Why do gay men have to tell everyone

Many gay men grew up feeling ashamed of not conforming to cultural expectations about “real boys” or “real men.” Especially during middle and high institution, they may possess been bullied or publicly humiliated because of their difference—made to feel fond of outsiders and not “one of the boys.” They may have found it easier relating to women than men, though they didn’t fully belong to the girl community, either.

Every gay guy I’ve seen in my practice over the years has had a conflicted, troubled relationship with his own masculinity, often shaping his behavior in destructive ways. Writing for Vice, Jeff Leavell captures the dynamic nicely: “Queer people, especially gay men, are known for dealing with a slew of self-doubts and anxieties in noxious ways. Queer men are liable to feel incredibly insecure over their masculinity, a benign of internalized homophobia that leads them to idolize 'masc 4 masc', 'gaybros' and [to] shame and oppress femme men.”

Here we look one of the most common defenses against shame: getting rid of it by offloading or projecting it onto somebody else; in this case, one of those “femme men.” In outcome, “masc” men who humiliate “femmes” recur the shame trauma of their

My Husband’s Not Gay, a show on TLC, has caused an uproar. The negative attention is unfortunate because this could have been a show that highlighted mixed-orientation couples and how these couples can actually make their relationships work.

Why do some people become so outspoken and judgmental about marriages with one straight and one gay spouse? There are several reasons. These marriages raise concerns about infidelity. They take out people’s decisions about what marriage should or should not be. In particular, they transport out people’s verdicts about monogamy.

Finally, these relationships suggest to some people “reparative therapy,” the unethical and impossible claim that a person can be changed from gay to straight. The men in this television program aren’t claiming to be ex-gay nor that they can change their sexual orientation (at least not on the show). They report they are attracted to men but choose not to live as a gay male and their unbent wives accept this.

People seem to obtain up in arms when a dude says he is not gay but rather simply attracted to men. In our culture, we identify ourselves via a sexual-attraction binary: gay or vertical. This is severely limiting

The Closet: Psychological Issues of Being In and Coming Out

In the jargon of contemporary homosexual culture, those who hide 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 experience with gay patients reveals hiding and uncovering behaviors to be psychologically complex.

Homosexual Identities

In the developmental histories of gay 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 support in dealing with antihomosexual prejudices. On the contrary, beginning 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 enclose homophobia (Weinberg, 1972), heterosexism (Herek, 1984), moral condemnations of homosexuality (Drescher, 1998) and antigay violence (Herek and Berrill, 1992). Hiding activities learned in childhood often persist into adolescent adulthood, middle age an