Live Longer: Come Out of The Closet
Oct 11th, 2011 | 7 responses
Happy Coming Out Day. Come Out. It’s good for you…
“The more you’re in the closet, the worse for you,” says Robert Trivers, a Professor of Anthropology and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University. “There is an immunological dimension to self-deception.”
In his new book (out in the UK, Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others, and coming soon to America as The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life) Trivers explores psychoneuroimmunology to conclude that the closet is an unhealthy place.
From a recent lecture at the London School of Economics:
If you take measures of the immune system, they’re weaker. If you’re HIV negative, on the one extreme, you suffer more from cancer. On the other extreme, you suffer more from bronchitis. If you’re HIV positive, you transit into AIDS quicker and you die 20 percent earlier… Living a lie is immunologically costly.
Trivers notes that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was an immunological disaster. No word yet on the glass closet:
The term was just invented about two months ago in New Jersey… Someone living in a glass closet is a homosexual male hiding his sexuality from his heterosexual friends because he thinks they’ll like him less if they know. In fact, all of them know. He’s in a glass closet.
Nobody yet has done the immune work on someone living in a glass closet.”
Trivers also references this classic case of denial and projection:
“In tests conducted by Prof. Henry E Adams of the University of Georgia, homophobic men who said they were exclusively heterosexual were shown gay sex videos. Four out of five became sexually aroused by the homoerotic imagery, as recorded by a penile circumference measuring device – a plethysmograph. Prof. Adams says his research shows that most homophobes “demonstrate significant sexual arousal to homosexual erotic stimuli”, suggesting that homophobia is a form of “latent homosexuality where persons are either unaware of or deny their homosexual urges.”
More on that from the Journal of Abnormal Psychology and from Ed Brayton at ScienceBlogs.
7 Responses to “Live Longer: Come Out of The Closet”
“as recorded by a penile circumference measuring device”
now I guess it really depends on the hotness of the student installing the device.
I know a lot of homophobe straight guys that would be much happier if they would just acknowledge their gay tendencies. They don’t need to go full gay…just deal with the fact the Brad Pitt makes you feel funny all over.
It seems to me, of those people, the more homophobic they behave, the more they did other things that were quite gay…not being a douche gay, but like the same sex gay
love that southpark episode.
I’ve always wondered if all those “straight” people who claim being gay is a choice are actually bi and have decided to be exclusively straight. I mean being bi is really the only way to know if there is a choice in the gender of the one you go to bed with, right?
I think it’s also important to acknowledge that for many, coming out is not safe. The idea that “the more you’re in the closet, the worse for you” does have some privilege involved — the privilege that coming out will not be an immediate physical danger. Violence against non-straight sexualities is particularly common for trans people (it’s also disclose your gender day).
In any case, if it’s safe for you — come out! Disclose! If it’s not, well, we should all recommit to making all areas safe spaces for people to be themselves, free from violence from the hateful and fearful.
StockBoy — I agree entirely. If all sexuality exists on a spectrum, it seems reasonable that those brought up in homophobic circumstances who are somewhere in the middle of that spectrum might reasonably get by ignoring the part of them that is gay. This is why I never get too up in arms about the “it’s a choice/it’s not a choice” argument. For some people, it’s really not a choice, of course, but for some, it could be. People shouldn’t be given or denied basic human rights like the ability to decide how to construct ones family based on a choice like that.
If you’re going to make a decision in life, own it.
Some people are born with homosexual urges. Some people are born with heterosexual urges. Some people are born with sadomasochistic urges. Some people are born with fecalphelia urges, some people are born with bestial urges. Some people are born with pedophile urges. Some people are born with necrophiliac urges. Some people are born with homicidal urges. Some people are born with the urge to eat lots of bacon.
The point is, that humans are complicated creatures that are born with all sorts of urges, but that does not mean we can and should act on all of those urges. It is up to you to decide which urges to act upon, and which ones to resist. And you own the consequences of your decision.
Most the things on that list are not anyone’s business. Between 2 consenting adults, nobody is being harmed, and nobody should be bothered by it. Right now, society is alot better about not crucifying people based on most of the sexual urges in that list, than they were decades ago. However, some things on that list will earn you the wrath of the public at large.
Life is all about “choices”, it’s the nature of “living” itself.
However, dealing with the awkward social consequences of that decision is just a fact of life. Society will eventually calm down about the subject of homosexuality, but it’s going to take more time for society to adjust. Trying to force the issue is just going to piss everyone off, and make the adjustment take alot longer than it should.
So if you’re in the closet, come out. I won’t bite you. I won’t hate you. I can’t guarantee it’ll be smooth sailing, but I think it’s the only way for society to evolve past homophobia.
“However, dealing with the awkward social consequences of that decision is just a fact of life”
“Awkward”? Getting kicked out of your family, losing your job, being EQUATED WITH PEDOPHILES, being subject to violence. Yeah, “awkward” doesn’t really fit. How kind of you not to bite, though.
I came out of the closet once I bought a house in Fort Lauderdale. With the resulting exposure to the Wilton Manors community, I had my shirtmaker make me a couple of pink dress shirts and I wear them regularly to the office without feeling the least bit self-conscious.
just a .02. No one is sure what makes a person a certain ‘way.’ But some of the ‘philias’ appear to be imprints after birth, as in being molested sexually as a young child appears in some to turn a switch that remains on. First sexual scent, touch, music, feel, taste, profoundly imprinting to body regardless of all other facts surrounding. This is why hands off the young. Let them be. Instead of forcing imprinting on them for perpetrator’s self interest.
stockboy,, my clinical experience is that people who may be bi-sexual will most often choose who they love by who they love, rather than by gender first. It appears that attraction to others is also based not exactly on genders, but on who has the electric attractant for the person in personality, energy, etc. I think you are right that it is more of a soft line than a bright one.
And Roro, you are right, it is deadly dangerous for many in certain parts of the world to declare they love same gender person. It may have been the spiritual crime of the century for evengelicals from the US to proselytize Africans to turn against their own gay people to the point of death sentences. That will never, ever, ever wash clean. Never.