Abstract
The present study centers on interviews with 30 individuals, all of whom are engaged in coming out related to their sexualities. Among all of the themes shared across the interviews, one of the more prevalent dimensions was that of temporality. Participants shared numerous experiences (both directly and contextually) about how long coming out takes and whether or not it ever truly ends. Despite participants alluding to the point-in-time and processional nature of coming out, the broader experiences shared by participants uncovered an enduring reality—that coming out is a career. Building on the works of prior social scientists, this manuscript provides support for a redefinition of coming out as a perpetual endeavor based in the concurrent management of internal and external matters related to sexual identity formation and maintenance in a heteronormative society. More succinctly, coming out is not a process to be completed, but a career to be managed.
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Notes
It is worth noting that the discussion of coming out here relates specifically to sexuality—not gender identity or expression—thus, the acronym LGBQ is being used in place of the more common LGBTQ.
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Nicholas A. Guittar declares that they has no conflict of interest. Rachel L. Rayburn declares that they has no conflict of interest.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies that were deemed to be “human subjects research” by the IRB of the author(s) institutions. The research was thus exempted from full review and deemed it to not be “human subjects research” since there was no treatment involved in the study.
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Guittar, N.A., Rayburn, R.L. Coming Out: The Career Management of One’s Sexuality. Sexuality & Culture 20, 336–357 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-015-9325-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-015-9325-y