The Kin Closet

This chapter shows the first way that LGBTQ people do conflict work to stay in the family: avoiding rejection and conflict by never coming out of the closet at all. The chapter describes three types of closets used as conflict work to keep the family bonded—dad’s closet, the trans-itional closet, and the bisexual closet. LGBTQ adults in the study maneuvered within and around the closet to keep the peace in the family, especially when dads are involved. Instead of the closet being (only) a repressive site that one should get out of, the closet was often seen as a necessity to keep peace in the family—a central tool LGBTQ adults use to stay in their families. Amid continued stigma of queerness in the United States, and the Midwest more specifically, the closet privileges the solidarity of the family over the individual self. And while being in the closet may indeed be oppressive, it can also be the only recourse for managing these ties in a homophobic—and in the case of this chapter especially transphobic and biphobic—environment. The closet is used primarily by the white interviewees.