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). 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.
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.