CASE STUDY INSTRUCTIONS

CASE STUDY INSTRUCTIONS Use scenario below and discuss how you would proceed if working with this client. Do not use any outside sources besides journals attached. PLEASE DO NOT CUT AND PASTE PARTS OF THE JOURNAL. DO NOT DO ANY DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE JOURNAL ONLY CITE INFORMATION ACCORDING TO THE PAGE OF THE JOURNAL THAT IT PERTAINS TO IN YOUR PARAGRAPH. EXAMPLE Scenario Roger is an obese 40-year old man and suffers from other health issues. Roger reports that he lives alone and has very few friends. Roger is single and would like to be married. However, he is afraid that women will reject his advances due to his weight. To further complicate the issue he reports struggling with homosexual thoughts. Roger sought your help because he recently contemplated suicide. Personal Biases and Limitations Every counselor needs to consider personal biases and limitations carefully. If the topic is a hot-button or you lack sufficient knowledge to be effective with the client then you would need to refer. Identify possible problems in working with the client. Be clear in explaining why these issues could detract from counseling. Goals What goals would you like to achieve with the client? Why do you believe that these goals are important? What would you do if the client refused to accept a goal that you believe would be helpful? If you were allowed only one goal, what would that goal be? Why do you believe this would be the most beneficial goal? Journal of Ethnographic & Qualitative Research 2012, Vol. 6, 62–75 ISSN: 1935-3308 intrinsically negotiated by the individuals engaged in the composing process. The author identified three proponents of composing processes: author (the writer), audience (perceived or genuine), and product (the text). In college composition classrooms, audience includes both the author’s peers and the classroom facilitator; writing is often a result of the interaction between both. Composition classrooms entrench writers in constant negotiation among expectations. Flower’s (1990; 1994) investigations asked what happens at points of conflict and points of decision in composing processes. When the inner voices of teachers, collaborators, and peers speak together, how do writers negotiate these multiple, often conflicting guides to meaning making? How do these complex, internal representations of meaning shape text? How does the negotiation of inner voices shape the hidden Meaning, knowledge, and identity in writing have been part of a long-standing conversation in composition studies. In 1990, Flower showed that academic writing, in particular, is rich with negotiation because of the context in which it occurs: “Academic papers are typically written in the context of a rich rhetorical situation that includes not only the conventions of academic discourse, but the expectations of the instructor, the context of the course, and the terms of the assignment” (p. 35). In 1994, Flower asserted that writing is a social act in which aspects of meaning and knowing are Transforming Experience: Negotiations of Sexual Identity in the Composing Processes of Gay Men William F. Berry Cape Cod Community College Negotiating meaning, knowledge, and identity is fundamental to composing processes. These negotiations occur both individually and socially for writers. Sexual identity is an intrinsic part of these negotiations, but is often overlooked by researchers. This study explored the phenomenon of negotiating sexual identity in the composing processes of self-identified gay men. Using purposeful intensity sampling, I selected 7 gay men for semi-structured interviews. These interviews were analyzed using narrative analysis (Reissman, 2003) and the science of phenomenological inquiry as outlined by both Giorgi (1985) and Moustakas (1994). The data presented 7 emergent themes: (a) discovery, (b) expression, (c) courage, (d) being out, (e) reflection, (f) negotiating public and personal identity, and (g) integration. The essential experience of the phenomenon was transformation, wherein the qualities of engaging sexual identity in composing processes allowed the participants to bring deeper structures of meaning into written form. William F. Berry, Ph.D, is Associate Professor of Language and Literature at Cape Cod Community College in West Barnstable, Massachusetts. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to wberry@capecod.edu. 63 logic of the text? In answer to these questions, Newkirk (1997) suggested that students are not expressing a self, they are creating a self. Newkirk argued that the objective characteristics of language shaped the way in which the social characteristics formulated the creation of a linguistic identity, or self. Hence, negotiating meaning, knowledge, and identity is social, and writing is socially constructed. However, Emig (1971) presented another answer to these questions: “Persons, rather than mechanisms, compose” (p. 5). Emig focused on two modes of writing: reflexive writing (student’s feelings about their experience) and task-oriented writing (writing for a particular purpose). The author emphasized the individual’s place in composing processes. Emig accepted that language carried meaning both socially and individually, but argued that meaning was negotiated personally. Hence, negotiating meaning, knowledge, and identity is personal, and writing is constructed individually. While Emig emphasized the individual’s experience in composing processes, Newkirk emphasized the social aspects of composing processes. Both supported Flower (1990; 1994) in agreeing that writers are entrenched in conflict and expectation, and that personal and social negotiations are embedded in composing processes. In applying this proposition, one could argue that negotiating sexual identity in composing processes is natural, and that there are entrenched conflicts and expectations. Hence, negotiating sexual identity for gay writers is risky because the related negotiations are difficult and complex. When examining the discourse of gay writers, patterns of heteronormativity emerge in both the language and the discourse community. Bergman (1991) discussed the strategies that gay men use to fashion their sense of sexual identity, and argued that gay men build their sexual identity around constructs of heteronormativity: “For example, since heterosexuality approves of sex that is ‘natural,’ gay writers have showed that homosexuality is ‘natural,’ and, thus, worthy of approval” (p. 26). The author contended that constructing gay sexual identity as something natural negates gay sexual identity: “[This strategy] authenticates both the dominant and subordinate [and is] unable to fully acknowledge the extent to which the former negates the latter” (p. 26). The author explained that creating gay sexual identity in response to heterosexuality was a way of rendering heterosexuality as normative: “Gay men have fashioned their sense of themselves out of and in response to the heterosexual discourse about them, gay men, even as conceived by gay men, cannot be viewed outside of the constructs of heterosexuality” (p. 26). Thus, the language of sexuality becomes both a way of othering those who do not fit into predominant heteronormative categories and a means of validating heterosexuality; the language of sexuality becomes a way of codifying people as opposed to a discursive tool. For example, Malinowitz (1995) reasoned that it is not unusual to see the issue of sexual identity in one of two lights, as an issue of rights and/or personal identity. The author warned, however, that consigning gay and lesbian existence to a matter of mere personal identity can negate the issue of culture and community; likewise, consigning gay and lesbian existence to a matter of mere culture and/or community can negate the issue of personal identity and choice: The presence of lesbian and gay discourses in the classroom, then, contributes significantly to our understanding of the ways that seemingly remote, autonomous identities are in fact deeply implicated in one another’s existence— and of the ways that in writing we produce ourselves through our production of the other. Such notions suggest, too, that identity is not immutable and static, but rather may be reconstructed, repositioned, or redefined. The absence of a particular discourse may itself be a message. (p. 29) One of the ways that heterosexuality receives affirmation is through implicit, unspoken recognition of itself as a normative category of identification, and most of the colloquial language used to discuss sexuality is hegemonic and affirms heterosexuality over homosexuality (Armstrong, 1997). Unless sexuality is otherwise labeled, heterosexuality is always assumed. Writers are often unaware of the social and personal assumptions concerning language, even when that language concerns them. According to Armstrong (1997), in discourse, all participants are assumed to be Berry 64 heterosexual until information contradicts. When other sexual identities are present in discourse, they are often negotiated as a binary opposition: heterosexual versus homosexual. This kind of negotiation can create an adversarial discourse in which the phenomena of omission and othering can occur. However, Malinowitz (1995) argued that systems of classifying sexual identities had begun to change as a result of post-modern theory: Theorists of sexuality have challenged the systems of classification by which identities become inscribed, predominantly the dualistic thinking that has produced the homo-hetero opposition. In popular imagination, homosexuals are made, while heterosexuals just naturally exist in nature. Much of the writing that has come out of lesbian and gay studies—influenced by postmodern theory—challenges this dichotomy by demonstrating how all identities are constructed. (p. 43) The author explained that in the complex negotiation of sexual identity, constructions of choice, rights, personal identity, and culture happen from varied vantage points in both social and individual contexts; thus, indexed in writing are the patterns, network, and sexual identities they carry and/or construct. The foregoing literature review reveals some of the myriad, complex issues embedded in the phenomenon of negotiating sexual identity in composing processes for gay men and presents some of the perils of revealing and negotiating discourses about gay sexual identity. Ilyasova (2007) maintained that because of these perils and complexities, the field of composition studies has disregarded issues of sexual identity: Within the composition field sexual identity issues have often been overlooked, in spite of the increasing attention the composition field has paid to other identity issues such as race, gender and socio-economic class as factors that shape writing practices. In contrast, queer sexual identity issues have tended to be ignored and heterosexual identities taken, uncritically, for granted. (p. 3) The present study responded to Ilyasova’s assertion and explored how the phenomenon of negotiating sexual identity in composing processes is a core part of composing processes. Engaging transformation in the texts of writers engages negotiations of knowledge and meaning within composing processes. By recounting how the participants negotiated their sexual identity in composing processes, the present study further explored how sexual identity shape and transform both the writing and the writer. Method I selected participants for this study using “purposeful intensity sampling” (Patton, 2001, p. 234). It was important that each participant self-identified as a gay male and had experience writing in academic settings. However, it was not necessary that they were engaged in academic writing or part of a composition classroom. The saturated data achieved the study’s results, and the sample size of seven fell within the appropriate range of 5 to 25 participants for a transcendental phenomenological study (Creswell, 2007). The seven men who constituted the final pool of participants manifested the phenomenon in an intense, rich, and common manner; a brief narrative description of these men follows: Chris is a white male in his mid twenties who has taken several composition courses at a Midwest community college. Chris is an avid writer and intrigued with literature and art. He is a creative writer of both fiction and non-fiction and has enjoyed his college composition courses, where he wrote extensively for academic purposes. Steve is a white male who teaches reading and literature at a Northeast community college. He teaches reading and literature and lived for 12 years as a cloistered monk. He didn’t come out as a gay man until after age thirty. He facilitates writing processes in his courses, but does not consider himself a writer. He is an ordained priest. Bob is a Vietnamese-American who lives in the Northeast region of the U.S. is in his early thirties and is very close to his family. Bob works as a dentist and had a strict Catholic upbringing. Bob did not come out as a gay male until after college. His current writing is mostly private, but he has experienced writing in college contexts. Transforming Experience 65 Mark identifies as a gay Christian. He is a white male in his late twenties. Mark attended a Christian liberal arts college where he could not express his gayness. Mark came out as a gay man after he left college. Mark writes for his church and wrote several essays while in college. Stu is an African-American male in his early thirties who works as an addiction psychiatrist in a large metropolitan city in the Northeast region of the U.S.. Stu identifies as an African- American gay male. Stu mostly writes for professional purposes, but has experienced writing in academic contexts. Kirk is a white male in his early forties who lives in the Northeast region of the U.S. He identifies as a gay male and has worked as a journalist, writing in his field for predominantly gay oriented media, as well as having done writing in college contexts. Kirk works for a Northeastern community college where he does fundraising. Tom is a white male in his late twenties who identifies as a gay male and sings with a gay men’s chorus, living in Northeastern city where he also attended college. Tom does not consider himself a writer, but he has written essays for college and has done research papers for academic purposes. I used semi-structured interviews to explore the phenomenon with the study’s participants. Seidman (1998), in his work Interviewing as Qualitative Research, stated: “[Interviews lead] to deeper understanding and appreciation of the amazing intricacies, yet, coherence of people’s experiences” (p. 112). Phenomenology often relies on informal, interactive, open-ended interviews (Moustakas, 1994). Using the central question of the study as a starting point, I interviewed each man separately, at different times, and in different places. I audio-recorded these interviews and later transcribed them. The primary questions for the interview emphasized the focus of the study: a) How do you feel your sexuality impacts your writing process? b) If you were in a basic writing class (English 101) and asked to write a basic, expository essay that would somehow allow you to reveal your sexual identity, how would you respond? c) What are the experiences of addressing sexual identity in your composing processes? The interviews incorporated other questions, as needed for clarification and to prompt deeper insight and description from the participants. There was plenty of opportunity for participants to be spontaneous and allow the interview to take its own form. In accordance with the methodology of qualitative research and standards of phenomenological reduction, which indicate that it may be necessary to conduct a follow-up interview and verify the transcription and transformations with the participants (Giorgi, 1985; Moustakas, 1994), I provided each participant with a written transcription of both his interview and the transformation of his interview for verification. The need to regulate the study to composing processes in academic or composition classrooms was unnecessary. Thus, the specific college curricula each participant experienced was not core to the context of this study; each participant’s descriptions of his experiences in and out of these varied, academic settings was core. However, the participants needed to have some experience writing in composition classrooms because this experience made it possible for each participant to understand and describe their composing process. In order to review the data in the early stages of analysis, I used the process of phenomenological reduction. Moustakas (1994) outlined the process: “The method of Phenomenological Reduction takes on the character of graded prereflection, reflection, and reduction, with a concentrated work aimed at explicating the essential nature of the phenomenon” (p. 91). I kept an informal research journal about my biases and preconceptions and noted any expectations that may have interfered with the results. This process was ongoing throughout the data transcription and analysis, as well as during the write-up of the data. I followed eight steps in analyzing the data that Giorgi (1985) outlined. His method of data analysis is concerned with providing the psychological perspective of experience: “[It is] a direct analysis of the psychological meaning of naïve descriptions of personal experiences” (p. 1). As the present study explored the personal, often psychological descriptions of sexual identity in composing processes, Giorgi’s (1985) Berry 66 emphasis on psychological meaning was essential for my data interpretation. First, I collected, transcribed, and reviewed verbal descriptions of the phenomenon. Second, I transformed significant statements from each interview into meaning units. As I transformed each interview into meaning units, I engaged in imaginative variation, the art of perceiving the interviews from various perspectives, which Moustakas (1994) explained: “[Imaginative variation seeks] possible meanings through the utilization of imagination, varying frames of reference, employing polarities and reversals, and approaching the phenomenon from divergent perspectives, different positions, roles, or functions” (p. 97). This process determined all possible significances in the data. Third, I created a specific description of the phenomenon based on the transformed meaning units of the interview. I created the specific description of each interview from the determined meaning units. I gathered the data and sorted it to determine relevant from non-relevant aspects of the phenomenon, the process of horizonalization. Fourth, I extracted a general description of the phenomenon for each participant. Fifth, I identified the emergent themes. In the fourth and fifth steps, I used narrative analysis (Reissman, 2003) and more fully engaged that data. This process allowed me to explore the narratives on three levels: a) the external narrative mode, the description of what happened; b) the internal narrative mode; the description of the feelings, reactions, preconceptions; and c) the reflexive narrative mode where the question of meaning is addressed and extracted (Reissman, 2003). The use of narrative analysis in conjunction with phenomenological methodology allowed a richer, more complete description of the themes to emerge. Thus, I discovered and correlated the emergent themes of the phenomenon with the identified meaning units of the data, and I developed a general description of the phenomenon as a whole. This description contained both the emergent themes and the essence of the phenomenon. Hence, in the sixth step I analyzed the emergent themes in accordance to the identified meaning units and placed each meaning unit into an emergent theme. I analyzed the general description of the phenomenon by using each participant’s specific description and transcribed interview and provided further analysis of the emergent themes within the phenomenon and to show how each theme correlated with the essence of the phenomenon. Seventh, I described each individual emergent theme using the transcribed interviews of the participants. Finally, I synthesized the descriptions of the participants into a general description of the phenomenon as a whole and the essence of the experience. Giorgi (1985) stated: This last step is a difficult one because more so than with traditional research, where conventions are already established, one has the freedom to express findings in multiple ways. To a large extent, how the findings are presented very much depends upon the audience with whom one is in communication. (p. 20) Thus, I used the language and literature of the study of composition and rhetoric and contextualized the emergent themes, descriptions, and essence of the phenomenon I studied. Results I summarize the findings of this study and culled from each participant’s interview the emergent themes and essential experience of the phenomenon. From each participant’s interview, I identified seven emergent themes: (a) discovery, (b) expression, (c) courage, (d) being out, (e) reflection, (f) negotiating public and personal identity, and (g) integration. The themes correlate with the essential experience of the phenomenon based on the examination of the participants’ external narrative modes (what was experienced) and internal narrative modes (how it was experienced) of the phenomenon described. Transformation was the essential experience of the phenomenon, extracted from the participants’ descriptions by examining the reflexive narrative mode (wherein the question of meaning is addressed). I present the general descriptions of the themes here. Discovery The participants experienced the act of writing as providing new avenues of discovery into their sexual identity. Chris, a community college student in his 20’s, stated: “I came to terms with my sexual identity first in my reading process.” He defined his process of discovery: This is part of what I call my ‘me search.’ So I take this me search and Transforming Experience 67 I write about things that I’m reading about that have to do with who I am and incorporate that into my process. I start to write and just start to brainstorm about what can I write about? What do I feel like writing about? What is my objective in this? And then I write. For Chris, the experience of discovery led him to understand not only how his sexual identity shaped the perspective from which he wrote, but how composing processes worked for him. Similar to Chris’s description, Mark, who identified as a gay Christian and studied writing at a conservative Christian college, described how writing helped him uncover his sexual identity: I was going through college and realizing that I was actually gay and not fitting this perfect mold. And after hearing for 4 years that God can’t love gay people and all this stuff, that’s when I think I realized that I couldn’t let other people decide what my life should be about; what I should write and how I should write it. For Mark, the process of discovering his sexual identity had direct impact on his composing process: I really needed to just figure out what my own voice was and who I was as a person and who I was as a spiritual being, and I had to stop living other people’s lives and what my parents expected of me or what the college expected of me and what I had to be. And I think that’s when I realized that I could finally start discovering who I was as a writer rather than trying to fit someone else’s mold and whatever they wanted me to do. Mark’s description of discovery highlighted uncovering the private, more personal aspects of his sexual identity in order to convey the more public, social aspects of his sexual identity. Stu, an addiction therapist who writes mainly for professional purposes, described the theme of discovery as such: College afforded me an opportunity to take lots of classes on isms: racism, sexism, ageism, heterosexism, and homophobia. So in college, I think, even though I was not out, my interests grew out of that feeling that I couldn’t necessarily, at the time, be out without some sort of negative repercussions. Discovery was a way of coming to understand both his sexual identity and his writing interests. The participants described acts of discovery in composing processes as something that perpetuated the negotiation of sexual identity, publicly and privately. They stated that discovery occurred in composing processes before, during, or after writing tasks. Thus, they experienced discovery as an essential component of the phenomenon about negotiating sexual identity in composing processes. Expression The participants engaged the expression of their sexual identity with intrigue and passion, if not a tempered sense of external audience. In essence, they described it as the ability to articulate their sexual identity in writing. Steve, a community college professor and ordained minister, described his ideas of expressing his sexual identity in writing. He began with a description of writing in general: “That’s what composition is about, painting a picture in writing, as well as just putting words together.” Steve described his writing as directly affected by his sexual identity: I feel that we put more emotion toward our writing than a heterosexual male would. I think that we know that women and men speak differently in communication. And I think that, as a gay man, I probably tend to do that more; writing might be a bit more flowery. Steve’s sexual identity affected his writing to the extent that his writing style itself is, from his description, inherently gay. In contrast, Stu, a clinical psychiatrist, talked about how his sexual identity was not expressed in his college writing: Although, to some degree, it did impact the types of subjects that were interesting to me, such as HIV and AIDS. And the impacts of those illnesses on gay men were certainly an interest at the time and remain an interest, but not to the degree that I would do any writing on it. Berry 68 He further stated that in his professional field, sexual identity is often unexpressed and even assumed: It’s common in medical discourse to describe or discuss a patient by their age, by their race. Sometimes you may use their gender as well, so you might describe someone as a 59 year old White male or a 27 year old Black female, and there’s an assumption of heterosexuality in that term. But if you have a patient who’s gay, usually gay men, you identify that this gentleman is a 59 year old homosexual Caucasian male, and depending on the writer, they may use the word gay or homosexual. I find homosexual tends to be used much more often. And I guess in my own writing as a psychiatrist, I tend to use the word homosexual in describing men. Stu’s description indicated that the omission of expressed sexual identity in writing may be the norm and affirmed that gay sexual identity is often represented by omission and assumed heterosexual until stated otherwise. Bob, a very private writer by his own admission, supported Stu’s notion. He described the difficulty expressing his sexual identity in writing: “When I was in college, I don’t think I would be comfortable enough to write something about my sexuality.” However, Chris described expression differently: I mean we’re experiencing a kind of love that is foreign to the majority of the heterosexual society, so they don’t really know what we’re experiencing, which is why I feel it’s important to incorporate that into my writing style. Chris found expression in his composing processes as liberating because of his ability to share his experience with others. Through their experiences, the participants described expression as an act of revealing. These acts occurred both personally and publicly. The participants’ descriptions showed that expression varied from discreet to explicit in composing processes. Expression also took the form of stylistic choice, subject matter, and genre. The expression of sexual identity in composing processes was sometimes a way of overcoming homophobia. Often, as the participants described, the more indirect negotiations of sexual identity were the effect of homophobia; omission was a form of the expression of sexual identity. Whether for personal or public expression, the negotiation of sexual identity as it is expressed in writing, an essential component in the phenomenon of negotiating sexual identity in the participants composing processes. Courage The participants demonstrated courage through the ways in which they chose to express and negotiate their sexual identity in their writing. The risk of doing so was very real for them. Tom, who rarely wrote about his sexual identity in academic contexts explained: Well, you know, I just think that being gay in our society is just really difficult. You know, there are a lot of people who just want you dead and who can’t stand that fact that you live and that you love, or that you have sex with whoever you do. Steve, who worked with student writing for several years, affirmed Tom’s interpretation: Having taught high school for several years, I can imagine being an 18 year old kid who’s popular on the football team and life’s going great all of a sudden saying, “I think I’m gonna be gay. I think that it would be more fun to be hated by my classmates, be thrown out of my church (by) my parents.” While Tom’s interpretation of risk may not have seemed as extreme as Steve’s, the consequences of revealing sexual identity were often heartfelt, as Chris stated: “When I first started writing, I would have taken that experience as almost a death threat because I was so concerned about people knowing who I am, and I was afraid of being abused or beaten up.” Whether it was fear of a violent response or a loss of social acceptance, the courage to address sexual identity was a cornerstone of negotiating sexual identity in writing processes. Kirk chose to assert his sexual identity and selected a topic for a class project that he considered was gay-identified. He wrote about putting on a condom: “You know, in ’95, I don’t know, even though it was only 12 years ago, I don’t think there were a lot of straight boys writing about, you know, how to put on a condom.” Transforming Experience 69 Kirk described his courage and the awareness of his difference. Chris described his experience: “In writing courses where this [sexual identity] came up, I was fearful and yet excited to be able to share these experiences with people even if they were anonymous.” The impact that fear had on composing was in the form of the choice as whether to write about sexual identity or not. Chris explained that, in composing processes, fear would cause him to limit his writing: “[The act of writing] can be limiting at times because of my nervousness.” The consistent dichotomy of fear and courage was ever- present when negotiating sexual identity in composing processes. Weighing the risks against the rewards of revealing sexual identity in writing was another component of composing processes. Mark embraced his sexual identity as part of his spirituality: “I realize that my life isn’t going to be accepted by everyone and that there will be people out there who will say I can’t be Christian or I can’t be this or I can’t be that, but I’m doing those things.” Mark was not alone in his description of the rewards of embracing and expressing his sexual identity. Bob enjoyed more private aspects of writing: “Well I think as I get older, coming out and meeting other gay people and being more open about my sexuality, my writing has gotten more emotional.” Bob described the experience of creating writing that was more honest as a result of his courage to express his sexual identity. Being Out As the participants experienced, to privately live with awareness of one’s sexual identity does not necessarily beget publicly expressing one’s sexual identity. However, awareness is an important step to public expression. Regardless of the choices one makes in his private and personal expressions of his sexual identity, being out is a fundamental act negotiated in the composing processes. Yet, in order to be out, one must first come out. Coming out, or becoming aware of one’s sexual identity, uniquely happened for each participant. While the experience of coming out was not the focus of the present study, it was a primary facet of being out and negotiating sexual identity. Coming out led to being out, and was a core component in negotiating sexual identity in composing processes. For Steve, being out was important: “The world is still very ignorant of what the gay and lesbian lifestyle is.” Kirk had an interesting description of being out: “It wasn’t necessary for me to come out if I lived in Provincetown because I was living the gay dream.” Because Provincetown is a wellknown gay resort town, Kirk described his sexual identity as being implied by the culture in which he lived. Thus, coming out in his writing was unnecessary: Most of the writing I did publicly was for either a publication called Bay Windows, which is a New England weekly gay newspaper. I did some arts writing. And then I did some arts writing for Provincetown Banner and they’re not a gay newspaper per se, but it’s the Provincetown weekly paper, the gay press today, you know, content by default it’s a gay writer. And by writing it, you’re sort of implying your sexuality. Kirk described how his sexual identity is implied by the context in which he writes and the community in which he lives. The participants described the experience of not knowing or just coming to know about their sexual identity, as Bob described in his college experience: I think back then, when I was in college, I don’t think I would be comfortable enough to write something about my sexuality. I don’t think I really came into my sexuality until I was into my late twenties. So if I was in college and I was asked to write an essay based on my sexuality, I don’t think that my orientation would come out in any way whatsoever. Chris described his first college writing experiences: “I did notice trepidation in the beginning because of all of that, and it took me several years to get comfortable enough to, to really identify myself in writing as being gay.” Mark added: I think part of the reason I went through the depression and failed out of school and all that was because I was just so caught up in the idea that other people could tell me who I should be; who I could be; who God wanted me to be. Berry 70 Stu stated: In college, I was not out and, but I had, even though I wasn’t out, an awareness that I was gay. I think because of that, my inclination was to write about themes related to social justice and prejudice and even impacted the major that I selected in college. Now, I was in the process of coming out, and subsequently came out during graduate school, but I’m not necessarily sure that my coming impacted the kind of writing it did. Although to some degree, it did impact the types of subjects that were interesting to me. The participants described two primary aspects about how sexual identity is expressed in writing. One of these is not being out and thus not being able to write about sexual identity directly. The other is choice. It is important to note that while the participants may not have been explicitly negotiating sexual identity, they made a conscious choice to not do so. However, the participants experienced a freedom in expressing their sexual identity through writing. Chris illustrated the process of negotiating sexual identity in composing processes by describing what it was like to write as an out gay man: “I can’t take on this other persona of someone that I never was and try to live through that, otherwise my writing process would be almost invalid; it would be false, and people would, I feel, see through it.” Chris described his writing processes as essential to his being out. According to the participants’ descriptions, being out and coming out were intrinsic to each other. How this was negotiated in the participants’ composing processes occurred both within composing processes and outside of them. Whether the participants were personally out about their sexual identity or not, the participants negotiated their sexual identity and either engaged it in writing acts or chose not to do so. The participants found themselves in continual negotiation with the landscape of sexual identity during their composing processes. Reflection The participants’ descriptions affirmed that writing as an innately reflective act. When composing, the participants engaged the process of reflection by considering the ways their sexual identity could affect their writing. Reflection was as a way of coming to understand one’s experience. When asked how one might respond to an essay prompt that allowed one to address sexual identity, the participants reflected on the difficulties of the question. They reflected on it through both their life experience and hypotheses, and asserted the impossibility of having been able to address their sexual identity in writing while in college. For example, Tom shared: You know, I’m not really sure. I didn’t do a lot of writing about my sexuality. I think I did an abstract story once about two gay boys not boys, young men. It was in a creative writing class, and it wasn’t very good mainly because I’m not a creative writer. Stu stated: “I’ve never really had to write something like that. I don’t think I’ve ever been asked to write that.” It was through reflection that this awareness presented itself to the participants. The participants described reflection as providing a sense of completion and understanding. Kirk reflected on how he would write an essay concerning his sexual identity: “I think I would definitely. For me it would immediately start at my childhood because my sexuality was sort of muted. It is very much a part of my story.” Kirk would have incorporated his life experience into the narrative, if he had been provided the opportunity and had the personal awareness necessary to write about his sexual identity. Mark stated: “You have to be honest with yourself and you have to figure that out, otherwise there would be no point in writing an essay that would reveal your sexual orientation.” Through reflective acts, Mark came to understand why writing about his sexual identity was difficult for him The participants said that reflection naturally and spontaneously occurred in their writing. They showed that reflection also occurred outside the contexts of composing processes. Reflection allowed them the ability to discover the nature of their experience and describe it completely. Through the description of their experiences with composing and their descriptions of their lives, the participants described Transforming Experience 71 the links in negotiating their sexual identity in composing processes. Negotiating Public and Personal Identity Two primary ways in which the participants negotiated their identity were personally and publicly. The ways in which the participants negotiated their sexual identity in composing processes provided a look into how they negotiated their sexual identity as moving from private contexts of identification into public expression. Kirk described this negotiation of public and personal identity as being influenced by culture. He used his professional career as a journalist to demonstrate: Well you know, sure, I mean, like, culturally I think sometimes editors would choose me for a topic because they knew I would get it without any, you know, intensive study of, you know, something had to be written within a week’s time. The public negotiation of sexual identity for Kirk was externally focused: “I would rather look out toward other people than look too introspectively.” Kirk said this was a result of the media for which he wrote, which was gaycentric and imbedded in a gay-centric culture. Kirk experienced the negotiation of his sexual identity uniquely; it was expected that his writing would be gay. He stated: “People just know who you are, or that’s the gay guy that works at the AIDS support group, and he’s freelancing about this gay topic. Isn’t that nice?” Kirk showed that culture influences how sexual identity is negotiated, because culture is the audience for whom one writes. The culture in which the participants negotiated sexual identity was a core component in choosing to engage or ignore sexual identity. However, they experienced personal and public identity, regardless of social context, as inseparable. Within composing processes, this negotiation was intrinsic. Tom stated: Well, like I said, I certainly look at things from a different perspective than say a straight man would. So in that regard it does affect my writing process; what I write about would be affected; what I choose to write about would be affected; and it would be, you know, topics that would be, you know, if it’s a story about a paper about a health the AIDS health crisis in the early part of the gay community or in the earlier days. Chris claimed: “At first, I tried to separate my sexual identity and my writing process.” He later felt this was unnecessary: “I’m just thinking if they’re not sleeping with me it’s none of their business, but I’m gonna write.” The participants described the negotiation of personal and public identity as a way of negotiating culture and context. Writing exists within the confines of culture. However, the context of that culture allowed the participants to experience their sexual identity differently. Some of the participants described composing experiences positively; others described their experiences as stilted, even negatively. Whether writing personally, professionally, or academically, the negotiation of personal and public sexual identity was a primary component in the composing processes for the participants. Integration The participants described integration as the process of incorporating sexual identity into both personal and public identities. They experienced the process of integration as a long one that involved many steps and struggles; however, the resulting integration was empowering. Integration was intrinsic to their descriptions. Tom discussed integrating his sexual identity in writing as relief: “It is validating in many ways, and it’s a good way to sort of get things out.” Chris stated: “And then the more I became more comfortable with myself, the easier it became in the writing process.” The effects of integrating sexual identity are clearly described by these two participants. He added: “Everything that I write about is slanted on my own experiences, my own experiences being a gay man.” The way in which Chris’s sexual identity has integrated itself into both his personal identity and his composing process is evident. It is experienced as something essential. Steve said: “I think it’s a lifestyle to which we’re born in.” Chris explained: “My sexual identity because that’s who I am, and that’s what I’m capable of grasping. I don’t know that I have the imagination as of yet to write about heterosexual love because I haven’t experienced that so in Berry 72 writing. I basically have that viewpoint of GLTB identity and use that in my writing.” Tom explained his experience in great detail: I just think that I would approach things, you know, as a gay man. I would approach everything that way. I certainly look at things from a different perspective than, say, a straight man would. So in that regard, it does affect my writing process in the sense of the process of writing. The participants’ sexual identities became a component of who they are. Thus, they experienced writing as being more authentic. Stu described how sexual identity operated in his composing processes: Now, I would say that my writing continues to be more of a technical kind of writing related to my career. How my sexuality may impact my writing today. It’s interesting. I have on occasion gay patients, and I’m always surprised or interested how other people refer to those patients … And I think that my own writing, because of my own sexuality, I feel like I can handle that with a certain sort of sensitivity that someone else without this particular perspective could. Stu then reflected on what it might be like if he were writing from his current perspective in a college classroom: And I think because I’ve moved past that in my life, if I were to write about it now even in an English 101 class, if I were to write about it now, it would be more regular, more matter of fact. It just is what it is. There’s not a lot of thought that goes into it. There’s not a lot of thought that goes into it, but because there really isn’t much struggle now, I don’t think I’d write about it from that perspective. For Stu, integration was the final stage of negotiating sexual identity in composing processes. Integration allowed both the author and the reader to engage in the discourse of sexual identity with acceptance and understanding. While the participants described the process of integrating sexual identity into personal and public identities as a life-long process, they stated that the negotiation is well worth the risks. Steve explained: I think how glad I am that I am who I am; that I don’t have to worry about that. Also, the time in which we live that we don’t have to worry about being put to death as a result of who we are. The end result of this integrative process, as Steve described, was transformative. Discussion Writing is an innately transformational act (Malinowitz, 1995). Paranto (2005) stated: “Writing can transform and heal writers; writing makes personal and social change possible” (p. 3). Paranto’s study defined writing as transformative by both teachers and students and something innate to one’s sense of identity, culture, and community: Students draw on multiple and complex discourses to define transformative writing. This study suggests that for these students writing is a sociocultural practice deeply imbedded in their sense of self and their constructs of knowledge and power. This study also suggests that writing in a classroom that creates the space for students to connect their subjective experience and knowledge with academic literacy practices is transformative. (p. 3) In the composition classroom, this kind of academic literacy, Paranto argued, is innate to writing. Within this transformative process of writing is the negotiation of personal and public identities, meaning and knowledge, and authority and power (Malinowitz, 1995). The discourses of sexual identity, both written and oral, can, as well, become transformative ways of producing more authentic writing. The essence of negotiating sexual identity in the composing processes of gay men was transformation. I identified transformation as a process marked with acts that produced a continued change, both personal and social, and that is imbedded in the emergent themes of the phenomenon. It was through transformation that both the experience and knowledge of the participants connected with written meaning. Hence, the transformative experience of negotiating sexual identity in composing processes Transforming Experience 73 allowed the participants to bring deeper structures of meaning into written form. The emergent themes of this phenomenon have been ordered in such a way as to suggest this process for transformation, but this ordering does not attempt to assert that this is the only process through which transformation can or will occur. The ordering of the seven themes presented in this study suggests that the thread of transformation can be traced through the emergent themes; this thread can be, as with most human experience, linear or not. To better explicate the transformative nature of the phenomenon, I offer a discussion of how each emergent theme inter-relates. The participants described discovery as a way of coming into awareness. Discovery happened when there was an absence of understanding about something. The discovery of sexual identity was often an essential moment of personal growth. However, discovery did not necessarily beget acceptance. Malinowitz (1995) stated: “Sexual identity is a component of personal and social identity highlighted for gay men because homophobia in the culture makes it problematic” (p. 24). As a result, as the participants discovered their sexual identity, it often led to years of denial and/or constraints of expression. The author supported this description: Because gay men must constantly assess the consequences of being out and negotiate the terms of disclosure, often necessitating elaborate monitoring of what is said and even thought (‘internalized homophobia’), a particular complication is woven into their processes of construing and constructing knowledge. Even for those who are most out, acts of making meaning involve constant confrontation with many of the premises and mandates of the dominant culture. Gay writers do not have to be familiar with reader-response theory to know that in a homophobic society, the transaction between a heterosexual reader and a homosexual text can yield explosive meanings. (p. 24) It took the participants courage to discover and express sexual identity in writing because it involved confronting the mandates of the dominant culture. As the participants experienced, courage was not the absence of fear, but the quality of mind and spirit that allowed the participants to face difficulty and/or pain regardless of fear. Courage was necessary to overcome adversity and choose to live a life of being out, or to live openly and publicly with awareness. Malinowitz wrote about the experience of being out and creating a sense of self: The risks that [gay men] take in coming out, the rewards that motivate and enable them to come out, the ways they calculate those risks and rewards, the factors that position them to negotiate that calculation, the ways they locate and define and propel themselves within the master narratives of hegemonic heterosexual culture, the communities and identities they form within and in opposition to that culture—all of these things produce particular sorts of relationships to the world that have everything to do with who they “are.” (p. 7) By reflecting on the world in which they lived, the participants experienced being out as living openly and publicly with awareness. In contrast, they experienced the closet as living privately or secretively, often without awareness. The participants also experienced reflecting or meditating on sexual identity as part of negotiating personal and public identity. Constructions of identity in writing are often based around a fairly simple premise: audience and expectation. For gay men, identity is negotiated chiefly around heteronormativity. One writes according to the precepts set forth by one’s audience, according to the participants’ descriptions of their experiences. In support of this idea, Hickey (1993) showed that identity and voice, or written identity, are shaped through the constant tension of the constructed and the “distinctive self” (p. 25): Any reader, like any writer, is in a state of both constancy and flux. Each writer strives to discover and communicate her private relationship to the world in which she lives, yet that same world pressures her to conform, to please. All we can do, I believe, is live with the tension. Its existence is part of what it means to be an individual and a member of a community. Every day, Berry 74 our voices are spoken and heard, written and read, within that tension. The sound of that struggle, however, is often what’s missing in print. (p. 25) The process of constructing identity and knowledge of that identity was in constant flux with the participants’ perceptions. However, what Hickey illustrated as the primary tension between the constructed self and the distinctive self, the participants experienced as the process of integration. This integrative act was defined by Hickey (1993): “The sound of that struggle” (p. 25). This struggle was often the continued result of identity discovery and/or construction or, as Malinowitz (1995) postulated, something essential in the process of discourse: “Creating a new kind of discourse through community, and a new kind of community through discourse” (p. 267). Negotiating sexual identity in composing processes occurred both literally and figuratively. The descriptions and experiences the participants presented held within them a transformative quality. While sexual identity was often constructed differently in various settings, the participants described negotiations of sexual identity as something essential to the way in which they experienced themselves. Through the lens of composing processes, the participants engaged a sense of who they are by revealing themselves with unabridged descriptions of how they experienced negotiating their sexual identity in composing processes. In summary, each emergent theme of the phenomenon explained another texture of transformation in negotiating sexual identity in composing processes. Discovery provided a way of uncovering sexual identity; expression provided avenues of revealing sexual identity; courage provided a sense of being able to overcome perceived and inherent risks in identifying sexual identity; being out provided avenues of knowing about sexual identity, reflection provided further insight into sexual identity, negotiating public and personal identities provided ways of combining and incorporating sexual identity, and integration provided a means for which sexual identity became something normative in the lives of the participants. Within each of these emergent themes, the participants experienced acts, processes, and instances of transformation. The patterns that emerged as the descriptive qualities of these themes serve to reinforce the transformative quality of each emergent theme and the phenomenon as a whole. Through an explication of these themes, transformation rooted itself as the essential experience and the participants were able to bring deeper structures of meaning into their varied descriptions. Limitations and Future Research There are several limitations in the present study. First, this study describes the phenomenon of writing and the observations and experiences of a small population. It cannot be determined whether a larger pool would have revealed different results. However, the data from the participants saturated quickly and richly, and data analysis was validated by external readers. Second, along with the participants, I identify as an out gay man. Additionally, I am a college-level writing instructor. Thus, I had the potential to influence the results of the study. Because of my perceptions of the congruence between the writing process and sexual identity, I could affect the participants’ interviews. I engaged Moustakas’ (1997) epoche to help address this issue. The descriptions of the participants are presented for an audience that includes researchers and educators in the field of rhetoric and composition and queer studies, as well as gay men. Future qualitative research into the relationships between sexual identity and composing processes can help shape future pedagogies. By better understanding how sexual identity reveals itself through writing, composition instructors can better understand the composing processes of gay men. Exploring the voices of sexual identity in a variety of composing processes can help create a better understanding of their unique contexts. In turn, this understanding will help create more awareness of these contexts. By exposing the impact of sexual identity on writing processes, teachers can better facilitate and negotiate the experience of their queer student writers. By exploring gay voices in writing, new ways of interpreting texts will evolve that will continue to provide new insight into composing processes. New ways of understanding constructions of meaning, identity, knowledge, power, and authority can continue to emerge through Transforming Experience 75 the exploration of queer voices in writing and the composition classroom. This study shows how future researchers can continue to expand on what is known about the relationship between sexual identity and writing. For educators, this study furthers the discourses about identity and composing processes. For gay men, this study provides continued validation for exploring sexual identity. In the end, this study on negotiating sexual identity in the composing processes of gay men, built upon existing research, hopes to shed more light on the ways in which queer voices resonate in writing and in our societies. References Armstrong, J. (1997). 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Interviewing as qualitative research: A guide for researchers in education and the social sciences. New York: Teachers College. Berry Copyright of Journal of Ethnographic & Qualitative Research is the property of Journal of Ethnographic & Qualitative Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. Copyright of Journal of Ethnographic & Qualitative Research is the property of Journal of Ethnographic & Qualitative Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.