Coming out, or the disclosure of a minority identity, features prominently across disciplines, including several subfields of sociological research. In the context of sexuality, theoretical arguments offer competing predictions. Some studies propose that coming out is increasingly an unremarkable life transition as the stigma associated with non-heterosexualities attenuates, while others posit entrenched discrimination. Rather than testing these theories or providing incremental evidence in support of one position, we use 52 in-depth interviews with recently-out individuals to explain how identity disclosures in (...) the present moment can validate plural possibilities. Our findings show that ambivalence is the core narrative which animates the contemporary coming out process. Respondents identify three interpretive frameworks that structure their experience of sexuality as at once incidental and central: generational differences, identity misrecognitions, and interfacing with institutions. We also detail a fourth theme, intersectionality, which shows the analytic limits of ambivalence in the coming out process. These patterns suggest more broadly that sexuality, like ethnicity, may provide symbolic resources—“distinguishing but not defining”—in the service of crafting a modern sexual self. (shrink)

The paper addresses a phenomenological explanation of the processes of meaning-formation that take place in everyday life. Whereas various social sciences have taken a structuralist standpoint and refer to cultural structures that inform and shape the way things are experienced, classical philosophical epistemology, in contrast, has put an emphasis on the individual mind as the active center of meaning-formation. The author argues for a cultural phenomenology that is capable of giving a philosophically satisfying epistemological account of individual experiences that are (...) culturally structured. As a result, meaning-formation processes are viewed as reciprocal enactment of mind and world, creating the qualitative dimension of meaning of human being-in-the-world. (shrink)