Walking a Fine Line: Tony's Introduction

I (Tony) put on my pack and approach the start of a fourteen-mile overnight hike. I am with my friends Carolyn and Art, and two of their friends whom I have never met, Cindy and Susan.

Typically I am fine interacting with strangers for a short time. But with the length of time we'll spend together, two days and a night, I feel sure the unfamiliar others will ask about my life, particularly my relationships, research interests, and teaching. And I feel anxious: as a gay man who studies and teaches about gay identity, I put pressure on myself about deciding when and how to inform others of my identity and my work.

I fear negative responses to my identity, particularly from people who find gayness inappropriate or immoral. Persons who identify as or are perceived to be gay are often targets of physical violence (Pascoe, 2007), and in places like the United States, same-sex relationships are not recognized as a legitimate kind of coupling in many significant contexts (such as hospitals, governments, and families). Such institutions as the military (Brouwer, 2004); the education system (Gust & Warren, 2008); and some religious sects (Cobb, 2006) require a person to vigilantly regulate or stay silent about same-sex desire, and intimate same-sex affairs are often absent from or disregarded in mundane conversation (Foster, 2008).