Seize Out Of The Shadows: Reimagining Gay Mens Lives Author Walt Odets Distributed As Interactive EBook
you are a gay man or know someone who is a gay man, listen up, Walt Odets has been a San Francisco psychotherapist for overyears, His book, Out of the Shadows: Reimagining Gay Men's Lives is a call to embrace the life we were meant to live no matter what age we are when we read this book.
Odets weaves the understanding of societal influence, biological family, community, and the two parts of the AIDS epidemic in the western world and how these merge together to either support or hinder us.
He also understands that marriage equality and military service will only help if we hold on to what he calls our gay sensibility, I've always thought that. Odets never bashes anyone. He gently lays out a tapestry of three different life experiences, those of us who came of age before HIV, those who came of age during, and young men who have come of age after the introduction of the medicines that have been keeping HIV people alive since the's.
Out of the Shadows acts as a road map to help each of us understand what might be holding us back and in the most loving way possible invite us to move forward and embrace a fuller life.
I want to read this again, There's lots to digest. But my initial thought upon finishing Odets' book is one of wonder and familiarity, Thank you for putting together many parts of my life's puzzle pieces that have confused me over the years, You've given me lots to work with and affirm in my own therapy,
Odets' book blurs the lines of genre, As Publisher's Weekly put it, "A soaring combination of social critique, memoir, and manifesto, . . "
More thanif I could, An essential book for people to read young or older to understand the complicated psychological landscape within which gay men are living, With "marriage equality" finally granted, many people incorrectly think that everything is easily mended and works without the need for introspection and hard work,
As Walt Odets writes: "Are men who fall in love with other men and get married just like heterosexual men in conventional marriages Both gay lives and gay relationships have a long, necessarily independent history of improvisation and invention, largely born of a gay sensibility.
Without traditional social models to draw on, gay men have had to discover ways to be themselves in a manner that straight men with a readymade life plan never have.
For gay men, married or not, the task of discovery persists, "
I recommend this book to all my gay brothers but also hope that our straight friends and families can learn from the stories that Odets generously shares from decades of analyzing the complicated thing we call love.
'Today's gay communities would like to think that they bask in the light of a new golden age of acceptance and selfacceptance, but that is significantly untrue.
' to follow. Walt Odets has done a phenomenal job of describing the life of a gay man in America, This should be required reading for all gay, bi, queer, gender fluid, trans, etc, individuals, as well as any allies, friends, or curious souls,
Odets is a clinical psychologist, and thus presents various aspects of the gay existence via psychological case studies, Each account is compelling, and for me, hauntingly familiar, as I suspect it would be for most queer men in America, Within these vignettes, Odets details the psychological underpinnings of the concept at hand, e, g. , stigma, and how we internalize and project these feelings, The result is a beautiful book full of humor, honesty, humanity, and hope, I encourage everyone to read this, Um livro excelente, bem escrito e esclarecedor a respeito da psique e possíveis problemas de saúde mental de homens gays vivendo em uma sociedade heteronormativa antes, durante e depois da primeira e segunda onda da epidemia de HIV/AIDS.
Recomendo!.
This one has been a while in the reading, and one I've had to stop and start many times,
Although the subject matter is one of importance and needs to be addressed, I think the author's writing style just didn't gel very much with me and I therefore found it to be a bit of a slog to get through.
Odets deals with the many traumas that gay men experience, from coming out and family rejection, bullying, negative relationship experiences, to surviving and navigating the AIDS epidemic whilst losing those around you.
I think particularly regarding the trauma surrounding the AIDS pandemic and the trauma the gay community experienced, sitelinkHow to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS is a much better title to read, and covers way more ground.
Overall, this book was ok, but just ok, Not one I'd particularly recommend or return to, Insightful book about how gay men are shaped by experiences while growing up, with an especial focus on men living through the AIDS epidemic, whether as adults or children growing up with the fearmongering about being gay as a result of the epidemic, while also writing about current issues.
The discussion about the issues with gay marriage being the ultimate goal for a lot of activists was especially interesting, with how this in some cases seem to be a fight to assimilate queer people into straight institutions rather than just fighting for acceptance for alternative lifestyles despite gay marriage being something that should be legal.
The discussion about how sex education often fail men who have sex with men was also interesting and pretty relatable,
Other than that, the author writes really well, and whenever he takes up his own experiences with the AIDS epidemic, it's both really insightful to someone who did not live through thes/earlys, and it's also devastating.
It took me a long time to finish reading this book because I recognized myself on every page, and that was painful, For anyone, gay or straight or otherwise, wanting to delver deeply into what it means and what it's meant to be "gay," and not just "homosexual," I couldn't recommend this book more.
Ad essere onesto, non so né se né come metabolizzerò questo libro,
Meglio con che senza, credo che è poi l'unico metro sensato con cui valutare un libro,
This book by Walt Odets son of the playwright Clifford Odets is part memoir and the larger part reflections of a gay psychotherapist on his practice and patients over aboutyears of recent gay men's experiences.
The memoirs occupy the first and last chapters, and are very moving the chapter about his relationship with Matthias Johnston, and the family eventually comprising four gay men that they formed, is beautiful and quite emotional.
The rest of the book looks at exactly what the subtitle promises: ways to re imagine how gay men can live honest and authentic lives in thest century.
He offers a number of useful frameworks and structures to model some of this, and even though there's a kind of academic quality to all of this, the work never feels didactic or impersonal or dull.
In fact I was astonished at how much of the material seemed to apply directly to my own lived experiences and indeed how illuminating and supportive it turned out to be for me at this particular moment in my life.
The most striking takeaway from the book, for me, is Odets's insistence that gay people need to forge their own kinds of socialization for example, marriages, as exemplified by this quote: "Half the time, the gay liberation movement is really the 'Please like us, we were born this way' movement.
Liberation is about insisting on our own lives, not seeking their permissions for a diversity that harms no one, " Emphasis mine.
An essential exploration of the possibilities for gay selflove in the wake of lifelong and ongoing personal and community trauma, by a gay psychotherapist who has treated hundreds of gay men attempting to build authentic lives in the face of immenseand ethically inexcusablesuffering.
This brave, beautiful book is a guidemap or, as Odets calls it, a songbook for interrogating the coping mechanisms that can imperil healing and a more authentic life.
Empathetic and wise. I cried so much. Including on a plane. For this gay man, it was lifechanging, I have just finished this book and I have much to think about, I'll have to come back to write a longer review, I won this novel via Goodreads Giveaways,
As someone who has background working in AIDS hospice and day centers in the earlier's, I was very excited to read this novel.
Listening to the history of the epidemic from the survivors is incredibly powerful and this novel brought back some of the very real, very painful, yet full of hope stories I witnessed there.
In this age, it's hard for some of us to imagine living in shame and fear, To hiding who we are even to those who should be our biggest supporters, Out of the Shadows made it very clear that the battles faced by the LGBTQ community are far from over, Equal legal rights do not change people's hearts, That is up to us,
It's incredibly important that people from all backgrounds read this book, Out of the Shadows gives voice to our friends, family members, coworkers and neighbors struggling to find identity and acceptance, It's time to listen.
And for the record, my favorite story was the loving tribute to Matthias, Thank you for sharing his life Walt, Insightful, moving, tragic, hopeful. Note: Odetss book is focused on gay males so I will use the word gay rather than the more inclusive LGBTQ,
I cannot do this book justice with this review, In fact, I cannot do it justice with a single reading, As I read, I was aware that Odets was writing about something that would take a lifetime to undo and to reimaginemy own life as well as the life of countless gay men born into a society that is still hostile to them.
“True selfacceptance is readily recognizable: it is largely free of needless explanation, apology, and pandering, and free of reactive, unrealistic selfconfidence and compensatory false pride.
Selfacceptance allows realistic selfconfidence, which is significantly unhinged in adulthood from the expectations and approval of others, In the end, authentic selfacceptanceor the lack of itis almost the entirety of what defines a life, Without true selfacceptance, there is no true selfconfidence or selfrealization, Without selfrealization, lives feel squeezed, purposeless, and truncated, cut short long before physical death finally ends them entirely, ”
Claiming that the yearsthe Stonewall uprising,the first news of HIV/AIDS, andthe year AIDS began to become manageable are milestones in gay life in America, Out of the Shadows discusses what it “means” to be a gay man in the United States today, the shame and stigma most gay persons feel, and the role the HIV / AIDS plague plays in the shaping of our understanding of what it is to be gay.
The book covers much territory including the impact of the ongoing HIV / AIDS epidemic, the developmental stages of life, and obstructions to selfdiscovery and realization, but ultimately the book is focused on the role of shame in the life of gay men and the struggle to deal with that shame and create a full and honest life.
Odets frequently reminds the reader that this shame is not the "fault" of the gay man but is a reaction to living in a world that still does not celebrate the diversity of people but has very rigid gender and sexual norms.
Although society has created the conflict by imposing a simplistic, inhuman model, it is left to LGBTQ people to deal with the problem: it is LGBTQ people who are left feeling deviant and “misaligned.
” We have the choice of either rejecting the social construction in a pursuit of wholeness and authenticity or bringing ourselves into alignment,
As I read the book I frequently found myself remembering and thinking more deeply about my own experience:
I had long felt “different” from most of the boys around me while I was growing up.
As a child, I did not have the words to identify the source of that feeling, but I knew I was not like the other boys in some deep and fundamental way.
I began to sense I was flawed, Today, when I look at pictures of myself from late elementary school, I see the face of a frightened boy already withdrawing from people around him.
Inth grade, after months of severe anxiety that made me sometimes think of suicide, I whispered to myself the words, “I think I am homosexual.
” But I also felt I was alone, There was no one I knew like me, There was no Internet or Google for research, There were no positive overtly gay characters on television, in the movies, or in books, All I could find were a few clinicalsounding passages in books that claimed gay people were mentally ill, All I heard from my fundamentalist church was that I was going to burn in hell for eternity, All I knew from the news was that I was a criminal,
By the end of high school, with great fear, I admittedas though it was shameful and evilI was gay to a very few people, Even though they were supportive, I still believed what the medical profession, the church, and the government said about me, I believed they knew me better than I knew myself,
As I began college, my parents went through a nasty separation and my brother became drug addicted, I tried to be “the perfect kid” as everything fell apart, I also worked and went to college full time and tried to maintain the house and unsuccessfully hold the family together, I buried myself even more and tried not to add more to all that was happening around me,
Furthermore, while in college preparing to become a teacher, I knew I had to hide myself even more which intensified the feelings of being flawed and unworthy.
Anita Bryant, the Save the Children campaign, and the California Briggs Initiative were all in the news, These were all attempts to remove gay teachers from the classroom, If I wanted to teach, I could not live my life as a gay manas the man I was, I buried myself in my schoolwork and fulltime job and strived for perfection in both, I tried to prove I was worthy, but also to make sure I had no time to explore my own life,
When I signed my contract to become a teacher, that contract included a morality clause that made it very clear I would be fired if gay.
I pushed myself deeper into the closet and buried myself in my job workinghours daily, If I could only think my career, I did not have to think about myself as a gay man,
Then, in, the first news began to break about what was at first called GRID Gay Related Immune Deficiency, Of course, this was soon called AIDS, The president of the US, Ronald Reagan, did
not mention the plague until many years into it, Most of the nation turned its back until it then became antagonistic and fearful, William Buckley, Jr. even called for the tattooing of all AIDS victims, Thousands upon thousands over,by the end of the decade of gay men began to die, I began to believe I might get the disease and die unless I continued to bury myself in my work and avoid contact with other gay men.
In, I took a sabbatical and went to Japan to teach, While there, the shame, the horror, and selfloathing led to a breakdown that brought me home and into therapy,
That same year, I told my mom and stepdad and a few others that I was gay, but still there were periods of time when I tried to deny it by dating women.
I also continued to hide to protect my job, But, as the years went on, it became harder and harder to do this as I became consciously aware of how deeply I had swallowed the shame and how much I hated myself.
Finally, I began to wonder if maybe the world was wrong about me and “my guts” were right,
Finally, I had had enough, I woke one morning and chose to live, Though those earlier years caused great damage, I decided to live more fully and authentically, As a friend said, I threw the closet door open so hard it came off its hinges,
Though the struggle with shame continues, I am “out” in all areas of my life and entering thend year of living with the man I love.
I now face that struggle with the knowledge I will never hide or go backward but will continue to learn how to be more authentic and claim my place in a world of beautiful diversity.
Furthermore, I will do my part to make life easier for those LGBTQ persons who follow, and argue not only for assimilation, but for the acceptance and celebration of the great diversity of human life.
As the author Odets writes, “it is time that we act out of who we are, not who they are or whom they would want us to be to bestow their approval.
” Our emergence from the shadows must be about something more than survival, Instead, it must “allow living better, more vital, and more authentic lives than American families and society had offered us, ”
With clear explanations of psychological concepts and stories of gay men the author has worked with over the decades, the Odets makes clear that “as far as we know, being gay is simply one expression of natural human diversity, for which explanations and justifications are owed to no one.
” Furthermore, he celebrates the resilience of gay men living in a straight world,
Odets begins by defining terms, Most importantly, he makes clear that being gay is about something far more fundamental than sexual attraction or behavior, Over the years, many people have come to think that the only difference between a gay man and one who is straight lies in the gender of the sexual participants.
He goes on to say that even manyif not mostgay men have internalized straight societys belief that “the gender of his sexual partner defines him as gay and is his only distinguishing difference.
”
Instead, being gay is about falling in love consistently with persons of the same gender, It is not only about sex, A straight man can have sex with someone of the same gender and not be gay, A gay man can have sex with a female and not be straight,
Sex and sexual attraction are only one expression of being gay or straight, A gay sensibility, instead, is about something deeper and more fundamental, It is about our internal being, our “real” self and the expression of it, It is about who we are rather than who society says we are,
Instead, being gay is about “cathexis” which is defined as “the natural human channeling and attachment of emotion to other people, ” This gay sensibility “describes both the mans internal experience of himself, and his characteristic external expression of self to others, ” It is this gay sensibilitythis experience of self, others, and the worldthat lies behind and gives expression to sexual behavior,
Persons who are gay are not “just like everyone else” but are shaped by their integration of conventional male and female traits, Odets continues by writing that “the gay sensibility constructs gender more humanly, by integrating elements of conventionally feminine and masculine sensibilities into the life of a single person.
”
He goes on to write that “In the societal model, observed biological sex, gender selfidentity, internal sensibility, and expressed sensibility must all be aligned.
As children and young adults, we easily internalize this model, and any discontinuity between the four components becomes a painful internal struggle that is worsened by societal stigma and rejection.
Odets also argues that until gay men come to understand that being gay is about more than sexual behavior, and until they stop equating their gay sensibility with the narrow definition of homosexuality, they will continue to be adversely affected our society still defines homosexuality as something sick, perverted, flawed, deviant, criminal, sinful, and even evil.
And most gay men use those adjectives to define themselves and come to believe themselves unworthy of a life of fullness, love, health, and joy,
Today, even though a slim majority of Americans say they support equal rights for LGBTQ persons, watch the reaction of many Americans when a gay couple walks down the street holding hands or kiss at the airport.
Ask gay men how comfortable they feel expressing their love in public,
Odets argues that while many people, gay and straight, support formal rights, that support lags far behind when it comes to the affectionate expression of loving relationships.
We can also see this support lagging when a gay man expresses his more feminine internal self,
Despite the polls gay men must daily struggle for selfacceptance in a society that is still hostile to those who are gay, Selfacceptance “is largely free of needless explanation, apology, and pandering, and free of reactive, unrealistic selfconfidence and compensatory false pride, Selfacceptance allows realistic selfconfidence, which is significantly unhinged in adulthood from the expectations and approval of others, In the end, authentic selfacceptanceor the lack of itis almost the entirety of what defines a life, Without true selfacceptance, there is no true selfconfidence or selfrealization, Without selfrealization, lives feel squeezed, purposeless, and truncated, cut short long before physical death finally ends them entirely, ”
Reminded that a large percentage of gay men of his my generation were dead before the age of thirty and that the survivors were ruined by all the death around them, Odets argues that “it is time that we act out of who we are, not who they are or whom they would want us to be to bestow their approval.
We must do more than survive, we must “allow living better, more vital, and more authentic lives than American families and society had offered us, ”
We must not fall prey to the message that being gay is OK if all that is wanted are “equal rights, ” We must not accept the message that that the love between two gay me is “just sex”, Instead, we must continue to struggle to live fully and openly with all the privileges of those who are straight, We must allow ourselves to love fully, emotionally, and completely rather than cave to the pressure to see our loving relationships as “less than, ” We must embrace our inner sensibility that causes us to fall in love with persons of the same gender,
We must come to believe that “being gay is simply one expression of natural human diversity, for which explanations and justifications are owed to no one.
” We must not doubt our inner sensibility but seek a path of selfdiscovery and acceptance so we can integrate our inner and outer life and outwardly express the internal impulse of our authentic self.
For, when we free ourselves of the stigma imposed by society and internalized by ourselves, we can be more fully ourselves and grow into our potential.
We must overcome the stigma thrust upon us and be confident in our capacity to be loved and be in love, As Odets writes, the authentically lived gay man “has a lively internal life that he comfortably expresses, a quality of emotional receptivity, and a sense of human vulnerability that are all elements of a gay sensibility.
”
Until then, we will live truncated lives,
Authentic lives are significantly nonreactive: they are primarily rooted in an internal center rather than in others norms and expectations,
Out of the Shadows covers many topics around the theme of reimaging gay lives and coming out of shame, So, while it may be a challenge to boil this important book down to a few points, it is one that deserves multiple readings and much reflection.
A highly recommended book, .