Opening the Closet Door

716 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Identity versus identity confusion essay

As we move through our daily lives, most people at some time experience a sense of disconnection, of not conforming to the box. When these challenges come in the form of sexual orientation they can create a great deal of confusion, fear, and resentment. It can become a lifelong journey to sort these out, not only for the person in the dilemma, but their families as well. In her poem “In the Counselor’s Waiting Room,” Bettie Sellers touches on many of these issues. The guilt associated with being discovered with the “quiet girl down the hall,” the rejection of that lifestyle by her family, and the narrator’s own sense of confusion over this “outing” are revealed in this brief thirteen line poem ( line 9). The “terra cotta girl” is wracked with guilt over the affair, yet she sits reading an existentialist book. This implies she is exploring her personal freedom to choose (line 1; line 5). Martha Barron Barrett spent one year of her life interviewing 125 lesbian / bisexual women for her book Invisible Lives: The Truth About Women-Loving Women. The women of these stories com...

Show More
Related

  • Criticism for Margaret Fuller’s “Autobiographical Sketch”

    1161 Words  | 3 Pages

    In order to somewhat comprehend Fuller’s riveting real-life stories, we must step back and remember that her time period is much different than ours (early 1800s). Back then, the people with right minds wouldn’t dare to go against norms or traditions of an in-line kept society, for the fear of being shunned and shamed. Nonetheless, this story really spoke to me, in terms of Ms. Fuller having a head start on all of her life experiences. She had no other siblings in the household to interact with her like normal children, she had no other playmates. The theories I decided to use in order to bring her work under different light, are “Queer theory” and “Psychological theory”. I believe that Ms. Fuller was really deep in her writing, especially in reflective pieces where she talks about her dear soul mate. She went through so much for the 40 years she lived, and most of it, in her childhood.

    Read More

  • Anne Sexton : Life into Art

    3818 Words  | 8 Pages

    I chose to start this paper by quoting an entire poem of Anne Sexton's. Why? Because no one told the story of Anne Sexton's life as often or as well as Anne Sexton herself. Over and over she wrote, recounted, and recast her struggles with madness, her love affairs, her joys and griefs in parenting, and her religious quests. For example, "Rowing" touches upon the need for Anne to tell stories about herself, her longing for connection with others, her mental problems, and her searching for God - one could not ask for a better introduction to the world of Anne Sexton.

    Read More

  • Ally Training: Helping with the Struggles Faced by Homosexuals

    935 Words  | 2 Pages

    We live in a society in which there are people of different race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation etc. people are free to choose whatever path they want to follow and especially with sexual orientation. People know what path they way want to follow at an early age whether they heterosexual, meaning that they are straight or if they are homosexual which means that they are lesbian, transgender, or queer/questioning. In this paper, Ally Training will be discussed as being educational, how heterosexism plays a part in homosexual’s lives, the coming out process, the multicultural world, concerns that homosexual faces, and religion.

    Read More

  • Judith Sargent Murray

    1718 Words  | 4 Pages

    American Literature. 6th Edition. Vol. A. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2003. 783-791

    Read More

  • Psychiatric Evaluation and Diagnosis of Virginia Woolf

    773 Words  | 2 Pages

    I have chosen to write about Virginia Woolf, a British novelist who wrote A Room of One’s Own, To the Lighthouse and Orlando, to name a few of her pieces of work. Virginia Woolf was my first introduction to feminist type books. I chose Woolf because she is a fantastic writer and one of my favorites as well. Her unique style of writing, which came to be known as stream-of-consciousness, was influenced by the symptoms she experienced through her bipolar disorder. Many people have heard the word "bipolar," but do not realize its full implications. People who know someone with this disorder might understand their irregular behavior as a character flaw, not realizing that people with bipolar mental illness do not have control over their moods. Virginia Woolf’s illness was not understood in her lifetime. She committed suicide in 1941.

    Read More

  • What is a Homosexual?

    1010 Words  | 3 Pages

    Andrew Sullivan, author of, What is a Homosexual, portrays his experience growing up; trapped in his own identity. He paints a detailed portrait of the hardships caused by being homosexual. He explains the struggle of self-concealment, and how doing so is vital for social acceptation. The ability to hide one’s true feelings make it easier to be “invisible” as Sullivan puts it. “The experience of growing up profoundly different in emotional and psychological makeup inevitably alters a person’s self-perception.”(Sullivan)This statement marks one of the many reasons for this concealment. The main idea of this passage is to reflect on those hardships, and too understand true self-conscious difference. Being different can cause identity problems, especially in adolescents.

    Read More

  • Depression In Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne Of Green Gables

    2405 Words  | 5 Pages

    Within the last decade, it has come out that Lucy Maud Montgomery, the beloved writer of Anne of Green Gables had potentially committed suicide. This has pushed readers and critics alike to read deeper into her novels in order to discover precursor signs of a dark depression that she experienced for a substantial period of time. That being said, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s opinions and feelings are certainly reflected in her works, and more particularly in her biggest success Anne of Green Gables. The story, according to blank, acts as a vehicle to uncover Maud’s deepest emotions and also her, “social outlook” (1) To begin with, Montgomery makes a direct line of connection between the events of Anne’s life and her own, which only serves to point

    Read More

  • Anne Sexton

    1279 Words  | 3 Pages

    The third decade of the twentieth century brought on more explicit writers than ever before, but none were as expressive as Anne Sexton. Her style of writing, her works, the image that she created, and the crazy life that she led are all prime examples of this. Known as one of the most “confessional” poets of her time, Anne Sexton was also one of the most criticized. She was known to use images of incest, adultery, and madness to reveal the depths of her deeply troubled life, which often brought on much controversy. Despite this, Anne went on to win many awards and go down as one of the best poets of all time.

    Read More

  • The Feminist Struggle in Katherine Mansfield’s Short Stories

    2631 Words  | 6 Pages

    Social and internal dialogue is representative of the enculturation process that Laura and Miss Brill have been exposed to. Both of Mansfield’s short stories represent a binary: Laura’s realizations of...

    Read More

  • Discrimination Against Gay Adoption

    2163 Words  | 5 Pages

    Note: This paper has a very long Annotated Bibliography. In recent years, same-sex relationships have become more encompassing in US society. State legislation is changing such as accepting gay marriages, enforcing anti-discrimination laws, and legal gay adoptions; the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community is becoming public. Gay-headed families, like heterosexuals, are diverse and varying in different forms.

    Read More

  • Terra-Cotta Girl

    943 Words  | 2 Pages

    Technically a lyric, the poem filled with narrative and drama: an off-the-farm college girl, a Southerner, and perhaps a Georgian like Sellers herself, has fallen in love with a “quiet girl down the hall” (9). The girl’s conservative mother “has seen to” (10) having her daughter seek for an expert help. Ungraceful, conflicted inwardly, and beset outwardly by parental pressure, the girl now waits to see a counselor. No character speaks, but the role of each is well defined. At least five characters, perhaps six, come into play: two girls, their two mothers, and one or maybe two counselors. Onstage is the “terra cotta girl” (1)--and maybe her mother as well. The other, “quiet” (9) daughter and her mother, along with a counselor (perhaps the same one), running a parallel to the scene we are witnessing.

    Read More

  • The Aspects Of Society: Gender And Sexuality In Society

    701 Words  | 2 Pages

    Each individual is inevitably born as one or the other; male or female, but that does not mean that they have discover their sexuality yet. Gender and sexuality are two different entities. Gender is what people use to identify themselves as while filling out an application, while sexuality is what sex and gender are desire to like or love. Human sexuality is constructed socially, and their desire is influenced by a person’s individual childhood or exposure to familial or religious contacts. People have become open minded about their sexuality. Society judges and discriminates in different ways against a person’s sexuality.

    Read More

  • Homosexuality in Today's Society

    1992 Words  | 4 Pages

    An issue that has, in recent years, begun to increase in arguments, is the acceptability of homosexuality in society. Until recently, homosexuality was considered strictly taboo. If an individual was homosexual, it was considered a secret to be kept from all family, friends, and society. However, it seems that society has begun to accept this lifestyle by allowing same sex couples. The idea of coming out of the closet has moved to the head of homosexual individuals when it used to be the exception.

    Read More

  • Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation

    3600 Words  | 8 Pages

    In order to discuss the biology of gender identity and sexual orientation, it is necessary to first examine the differences between multiple definitions that are often mistakenly interchanged: sex, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Sexual orientation is defined by LeVay (2011) as “the trait that predisposes us to experience sexual attraction to people of the same sex as ourselves, to persons of the other sex, or to both sexes” (p. 1). The typical categories of sexual orientation are homosexual, heterosexual and bisexual. Vrangalova and Savin-Williams (2012) found that most people identify as heterosexual, but there are also groups of people that identify as mostly heterosexual and mostly gay within the three traditional categories (p. 89). This is to say that there are not three concrete groups, but sexual orientation is a continuum and one can even fluctuate on it over time. LeVay (2011) also defines gender as “the ...

    Read More

  • LGBT Subculture

    1415 Words  | 3 Pages

    Savin-Williams, Ritch C. Mom, Dad, I'm Gay: How Families Negotiate Coming out. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2001. Print.

    Read More

More about Opening the Closet Door

Open Document