romantic love,
without sex. Despite enormous progress, the persistence of intolerance will
cause millions of other Americans to do the same.
So writes Seth
Stephens-Davidowitz in The
New York Times, in an opinion
piece entitled “How Many American Men Are Gay?” (And the answer, culled
from Gallup polls, porn sites, Craigslist, and other
sources is 5%....)
The article
is interesting, but the anecdote above is what fascinates. Start with the guy’s
profession—a professor thinks that men are attracted to men but hide it, and
that’s normal? A professor? Has this guy ever read any of the research about
gender studies in the last 40 years? Has he even turned on a television?
And then
his age. A young man in his twenties—OK, I get that. It can be hard to figure
it out, hard to come out, though increasingly people are coming out at younger
ages. But to get into your sixties and still be so clueless?
So then we
come to the fact that he’s had one gay sexual experience, which he calls
wonderful. Oh, and he doesn’t have sex with his wife. Surely a professor could
put together those two facts and comes to a logical conclusion?
OK—those of
us who are out can be logical: we’ve faced our fears, we’ve come out and dealt
with the consequences. Even if rejected by friends or family, it’s at least an
external rejection, rather than the self-condemnation of the closet.
But those
living in the closet are living in a system of fear that requires elaborate
scaffolds of denial to support. And as Michelangelo
Signorile writes
in the Huffington Post,
life in the closet leads to two often-disastrous results.
It’s well
known in the gay world: the guy waving the biggest anti-gay flag in the parade
(as well as heading it) is the most closeted queer. Nor is it just gay people
who have noticed this; clinical psychologists will recognize this as reaction
formation, defined here
by Wikipedia:
In psychoanalytic
theory, reaction formation is a defensive process (defense mechanism) in
which anxiety-producing or
unacceptable emotions and impulses are mastered by exaggeration (hypertrophy) of the
directly opposing tendency.[
Nor is it
just psychoanalysts and gay people—Shakespeare got it,
too. Remember “the
lady doth protest too much, methinks?”
The second
thing that guys in the closet do is to have risky, stupid sex. Part of it, of
course, is because they can’t have safe, protected sex. Because if you see me
going into a gay bar? Well, you’re not gonna get much horror or moral
indignation from my boss, my friends, my family.
So what
does Senator X do? He bottles it in until his need for sex is overwhelming, and
then he seeks relief in the worst possible ways—hustlers, Craigslist, porn
sites. But there’s something worse. He may well turn to those over whom he has
some power—a student, an altar boy, an employee. Sound familiar?
So far, I
completely agree with Signorile in his analysis of the dynamics of the closet.
But then he writes the following sentence:
While many
people are forced to be remain closeted in a society that is still often
homophobic, the closet nonetheless should never be seen as a healthy place.
I’ve known
few people who didn’t face obstacles—some of them great—to coming out. In fact,
in the great majority of cases, gay people create the supportive family and
friends from people who were either un-accepting or hostile. Coming out, in
fact, is a two-way street—as any devastated parent can tell you. But is it
really true that a person is forced to stay in the closet?
Consider
the professor cited above—is it really too late for him? Well, men in their 60s
do find love and partners; people do change professions late in life; no one
has to live in an intolerant state forever.
I generally
toe the established line about outing people: I’ll let anyone be in the closet
as long as you’re not hurting—by words or actions—other gay people. But I
wonder about this belief that the closet might be justified.
“The
saddest experience I ever had as a pastor,” said Pablo, “was of a kid of 14 or
15 whose mother went to her Evangelical church and got the message: gay people
are possessed by the devil. So she came home and threw her kid out of the
house: she didn’t want Satan in her house. And they lived way out in the
country, so there he was, miles from town, walking and sobbing down a dark road
toward town. Eventually, he ended up with a couple of gay people who tried to
take care of him, but the trauma was too great. The kid returned to the
streets, and then dropped out of sight.”
We
speculated: was he hustling? Was he in a bordello? If so, could he get out, or
was he being held? Drugs or drink?
So, should
he have stayed in the closet? Certainly looks that way, doesn’t it? But
wait—what if he had come out in a different way? What if he had called a gay
hotline, or gone to PFLAG, or
found a friend he could trust?
I’m trying
to think of a situation where being in the closet is the preferred alternative,
but sorry—I can’t. And does it matter?
I think
so—because saying that it might be better for some of us to stay in the closet
empowers…
…the
closet.
