Kudos to David Oliver and the team at USA Today for their succinct article about queerness earlier this week, written in conjunction with musician Maren Morris posting on Instagram that she identifies as bisexual.
In this article, Oliver writes:
“Coming out isn't just a one-time thing. Coming out is a lifelong process. You don't simply declare"I'm gay" and a rainbow halo sprouts atop your head.”
What does it mean that coming out is a lifelong process? And what are the individual and relational implications of this?
I appreciate how David Matthew Doyle, professor of psychology at the Amsterdam University Medical Center and Manuela Barreto, professor of psychology at the University of Exeter, address this in their article “Toward a More Relational Model of Sexual Minority Identity Concealment”, written in June 2023’s Archive of Sexual Behavior.
They start their article by talking about the role that secrets play in helping a person manage life’s stressors. One of the key skillsets of a family therapist is not just paying attention to what a family is talking about, but also what they are not talking about. In a lot of cases, people have good reasons for avoiding talking about potentially controversial subjects.
For instance, most families want to project a certain image to their larger communities: stable, sane, functional. If one person talks about a family member’s substance use issue, other family members may respond by dismissing the existence of substance use or downplaying the significance of substance use. While these types of behaviors may enable the continuation of substance use, family therapists would suggest that these family members are protecting the image of the sane, stable, functional family. Talking honestly about substance use involves direct confrontation and the promotion of accountability and consequences for the person using substances, and an acknowledgement, or a “coming out”, if you will, that our family has significant challenges. Similar dynamics happen with trauma and abuse within family systems.
Varying levels of anxiety accompanies exposing secrets. And for good reasons, because talking honestly about secrets carry significant risks. Perhaps there will be direct retribution from the person abusing substances or other people, or more passive retribution from others in the family system.
Doyle and Barreto ascribe these principles to the coming out process. If a person experiences that the key people in their lives will respond poorly to identifying as not heterosexual, the closet, or the act of not disclosing your sexual identity, provides a lot of safety.
A quick note. There’s a significant difference between secrets in the context of family dynamics that harm other people, such as substance use and physical violence, and secrets about interactions that do not harm other people, such as queerness. This is the beauty of Pride Month. It’s an annual PR event that normalizes and celebrates the expansiveness of sexuality, gender, and the capacity of relationships.
Queerness does not harm people. Abuse and repression are the things that harm people.
It’s not lost on me that the growth of Pride events and other events and rhetoric that celebrate queerness throughout the world are coinciding with a growing number of anti-queer, anti-trans legislation from systems of power. Systems theory reminds us that when one person in the system changes, the rest of the system responds in a way that maintains homeostasis, or the status quo, often stifling and repressing the desires and needs of the individuals seeking change.
Which brings us back to David Oliver’s comment about coming out being a lifelong process. Doyle and Barreto describe it this way:
“Each new social encounter necessitates decision making regarding disclosure and concealment. Coming out is not a discrete event, but rather a process of identity management in members of stigmatized groups, a repeated identity negotiation. [Queer folks] are active agents who negotiate self-presentation strategies by considering features of their social environments” (p. 1913).
This is a lot of mental, emotional, and psychological work for queer folks to make. (A nod here to intersectionality, which reminds us that minorities of all kinds, from racial to able-bodied, have to do this calculus.) As long as there are spaces where legislating bodies, be they local/national governments, businesses, or police forces, attempt to criminalize queerness, queer folks will be saddled with this unnecessary burden, where they have to choose if, how, or to what extent they want to come out.
Doyle and Barreto end their article by pushing back on the concept of authenticity. We see this in wellness circles (and sadly, a growing number of therapy circles), where coaches and social media influencers suggest that if their customers live their fullest, most authentic lives, if they just set those boundaries, that they will be on the pathway to freedom.
Doyle and Barreto ask us to consider the vast nuance that a person may be experiencing, giving this example:
“Queer people of color who perceive their orientation and ethnicity to be incompatible sometimes decide to conceal from family, and while they might be doing so to avoid sanction, they might also be doing so because that allows them to be regarded by others simply as a family member.
Concealment can be liberating, freeing individuals to express valued identities unimpeded by stereotypes associated with other potentially stigmatized aspects of one’s identity” (p. 1914).
My one critique of the USA Today article is that Pride Month can be treated like an altar call, where we welcome Maren Morris into the fold of evolved, brave queer folks, with the hope that other closeted folks will be encouraged by Morris, walk down to the front of the auditorium, and dedicate their lives to the Pride flag. Pride Mag concretizes this process with their article “Here are all the celebrities who came out in 2024 (so far!)”.
Doyle and Barreto remind us that the coming out process is much more complex and diverse, concluding:
“Managing stigmatized identities often involves a degree of controlled self-expression that takes into account external views of the self. [As such], we need to move beyond normative norms that disclosure is always ideal…[And we need to move beyond] the expectations of disclosure leading to a moralization of concealment that punishes members of stigmatized groups who do not choose to conceal for whatever reason” (p. 1915).
Happy Pride, wherever you are in the coming out process!
Let’s heal together,
Jeremiah and Julia