“Coming Out” as a family with an LGB member in Japan: Normalizing strategies and negotiating with social norms

Kotona Motoyama

Contemporary Japan, 2019, vol. 31, issue 2, 159-179

Abstract: Research on parents of an LGB child demonstrates the processes of parents’ emotional and behavioral changes leading them finally to accept their children. Only after parents accept their children will they be able to start their own process of “coming out”. This article examines how families with an LGB member in Japan come out by negotiating with social norms. Interviews with family members in Japan revealed that most respondents went through emotional and behavioral changes to accept an LGB member; however, their struggle continued even after they accepted an LGB member due to their fear of negative judgments by others around them. Also, the respondents felt more difficulty coming out to people they know than to anonymous others. How the respondents try to control their emotions and negotiate with others reveals that families face difficulties dealing with one of their members being an LGB person and coming out to others despite social improvements surrounding the LGB community in general. This shows that a certain degree of stigma against sexual minorities at the interpersonal level remains strong in the society. In response, respondents used a normalizing strategy in order to avoid possible conflicts with people in close relationships.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/18692729.2019.1657055 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rcojxx:v:31:y:2019:i:2:p:159-179

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rcoj20

DOI: 10.1080/18692729.2019.1657055

Access Statistics for this article

Contemporary Japan is currently edited by Isaac Gagni

More articles in Contemporary Japan from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().