Which Way Out? A Typology of Non-Heterosexual Male Collegiate Identities

Although numerous studies over the latter half of the twentieth century examined the identities and development of students during their collegiate experiences (as summarized in Evans, Forney & Guido-DiBrito, 1998; and Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991), surprisingly few have focused specifically on students who were not heterosexual. Only within the past 15 years have major studies of identities of non-heterosexual youth been published (D'Augelli, 1994; D'Augelli & Patterson, 1995; Herdt & Boxer, 1993; Savin-Williams, 1990, 1998); a smaller number of studies specifically looks at non-heterosexual college students (Dilley, 2002b; Evans & D'Augelli, 1996; Love, 1999; Rhoads, 1994, 1997). Most investigations of this student population have focused on three related elements affecting aspects of particular non-heterosexual identities. First, much of the research posits a static binary identity (in or out, gay or straight), drawn from contemporary student populations. Second, this research places a primacy on the social climates of postsecondary institutions for non-heterosexual students but often does not examine those climates historically. Finally, related to campus climates is the collegiate experience of gays' and lesbians' processes of admitting to self and others one's non-heterosexual orientation ("coming out") (Cohen & Savin-Williams, 1996; D'Augelli, 1989a, 1989b, 1994; D'Augelli & Rose, 1990; Evans & Broido, 1999; Evans & D'Augelli, 1996; Love, 1997, 1999; Rhoads, 1995). A few researchers (particularly Cohen & Savin-Williams, 1996; D'Augelli, 1991, 1994; Rhoads, 1994, 1997; Savin-Williams, 1990, 1998) examined how these climates and experiences might affect individual identities. A reader of this research could easily--and perhaps rightly--come to believe that there exists a singular "positive" or "healthy" gay identity that is attained progressively, with particular emphasis on coming out publicly (or, at least, in increasingly public stages). Theories of how college affects students' identities and how their identities develop (such as Astin, 1993; Chickering, 1969; Chickering & Reisser, 1993; Thomas & Chickering, 1984) imply that almost everyone in a given campus population (or sub-population) progresses along specific paths, toward more complete ideation of identity or fulfillment of potential. The primacy of coming out reflects (or begins to create) in understandings of non-heterosexual identity a very specific identity in particular relation to heterosexual identity; if all goes well, those students undergoing the process become progressively more committed to and public about a "gay" identity for themselves. In this regard, models of gay student development mirror those designed to reflect heterosexual student identity development. Despite attempts to reframe understandings of student sexual identity in higher education research (including D'Augelli, 1994; Dilley, 2002b; Rhoads, 1994; and Savin-Williams, 1999), most conceptualizations of gay student identity development do not move beyond the normative presumptions of heterosexual models. Other researchers have presumed a fixed non-heterosexual identity fitting within the binary distinction between "normal" and heterosexual, and "different" or homosexual; one is either heterosexual or one is gay. Various stages or points of self-realization center on how and to whom to proclaim this difference. In this view, students (straight or not) develop from one identity (or understanding of their lives and relation to society) to another. But the path is singular, the outcome unquestioned, and that outcome unquestionably either achieved or not. These colleagues calling for a reconceptualization of collegiate non-heterosexuality appear to me to be struggling with how to define the population and its experiences in ways that are understandable (and relatable) to heterosexual models. Yet, in building bridges between the normative heterosexual and the "queer" non-heterosexual, what we often do not convey is the multiplicity of non-heterosexual identities: the experiences and qualities of which do not match the "gay" student identity nor, perhaps, the experience of "coming out" in the ways previously explicated. …