“Não é o filho que sai do armário, é a família que tem que sair do armário”: uma leitura sócio-antropológica do processo de “coming out”

Abstract

The present work, anchored in the anthropological perspective, aims to understand how different subjects signify, position themselves and manage their respective coming out processes. In the field of gay and lesbian studies, this process is known as “coming out of the closet” - the moment when gay men and lesbian women make the social “disclosure” of their sexual orientation. Coming out of the closet is a complex process, usually tense and sometimes little understood in different family arrangements. In theoretical terms, the proposal is anchored in the anthropology of emotions articulated with Spinoza's cartography and theory of affects.For this research, six interviews were carried out, three with mothers of gay men and three with self-declared people, two gay men and one lesbian woman. Due to the pandemic scenario that crossed the research development time, the interviews were carried out online via Google Meet, with the exception of one carried out in person, had an average duration of 30 minutes and followed the semi-structured interview modality. The questions were based on two scripts, one for mothers and the other for self-declared people.The results indicated a wide variation in coming out processes. For some people it was a chaotic and very troubled event, while for others it was relatively peaceful, with the exception of the anguish of the pre-disclosure moment. Among the emotions, shame, guilt, fear and anguish stood out. In several speeches, religion received a strong emphasis, however, for some subjects it had more character of control and punishment, while for others it appears as a source of sociability. Sex education was seen as something interesting for the disclosure process, as long as it was welcoming. The tension between coming out of the closet and keeping a secret was also very present in the reports, implying a different moral grammar in the circulation through public and private spaces. Spinoza's theory of affects, when articulated with cartography, seems to have an interesting potential to contribute to the field of studies on emotion in anthropology.