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To be gay, in contrast to being homosexually self-aware, is to claim a normative identity. Individuals who are either consciously prepared to act on their homoerotic feelings or to reveal a homosexual identity to others usually define themselves as gay or lesbian. For example, a religious, homosexually self-aware man may choose a celibate life to avoid what, for him, would be the problematic integration of his religious and sexual identities. While homosexually self-aware people might consider accepting and integrating these feelings into their public persona, acceptance is not a pre-determined outcome. Individuals to whom this happens can acknowledge some aspect of their homosexuality to themselves. If and when same-sex feelings and attractions can no longer be kept out of consciousness, the individual becomes homosexually self-aware. Consequently, these feelings must be dissociated from the self and hidden from others. Their homosexuality is so unacceptable that it must be kept out of conscious awareness and cannot be integrated into their public persona. Hiding activities learned in childhood often persist into young adulthood, middle age and even senescence, leading many gay people to conceal important aspects of themselves.Ĭloseted individuals frequently cannot acknowledge to themselves, let alone to others, their homoerotic feelings, attractions and fantasies. Antihomosexual attitudes include homophobia (Weinberg, 1972), heterosexism (Herek, 1984), moral condemnations of homosexuality (Drescher, 1998) and antigay violence (Herek and Berrill, 1992).
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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). Children who grow up to be gay rarely receive family support in dealing with antihomosexual prejudices. 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. Clinical experience with gay patients reveals hiding and revealing behaviors to be psychologically complex. Revealing one's homosexuality is referred to as coming out. This term describes someone who is questioning their sexual orientation or gender identity.įind more LGBTQ information and resources by visiting our resource center or by giving us a call at 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. Sometimes, when the Q is seen at the end of LGBT, it can also mean questioning. Once considered a pejorative term, queer has been reclaimed by some LGBTQ people to describe themselves however, it is not a universally accepted term even within the LGBTQ community. Some people may use queer, or genderqueer, to describe their gender identity and/or gender expression. Typically, for those who identify as queer, the terms lesbian, gay, and bisexual are perceived to be too limiting and/or fraught with cultural connotations they feel don’t apply to them. QUEERĪn adjective used by some people whose sexual orientation is not exclusively heterosexual. But not all transgender people can or will take those steps, and a transgender identity is not dependent upon physical appearance or medical procedures.
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Many transgender people are prescribed hormones by their doctors to bring their bodies into alignment with their gender identity. People under the transgender umbrella may describe themselves using one or more of a wide variety of terms- including transgender. TRANSGENDERĪn umbrella term for people whose gender identity and/or gender expression differs from what is typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. Bisexual people need not have had specific sexual experiences to be bisexual in fact, they need not have had any sexual experience at all to identify as bisexual. People may experience this attraction in differing ways and degrees over their lifetime. BISEXUALĪ person who has the capacity to form enduring physical, romantic, and/or emotional attractions to those of the same gender or to those of another gender. Sometimes lesbian is the preferred term for women. The adjective used to describe people whose enduring physical, romantic, and/or emotional attractions are to people of the same sex. Some lesbians may prefer to identify as gay or as gay women. A woman whose enduring physical, romantic, and/or emotional attraction is to other women.