What’s the Cost of Being Out of the Closet?
When looking at the high profile life of celebrities, do you ever wonder exactly how much money would be at stake if they were to come out of the closet?
Last week John Amaechi spoke at UC Berkeley about gays in athletics. To those who tune out sports news, John Amaechi is a retired NBA basketball player whose new book, Man in the Middle, discusses his experience as a gay man in professional sports. I was expecting promotion of his book, but instead he gave a thoughtful analysis of the unique challenges LGBT athletes have to endure, and how their sexuality can put a sports career in jeopardy.
Someone in the audience asked, “If you felt your basketball career was nothing more to you than ‘putting a ball in a hole’ in retrospect, why didn’t you just come out in the first place?”
Amaechi responded with pretty much the same answer he gave to Michael Musto in The Glass Closet article that appeared in Out magazine. He told Musto, “I was worried about my career and what it would be like walking through stadiums. In 30 states I could still have been fired for being gay, without recourse. There’s no protection for discrimination….”
I’m not going to join in the debate about whether it’s good or bad to stay in the closet, nor does anything more need to be said about the “glass closet.” Closet is closet in my opinion, and there are plenty of reasons and situations that keep people in there. Being a judgmental gay about it doesn’t really help anyone.
But I do like what Musto is trying to get closeted celebrities to admit: There’s a limit to how lucrative you can be if you’re openly gay and in the public eye, and that’s why you’re in the closet.
It’s intersting that Amaechi admitted he did not have a great love of basketball. He knew he was good enough to be in the NBA, but professional basketball wasn’t his lifelong ambition. From these admissions, I can’t help but think he stayed in the closet during his NBA years just for the money in professional sports. That’s not something he admitted to during his talk, however.
We can argue about privacy and all the “Who cares?” about celebrities and their sexual orientation until we’re blue in the face. One thing we need to acknowledge is that it’s way harder for an LGBT-identified person to break into the mainstream media and make the same kind of money as the closeted person who gains prominence first and comes out later.
Let’s take Anderson Cooper as an example. I don’t know if there’s truth behind the widely-reported rumors that he is gay. Personally, he seems as gay as the wind to me. But if he were openly gay, would he still have been able to land his $50 million contract with CNN? I really don’t think an openly gay Coop would have gained the popularity to land this kind of deal.
Perhaps one day people will yawn about the differences between the LGBT community and everyone else, but I don’t see it happening in the near future. The queer community has valuable things to say, and unfortunately lots of people don’t get to hear it because anything related to the LGBT label is just too much to handle for some. Perhaps that loss of oppurtinity to be heard and to reach a great many others is the greatest cost to being out of the closet. It’s a cost greater than what dollars could measure.
I had a childhood classmate who is a lesbian and as far as I know she is not out of the closet. Last I looked, she was a senior executive for a Fortune 500 corporation you’ll all recognize. It makes me wonder, how many other lesbians and gays are in high places that we don’t know about because they’re in the clkoset?
I have found that being out actually has helped my career. I’m not particularly “obvious” as a gay person, and I don’t take every opportunity to inform people in a work context (because really, we’re not there to delve into each other’s personal lives). But I am always direct with my bosses, early on in my time with them. Recently, this allowed me to discuss relocation to London with my current boss, and the complexities around whether my partner could work there, too. Without having come out of the closet, contemplating an international assignment would have been impossible.
I’ve been invited to be part of mentoring programs, diversity programs, etc. at work (some of which I’ve accepted, some not) but being “out” without being “loud” has allowed me to build a credible, professional reputation as a competent executive who happens to be gay and has nothing to hide. Those who don’t come out (especially in large, modern corporations) I think are really just excluding themselves from being included and welcomed.
When we are uncomfortable with ourselves, colleagues and superiors pick up on this, and learn to tread lightly around us. It’s like there’s a dark cloud of danger around us. When we are comfortable and natural and easy-going about our identities and life situations, straight people find it comfortable and natural to be around us, and learn about us. If I were ever in a work situation where I didn’t find it ok to be out and relaxed about it, I would immediately begin work to find a new position in the company, or a new company, following Paula’s excellent advice in her recent career columns.
“When we are uncomfortable with ourselves, colleagues and superiors pick up on this, and learn to tread lightly around us. It’s like there’s a dark cloud of danger around us. When we are comfortable and natural and easy-going about our identities and life situations, straight people find it comfortable and natural to be around us, and learn about us.”
Rich- this is so true! As one of the few out people in my large company, I know exactly what you are referring to. I see people I know in the community who work here scramble for cover when they see me, since they think “the big gay secret” will be known by association. It’s maddening.
I have also overheard people talking about these closet cases in disparaging tones- when I pressed as to why they felt they could talk so negatively about these types- point blank I was told that if they were uncomfortable, it makes everyone around them uncomfortable.