Gay men constantly making it known they are gay
The Closet: Psychological Issues of Being In and Coming Out
In the jargon of contemporary homosexual identity, those who obscure their sexual identities are referred to as either closeted or said to be in the closet. Revealing one's homosexuality is referred to as coming out. Clinical encounter with gay patients reveals hiding and revealing behaviors to be psychologically complex.
Homosexual Identities
In the developmental histories of lgbtq+ men and women, periods of difficulty in acknowledging their homosexuality, either to themselves or to others, are often reported. Children who grow up to be gay rarely receive family aid in dealing with antihomosexual prejudices. On the contrary, first stage in childhood--and distinguishing them from racial and ethnic minorities--gay people are often subjected to the antihomosexual attitudes of their own families and communities (Drescher et al., 2004). Antihomosexual attitudes comprise homophobia (Weinberg, 1972), heterosexism (Herek, 1984), moral condemnations of homosexuality (Drescher, 1998) and antigay hostility (Herek and Berrill, 1992). Hiding activities learned in childhood often persist into young adulthood, middle age an
Why do some gay men “sound” gay? After three years of research, linguistics professors Henry Rogers and Ron Smyth may be on the verge of answering that question. After identifying phonetic characteristics that seem to make a man’s voice sound lgbtq+, their best hunch is that some gay men may subconsciously adopt certain female speech patterns. They want to know how men acquire this conduct of speaking, and why – especially when population so often stigmatizes those with gay-sounding voices.
Rogers and Smyth are also exploring the stereotypes that homosexual men sound effeminate and are recognized by the way they speak. They asked people to attend to recordings of 25 men, 17 of them gay. In 62 per cent of the cases the listeners identified the sexual orientation of the speakers correctly. Perhaps fewer than half of male lover men sound gay, says Rogers.
The straightest-sounding voice in the study was in fact a gay guy, and the sixth gayest-sounding voice was a vertical man.
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by Fred Penzel, PhD
This article was initially published in the Winter 2007 edition of the OCD Newsletter.
OCD, as we know, is largely about experiencing drastic and unrelenting doubt. It can cause you to doubt even the most basic things about yourself – even your sexual orientation. A 1998 review published in the Journal of Sex Research start that among a collective of 171 college students, 84% reported the occurrence of sexual intrusive thoughts (Byers, et al. 1998). In order to include doubts about one’s sexual identity, a sufferer demand not ever have had a homo- or heterosexual experience, or any type of sexual experience at all. I have observed this symptom in juvenile children, adolescents, and adults as well. Interestingly Swedo, et al., 1989, found that approximately 4% of children with OCD experience obsessions concerned with forbidden violent or perverse sexual thoughts.
Although doubts about one’s possess sexual identity might feel pretty straightforward as a symptom, there are actually a number of variations. The most obvious establish is where a sufferer experiences the thought that they might be of a different sexual orientation than they formerly believed. If the su
AsI think back on the past 24 years of providing couples counseling for gay male relationships, I sometimes get asked what the differences are that I see (in general) in gay male relationships that are (again, in general), different from vertical relationships.
I offer these thoughts to both unattached and coupled gay men, based on my perspective of what I’ve seen through the years. My experiences and observations as a gay men’s specialist psychotherapist might differ from other gay men, and even other gay male therapists, and we always have to be mindful of not indulging in unfair assumptions, stereotypes, or even prejudices. But since making a relationship perform (which I define, in part, as the relationship’s level of satisfaction for each partner and in its overall longevity and subjective “quality” for each partner) is at least in part based on a skills-building process, skills that I believe are required for a queer male relationship to both endure (quantity) and thrive (quality). These are the issues that come up repeatedly in couples counseling sessions:
1. Money– Queer male couples can contain a lot of opposition around money. Statistically, light men tend to be relatively
March 02, 2017
The Epidemic of
Gay LonelinessBy Michael Hobbes
I
“I used to get so ecstatic when the meth was all gone.”
This is my companion Jeremy.
“When you hold it,” he says, “you have to keep using it. When it’s gone, it’s like, ‘Oh good, I can go back to my life now.’ I would linger up all weekend and go to these sex parties and then sense like shit until Wednesday. About two years ago I switched to cocaine because I could work the next day.”
Jeremy is telling me this from a hospital bed, six stories above Seattle. He won’t tell me the exact circumstances of the overdose, only that a stranger called an ambulance and he woke up here.
Jeremy is not the ally I was expecting to have this conversation with. Until a few weeks ago, I had no idea he used anything heavier than martinis. He is trim, intelligent, gluten-free, the nice of guy who wears a serve shirt no matter what day of the week it is. The first time we met, three years ago, he asked me if I knew a good place to do CrossFit. Today, when I ask him how the hospital’s been so far, the first thing he says is that there’s no Wi-F