Hi everyone, So this topic has been top-of-the-mind for a few days now and I have been Googling frantically for this (confession - this is how I found EC! Though the discussion which I came upon was for something different so...) I started a PhD program last year in AnonymousCity, USA and am enjoying everything about it (well, most things anyway!). The thing is - I'm gay and have been closeted since forever. And by closeted I mean forcing myself not having to do anything with homosexuality (long story - think Taboo with a capital T). One thing which I was looking forward to was coming out to people finally now that I've reached an age when people (naturally) start asking one about marriage/dating etc. I didn't want to keep up the façade forever as we-only-get-one-shot-at-life and other such life-affirming thoughts And a simpler reason - I wanted to find someone to share my life with! But when I googled about the experiences of gay PhD students, well, the search results are surprisingly sparse and, worse, NOT very encouraging. A few blogs/articles/news reports have talked about how homosexuality is still not accepted in academic circles (except paying lip service to it) and how openly-gay professors are even discriminated against in decisions like granting tenure (which is THE most important thing for most wannabe-professors!). Probably the only area where gay people are comfortable is the gender-studies area where (duh!) sexuality acceptance is high. So I now have a brand new quandary - do I keep quiet and stifle my sexuality until I get a permanent job (something which could take a decade and which would mean that I cannot even meet other gay people, let alone start a relationship)? Or do I take the risk and eventually come out to people and start on the whole relationship quest? While everyone is more than welcome to respond I would really like to hear from any other fellow PhD students reading this who have thought about this issue and/or are facing it in their real lives. Initially I'd thought that it wouldn't be a problem in USA given that homosexuality is more accepted here than in other places but, apparently, in professorial circles, this doesn't hold :-( So, write back with your thoughts and, to quote Abe Simpson from The Simpsons Movie - "Thanks for listening!"
Oh, thats rough. Maybe if you feel the need to take a small step out of that dark closet, tell someone close to you. Parents? Friends? ( ones that wont go blabbing it all around). Even talk to a cat if you want to get it out. I guess thats the first step. As for you studies, do some research around the place and town. Maybe the stories were in a different place or overexagerated.
Hi Fruit You are right but coming out to friends and family is not the problem. It's more like the fact that you would have to remain single all your life because if someone found out about your sexuality they could spread the word and really limit your career opportunities (again - things might be much better in places like NY etc. but getting a job there is that much harder). I can't expect to be in a relationship and push my partner under the bed or sofa everytime the doorbell rings! Doing research around town is hard because even asking this would make people's ears prick up - it's not exactly a routine question That' why I wrote this on EC to see what people have seen and heard. Thanks for replying though!
I'm a PhD student and came out last year. I'm not going to lie, it's been rough. Trying to balance school with the tremendous personal work that goes into coming out was extremely difficult and made it a lot harder to do good work in school. It made for a really tough year, and I'm still dealing with the aftermath. My field is very supportive of LGBT individuals, so I wasn't worried about homophobia, and all my friends in my program have been awesome. The faculty seem not to care, not because they're homophobic but because they're incredibly cold and don't give two shits about students as people. I went to a meeting at the LGBT center on campus, and while I haven't been more involved, it's nice to know it's there. I'm sure your university has a similar center--may be worth it to check it out. Hope this helps!
I'm not sure where these studies that you've read can be found, but I am fairly positive that reputable studies have found the opposite to be more common. Members of higher education are on average more accepting of social and political diversity than those with lesser amounts. You are on a university, which means that there are resources everywhere. In the case that a professor appears to be discriminating against you after they discover your sexuality, report them and continue report any further incidents. As long as you are an acceptable student, there is not much a prejudice superior could do to you or your career unless they are willing to be flooded with legal matters. Though I still highly doubt that would be the case. PhD programs are painfully long. You don't want to add on unnecessary stress over having to hide yourself.
Dear SemiCharmed Life - I raise my hat to you! What you did was very gutsy - I hope the worst of the storm's passed by now. I think there're some university resources so I'll check them out and see how things go. Still, if you can share, I would like to hear more about your experience to see what are some things I can do to cope for now. Dear Gen - That is an encouraging point of view - I know that theoretically it makes sense but that's why the online search was so disappointing. I was expecting more accounts of how people were able to come out more easily in academic circles but I found just the opposite. Then again, might be wrong to generalize from just a handful of examples. Thanks to both of you for your advice! I'm lucky I found this platform
It really depends on the university/state/city/department. Most universities have better LGBT scene than surrounding environment but I am not sure it is only for students. I completed my PhD in physical sciences and I have yet to meet an openly gay professor. However, most universities have very gay friendly code of conduct and policies. Tricky part to find how applicable they are. I left academia after I completed my PhD and I work in a fortune 500 company which has very gay friendly policies. They even have some gay support groups. But the problem is the fact that most of the coworkers are either anti-gay or they support don't ask don't tell. They don't openly say that but I heard that when they were talking to each other and they didn't even suspect that I was gay. I know some are member of very anti-gay church communities. I think you should consider academia and PhD independent of your sexuality because discrimination is everywhere and colleges are usually more liberal but hard to make a distinction. If you love spending your whole time on reading/experimenting/writing and proposing new ideas go for a phd. PhD means dedication and if you have that dedication don't worry about being gay. Please let me know if you have questions. Also tell me your discipline or area of research so that I can tell more about it. Good luck, and publish or perish !!
I can imagine this would be a really difficult situation for you to navigate. The minefield of working with a doctoral committee and negotiate competing egos, academic interests, and viewpoints is bad enough without adding a potential bias. From everything I've read, this issue cuts across philosophical lines. If you're studying in a traditionally conservative field, let's say some religious studies, maybe some of the hard sciences, I could imagine there being bias. Likewise if you're at an unusually conservative school. But my experience, by and large, is that academics are among the most intelligent in the population, and with that often goes advanced critical thinking and analysis skills. And those are things typically associated with openmindedness and willingness to suspend judgment, at least long enough to critically evaulate something. I have a number of friends who are gay Ph.Ds, and none of them have reported any problems associated with committee members being discriminatory or resistant toward LGBT people. To be fair, that's been a small number (one in biochemistry, one in immunotherapeutics, a couple in social sciences) and all at schools that were already pretty liberal. Have you considered stalking online comments/writings of the people on your committee to gauge their level of comfort with LGBT people? Or considered asking around at your school's LGBT center or, better yet, LGBT faculty group? You could probably get a pretty quick read on your various committee members if you knew the right people to ask. It's just delicate that it doesn't get back to the department(s), and the other problem is, it's near impossible to ask those questions without outing yourself. I think, if I were you, I'd go and take another look at the references you found. Find out what schools, what subject areas, and maybe get a feel for the liberalness or conservativeness of the committee members and/or the departments or schools. I think that would be much more illuminating. I could be wrong, but I suspect that the negative viewpoints will turn out to be aberrations or else issues you see at ultra conservative schools. After all, academia really is full of faggots and dykes.
Hi Closeteer, welcome to EC. I’m sorry I don’t have any any first hand or even anecdotal knowledge of this but I do have a few random thoughts you may want to consider. If you put so much effort into concealing your own identity, looking over your shoulder all the time, worrying about who could find out you're gay, and denying yourself normal social and sexual interaction with other gay guys etc., it’s going to have a detrimental impact on your ability to fully focus on your PhD. I can’t recall exactly where I have seen this, or what the context was, but I seem to recall a figure of 20% improvement in something once someone comes out. If you’ve kept the real you bottled up for so long especially if you have much pent up sexual frustration, if you do come out now I guess there is a possibility of over doing things too much so you end up interfering with your studies. You are based in the USA and at the speed of improvement in acceptance of gay marriage by the time you finish your PhD being gay will be even less of an issue than it is today. In an odd sort of way being openly gay could ultimately help in securing a job or funding because if you were turned down employers etc. may be worried that you could play the discrimination card which could be detrimental to them. If I were in your position, unless your PhD is in religious studies, I would be tempted to wait until your next long academic break and come out right at the beginning of it and have a mad, but somewhat controlled, splurge to get things out of your system a bit, but out of the way people likely to put inappropriate things on Facebook. You can them return after the break to your academic studies with better focus, and if anyone queries your coming out you could say you felt it was necessary to do this at this time so you could fully focus on your work without anything holding you back. I have come across a few articles that may be of interest. How Do You Help a Closeted Gay Person Come Out? « Brian McNaught's Gay & Transgender Issues in the Workplace Blog For LGBT Workers, Being “Out” Brings Advantages - Harvard Business Review SGG P.S. Over the years I have hired many people and always look for those with a creative element to their background rather than just another standard university output individual that thinks the same as all the other individuals. To gain a competitive advantage you have to have people who don’t think like the rest, and gay people are well known to have a creative flair which I would see as being an advantage. Just for clarification my background is scientific, I used to design high tech gamma ray detectors, and I cannot see how being openly gay would be in anyway detrimental to job performance. I can however from personal experience tell you that being closeted or not fulfilling your sexual needs does impact job performance and the longer you keep things bottled up the worse it gets. Even though I’m out to my wife I’m not out to everyone so some of my energy is spent in concealing this part of my identity. By far the biggest impact on my work is the hours spent day dreaming about hot guys and what I’m going to do with them in bed, I have a lot of catching up to do in the bedroom department. I think if I could live openly and have a regular outlet for my pent up sexual frustration my work would improve 100%.
Just a few more thoughts. Many larger metropolitan areas have professional gay men’s groups attracting senior business types etc., it’s possible your area may have such a group that could help you build your business networking skills as well as being able to help you with LGBT issues in the workplace. It’s likely that members of such a group will be discrete which you may find beneficial. If you do come out, and ONLY if time permits, perhaps you could get involved at the more professional looking, rather than stereotypical, end of LGBT rights campaigning. This could give you skills in public speaking, media exposure, fund raising, networking, and budgeting in the real world, all of which may be beneficial to you in your work. I know from personal experience in working on government funded projects with a lot of money that moving onto projects with smaller, and more realistic, budgets can come as a shock. Some sort of peripheral exposure to smaller project budgets, perhaps within a LGBT campaign group, would have been helpful to me. Prospective employers will look at Facebook and other social media sites to gain some additional knowledge about prospective candidates. Since being gay could be somewhat of a handicap in job hunting /grant seeking I would recommend that you give your public sites a professional spin because they are part of your marketing. I would even go as far as looking at the Facebook, twitter, whatever sites of well-known openly gay professionals operating at C level to see how they publically handle being gay. If you want to go the extra mile you could even write to 1 or 2 of them explaining you are a serious professional asking for their advice, you never know you could get some good contacts from this, and it’s always good to become comfortable writing to such high level guys when you’re not looking for a job or funding. One last point for the professional gay, Lord Browne the ex CEO of BP has written a book “The Glass Closet” that you may find interesting The Glass Closet: Why Coming Out Is Good Business: Amazon.co.uk: John Browne: Books Also check out BBC News - Lord Browne encourages young gay workers to come out SGG
When opportunities presented themselves, I told other students in my program, and they were all really supportive. After awhile I started wearing a rainbow bracelet as well. Nobody has said anything negative to me at all. Again, I'm in a very accepting field and my university has very strong LGBT-affirming policies, so I'm not surprised. You may want to read up on your university's policies on LGBT nondiscrimination in addition to finding if there's an LGBT resource center.
