WHAT EX-EXGAYS CAN TEACH US ABOUT GAY, LESBIAN, AND QUEER
RHETORICS
By
Travis Webster

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Rhetoric & Writing
2012

ABSTRACT
WHAT EX-EXGAYS CAN TEACH US ABOUT GAY, LESBIAN, AND QUEER
RHETORICS
By
Travis Webster
What Ex-ExGays Can Teach Us About Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Rhetorics is an interviewbased research project, where I assemble a gay, lesbian, and queer (GLQ) rhetoric grounded
in what I call “GLQ rhetorical responsibilities”—activist rhetorical practices related to
interrupting historic homophobic forces. I locate my research at the virtual site, Ex-ExGays—a Facebook community made up of gay men and lesbians, myself included, who
participated in but ultimately oppose the ex-gay movement. This movement centers on a
western phenomenon linked to conservative organizations that claim to assist gay men and
lesbians with sexual conversion through ministry and therapy. From my data, I argue that
research participants (whom I call participatory theorists) tell stories meant to inform, to
persuade, and to enact change within particular audience networks, share difficult
perspectives based on histories of violence, employ queer narrative practices intended to
disrupt and to revise grand narratives about ex-exgay activism, and use stories as a way to
mediate and reclaim shame.

Copyright by
TRAVIS WEBSTER
2012

DEDICATION
For Adam

iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wouldn’t be here right now without the encouragement, support, and love of many
amazing people. I struggle with the “how” here—how do I thank people not just for seeing
me through the development, writing, and revision of this project, but for guiding me to be a
better researcher and teacher, for helping me see the world differently, and for being
amazing human beings. For that last part—the “human beings” part—I’m most thankful.
Dianna Baldwin, Malea Powell, and Julie Lindquist, my dissertation reading
committee, deserve special recognition. Dianna shared stories from her own grad school
experiences, while offering advice, perspective, and encouragement throughout the
dissertation writing process, especially when we’d chat at the candy bowl or during our lunch
breaks in the writing center. Malea helped me be stronger than I thought I could be while
writing a dissertation so close to my own body; she challenged me to be the responsible
rhetorician I’ve talked about in this project, no matter how hard it was to write at times. Julie
and I are kindred spirits bound by a love of tireless laughter, foul jokes, and inappropriate
humor; it was those light moments that kept me grounded and balanced from day-one of the
PhD process. Thank you, all!
My outside reader, Will Banks—“oh, Wonka”—came to my 8:00 a.m. Fem/Rhet
session on a rainy Friday in October 2007. The rest of the presenters couldn’t make it that
morning, so there I was … a nervous MA student with an entire hour-and-a-half session to
myself. Hands-down, the most thoughtful audience member, Will asked me helpful
questions that led to the further development of my scholarly and teacherly confidence. Will
and I soon became friends, and over the years, he’s become dear to me. His commitment to
v

and enthusiasm for this project are beyond anything I could have imagined. I’m blessed with
his mentorship and friendship.
My dissertation chair, Trixie Smith, is an amazing advisor, director, and supervisor,
but she’s an even better friend, person, and human. She’s pushed me in coursework, exams,
job-seeking, and dissertation-writing. She’s listened while I’ve worked through enthusiasms,
tears, fears, failures, and successes in my professional and personal life. I’m forever grateful
for afternoons talking in her office, hanging out and watching movies at her house, and
trying new restaurants around town. At the moments I wanted to thrown in the towel,
Trixie’s tireless support gave me strength. She’s become family to me over the years: I
cherish her.
I give special thanks to and for the people of this project and the Facebook group.
While I can only name Michael Bussee here (thank you, Michael), three other men were
brave and generous enough to share stories for this project. Over time, I’ve come to care
deeply about all of them, through post-cards and facebook chats that feel like we’ve known
each other for twenty years (“Alex”), through time at the farm for holiday celebrations
(“Jack”), through late-night chats about graduate school (“Brent”), and through Michael’s
warmth and listening ear.
In the past two years, I’ve hit the gym really hard to positively channel graduate
school energy. Tonya Emerson and Jason McCammon from Lansing’s IronQuest Fitness
deserve special thanks. They helped me push, shape, challenge, and listen to my body in
ways I’d never thought possible.

vi

I also owe a “thank you” to Chanon Adsanatham, Melissa Arthurton, April BakerBell, Stuart Blythe, Judy Easterbrook, Michelle Eble, Marsha Edington, Bill Hart-Davidson,
Jeff Grabill, Beth Keller, Tim Leslie, Katie Manthey, Mike O’Keefe, Michele Polak, Dean
Rehberger, Doug Schraufnagle, Diana Shank, Sue Webb, Simone West, Ali White, and
Danielle Winterberger for their support, smiles, and encouragement along the way. I extend
special hugs to my extended family: Bridget Borsellino, George Gammage, Bethany Haney,
Logan Haney, Barbara Pembroke, Brittany Pembroke, Robin Smith, Kleta Webster, and Sue
Webster.
My two mentors from my previous institutions, Mike Martin and Michele Simmons,
played a major role in helping me to make decisions about attending graduate school. Mike
helped me manage failure; Michele helped me manage success. Both instances were
challenging for me in their own regard, and both Mike and Michele were amazing in their
advice and support, as they always are and always will be.
Esther Milu (“Original”) helped me through the diss-writing process and the jobmarket year with a quiet wisdom and unflagging kindness that always made me feel better no
matter what the day brought. I’m also grateful for the moments when she did the
administrative “heavy-lifting” while I was writing, prepping for the defense, and campusvisiting.
Marilee Brooks Gillies is a bright, shining example of just a good person, inside and
out. If I see Mari, I’m automatically going to feel even more positive about my day. I’m
incredibly thankful for Mari’s good energy and kindness throughout my years at MSU.

vii

I’m incredibly thankful for Daisy Levy (“Martha”) and Andrea Riley Mukavetz
(“Boopie”), my friends and my Fall 2011 writing group, who taught me more about bodies
than I’d could have ever thought possible—fingers, knees, elbows, stomachs, muscles, hair,
all beautiful. Cheers to a killer writing group and to amazing friends who’ve both taught me
much about shoes and boots than I could have ever imagined over the years. I’m thankful
for the times we shared together on the Fall 2011 academic job market, and I’m even more
thankful for their friendship over the years. Thank you for the love and the laughs.
Elena Goodwin Garcia and I lived together our second year in the program together.
There aren’t many folks I’d share intimate space with, but she’s one of them. I’m always
thankful for Lena, because in her I’ve found a friend I’ll have for life. I thank Lena for
always being upbeat and helping me, whether she knew or not, remain positive in some of
the most challenging moments of this process.
Les Loncharich has been my ally, my confidante, and my friend since day-one, when
we were first officemates in Bessey 274. I couldn’t have made it through the job-market year
without our trips to Cosi for salads, while we chatted through successes, anxieties, and joys.
Les makes me laugh a lot, too, and he’s one of the few people who really understands my
sick sense of humor. From him, I’ve also learned a great deal about generosity—for he’s one
of the most giving people I’ve ever known of his time, his energy, and his support.
Madhu Narayan makes me laugh until I cry. She’s one of the smartest rhetorical
theorists our field has ever known, but that’s only one way I know her. When I think of
Mad, I remember our nights watching horrible movies with her partner, Ben Martin-Bean,
laughing hysterically at bad reality television, and spending hours Wii bowling (accompanied

viii

by playful “trash-talking” with Novak and Sarah). I’m grateful for the down-time we allowed
ourselves to have together during the immense challenges of graduate school.
Sarah Johnson made so many of my days better. She’d invite me over, cook for me,
make me laugh, and just be the amazing person she always is. She’s starting the CSLP MA
program in fall, and I’ve no doubts that she’ll continue to be an amazing teacher, scholar,
and person. Her support for the past nearly two years has made me a better person. She’s
example for all of us a person who brings good energy and love into the world.
Steven Patton—dear STP—encouraged me to get back into running during the final
stretch of this process. 10K-a-day, right? I needed those added endorphins to accompany my
workouts. Your support has meant more to me than you know. Thanks, babe, for sending
rainbows from Kauai, researching numerology, and sharing “You’re the Sun to Me.”
Dan Pratt—“Danny”—makes my day when I talk to him. He’s the most loyal person
I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. He opened his home to me during the PhD process,
where I spent many a weekends and holidays, and where he offered tireless love and support
as I worked my way through this process. I look forward to Danny’s success in his
upcoming career—what a blessing he will be to all those meets, mentors, guides, leads, and
loves.
Bre Garrett—“gayby mamma”—stood with me every step of the way. She was the
first person I met when I walked into Miami-Ohio’s summer teaching seminar in July of
2006, and we’ve been kindred spirits ever since. I’m thankful everyday for her amazing
energy, for her brilliant mind, and for her kind soul. Birds! Tab! Caroline Dadas—“CareCare”—amazes me more every day that I know her (“gurl, don’t even get me started …”).

ix

All it takes is her warmth and a few minutes on the phone of laughing, and even though
we’ve not lived in the same city in nearly four years, I know she’s right there with me. On a
daily basis, she teaches me about loyalty, love, and friendship. It’s rare to meet others in grad
school who actually stick with you through the rest of your life. She and Bre are those
friends for me—life friends. And then there were three (doctors)! I love you, Brea! I love
you, Care!
Matt Novak—my “life husband,” “my girlfriend”—has seen me through every phase
of this process. He’s seen me in my most vulnerable states—laughing ‘til I cry, crying ‘til I
can’t help but laugh. We have a bond that I will always cherish. From him, I’ve begun to
understand love, trust, and loyalty. And frankly, who else would I honk the “haaaayyy horn”
with? Who else would I go on Wednesday work dates with? Not sure what I’d have done
here in Lansing without Flashdance, “we’re the fat girls,” stress-eating, Sushi Ya dates, ERC
dates, “follow that queen!,” root beers and beer at Woody’s, Dorothy Allison, “in the event
that you …,” Little Women, and our all-time favorite moment: “Oh, really? Really?” I love you,
Matt Novak.
Matt Cox—“Matty” “This”—my partner-in-crime throughout pre-PhD life,
coursework, exams, prospecti, dissertations, job market joys/anxieties, defenses, and
graduations. Those are all the professional moments. But what we’ve actually seen each
other through is growth as two human beings. MBC, thank you for every moment—the
good, the bad, the everyday. Every trip to Video-to-Go, every “escape” from Lansing, every
YouTube video, every moment of laughter, every moment of us being us (usually being

x

ridiculously silly). Excuse me, person? I’ll end your section, Matty, with the phrase that
started us off: “And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.” Isn’t that what we had said?
My parents Rusty Webster and Belynda Smith—“D. Cats and Momma”—are my
biggest fans. They’ve never been anywhere but by my side from day-one. They’ve both
always told me I could be anything I wanted to be, as long as I put good energy and love
into the world. I’ve learned so much academic and professional stuff in ten years of postsecondary education, but the lessons I remember most come from them: Be mindful of how
others feel. Help and love others. Do what you say you’re gonna do. Love with all your heart. Be patient. Be
passionate. Be honest. Be nice. Be yourself. And while you’re doing all that, be strong. These are lessons
that both of them live by on a daily basis. Their teachings live through me, for I seek to “pay
forward” what they’ve taught me. I love you both more than I can possibly put into words,
Mom & Dad.
Adam Thompson—“Mizztaaaah!” “New York”—his sons and his sister, Bree, have
been a, if not the, light in my life since the fall of 2010, when we all first met. Adam and I
have seen each other through love, loss, strength, weakness, tears, and laughs. I love him
with all my heart and am blessed he came into my life. His support of me, these stories, my
stories, and this entire project has been tireless and unflagging. He’s a, if not the, constant in
my life, and I only hope I can give back to him—and to the world—all that he’s given me.
On a late night in October 2010, he took a chance and flew into Lansing from Sarasota to
meet me. We stayed up late that night talking about our lives, our loves, our pasts, and our
futures. I knew in those moments that he’d be in my life forever. During this process, our
walks on the Sarasota beaches, our trips to Orlando, Tampa, and St. Pete, and our night

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strolls on St. Armand’s Circle (people-watching, window-shopping, munching on pear Jelly
Bellies, and eating Kilwin’s) made my world a better place. I look forward to all that our lives
hold for us. I love you, Adam.

xii

TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCING EX-EXGAYS AND GAY, LESBIAN, AND QUEER
RHETORICS…………………………………………………………………………... 1
A Story…………………………………………………………………………………..1
The Site, Context, and Participants………………………………………………………8
An “Introduction” to the Project……………………………………………………….16
Pedagogical Snapshots…………………………………………………………………..21
CHAPTER 2
TRACING METHODOLOGIES & HEURISTICS……………………………………24
Describing Methods………………………………………………………………...........29
Interpreting My Data………………………………………………………………….....30
Tracing Theoretical, Practical, and Personal Lenses……………………………………...30
Rhetorics & Queernesses as Heuristics…………………………………………………..35
The Project & Its Design……………………………………………….………………. 40
CHAPTER 3
GLQ RHETORICAL RESPONSIBILITIES: IMPACTING AUDIENCES……………43
How Are Responsibilities Rhetorical?: Jack’s Methods of “Unraveling”………………….43
GLQ Rhetorical Responsibility & Arguments Grounded in Identities & Ideologies……...51
CHAPTER 4
GLQ RHETORICAL RESPONSIBILITIES: SHARING SEXUAL STORIES…………58
Tracing Relationships with Alex…………………………………………………………..62
How, Then, Are Sexual, Uncomfortable, and Disorienting Stories Rhetorical and Related to
Responsibilities? How is Shame Rhetorical?................................................................................. 75
Extrapolating Rhetorical Theory From These Theorists…………………………………..82
CHAPTER 5
GLQ RHETORICAL RESPONSIBILITIES: QUEERING GRAND NARRATIVES …83
What Are Grand Narratives Associated with This Movement
and Its Counter-Movements?........................................................................................................... 84
Queering with Brent, Alex, and Jack………………………………………………………88
CHAPTER 6
SO, WHAT CAN EX-EXGAYS TEACH US ABOUT GAY, LESBIAN, AND QUEER
RHETORICS……………………………………………………………………………105
Revisiting the First Pedagogical Snapshots……………………………………………….105
Extending the Pedagogical Snapshots……………………………………………………113
WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………...118
xiii

Chapter 1:
Introducing Ex-Ex-Gays
and Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Rhetorics
It’s 8:45 a.m. October 31, 2010. The main conference is about to start. My hands are
shaking a little. When I get this perfect storm of fear and anger, my jaw normally shakes. On
this particular morning, I’m thankful that my jaw isn’t shaking because it makes my teeth
chatter loudly, and it’s really noticeable. I want to be anonymous here. I didn’t bring a
laptop. I’d look too much like an academic. But the funny thing is, even if I felt really
academicky, which I don’t right now, I’d not know what I was supposed to find here. And
no idea what I’d say about it. I’m not a researcher here, even though that’s what I thought
I’d be when I told my committee I was coming to this thing. In the row behind me, two
effeminate men are laughing, carrying on, talking about the attractiveness of one of the
women staying on-site with them. Simultaneously, I hear one pinch the other and giggle.
They’re positioning this play as jovial “bro” interaction. It’s not. I can hear differently and
sense even more. I can smell the sex in the room. Two-hundred people in one conference
hall; three-fourths are men trying not to look at each other. You can cut the sexual tension in
the room with a knife.
I paid my registration fee, spoke with a representative, and received my information
and documents electronically. The process wasn’t that different from registering for CCCC.
The email receipt for them taking my money for registration looks no different than any
other “conference” I’d gone to in my career. Thank you for your payment, they say.
As I’m sitting here, I feel that my fitted pants are too loose. I didn’t eat enough. No
amount of greens, vitamins, and protein shakes could have given me the Wheaties breakfast

1

boost I’d need to manage myself this morning. The conference fee included a breakfast. I
got up and went to the banquet hall really early. I filled my plate with stuff I knew I wasn’t
going to eat. Eggs, French toast, donuts. While I was in line this morning, at least three men
approached me to chat about “my journey.” They were looking me up and down, but Jesus
was watching so they got their eyes in check when they recognized that I recognized their
looks. When approached to talk, I just said I needed time to take everything in—that I
wasn’t really up for talking about “my journey.” I wasn’t lying.
I’m seated in the middle of the room on the end of the row in this medium-sized
conference-style room. Near the exit. A horrendous cacophony of microphone screeches
begins the morning’s “hellos,” as a leader introduces himself and welcomes us, thanking us
for joining them here this weekend. With that brief introduction, we start with a praise band,
lots of singing, lots of sitting and standing. I’m one of the few people here who doesn’t have
a Bible with me, but someone kindly gives me their extra earlier. I thank them. I mean it. I’m
fighting the fact that I’m being extremely polite and I mean it. I’m not faking it. I
fundamentally hate what’s going on here. I wonder how different these people really are than
me, had my experiences been slightly different. We’re humans in all this together: I can’t
forget this, but at other moments, I can’t remember this. After we sing with lyrics about
“[coming] out of your prisons” and “I’m my dad’s favorite,” we hear testimonies. To me, the
speakers are faceless. I couldn’t remember what these people looked like if I had to. I can
barely listen, but also can’t hear enough.
The leader introduces us to the morning’s testimonial. Testifying, the guy at the front
of the room begins telling a story that’s the same old trope I’ve heard a thousand times

2

before; he had a poor relationship with his dad and didn’t excel at sports. This isn’t my first
rodeo. It’s an engagingly enraging story. And I’m taking notes. Occasionally, I’m writing
“fuck you” in the margin, just to let out a little negative energy. My handwriting sucks, and
I’m not sure if I’ll even be able to read my notes when I get home. God, I want to be home
right now. The guy is going on and on. People are clapping, crying—praising him. He’s
“come in out of the dark,” the leaders say, as they said when they introduce him, pointing to
him as an example of a “fighter.” He still struggles with his sexuality, but now he’s celibate,
he says. He still fights same-sex “urges,” but openly talks to his girlfriend about his struggles.
She understands, he says, because she’s also a “fighter.” He’s not “healed of the shell of a
person he used to be,” but he’d rather be a “struggler” than “a gay.” He asks, “Will I always
fight these attractions for men?” (yes.) and “Will I ever feel strong enough to get married?”
(you’re on your own with that one, girl.). “Freedom,” he says, “is not freedom from
homosexuality, but freedom to accept the struggle with it.” Lord, help me. The testimonies
come to an end. The “keynote speaker” begins talking. It’s not Andrea Lunsford, as far as I
can tell. He says so much homophobic, misogynistic stuff in thirty minutes time that my
head spins. If I had to put his “sermon” into one sentence, it’d be a train wreck of phrases
about “God’s plan for sexuality,” “culture has God’s plan wrong,” “we’re more than just our
sexualities,” “from Genesis, we can understand the true nature of the masculine and
feminine,” “Christian sex isn’t about pleasure,” “the new godless progressive supports
paganism,” “we should be filled up by God, not by demons.” I’m the pagan they’re talking
about. I can’t remember feeling this way in years.
More testimonies are given. By men. Other speakers come up and tell similar stories

3

to that of the keynote. Fighting the good fight (against homosexuality). No women tell
stories, nor do they speak, other than to give praise to the men telling stories. When the
stories are done, they sing. They sing for what seems like an hour. I’ve always hated singing
in church. They’re singing to make people straight, for people to be less gay, for people to
fight “urges.” I start thinking about my mom and me in church when I was kid. I smile. She
and I used to try to make each other laugh during services. This memory gets me through
singing. The praise band leads us in worship music, as does the screen that highlights the
song lyrics as we work our ways through pop-music-style hymns. I stand, but again I don’t
sing. The stories are so deeply in me right now that I’m only moving my lips and mouthing
words. By this point, I’ve not run because I feel like I’m invested now. I’m on the inside
now, and I need to keep looking.
The singing dies down. The hymns stop. We’re dismissed to our “break-out”
sessions. I don’t know what this means. This morning, I made my way to breakfast, yes, but
I did so after being lost on the conference site. I’m staying at a hotel away from the
conference site. The conference chair suggested I go ahead and stay on-site, so that I could
have an “accountability partner” in my room with me; that’s a fancy way of saying a male
roommate (another “struggler”). But I don’t because, well, I just can’t. I’m staying at a rundown motel about a half-a-mile away with Matt Cox. The room looks like the backdrop
from the film Vacancy, but it’s less scary than the conference site. And when I say “site,” I
mean it. It’s located on a few acres that go deep into the woods. Once you turn off the
highway, you drive about a mile into the woods toward a lake. Seen the movie, The Village?
The cottages in that small community are the only thing I can compare this place to. Keep in

4

mind that when I arrived here, it was 8:00 a.m. The sun was coming up. But I couldn’t see
the sky through the clearings in the trees. It was dark as night. The closer I got to the lake,
the more small cottages I saw. Near the cottages was the larger conference center. I parked,
walked around for a few minutes, but couldn’t find out exactly where I was supposed to be.
Because I’d not stayed on-site, they weren’t taking care of me in the same way. I finally
found where I was supposed to be and ate breakfast. Because I’m not on-site, I don’t yet
have access to the registration packet with information about my “break-out session”
designation.
After I ask a leader at the morning’s praise and worship, I find out that I’m not yet
linked to a break-out session, but I can join the group for “young male strugglers, aged 1830.” Seas of people are parting to their respective sites. I find out from a few men walking
near me that the groups meet in the cottages that I saw driving through the woods. These
men, no doubt, befriended me because I look lost. They’re nice, but make me incredibly
uncomfortable. I have only an idea of what goes on in the cottages. My first instinct is to
run. What I’ve seen already in the form of praise and worship is enough, I think to myself.
But I feel committed because I’ve already started talking to someone. I’ve already been
identified as someone in the cottage. I’m astounded that the men are this friendly with each
other. I then remember that they’ve been staying together in these cottages since 5:00 p.m.
the previous day. They’ve been each other’s accountability partners. I’d always heard this
word from back when I was involved in this movement, but I’m horrified about what it
actually looks like in the flesh. It looks like a tango around the act of dry-humping, or like
soft-core porn. I’m immediately an outsider, I realize, by sheer fact that I’ve not stayed on-

5

site (as if the message wasn’t clear enough this morning, when I couldn’t find my way
around or identify anyone to help me get to the right place). By this point, we are nearing the
cottage, which is a few-minutes’ walk away from the main conference center. I say hardly
anything, as the men in my age group are laughing, joking, drawing upon the previous night’s
experiences, and flirting (giving each other “noogies”).
Nearing the steps, I find the cottage to be, well, beautiful. I’m terrible at describing
physical objects, but I guess if I had to put words around it, I’d say it looks like a cottage
from a Thomas Kincaid painting set near the water. Once in the cottage, I see the kitchen
and its remnants from a night of “accountability” (I’m assuming), a bunch of half-eaten
Oreos on a plate along with a kitchen-full of similarly processed junk food and soft drinks.
After a few minutes, we gather in the main living area, arranging ourselves in a circle. I’m
nearest to the hallway leading to the front door. I might need to run.
“Welcome, guys. I want us to start today’s break-out session with stories,” says the
leader, I can’t give his name, as he calls us to order. I’m not talking but most everyone is. He
says that the morning’s testimonies, praise, and worship should inspire us to tell our own
stories, so that we can be accountable to each other. If we can confess all of our stories, our
struggles, we can be on the path back to salvation. I’m angry and horrified. I know that I
really am going to have to run at some point. A “brave” young man who couldn’t be older
than 25 tells his story. It’s about finally understanding that what his dad has said all his life
about him being a “fag” and a “sissy” is right. Since he’s gotten involved in this organization,
he’s cut his close ties to the women in his family and tried to get closer to his dad and uncles.
He’s done this by going on hunting trips, where, he says, they still mock him and call him

6

names. He hates hunting, he says, but the experience brings him closer to his “destiny as a
productive man.” I’m sure I’m going to be sick. I want to simultaneously scream at and hug
these men.
The next speaker, the leader, tells his story. He’s recently married and has a daughter.
Those two “unions” with his wife and daughter make him feel like a man. He doesn’t miss
his homosexuality, he says. At this point, I watch the other men in the room, many of whom
are watching each other then averting their eyes when “caught.” When not watching each
other, I see that they look to this leader as an example. He’s made it out. I realize I’m back
and forth between two things: what am I going to say when it’s my turn to share, and how
has a houseful of men this attractive not put a hole in the earth from fucking the night
before?
The third speaker, the jock I call him in my head, begins by telling us that we should
take up a game of tag football at the lunch break. He’s holding a Nerf football as he talks.
He’s didactic in the way he talks to the group. He says he’s already got the sports part down.
He just has to be careful where his eyes and thoughts go. I fight the urge to size him up. I’m
thinking I’m gay and I could beat you in a game of pick-up one-on-one (not a euphemism). I
like him least of everyone here. I don’t care if anyone hugs him. He’s a lifetime of people
telling me that gay men aren’t athletic, aren’t weight-lifters, aren’t coordinated, aren’t good
with their bodies.
I tune out. All the stories sound similar.
“We have time for one more story before lunch and football. Wait, no we don’t.
Travis, will you tell us your story after break?” asks the leader.

7

“Sure.” The first word I’ve uttered in nearly two hours. I dodge a bullet.
I leave the house. The other men walk back toward the conference hotel. I walk to
my car. I don’t eat lunch. I don’t play football. I text Matt and meet him at a Subway about
ten minutes from the conference site. He asks me how it went. I can’t get my head around
the words I need to say. We check out of our motel within the hour, and we head to another
city for Halloween on a whim. I need to do something to take my mind off all this. I’m
thankful that I experienced this when I did, and not earlier in life. I know I’d have been
broken had I seen this at 19. I thank God. I leave realizing that I’m not sure what this
experience will do for my dissertation, but nonetheless it confirms for me that I was
supposed to see all this. I am supposed to be doing this research.
The Context, Site, and Participants of the Project
I told the above story to offer you a narrative background of the ex-gay movement—
a site that evokes the counter-activisms of this project. The American Ex-Gay Movement is
a global but primarily western phenomenon grounded in conservative Christian
organizations that claim to assist gay and lesbian1 people with sexual conversions from gay
to straight. You’ve probably seen snippets of this phenomenon over the past two decades,
with phrases such as “pray the gay away” used in the media for sheer spectacle. This

1

Identity definitions: I define “gay” as an adjectival identifier of men or women who have
intimate, relational, and/or sexual relationships with members of the same sex; gay, though, in
this project and in culture at large, often means gay men. I define “lesbian” also as an adjectival
identifier but for women who primarily seek intimate, relational, and/or sexual relationships with
other women. Certainly, postmodern critical theories warn against “defining” any one identity;
for the purposes of this project, however, I have to define terms, so that my audiences will be
better equipped to understand my arguments.
8

movement isn’t new. Dating back to the 1970s (at least)2, conservative religious groups,
conservative ministries, and outreach programs have emerged claiming to assist individuals
with changing their sexuality, namely their homosexuality, through ritual prayer, behavior
modification, and revised gender performance. “Ex-gay” is a complicated term, referring to a
gay person who seeks sexual conversion—one who has tried or is trying to “transition” from
a gay to straight identity. This term has many nuances, though, as ex-gays also identify as
those who want to actually be straight, while others, however, simply identify this way
because they wish to not practice same-sex sexual acts. Others simply may struggle with
mediating Christian and gay identities.
Also a complicated term, “ex-ex-gays,” the participants and primary theorists of this
project, have formerly partaken in sexual conversion practices, ministries, or therapies, but
ultimately reject the ex-gay movement’s ideologies in order to reclaim gay, lesbian, or queer
identities. For a moment, consider the word “ex-ex-gay.” Interesting configuration of
prefixes, infixes, and suffixes, huh? Upon hearing this word, people often ask me if I’m
referring to “just gay people” or “people who used to be gay.” Sometimes, I am even asked,
“oh, X-X-gay – are you talking about gay porn?” Even as someone who identifies with the
resistant values that this word implies, I recognize both its confusing nature but also its
rhetorical affordances. From this project, I’ve learned that Michael Bussee, a participant in

2

The rise of modernism informs a connection to “the self” unforeseen in previous historical
moments making possible a self-referential connection to the body and its inherent malleability. I
don’t argue sexual reparation didn’t happen before the 1970s; I’m merely arguing that this
particular movement arises during this historical context.
9

this participant, an original co-founder of Exodus International3, and a current opponent of
ex-gay ministries, coined this term in the early 1990s in response to the ex-gay movement.
These participants and this group offers queer and non-queer people alike a lens for
understanding how other queer folks make meaning and disseminate knowledges. Thus,
we’re more than just a group of queers with a funny name. Yes, I use “we” here; I’m part of
this group, too, as my background ties me to both being an ex-gay and an ex-ex-gay4.
In the Gay 1990s5, western media introduced previously-coined words like “ex-gay”
and “ex-exgay” into American households, as evidenced by August 1998’s Newsweek.
Headlining an article on gay conversion therapies, the magazine cover featured the words
“ex-gay” on the cover, bold. For the cover photo, John and Anne Paulk, prominent ex-gay
activists, sat together, his arm around her waist, both conservatively attired: he, in a collared
shirt and sports jacket; she, in flowered dress with gold cross pendant around her neck.
Titled “Gay for Life? Going Straight: The Uproar Over Sexual Conversion,” the story
chronicled the Paulks’ former “separation from God,” and subsequent fall from “God’s plan
for sexuality” (Newsweek), marking a career for John as, after this feature, he became the
poster-child for the ex-gay movement: Exodus International executives hired Paulk as a
motivational speaker at ex-gay conventions. In early 2000, however, a mere two years after

3

Exodus International is a conservative Christian organization known as one of the earliest “exgay ministries”; its practices surround the implementation of assistance for individuals who seek
sexual reparation and conversion. Michael Bussee and Gary Cooper, two activists who later
spoke out against the movement’s ideologies and politics, founded the organization. Bussee is a
participant in this project.
4
Later, I tell my story.
5

A historical period noted for emergent gay visibility in western culture.
10

his didactic interview with Newsweek6, Paulk was discovered at Washington, D.C.’s oldest gay
pub. His discovery launched a series of oft-mocked events that inform how the ex-gay
movement is talked about in western media—events that also ground the values of the exex-gay countermovement, upon which this project rests. In the 2000s and 2010s, a number
of American politicians inspired further ex-gay conversations through the cases of Ted
Haggard, Larry Craig, and Mark Foley, conservative political figures many of whom publicly
denounce non-straight sexualities but who’ve later been recognized as men who’ve engaged
in same-sex practices and relationships. Upon public “outing” of these practices and
relationships, each of these men has sought conversion therapies. Most recently, the word
“ex-gay” surfaces in the stories surrounding Marcus Bachman, Michele Bachman’s husband,
a psychologist who many have spoken out against for his advocacy of such conversion
practices. As a practice, western media often mocks and derides these practices, despite
evangelical advocacy, as can be seen from films like 1999’s But I’m a Cheerleader, 2004’s Saved!,
and 2007’s Save Me, all of which satirize and dramatize ex-gay representations, respectively,
each offering skepticism of sexual conversion practices.
Queer theory tells us that gay and straight identity categories aren’t stable, as we queer
theorists and rhetoricians are aptly aware, which leads to a number of assumptions in need
of reworking, rethinking, and revising. This project, though, isn’t about undermining the
argumentative strategies of any ex-gay organization, for that’s a conversation that’s ongoing;
nor does my dissertation point a finger at this “bad” or “problematic” western phenomenon.
6

During his interview, Paulk called all homosexuals to “convert” to heterosexuality and
discussed any “unnatural” sexual identities as apart from a natural, Godly scheme of sexuality
(Newsweek).
11

As a former ex-gay myself, I know that sexual conversion practices are harmful, a
description among a list of many pejoratives. The Newsweek article and the other texts I
mention deal with ex-gay representation, though this project is not about ex-gay rhetorics
but about tracing how men from a counter-community enact gay, lesbian, and queer7
rhetorics and what these rhetorics mean for gay people’s dissemination of knowledge- and
identity-making practices.
My research is grounded in the online Facebook site, Ex-Ex-Gay—a group of men
and women who have participated in but ultimately reject ex-gay practices. The group is a
public Facebook group; however, you have to join the group and be accepted by its
administrators in order to access the wall and participate in discussions. At 248 members as
of October 1, 2011, the group offers a space where gay people who have participated in exgay ministries and therapies can share common stories, talk to each other, post relevant
media and articles to the common wall, and build community. Group members come from
various backgrounds: most are survivors of ex-gay practices; some are gay allies; others are
gay people who just flat-out oppose the institutional rhetorics that ex-gay practices support.
While there exist formal, non-profit groups that address this topic, such as Beyond ExGay, this group is not affiliated with any one organization. As I mentioned before, I’m a
member. I joined originally because I’d come across the group early in my master’s
coursework. I knew of Michael Bussee because he’s a public figure and opponent of ex-gay

7

Here, I use “queer” to describe non-normative sexualities; I’m not describing queer theories or
rhetorics (yet). Later, though, I wager that this research is a queer culturally-situated project that
does, indeed, employ the lens of disruption—a major tenet of queer theories and rhetorics (as
disciplines).
12

practices. When I was part of ex-gay ministries and therapies, I knew him as someone who’d
“lost his way.” Michael and Alex, another participant I will introduce soon, are both
administrators of the site and regularly post articles, media, and commentary about
religiously affiliated or ex-gay-connected topics. For instance, Michael recently reminded the
group that October is LGBT history month; another member mentioned a gay-affirmative
line from a recent Law & Order: SVU episode; another, a “Hate Begets Hate” article from a
gay-affirmative and -friendly blog.
This project includes stories from Ex-ex-gay group members, Michael, Alex, Jack, and
Brent8. As I’ve mentioned before, Michael is Michael Bussee, a co-founder of Exodus
International, a group known for its involvement and advocacy in sexual conversion
ministries. Michael, a retired counselor, has requested that I include his full name in this
dissertation. Growing up in Riverside, California, Michael spent years as an advocate of
Exodus, where he was a leader, speaker, and proponent of conversion practices. Since the
early 1980s, he has rejected sexual conversion ministries and therapies of Exodus and their
affiliates, and since 1991, he has openly spoken against their practices and leaders in public
forums. As recent as May 2011, he was interviewed by Lisa Ling for a special on the Oprah
Winfrey Network dealing with sexual conversion practices.
In the 1970s, Michael married and had children and after becoming involved with
Exodus, went on the road as a speaker for the organization. The same decade, Michael met
Gary Cooper, another Exodus leader and speaker. According to Michael, they fell in love

8

Alex, Jack, and Brent are pseudonyms for these participants. Michael requested to go by his
actual and full name.
13

over time, at first trying to keep the relationship under wraps, then later coming out about it
publicly. A 1979 Exodus conference saw Michael and Gary come out about their
relationship and about their true feelings about sexual conversion practices, for they used
conference time to denounce the practices of the organizations, and soon after were
banished. In the 1980s and 1990s, Michael and Gary stayed away from the media. Upon
Gary’s passing in the early 1990s, Michael began speaking out against Exodus and became a
strong opponent of such organizations and affiliates.
As an administrator of the online community, Michael posts to the group often with
articles, threads, and interesting reads he finds online. One night, he asked a number of us to
participate in a series of threads on the Dr. Drew Facebook page, where a number of
Facebook users spoke in advocacy of sexual conversion practices. With poise and peace,
Michael offered a completely different perspective to these users and encouraged us to do
the same, through a series of forum debates on the page’s wall. We offered stories as our
“side” of the debate, of course.
Alex, a person with whom I’ve grown very close since the interviews and since
joining the online group, is also a former leader from Exodus. Raised on the East Coast, he
dealt with a number of instances in his life—some of which come up in his stories—that led
him to the organization. He left for an East Coast college at age 18, leaving behind two
verbally abusive parents from whom he learned strict Christian dogma, he says. Joining a
series of fundamentalist collegiate Christian groups, Alex, never feeling attraction to women
and staying close to his fundamentalist background, began to feel as though he was in need
of changing his sexuality. His main involvement in the group is centered on keeping peace

14

and love in the world, he says. He’s close to Michael, a major reason for his involvement in
the group, but unlike Michael, he doesn’t connect with a Christian faith any longer.
Jack is in law enforcement in small town that neighbors a metropolitan city. Active in
the Facebook group less than the previous two participants, he and I have also become
friends over the years. Raised in a Church of Christ background with strict fundamentalist
parents, Jack identifies as a gay male. He is recently single after a three-year relationship.
Because of the homophobic nature of his profession, Jack is not out at work, but is out to
most of his close friends. He is part of the Facebook group under a pseudonym, for he has
experiences with sexual conversion and wants to keep up with the conversations that go in
the group without being public about his group membership.
A less active member of the Facebook community, Brent, a graduate student, grew
up in the rural Midwest. He identifies as gay and has a fundamentalist Christian background
marked by experiences with sexual conversion, which he describes in detail in his stories. An
avid reader, he’s part of the group to keep up with Michael’s posts. His first experiences with
attempted sexual conversion came, like me, during his teen years, where his well-intended
parents found a counselor for him upon his coming out. In college, he became active in a
Christian student organization, but came out twice: once to his parents (but he and they
assumed this was merely a phase) during the teen stage I mentioned above and later in his
post-college years.
All part of this group for varying reasons—some of which weren’t even shared in
interviews—each of these men exhibits an activism and each seeks to tell stories as rhetorical
offerings to audiences with whom they both identify and counter-identify at particular

15

rhetorical moments. I have to say, though, that none of these men identify in daily life as
“ex-exgay.” In introducing these men here, I hope to offer audiences background before
sharing and theorizing their stories, but also I hope to communicate that these are men I
know and with whom I share an online community and experience. My participants are what
I will participatory theorists in this project, for their stories—their participations in sharing
their lives—are the primary means by which meaning is made in this project, for all of these
men offer us—gay, straight, queer—teachings about bodies across time and space. Here, I
first outline the vision and trajectory of the project, then will trace a series of snapshots that
speak to the major conversations outlined in this project, where I also offer a series of
invitations that I hope you'll take with you as you participate and interact with this project
and its stories.
An “Introduction” to the Project
As a teenager, I struggled with my sexuality, while never quite understanding how to
be, how to fit in with other men, and why I didn’t have words with which to describe
myself—or why the words I did know scared me. As a college student, I had ex-gay, ex-exgay, straight, and queer experiences, but never knew quite how to name myself, for what
purposes, or for whom. As a master’s student, I poked around websites to study how ex-gay
folks avoid being gay, as represented through visual rhetorics. To no avail, each instance left
me confused and annoyed. My first PhD program year, I tried to understand what I called
“gay men’s rhetoric.” Three years, a queer rhetorics course, an exam sequence, and a
dissertation project later, I find that even tracing “a”—and not “the”—rhetoric of any one
group is a formidable task. That said, I believe that groups do, indeed, exhibit rhetorical

16

practices and acts that offer a frame for how cultures make meanings and identities over
time and within space.
Through this research site and through stories9 from Michael, Alex, Jack, and Brent, I
assemble a rhetorical theory reflective of responsibilities, for now is a kairotic10moment for
gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer (GLBTQ) people. This project traces how a
gay, lesbian, and queer1112 (GLQ) rhetoric reflect “GLQ rhetorical responsibilities”—a term
I adopt to theorize about how GLQ rhetorics play out through stories that make meaning
for a group of gay men and their perceived audiences. Through stories, I examine rhetorical
moments where these participatory theorists recognize audience networks, tell sexual
experiences of pain and pleasure for rhetorical purposes, and queer grand narratives. While I
sometimes rely on Greeks, Romans, and “white-guy”13 rhetoricians, this work pushes
against Greco-Roman celebrations, for I draw upon a queer rhetoric as a heuristic for
theorizing about queer people’s stories. Further, I don’t apply a rhetoric lens to this piece
(i.e. “oh, here’s an example of logos), rather I listen for and seek to understand where
9

I define “story” and “stories” broadly. For me, stories are shared moments, perspectives,
embodiments, and histories that point to how a person makes meaning about themselves and his
communities.
10
Later in this chapter, I will expand on the idea of a kairotic moment for GLBTQ folks.
11

Identity definition: I define “queer” also as adjectival identifier of a men, women, and nongender-identified people who claim sexualities and sexual identities apart from straight culture.
12
I promise I’m not trying to confuse you: I include two acronyms in this project: one,
“GLBTQ,” is intended to offer inclusive language and speak to and about a broader queer
community; the other (GLQ) is my acronym that describes a rhetoric examined in this project.
13
Certainly, figures like Aristotle weren’t “white” according to today’s narrow racial
categorizations, but these early rhetoricians are currently read through a lens of privilege and
whiteness. That is, Aristotlean rhetorical models, while certainly a rhetorical tradition of a
Greco-Roman culture, are adopted as the one-and-only rhetorical canon and are therefore
“raced” and “classed” accordingly.
17

rhetorics emerge from participants’ stories. I investigate stories because I believe that
culturally GLQ people tell them to make visible our bodies, to deal with anger, to disrupt the
heteronormative spaces around us, and to “disorient” ourselves in order to queer14 the
space around us (Ahmed 3). Essentially, stories help us in disorienting ourselves from
oppressive grand narratives that seek to write us.
What do I mean by a GLQ rhetoric of responsibility, though, broadly? For instance, a
week before the 2011 Conference on College Composition and Communication, my colleagues and I –
all GLBTQ-identified people – spent the evening planning our all-day workshop titled “Fuck
Tradition!: Making, Mapping, and Contesting Queer Relations.” When together, we revel at
our collective banter and humor, often sexual, bodily, bawdy, campy, and raunchy to the
point that one colleague said, “this kind of humor seems to be characteristic of queer folks.”
While some straight folks might find these rhetorical moments offensive, I believe these
instances point to rhetorics of visibility, responsibility, and activism. That is, speaking about
our bodies is an activism that points to a responsibility that need not be oppressed, invisible,
and carnivalized any longer. For these moments of joking about, talking about, and
performing our bodies aren’t simply “inappropriate” or “tasteless” comments, but markers
of visibility in a western culture where we must tell stories—fight for visibilities—in order to
be seen, heard, and understood. We are driven to resist and to be responsible for
representing ourselves outside western ideas of a visible, acceptable body (read: straight,
white, non-queer). On the surface, we do it to “connect” with other folks like us. From a

14

Here, I use “queer” not as a noun but as verb related to disrupting knowledge and practice.
18

deeper perspective, though, we’re “getting at” something—getting at stories, practices, lived
lives that point to a common rhetoric of responsibility and resistance.
My dissertation chair and I always joke that a major part of any gay first date is about
the coming out story. When did you do it? How old were you? What were folks’ reactions?
This in and of itself is a set of articulations and performances that informs many gay men
and lesbians’ everyday and collective existence. My point here is that telling stories of myriad
“outings,” among other rhetorical acts, reflect a rhetoric positioned in how GLQ people
make knowledge through telling stories. What makes these stories different is that often gay
men, lesbians, and queer people tell stories to combat sexual and bodily oppression and
invisibility. I’d argue these rhetorical strategies have been and continue to be a response to
modernism15, for these movements grounded in “scientific” recognitions of bodies create
narratives that trickle into western culture, whereby identities are fixed, determinate,
identifiable, and recognizable.
Postmodern16 understandings of bodies, which arise out of a response to these
determinates, however, force other voices to be heard, so I’d argue that a queer rhetoric is
always postmodern because of its blurriness and incoherence in how these traditions make

15

By modernism, I refer Jean-Francois Lyotard’s critiques of modernism in The Postmodern
Condition: A Report on Knowledge. In this text, he analyzes how Enlightenment-era “values” of
truth, reason, logic, and progress disseminate into totalizing narratives that claim to explain and
to offer capital-T truths, but reject inherent blurriness in knowledges and meanings, which are
not often understood not as plural (as I have written them here) but as singular (one knowledge;
one meaning) For Lyotard, modernism is about “grand narratives” that afford power to some but
that ultimately constraint many.
16
Postmodernism is a term I draw also from Jean-Francois Lyotard in reference to his
deconstruction of the idea of a unitary end of history and of a subject. If modernism is about
order, logic, and capital-T, then postmodern is about blurriness-es, uncertainties, and pluralities.
19

meanings for identities and cultures. I realize my audiences might question my use of a
postmodern lens when I’m using “stable” identity categories like “gay,” “lesbian,” and
“queer.” However, I use these “stable” categories so that I use the language my audience is
familiar with. Western culture rests on these “stable categories,” so I need to use these
categories in order for this argument to be heard.
These postmodern moments reflect resistances to modernist narratives. For instance,
I think back a few years to my mom overhearing a conversation between two women at her
hair salon. One of the women—the mother of a former basketball teammate—mentioned
that she’d recently heard of one of my old teammates coming out. With anguish and disdain,
this woman resorted to the comment “well, he came out, but I hear there are good ways to
deal with that kind of stuff. There’re ministries that can help those kinds of men get back on
the right track and find the right girl.” This woman’s comment points to a rhetorical
tradition of oppression—a story rearticulated into reality. Here, modernist threads align
bodies with the rise of science – the credible institution – and imply that knowledge can be
taxonomized into knowable categories. Under this rhetorical ideology, bodies can be known,
shifted, changed, manipulated, simply because there is an “end result” – a recognizable,
stable, healthy body – that science rhetorics recognize and suggest are attainable. A GLQ
rhetoric, then, resists these stories by interrupting and inserting itself within them.
A response to oppressive rhetorical traditions, GLQ rhetorics are about
responsibilities to tell stories about sex, humor, naming, fucking, pain, pleasure, anger—all
for mindful reasons—for many gay people are responsible rhetoricians who seek to inform,
to persuade, and to enact change within like and unlike audiences. But in these cases, we’re

20

not eliciting one vision of sexuality—for queer theories point to blurred stories that offer
multiple interpretations. So, when I mention “disruption,” I have more than one vision of
what this can mean. Further, we’re not just disrupting but interrupting and moving in, for an
interruption is more than simply shaking things up: it’s a halt and subsequent reassembly of
dominant discourses. When bridged with this rhetorical heuristic, participants' stories point
in many different directions. Below, I've outlined a few pedagocial snapshots that will help
you continue to interact with the stories and knowledges of this project.
Pedagogical Snapshots
Pedagogical Snapshot 1: Stories teach us that all our bodies are complicated spaces, and we have a
responsibility to talk about these complications …
Even in light of recent gay visibility, GLQ identities are not easily “understood.” The
people in this project have often inhabited many bodies at once (and the same could be said
for nearly anyone, gay, straight, queer, or otherwise). But like ex-exgays, we’re often all
juggling multiple, conflicting, messy spaces that aren’t knowable through essentialized
categories or grand narratives. One might need not identify as GLTBQ to find truth in such
a statement. The problem comes when a culture tries to “know” or “understand” us through
a single lens. Such misunderstandings have implications far from simple
misunderstandings—for these misunderstandings have material, bodily, institutional,
political, and economical ramifications. Our stories must point to the complicated nature of
our embodiments. This first snapshot is directed not just at the responsibilities of my GLQ
audiences, but at all audiences, for I invite you all to tell your stories to address issues for
which you feel responsible. I ask you to think about your audiences, as many of them as you

21

can conceptualize—the ones you love, hate, and all those in between. In this project, I’ll talk
to you about things connected to GLQ people and their bodies. But I invite you to take your
story-telling practices and conceptions of your audience networks to spaces where you see
injustices happening, whether local, global, or some hybrid of the two. Locate your passions
and speak to those passions by telling and re-telling stories. In doing so, foster your
relationships, because …
Pedagogical Snap Shot 2: … GLQ rhetorics are grounded in building relationships ...
Following a job market teaching demonstration last month, I had a silent breakthrough. The hiring committee asked that I teach a “fundamental writing lesson” to them, a
few writing faculty folks from the division, and the department chair (they were my “student
audience”). I’d put together a full discussion about Rhetoric, rhetorics, and writing for
different audiences, and they’d completed a writing activity before wrapping up a large-group
discussion. In my final re-cap, I’d included the phrase “So What?” on my Power Point
header, which was intended to do two things: (1) to show the committee a meta-argument
about why I chose to do the demonstration, namely why it was “fundamental” to my writing
pedagogy, and (2) to map a vision for how a discussion of rhetorics, Rhetoric, and writing
would impact our discussion as well as writing practices for the entire semester (an activity
like this one would come early in the semester—week-one). On my “So-What?” slide, I
offered my final thoughts, which laid out three take-aways: (1) “How we make arguments
and communicate with writing matters,” (2) “How we reflect upon the situation in which we
write matters,” and (3) “How we interact and build relationships with audiences matters.”
The activity I’d planned focused heavily on writing to and for audiences, including

22

brainstorming and analyzing about how to write for particular audiences (as well as an actual
writing activity grounded in this discussion). In my notes and from their responses, I realized
I’d said multiple times that in the context of writing, “rhetoric is about building relationships
with audiences.” The most obvious statement I can imagine struck me later that day (in the
moment, I was in complete job market mode). It’s taken me four years to wrap my head
around a rhetorical mantra as simple as this one.
I know that I learned this and offer it to you today because of my current
relationships with the ex-exgays. I can point to this pedagogical moment through the very
layout of this project. Take a look at my early description of my participants in this chapter,
for instance. The descriptions are flat. Michael, Alex, Brent, and Jack are represented
through descriptive paragraphs that mirror the language and sentiment of case studies. As
the story (the dissertation) unravels, you’ll get to know each of the participants—hear their
stories—and, perhaps, even theorize with us. This dissertation is a story. I will tell it in a
particular way to afford you, audience, insight into the embodied rhetorical practices of the
people in this project. The stories are varied—all are beautiful, but many are difficult to hear,
to read, to share, and to tell, but …
Pedagogical Snapshot 3: … we’re responsible for telling the hard stories even if and/or when they’re hard on
our bodies.
“Stories matter.” “We’re all about stories.” “All we have are stories.” We hear these
kinds of claims often in culturally-situated rhetorics scholarship. I believe all of the above.
All this said, I think until about two months ago, I’d not let myself admit that telling stories
is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do professionally. Because what I research and

23

write about is incredibly close to me, I find myself cringing often. I find myself tired even
more often. I find myself blushing, tearing up, getting sick, vomiting, and biting my nails—
much like participants in this project do—as often as I write, think, and theorize. If there’s
ever going to be marriage equality, fewer homophobic hate crimes, more acknowledgement
of trans visibility, less bullying, fewer gay teen suicides, and the fall of ex-gay institutions, we
have to tell the stories that make us uncomfortable. Telling all the stories isn’t easy, because
we have a tendency to only tell the ones that keep our bodies safe. This is hard work,
though, and even while I’m sitting here telling you to do this kind of work, I realize I don’t
often know how to do it. Most of my family, for instance, doesn’t know many of these
stories of mine. I sometimes don’t tell stories when I, for instance, hear strangers making
homophobic statements in my hometown. But over time, I know I have to. As I’ve learned
through my participant relationships, we have to talk about sex, rape, violence, blood,
doctor’s visits, HIV, semen, bruises, tearing, scars, and injuries—if we’re to be as responsible
as we can be to our audiences. This project is about theorizing with stories—the good, the
bad, and all the in-between—as you will soon see. Some of these stories, though, will make
you feel uncomfortable, but such discomfort is necessary for activism, for listening, and for
enacting change. In the final chapter, I will offer four more pedagogical snapshots that will
act as a concluding thought. Offering them to you here could potentially inhibit the
rhetorical design of this project; it’s important that you hear stories first before I offer you
these further snapshots. The further teachings first come from hearing the stories.

24

Chapter 2:
Tracing Methodologies & Heuristics
I can’t talk about methodology without talking about relationships I have with
participants, all of whom who have experiences similar to stories I will tell myself in this
project. I mentioned earlier that the project’s primary theorists are my participants. Much of
how we’ve gone about making sense of our own bodies and their relationships to our
activisms comes from getting to know each other and from sharing stories. Cherrie Moraga
and Gloria Anzaldua call this embodied rhetorical experience a “theory of flesh.” For
Moraga and Anzaldua,
A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives—our skin
color, the land or concrete we grew up on, our sexual longings—all fuse to create a
politic born out of necessity. Here, we attempt to bridge the contradictions of our
experience…[We refuse]… the easy explanation to the conditions we live in. […]
Closer to home, daily, we feel the pull and tug of having to choose between which
parts of our mothers’ heritages we want to claim and wear and which parts have
served to cloak us from the knowledge of ourselves. This is how our theory develops.
We are interested in pursuing a society that uses flesh and blood experiences to
concretize a vision that can begin to heal our “wounded knee” (23).
This excerpt gives me words for making sense of and assembling an understanding of how
the stories and bodies of this project fit together (and sometimes don’t fit). Just tonight, a
group participant from Ex-ex-gay posted that he and his long-time partner are now married
in New York under new marriage equality laws. Nearly all of the participants in this study
“liked” the post. Sure, anyone can “like” a Facebook post, but I’d argue that together we’ve
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built a way of knowing and speaking back to institutional forces that we all understand—our
bodies are connected through what we’ve all lived—and that is recognizable to those outside
the online community. It’s hard to separate “my” project methodology from the
relationships I’ve built with the folks I’ve come to know.
I don’t want this section to turn into a literature review of the things I read in my
methodologies course. Here, I’ll talk about what I did and what happened along the way
through a story of events and relationships because that’s more theory than anything I could
cite. That, and I believe what this section offers pedagogically is more rich when told than
when trying to “sound like” the methodology genre.
When I started this project, I was really only close to one of my participants. Two
years ago in 2010, when I was just learning about research and relationships, that was a good
thing for me. Distance, we often remind ourselves as researchers, is a good thing, yes? A year
later at CCCCC 2011 at my queer methodologies panel, I nearly got into a debate with a
woman who claimed no one on our panel had enough distance with our participants.
Needless to say, my position has changed over time. Distance has never been possible in this
project, especially given, as I said before, that I’m in the group.
So, this is the part where I tell my audience what I did exactly. The technical side of
things will show that I went through institutional review board approval at Michigan State
University, as I was required. I took a methodologies course (AL870) specific to my
discipline, I wrote a dissertation prospectus reviewed by my PhD guidance committee, I
spent hours with my chair thinking through, conceptualizing questions for, and talking about
humane, feminist, gay-friendly interviewing methods and methodologies. I wrote many

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drafts of interview questions, a participant recruitment message, and a consent form. These
last three things were most important to me because by the time I was writing them, I
wanted my participants to know that I cared enough about them that I’d taken the time to
think through these things. These three parts were about the continuation and fostering of
an already-established but sometimes budding trust. In each case, I brought my own voice
into each document. I had models that guided me, but ultimately I wanted each document
(especially the interview questions) to sound humane and “like me.” Thus, I used
conversational language and tone in all documents. The official phase took place when I sent
all of my materials to MSU’s IRB. By mid-Spring 2011, I was IRB-approved and able to
begin recruiting participants. Because the group was online and many potential participants
were scattered through the U.S. and overseas, the IRB approved my request to get electronic
confirmations from participants. That is, I could send a consent form and accompanying
documents to a password-protected email account, where they could then electronically
“sign” their consent form, view their documents, and send the consent form back to my
password-protected email account.
I had two “participants” before I ever started the project. Because I’d joined the
online group years earlier, most of the folks in my project knew me long before I was
working on a dissertation project. They knew me as a graduate student who’d grown up
around and lived these kinds of ex-gay experiences and who was now researching it. I never
had to out myself to participants, nor to anyone in the online group who showed interest.
Frankly, two of the four eventual participants had given me electronic confirmation that
they’d like to be a part of a project long before I actually had a project. A selection process

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happened by default. In March 2011, I asked Michael to post my call for participants to the
message board of the group with an abridged version on the group’s wall.
Michael immediately, enthusiastically, and officially agreed to participate in the
project, as did Alex, but Alex wasn’t one of the two original pre-participants I mentioned
earlier. I didn’t know Alex prior to sending out the recruitment message. But we soon started
talking online. The other person who’d asked to be part of the project actually didn’t inquire
into my recruitment call. Once Michael sent the initial call, I felt both relieved and nervous.
To be honest, I didn’t scheduled interviews with these two men right away, nervous because
they were such prominent activists. Michael was currently shooting an Oprah Winfrey
Network special with Lisa Ling to be televised that May of 2011, and Alex was just such a
beautiful soul with an activist heart. I was intimidated, worried that I only appeared an
activist via dissertation research. By late April, I had four participants and began scheduling
the interviews. In each case, I sent and received back the consent form and provided a copy
of the questions I’d be asking as well as an overview of the project.
I conducted interviews via telephone and recorded them with an application on my
Macbook called Garage Band. In each case, I called my participants using Skype’s landlinecalling function, whereby I used only audio, not video. I called each participant a few
minutes before the interview on my cell phone to ensure they were still comfortable with the
process, to answer any questions they had, and to describe again the full process of
interviewing, reading to them the full consent form clause I’d written. Given that each
participant had received and returned consent forms and read the interview questions weeks
ahead of time, none of the participants had questions or concerns at the time of the

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interviews.
Describing Methods
As noted above, the primary method I used for this project was dialogic interview.
That is, I wrote IRB-approved interview questions, but the questions were merely a guide
that led to and elicited conversations. I read three books before I started interviews, Feminist
Methods in Social Research (Reinhartz, 1992), Interviewing as Qualitative Research (Seidman, 2006),
and Qualitative Inquiry & Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches (Creswell, 2007), to
prepare me for the process. That said, I didn’t really understanding the interviewing process
until, well, now. And if given the opportunity to do it all again, I’m sure my process would
be no less messy. That said, the messiness is where I’ve found my most interesting threads.
Researchers like Adele Clarke in her book Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory After the
Postmodern Turn (2005) speak to the importance of recognizing the “embodiment and
situatedness of all knowledge producers, and assuming the simultaneous ‘truths’ of multiple
knowledges” as well as a focus, most importantly, on a postmodern turn away from
“simplifying normativities and homogeneity” in order to embrace “complexities, differences,
and heterogeneities” (19). From this text, I learned to embrace messiness, for people never
said what I thought they would, what I expected, or what I envisioned. When I first received
my transcriptions back (I had them transcribed in June 2011), I was fearful that I didn’t have
any good information, but as I kept reading and “listened for” (Monberg, 2008) what the
relationships with my participants revealed about the interviews, the interviewees, and about
the larger situation (as Clarke might call it), I was able to see the rhetorics happening.

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Interpreting My Data
Late in my dissertation-writing process, I was consulting regularly with my colleague and
friend Madhu Narayan on her dissertation. We both expressed an active avoidance of
projects that simply apply already-canonical rhetorical terms to rhetorical situations of study.
While there are moments in this dissertation that I do, indeed, do that, I’ve tried, as she and I
talked about during those writing sessions, to make sure that I’m looking at, listening for,
and recognizing rhetorical moments that arise out of the stories. Later, I will, indeed,
mention and deconstuct ethos related to bodies and rhetorics, but will do so in order to
complicate this rhetorical term. Ultimately, though, my interpretative method was listening
for tropes and threads that arose from the stories. Here, I define tropes as cultural iterations,
whether lived, performed, and/or uttered, that make meaning about a community; tropes,
when bridged with other rhetorical methods, afford folks connections to other community
bodies via these iterations. Tropes don’t function the same with every iteration, but
ultimately represent patterns that point back to the meaning-making constructs of the
community at hand. The tropes I heard most frequently and with most passion centered on
participants’ relationships to their audiences (namely their audience’s potential
rehabilitations), relationships to telling difficult stories, and relationships to queering
“knowledge” about people who’ve undergone reparative or conversion therapy.
Tracing Theoretical, Practical, and Personal Lenses
I identify three primary queer theorists who, first and foremost, impacted the way I
understand my project’s form and function. The queer theorist and rhetorician I heard in my
head when I was writing, reading, researching, and interviewing was Trixie Smith. Over the

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years, I’ve heard her say the words, “I don’t like traditional,” and I’ve listened to her. As
you’ve probably noticed, audience, I’ve tried to talk to you through this dissertation. Some of
the voice at particular moments sounds more academic, but especially when talking through
the interview data, I’ve tried to use a voice and tone that was not only easy to understand,
but a conversation with you. That was the model I used anyway during the interview
process—conversation as a form of relationship-building—so I’ve used such a voice and
tone to build a relationship with you (hence, the use of second-person pronouns here and at
other moments). A frame I’ve used, then, is writing much of this dissertation as it was a
theory or pedagogy conversation I was having with Trixie on Tuesday afternoons in her
writing center office. When I think of teachers who are influential rhetoricians, I think of
her. Because this project and its stories are both theoretical and pedagogical, I envision that
my audiences could learn best when we’re “just talking through theory and pedagogy,” like I
do when Trixie and I talk every week. So, audience, I’ll do my best just to talk with you and
invite to think and theorize with me.
When I first read Michael Warner’s The Trouble with Normal, I saw this kind of “talking
through theory” in practice. When he writes, I see a conversation. I don’t see an academic
performance (for the most part). He’s using words like “ideology” but in everyday contexts,
especially when, for instance, he talks about gay men’s preoccupation with bottom-shame—
or the ways that gay men fear and denounce perceivably “feminized” receptive gay male sex
due to internalized homophobia. When I write today, I know that he’s a person who’s
writing and style I inevitably emulate. He’s a person, like me, who straddles gay male
communities and academia, and his awareness of this positionality impacts how he writes. If

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Trixie is the person I envision myself “talking to” as I write, then Warner is the person I see
myself “writing like.”
During my MA, I read Patti Lather’s and Chris Smithies’ Troubling the Angels: Women
Living with AIDS and knew that I’d eventually structure a project around these authors’ form
and arrangement. The dialogue that their work invokes impacts how I saw my dissertation
when I first began writing. The authors use a double-sided notebook form for their work. I
knew I wanted to write a dissertation that reflected the dialogic work of their project, and
while I’ve not modeled their exact form, I’ve, instead, hoped to elicit a similar strategy when
speaking with participants. The difference in our work primarily rests in the fact that I wrote
myself into the voices and that I share many experiences with my participants. Their work
showcases stories of women living with AIDS with their researcher “voice” arranged with a
discursive split (hence, the double-sided notebook approach) on the page. In my writing, I
write, speak, and theorize with my participants on the page without any intentional split in
pagination.
If I continue to position my research vision in the discipline, I think of rhetoric &
writing scholars Malea Powell, Julie Lindquist, and Blake Scott immediately in terms of their
impact on my work. In “Listening to Ghosts: An Alternative (Non)Argument,” Powell
theorizes about the “ghosts who appear in the stories we tell each other here in the
academy” (12). For Powell,
ghosts stories are both stories of the material colonization and the webs and wisps of
narrative that are woven around, underneath, behind, inside, and against the
dominant narratives of scholarly discourse. I think a lot about what ghost stories can

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teach us, how telling them I might honor both the knowledge that isn’t honored in
universities and do so in a way that interweaves these stories with more recognizable
academic ‘theorizing’ as well (12).
Here, Powell draws attention to the embedded relationships between the spoken-written and
the unspoken-unwritten bodies (read: erased, refused, unheard). Her balance of critical
theory, personal reflection, and non-fiction writing enact the kind of rhetorical moves that
I’ve extended to my project: because I plan for my dissertation to first take this academic,
traditional form, then be revised for differing genres for non-academic audiences, I find
Powell critical in helping me disrupt and revise academic genres. I say this because my
participants and I are thinking about broader audiences for this project. Michael has already
filmed and produced online anti-Exodus videos, but he’s famous. We’re trying to get as
many “non-famous” voices out there as possible (me, my participants, and others).
For me, the “ghosts” surrounding my project are bodily, historical, and spiritual: exgay rhetoric impacts bodies not only discursively by physiologically and spiritually. I hope my
scholarship both now and when revised for non-academic audiences can reclaim and rewrite
erased bodies. The impact of modernism, science, and medicine on sexed bodies, namely
non-normative sexed bodies, continues to impact modern-day knowledge about sexualities,
identities, and acts. As Foucault mentions, at the turn of the twentieth-century, these
discourses create species and Others to accommodate the self, the identity, and a free market
that impact definitions of nationalism, capitalism, citizenship, and family. Within these
historical nuances, bodies live, have lived, and have been erased. Bodies continue to exist in
a hybrid borderland between what Judith Butler in Undoing Gender calls the “livable” and

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“unlivable” life: some lives are materially sanctioned; others, deemed unrecognizable (21).
My dissertation, I hope, recovers and recognizes bodies lost over time and bodies that fade
from existence as I write. So many bodies are lost in the discourse of things like, say, ex-gay
conferences and hunting trips with fathers and uncles.
In A Place To Stand: Politics and Persuasion in a Working-Class Bar, Julie Lindquist
examines situational meaning-making through working-class bar patrons’ rhetorical topoi. By
investigating a local site through the means of ethnographic research, Lindquist theorizes, as
an insider, the dynamics of rhetorics at work within a particular geographic site. In my work,
I find Lindquist’s study a rich site for theorizing the impact of space upon rhetorical practice.
Her ability to communicate with academic audiences about the sophisticated rhetorical
practices of a historically marginalized group—the working-class—enables a proactive space
for renegotiating how erased bodies utilize communicative decisions to make meaning and
solidifying identity. In the tradition of Patti Lather’s Troubling the Angels: Women Living with
HIV & AIDS, Lindquist’s participants’ voices are made to speak for themselves. While she
does grapple with their voices, her theorizations are collaborative spaces: rhetorically-savvy
reflexivity is embedded in her words. Never does her audience feel “reported to”; rather,
Lindquist opens space for her audiences to negotiate meaning. In my dissertation, I hope
voices speak for themselves, for I’m aware of the power and importance of reflexive
research methodologies.
In Risky Rhetoric: AIDS and the Cultural Practices of HIV Testing, Blake Scott examines a
seemingly “neutral” HIV at-home testing kits by addressing written, fragmented, and erased
bodies’ interactions with these artifacts. Highlighting the impact of rhetorical-cultural and

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discursive-material lenses, Scott sheds light on the disciplining nature of HIV-testing: its
cultural grounding, its ethics, and its fixation on non-normative and normative bodies
through linguistic, instructional, and pictoral representations. Scott’s focus on disrupting
rhetorical “neutralities”—ultimately, queering public discourses and practices—inspires me
to use my dissertation as a vehicle for the further dismantling of “knowledge”: within the
frame of my project, genders, sexualities, histories, sciences, and religions are far from
neutral discourses. In reality, these “neutralities” are discourse-central and power-eliteconstructed. As a minority rhetorician, I must communicate to both academic and nonacademic audiences the sophistication to which “normal” becomes written across public
discourses eliciting a series of “truths” that make meaning. As a gay man, like Scott, I
understand the importance of positioning myself in my research and knowing how I might
help, assist, and support gay communities, where “truths” often pervade our everyday lives;
often, our awareness of how are bodies are written for us (a DuBoisian “double
consciousness”) is critical for revising dominant narratives written for and about “us.”
My dissertation grapples with, challenges, revises, and recovers material bodies. For,
as I mentioned above, to study and theorize about rhetoric only within traditional
interpretations is to do injustice to rhetoric’s possibilities. I’ve worked with people, with
lives, with bodies, with stories—with rhetorics, cultures, and epistemologies at the center of
my investigations. This project relies on a rhetoric, a method, and a methodology that
disrupts historical, cultural, and epistemological “truths.”

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Rhetorics and Queernesses as Heuristics
Rhetoric acts as a heuristic for this project. I define rhetoric, first and foremost, as
plural—more than one. In citing this plurality, I recognize rhetoric as identity- and meaningmaking systems connected to cultural positions and communities. I see rhetoric as intensely
married to human experiences of argumentation and how these argumentations are joined to
real bodies that desire to be seen and heard in the world. In our field, rhetoric and the
rhetorical tradition are defined through a particular disciplinary lens—for the rhetorical
tradition is often defined within Greco-Roman contexts. Often, because of the way this
Greco-Roman rhetorical tradition has surfaced in our discipline’s intellectual history, we
often cite only one tradition—one disciplinary tome, one way of knowing, understanding, and
interpreting. Certainly, this tradition reflects a culture’s meaning practices, but these
particular traditions offer only a narrow view of rhetorics and rhetorical possibilities. Here, I
will draw from two contexts as heuristics: one of which is highly canonical through the
Greco-Roman concept of ethos, which offers a specific, canonical context for this project’s
rhetorical theories—for I do believe that rhetoric is tied to one’s positionality and
subsequently examined, “credible” body with the infrastructures he inhabits. As rhetors and
writers, we constantly negotiate our bodily presence and its interactions and consequences
within rhetorical contexts. The concept of ethos is often simplified to a rhetor’s bodily
reputation within an institutional or recreational frame, so as to establish a recognizable,
respectable body by interacting with bodies not his own. Conversely, I argue that garnering
this bodily recognition intersects with establishing an ethos within the rhetor’s body to impact
other bodies. That is, ethos starts in the rhetor’s body, not vice versa with an eye toward

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bodily recognition. Ethos, then, I will argue later, begins with a rhetor’s awareness of a
particular social injustice, which is followed by a subsequent move to challenge, influence,
and impact outside bodies, with the intent to garner a collective ethos, which both offers
stories and revises narratives to elicit change, as I will argue in later chapters through
analyzing the rhetorical practices of these men. That said, I’ll not often refer to rhetorical
moments that arise out of this study as ethos. As I’ve said previously, I listen for and identify
a rhetoric that emerges from this project rather than from Greco-Roman definitions with
inherent limitations grounded in a community’s bodies and practices that don’t reflect those
of the men in my project. The men in the project, myself included, can’t be easily relegated
to a particular rhetorical tradition or to discipline-specific rhetorical devices related to
Aristotelian tenets. In rhetorical moments that certainly reflect a kind of ethos, though, these
men rely the handing down of stories, the building of relationships, and the construction of
identity to communicate with audiences, to change stories, and to evoke and transmit
activisms, for these practices are similar to ethos but are related to the building of
communities, of identities, and of alternative rhetorics that disrupt dominant stories.
Secondly, I also see further possibilities for defining rhetoric beyond antiquity. In her
work, Malea Powell articulates that rhetoric is a short-hand referring to the study of
meaning-making systems within particular cultural frames—all cultures have rhetorical
systems and practices that can be studied and understood as part of a rhetorical tradition, a
tenet I apply to the online culture I study in this project. Here, though, I bridge queer theory
with rhetoric as a means for further defining my project’s connection to rhetoric and to
theorize and implement my own definition for the purposes of this project. What a queer

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rhetoric affords is not simply a disciplinary, academic language and practice, but a rhetorical
awareness that encapsulates a marginalized group’s push for cultural visibility by inciting
non-dominant knowledges and ways of being. A queer rhetoric acts as a heuristic for
activism that equips marginalized bodies with ways to articulate ways of knowing,
experiencing, and living. Bodies at the margins often do not have the language to speak
about the things we are feeling: we just have a feeling—a nagging that there is a different
way of being. A queer rhetoric, then, is a heuristic for envisioning non-dominant ways of
knowing, thinking, seeing, interpreting, and ultimately, living, while giving life and words to
these bodies. Its disruptive capacity is what allows a rhetoric to be queer and to queer.
While I don’t envision queering and queerness as only existent in the academy, I find
it necessary for this project to locate these terms at their disciplinary roots (though, it could
be argued that queerness has been enacted and performed throughout history, though not
called such). A key text in the queer theory field, Annamarie Jagose’s 1996 text Queer Theory:
An Introduction claims that “queer is designated as not only the evolutionary extension of a
more conventional lesbian and gay studies but also its bent progenitor” offering that “queer
[is] the source rather than the destination of lesbian and gay studies” (5). While this
represents an early text in the field of Queer Theory, yet no less prominent for its early work
in Queer Studies, the possibilities for queerness are not yet fully articulated, as they still are
not, nor will ever be. Jagose’s text, while rich with rhetorical and bodily possibilities, locates
queerness mostly in the realm of gay and lesbian bodies. Conversely, Nikki Sullivan’s 2003
work, A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory, marks a less stable definition through which she
seeks inclusion of other voices, practices, and disruptions apart from sexual minorities: “this

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book aims to consider critiques of normalizing ways of knowing and of being that may not
always initially be evident as sex-specific” (vi). Here, I extend Sullivan’s primary claim to a
queer rhetoric because a queer rhetoric does not solely work for queers, gays, lesbians, fags,
dykes, and the rest of us, nor does it function as a cultural critique of sex, sexualities, and
sexual identities, but is the manifestation of a heuristic, a cultural and bodily tool, for cultural
disruption.
I turn to Ruth Goldman’s “Who Is That Queer Queer? Exploring Norms Around
Sexuality, Race, and Class in Queer Theory?” to understand that “rhetoric operates to
produce a normative discourse within queer theory, which in turn serves to limit, in the
words of Gloria Anzaldua, ‘the ways in which we think about being queer’” (83). Goldman
argues that “if we truly want to create theories that will enable us to eradicate homophobia
and heterosexism, we must understand the ways in which they are linked to all [race, class,
ability] systems of oppression and undertake discourses that seek to undermine/expose that
entire system” (90). Here, Goldman queers queerness and queer theories, for if we seek to
disrupt dominant narratives, we must, in turn, recognize that queering is a process without
an end. Queerness, then, continuously shifts, evolves, and moves. Queerness does not sleep;
it does not lay stagnant, nor does it rest upon one definition, but enacts, seeks, disrupts
normative practices, ideologies, and institutions through cultural activism and through
application of queerness to queering practices.
To enact this fluid yet constant rhetorical process, we must continue to tell, share,
and listen to stories, a major tenet of this project. In The Truth About Stories, Thomas King
“[tells] the stories not to play on your sympathies but to suggest how stories can control our

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lives, for there is a part of [him] that has never been able to move past these stories, a part of
[him] that will be chained to these stories as long as [he lives]” (9). King’s passage notes a
relationship that bodies have to stories. In some cases, we tell the stories; in other cases, the
stories are told for and about us (notice my passive construction). GLBTQ people must
cautiously tell stories and vehemently listen for what stories about us do to and for us, as we
can see from accounts in western media. We, as gay folks, must pay careful attention to the
ways in which writing grounded in dominant stories aids in the creation of truths. While easy
to locate hegemony in the past, queer rhetoricians must also locate a call-to-action in the
present. As a gay male rhetorician, I will fight for the eradication of dominant narratives that
seek to call me a cock-sucker, a faggot, a queen, a butch, an abomination. That said, I want
to re-tell the story, for I am a cock-sucker, a faggot, a queen, a butch, an abomination (if I
were not a cultural abomination, I would not feel the need to speak out and my life, in my
opinion, would have a different meaning). But I want to tell my own version of my story; I
want to queer what these names can and do mean—for that is what rhetoric is for this
project and for me.
The Project & Its Design
In the early 2000s, rhetoric scholars like Malea Powell, Julie Lindquist, and Blake
Scott, scholars I have mentioned earlier in this chapter, sought to disrupt narratives of the
field by offering new definitions of writing. While the field has historically given precedence
to the rhetorical tradition grounded in Greco-Roman histories of language and culture (read:
Aristotle, Plato, and a series of canonical texts arising from a power elite), rhetoric scholars
establish space outside of the canon seeking not only to disrupt the traditional text but to

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understand relationships between rhetorics and cultures. This project offers different lenses
beyond Greco-Roman rhetorical interpretations. I seek to push the field to address how
rhetorical practices revise grand narratives about GLBTQ identities, a topic often glossed
over in Rhetoric & Composition scholarship and practice. Further, I hope this dissertation
will push the field to have conversations that are slightly, if not very, uncomfortable. These
stories are uncomfortable for me, too, which is, perhaps, a reason, if not the reason, why I
write.
Little scholarship has directly addressed either the ex-gay or the ex-exgay movement
and its rhetorical implications, approaches, affordances, and limitations. In May 2008,
Chanon Adsanatham, a PhD student at Miami University of Ohio, presented a thread of exgay research at the Rhetoric Society of America Conference in Seattle, Washington. To this date, his
rhetorical analysis of an Exodus International artifact, an instructional ex-gay CD-Rom,
represents the only scholarship that exists in our field, other than my MA thesis. Only texts
grounded in social sciences and cultural studies have covered this ground. In the tradition of
the rhetoricians I mention above, my project contributes to Rhetoric & Writing scholarship
by offering further possibilities for cultural rhetorics as a disciplinary heuristic. I hope to
offer a GLBTQ rhetoric project; few projects in our field offer discussion about GLBTQ
rhetorical investigation, while many pose theorizations about writing classrooms and
pedagogies (Alexander, 2008; Alexander, Banks, Marinara, & Blackmon, 2008; Winans, 2006;
Goncalves, 2005; Elliot, 1996; Malinowitz, 1995). This is not one of those projects.
In the following chapters, I will theorize about how these rhetorical moments play out
through these stories. In Chapter 3: GLQ Rhetorical Responsibilities: Impacting Audiences, I answer

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the question “How are responsibilities rhetorical?” then moves on to frame the intersections
between responsibilities, rhetorics, and bodies. In Chapter 4: GLQ Rhetorical Responsibilities:
Telling Sexual Stories, I examine how participants share emotionally trying stories in order to
build community with other rhetors and activists and to incite dialogue with oppositional
forces. For participants, offering these stories to specific audiences builds a rhetorical
framework for advocating against ex-gay institutions. As participants and I argue, outside
audiences can hold to conservative belief systems, but stories, especially when intimate and
difficult to hear, are nearly impossible to ignore. Here, we argue that pain and pleasure
stories may, indeed, dismantle the entire ex-gay arena—a practice reflective of other GLQ
historical moments. In Chapter 5: GLQ: Rhetorical Responsibilities: Queering Grand Narratives, I
look at how participants’ stories disrupt grand sexuality narratives not only about ex-gays &
ex-ex-gays but also LGBTQ identities. I first define what I mean by an ex-gay or ex-ex-gay
grand narrative, then unpack and queer it based on participants’ stories, arguing that
participants do this kind of queering as a form of activism. In Chapter 6: So, What Can ExEx-Gays Teach Us About Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Rhetorics, I conclude with my final
assemblance of a GLQ rhetoric and its local and global implications.

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Chapter 3:
GLQ Rhetorical Responsibilities:
Impacting Audiences
How are responsibilities rhetorical?: Jack’s Practices of “Unraveling”
To answer this question, I first look to Jack. When I talked to him about his
audiences and to whom and for what reasons he tells his stories, he said:
I would try to tell someone my stories and help them really understand what I mean.
I’ve even thought about talking to the people that I went to church with and even like
the minister to try to change his thinking about [being gay] being wrong and trying to
change his beliefs and try to convince some of these people. I believe they’re good
people; I think they’re just misinformed. I think there’s fear and I think lack of
education is a big problem. And I’ve actually thought about approaching some of
these people and saying, “you know, I understand your thinking and your beliefs, and
here I am and I’m still a good person, you know, I don’t break the law; I’m a lawabiding citizen. I attend church. I read my bible daily. And I’m gay, but, you know,
it’s not the unraveling of society.” And I think those would be the people I would
want to tell my stories to. As much as I would like to condemn them and tell them
that they need to stop preaching hate and just making people feel guilty for who they
are instead of trying to get people to move to a higher plane and become a better
person and not trying to change who they are and basically condemning them. I think
those people I would probably want to go to at some point and try to – you know, I
don’t know if you’re ever going to change that with those people.

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Here, Jack points to a material activism of approaching audiences he’s once encountered,
whether in his church or based on his experiences. Jack’s career in law enforcement, no
doubt, informs his stories and his rhetorical approaches. He makes his audiences aware of
his role as a model citizen. While I know Jack to be highly informed about rhetorics of
institutions that privilege model citizenship through problematic understandings of
“morality,” he’s also using the language of the right to make a point: he’s not the “deviant” –
the narrative “character” – in a grand narrative about gay people. In light of the 1973
American Psychological Association’s declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness
and the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas ruling, where sodomy was no longer a criminalized,
pathologized offense in Texas legislature, Jack, an astute rhetorician and civil servant
(through his career in law enforcement), doesn’t merely mention this citizenship by chance.
He’s aware that pointing back to the fact that being gay is not an illness reminds audiences
lost in archaic, homophobic discourses of a distinct reality—gay people aren’t sick and aren’t
deviant. Employing language of the right that relies on science to make meaning, Jack
“disidentifies”17 (Munoz 4) in order to offer a rhetorical strategy that affords his opposing
audiences a look into how seemingly “air-tight,” argumentative techniques can be disrupted.
Jack’s repetition of the “law-abiding citizen” isn’t without purpose, for he’s aware that in
order to revise stories, he also has to tell new ones, a task that all participants in this project
take on. Ironically, telling new stories does “unravel society” as he mentions, but not in the
manner we might anticipate. The manner in which conservative cultures are being unraveled
17

I use queer theorist Jose Munoz’s definition of disidentification here. Munoz argues that queer
people use the discourses available to them in order to speak back to oppressive forces.
Sometimes – in fact, often – those discourses are also the strategies of oppressors.
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by stories like his, indeed, reflects a disruption of dominant, homophobic discourses. Society
is “in danger” of unraveling, much to the GLQ advantage. Jack’s concept of “unraveling”
mirrors many of the meaning-making, activist strategies of the men in this project, for
“unraveling” is a rhetorical method that threads through this entire dissertation.
For the people in this project, responsibilities are never far from, if not synonymous
with, storytelling practices intended to invoke conversation and interrupt homophobia. I
define responsibilities as, first and foremost, rhetorical acts, whether spoken or unspoken.
Here, responsibilities are story-telling performances that anticipate necessary messages to
audiences in need of hearing—whether in response to implicit or explicit homophobic
discourse, or as reactions to brotherly or sisterly advocates or frighteningly dismissive
opponents. A responsibility, then, in this case is related to a rhetorician’s ethos within a
systemic network of audiences in need of hearing stories. From my data, “the audience in
need of hearing” is more often than not “an opponent” of sorts, whether on a political issue
or from each rhetorician’s lived experiences with homophobia. These rhetoricians, my
participants, are aware of arguments necessitating revision. They exhibit a keen eye toward
recognizing storytelling responsibilities that assist in reconstructing opposing rhetoricians’
stories grounded in outwardly and internalized homophobic stances. Ultimately, these
rhetoricians recognize a network that “chips away” at homophobic western institutions that
will never be entirely undermined but that can be interrupted through stories.
From this vision, a systemic network is made up of rhetoricians, narratives, and
narrative revisions. That is, rhetorical responsibilities are systemic transferences between
audiences through which people – ex-exgays – aren’t telling depressing stories, or victim

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narratives, if you will, but seeking to revise stories and their re-tellings through networks of
rhetoricians. This process isn’t simply re-telling stories or giving perspectives, but the
process of interrupting and intervening in the ways stories are told. For instance, an activist
rhetorician tells a story to an audience out of a sense of responsibility, perceiving that an
audience needs to hear a story. The rhetorician’s responsibility, then, is disorientation, or
telling stories that disorient the audience from one narrative. These rhetoricians disorient
and, perhaps, reorient their audiences toward other stories or toward their audience’s
retellings of those stories for their own audiences. In Queer Phenomenology, Sara Ahmed
investigates the “orientation” of bodies in time and space within institutions. Her primary
argument is that cultural landscapes create lines that guide us. At first, the lines might appear
to be guiding paths, but they have real consequences for how we name, understand, and
negotiate meaning about ourselves as GLBTQ people (and for all people). To deviate from
the lines is to make a bodily decision, as a deviation is not “merely” straying from a path but
engaging defiance with bodily consequences. Through stories, the activist rhetorician, then,
is aware of the highly embedded, “guiding” homophobic narrative—one that, perhaps,
offers a grand narrative about gay people. In this awareness, the rhetorician is responsible for
telling stories that disorient and revise. Here, there is metaphorical, material, and rhetorical
movement away from a dominant text.
Lynn Weber’s arguments in Understanding Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality: A Conceptual
Framework afford me a lens for theorizing about possible, realistic outcomes for these
systemic networks, for I don’t mean to imply an utopian vision of GLQ rhetorical
responsibilities’ capabilities. In her text, she highlights theoretical and practical intersections

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among race, class, gender, and sexuality and their impact on western culture and its
oppressive ideologies. I look to her final arguments for recognizing networks and audiences,
some of which and of whom may be aligned with and apart from an activist rhetorician. In
closing her discussion, she extends “a vision of social justice” that acts as a pseudo-solution
and application for her praxis-based theorizations:
a vision, a dream for a just society [...]; a deep understanding of oppression
contextually grounded in time and place […]; and action that is motivated by a vision
of justice and a deep understanding of oppression and that is taken in principled
group coalitions that understand and respect differences while pursuing common
goals (213).
When I imagine rhetorical possibilities of what GLQ rhetorics and their traditions do for
GLQ culture and for all cultures, this “coalition” is what I envision. That is, I don’t mean to
imply that the network is a vehicle for befriending and thus changing all audiences; however,
networked storytelling affords opposing audiences an awareness of oppression and affords
them a venue for revising their own stories.
Further, when I spoke with Brent, I understood that he recognizes that offering the
following story provides material and hypothetical audiences a vehicle for revision:
[…] I tell [stories], right – like there’s this story about my crazy anti-gay aunt and
uncle who – my uncle sent me the same anti-gay Christmas card two years in a row
and – no clue like why he decided that a Christmas card was the right place to put his
feelings out there. All I had done was send a Christmas card to them saying “Merry
Christmas and I hope you’re well,” and what I got back was “Merry Christmas to you

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too, I hope that the Lord helps you get your head screwed on straight soon.” To me,
this was really funny because it was at a time when I had cousins in that same family
who were going to jail, and I was just like, okay, really, are you kidding me?
I’m paying my taxes and holding down a job and have finished my college degree and
you’re gonna talk to me about getting my head screwed on straight when these
cousins were in jail and having children out of wedlock and – so I don’t know. Those
stories – but those stories are absolutely crucial because when I tell people about
some of the things I’ve endured over the years, like getting a freaking Christmas card
from somebody telling me that they hope that God won’t send me straight to Hell, I
mean, that’s a moment for a lot of people, no matter how conservative they are, no
matter how Christian they are, when they’re just like, oh, my God, you know, like you
went through that.
Here, Brent tells me the story—me, an insider. Utilizing the Christmas card discussion in
order to communicate with potentially skeptical or oppressive audiences contributes to a
hypothetical audience’s rhetorical awareness. Regardless of an audience’s religious
background, Brent realizes his audiences will understand the “element of surprise” he
experienced. Cards, normally intimate moments between thoughtful parties, aren’t spaces to
“lower-the-boom” on a family member. Brent’s story points back to a tradition not terribly
far removed from him. While he doesn’t point to a life-or-death situation, he does make
GLQ folks think about how oppressive institutions infiltrate in micro-level gestures that
reflect larger institutional forces that, like D’Emilio argues, signal back to “systemic,” macrolevel oppressions that “[expose] the complex ways in which it is tied to a host of other

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injustices” (30). Further, in this network, we have two rhetoricians: Brent and his
homophobic uncle. Brent’s uncle offers one narrative of sexuality—a homophobic one. On
the other hand, Brent once listened to the story, was impacted by it, now listens to the story
with an activist ear, as a thoughtful, purposeful rhetor. He’s not telling the story just to tell it,
just so his audiences know he went through it. On the contrary, he hopes his audiences will
listen to his words and re-think the stories they’ve heard, been told, or that reflect his
uncle’s.
Reflecting on why he tells stories and envisioning his networks, he tells me:
I’ve told these stories a lot, but I also think it depends on who I tell them to because I
think in the gay world – and even beyond the gay world, like in the progressive,
liberal gay-friendly world, in the secular world, and in the progressive, liberal gay
Christian world, these stories have a little bit of cache. There’s a little bit of respect
you can get from people when you say, “oh, I grew up like really conservative Baptist
and I actually shoplifted gay porn, and then that was found out by my parents, and
then I was sent off to counseling to deal with it,” and there’s a certain ooh-and-ah
factor from people where they’re just like, “oh, wow, you really have been through
things.” And I think in those moments, like it almost makes you like – in the eyes of
people that you know, it makes you – not a more real gay because anyone that says
they’re gay is identifying as gay, but I think it’s like the way veterans get medals, it’s
like a moment where you tell people like, “oh, I went through all of this and I still
ended up as this well-adjusted gay man as an adult.” Like, it really literally is like this
respect you get from people who are like, “wow, you went through a lot and you still

49

became like a well-adjusted gay man as an adult.”
In telling these stories to people in the “gay world,” he talks about gaining “respect,” but
also an ethos, similar to Jack’s “law-abiding citizenship,” for Brent seeks for his audiences –
gay, straight, and in-between – to understand that he’s, first and foremost, a person—a body.
Brent’s “well-adjusted gay man” and Jack’s “law-abiding citizenship” push audiences to devilify gay bodies. These stories speak to the moments where we, as GLQ people, have to say
“yes, homophobic audience X or internally-homophobic GLQ audience X, we’ve heard that
story. We’ve heard the story where gay people are sick, sad, and molesting children, but well,
fuck that story.” In this case, both Brent and Jack are speaking from respectable positions
(law enforcer and graduate student/teacher) and thus use the stories, but also their own
bodies, to speak back to homophobic narratives grounded in making the GLQ body a site of
oppression and pathology. Here, I see two narratives, though: one narrative that each of
these men disrupts is focused on the oppressive, homophobic audience. Brent, however,
also speaks back to his GLQ audiences, addressing the tendency that marginalized folks have
of living and believing the outwardly-constucted, homophobic grand narratives. He enlivens
within his GLQ-identities’ audiences and networks a firm reminder that gay people aren’t,
well, crazy and sick; they’re actually “well-adjusted.” Thus, he reminds networks nearest him
of the same stories he tells outside, homophobic audiences.
Continuing, Brent says:
I think the stories are absolutely crucial. I mean, if I don’t have the stories, then – it’s
one thing for me to say to somebody, “okay, no, I don’t wanna be straight or I don’t
wanna try to be straight, I wanna be gay.” It’s one thing to just say that, but it’s

50

another thing to tell somebody, “okay, I had years of doing this or I spent years of
my life single and alone and unhappy,” and then they have this moment where they’re
like, “oh, my God, I would never want that for myself or for my child, how could I
ask that of you?”
Further, he envisions this hypothetical audience to whom he will and has told this story and
imagines his audience’s response will, of course, be what he says: “oh, my god, you know,
like you went through that” (“Brent”). Here, a systemic network opens possibility, whereby
there’s possibility to tell new, different stories. The first rhetorician, Brent’s uncle, will,
perhaps, stand by a homophobic understanding of GLQ identity, but Brent, conversely, has
the power to imagine another network of rhetoricians for whom this story will bring new
meaning and possibility. When Brent hypothesizes about an audience here, his speaking for
this audience (“how could I ask that of you”) signals that this hypothetical utterance is
grounded in experience. We can’t necessarily know the outcome of this network, but can
look to Brent as a rhetorician who seeks to tell stories for rhetorical purposes meant to
invoke thought and narrative revision. Here, he recognizes other rhetoricians in a network—
some of whom, like his perceived audiences, he can help with narrative revision; others, like
his uncle, whose stories he likely can’t help to revise. His ethos, then, is situated around not
just his own body, but the bodies he can potentially impact in a perceived network.
GLQ Rhetorical Responsibilities & Arguments Grounded in Identities & Ideologies
When relating rhetorical responsibilities to GLQ communities, I trace this idea to
Urvashi Vaid’s conversations about grassroots politics. Through a speech aimed at the
critique of identity-based and issue-based movements, Vaid deconstructs identity politics

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through the lens of the Asian Pacific American subjecthood. She values ideology-based
politics, arguing that identity-based movements are historically not well organized by
suggesting that “because of the way we are structured – issue by issue, or identity by identity
– social justice movements cannot boast the kind of ideological or political unity that is
found on the conservative right” (249). Vaid’s work suggests that if we are to make real
change, we need to take up the rhetorical moves of our “opposition.” Conversely, I argue
for GLQ folks to join together these political techniques. To merely write off historical
tactics informed by identity seems problematic to me. We need the connection to the
identity-based movement; the identity itself is what is marginalized. I push back against the
idea that we need to do things the way the “right” does them, but employ Vaid as a means of
thinking about GLQ rhetorical responsibility as a blending of identity and ideology-based
political approaches—for especially in light of the AIDS crisis and myriad teen suicides, we
haven’t the luxury of seeing these two things as separate entities. Ultimately, GLQ folks
never have this privilege of creating distance with their identities, for the right has such a
privilege because they often inhabit normalized bodies.
In theorizing about his decisions to tell stories, Michael replies:
I suppose part of it’s cathartic. By telling the story, the emotions attached to it
become less painful. Why do I tell the story? What does telling the story do? The
main reason I tell stories is because I feel I have a responsibility to tell them because I
think that a lot of people out there hear the word ex-gay and they think it means
you’re going to change your orientation, and they get their hopes up, and they put a

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lot of time, money and spiritual energy into it and it doesn’t happen, and they feel like
failures or there’s something wrong with their faith.
Michael pauses to think about his own bodily positionality when he tells stories, mentioning
the emotional pain of his experiences. Focusing on the “main reason [he] tells stories,”
though, is his commitment to needing and having to tell them. Pointing back to D’Emilio’s
claims that the early AIDS crisis unraveled a series of “systemic” political injustices for GLQ
people, I locate a similar thread here. We’re not talking about that historic moment, but
about the handed-down traditions of GLQ folks. Similar to homophobic medical and
political communities, this ex-gay institution – Exodus, in this case – reflects an
infrastructure that does more than simply “assist” people with spiritual and sexual “healing.”
Conversely, the entire institution is built on systemic manifestations of injustices done to
GLQ bodies. A modernist understanding of the body, one that Michael alludes to and seeks
to disrupt when he says “[people] think [ex-gay] means you’re going to change your
orientation,” grounds this system (Bussee). If all bodies are knowable in clearly-defined
terms within dominant medical and political communities, then ex-gay rhetorics are systems
of oppression that rest on similar injustices as the early AIDS years. When Michael reflects
on telling stories, he speaks back to an institution, but in doing so, he doesn’t merely yell and
scream.
Unlike Vaid, Michael utilizes an identity-based approach grounded in ideology, aware,
as I am, that the two are never too far apart. That is, Michael’s responsibility to tell the story
is grounded in remembering his own stories – reflecting upon his own human experience –
but recognizing his ethos in a systemic network of audiences. Let’s face it: people are putting

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time, energy, and resources into these ex-gay movements. A twenty-first century institution
can’t be separated from its drive to produce and seek capital, nor from how it uses
knowledge-producing practices to ensure such capital. Story-telling practices, then, are not
simply about disrupting the ethos of the institution, but about utilizing networks of audiences
in order to unravel said institution through stories’ movement across time and space. This is
the “chipping away” method I’ve mentioned. While the process is slow for “unraveling”
organizations and the institutions upon which they’re grounded, change can and does
happen. For instance, this week, I read an article from U.S. News about another prominent
ex-gay leader, John Smid, former director of Love-in-Action, who now speaks out against
the movement. Along a similar thread, Love-in-Action cut funding for its residential
programs earlier this year. Garnering an ethos and seeking networks of other rhetoricians
affords Michael agency in this process.
Further, I asked Michael about lore I’d heard from over the years, for many folks
involved or disinvolved in ex-gay practices know about Michael and his former partner
Gary’s move to call Exodus International leaders to the carpet. As the story goes, Michael
and Gary, friends and Exodus business partners, fell in love after years of traveling across
the country giving ex-gay seminars. In the late 1970s, however, the two arrived at an Exodus
Conference to report on their cross-country endeavors, but after a series of events, each had
had his own revelation: they were in love and frankly, had no interest in continuing on with
the facade. When arriving at national Exodus convention, they offered their stories—their
love for one another—and spoke out against Exodus publicly instead of reporting on their
cross-country ex-gay proselytizing trip.

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When I’ve heard the story before, it exists almost as folklore. Told by ex-gay
opponents almost as a love story, which it was, of two men with undying love, the lore
offers a near-Ennis Del Mar-Jack Twist narrative. When I sat down with Michael during our
interview, I made a specific note for myself to ask Michael about this event—whether it
actually happened; if it did, to what extent. To hear Michael tell the story, I listened for and
subsequently heard a different version of the story. Of course, this moment was about love
for Michael and Gary. But when I listened more closely, I heard that this is a story Michael
operationalizes for specific rhetorical purposes:
Yeah, we announced it at a convention. It was 1979. We were asked to speak for the
United Church of Christ Annual Meeting in Minneapolis. And it was on the plane
flight there that we broke down and I told him, ‘Gary, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t
keep up this façade. You know, I’m not changing. In fact, I love you with all my
heart,’ and I thought he would reject me. And he broke down and said the same
thing. And we decided we couldn’t call ourselves ex-gay any longer. So we told the
people at the conference that we could no longer in good conscience call ourselves
ex-gay, and that we thought that what the church ought to do was unconditionally
love and accept gay people, rather than try and change them. So that was the first
time we had publically announced that – we didn’t call ourselves ex-ex-gay at that
time. We just told them we could no longer present ourselves this way. Then we went
underground. We didn’t tell anybody anything for years. It wasn’t until Gary got sick
with HIV that we made a decision that we needed to, time was limited and we had to
tell the story.

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Here, I would offer that Michael’s ethos in the story is of direct consequence to what he calls
his “good conscience.” A rhetorical responsibility arises not in his vision of what the larger
institution should value, but also in terms of the kairotic moment interspersed with Gary’s
health. That is, telling the story is not only about their love, but also about how their love
undoes homophobic institutional values inherent in Exodus. The kairos, then, isn’t only
about telling the story before Gary’s death, but because he’s aware that their identities
inform an ideological stance that will impact outside audiences both within and outside this
story. Here, Michael abridges the “love” part of the story. Instead, he identifies a vehicle for
speaking out against Exodus. This story could certainly focus on a love story; it’s a perfect
segue to talk about his former partner whom he loves. Speaking about his post“underground” years, Michael mentions Gary’s HIV status and the urgency surrounding
their narrative offering, which this is reflective of this historical moment. What I understand
about this story is that it points to a kairos grounded in an opportune moment to speak.
Further, Michael speaks to a responsibility when he told the story both in the moment and
as he tells the same story today. First and foremost, though, this is his story to tell—his
identity bridges with an ideological foundation in order to interrupt a dominant political
force.
Ex-exgays have much to teach GLQ and non-queer folks alike. Collectively, these
men offer rhetorical models for GLQ people as well as for people who face marginalization.
These models, I argue, can point GLQ people to activisms. For instance, I have a number of
friends and colleagues who say things such as, “you know, I’m really not an activist,” when
they talk about asserting visibility in dominant culture. But yet, I know them, and they tell

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me stories that counter statements like these. A gay male colleague of mine, for instance,
recently corrected a bank teller gently for using a masculine pronoun to speak back to the
“are-you-married-and-what’s-her-name?” question. “Well, his name is Mike,” my colleague
said, then launched into a brief story about his partner and him. Gentle, subtle, yet
rhetorically effective are these kinds of moves. These small articulations are stories that chip
away at a dominant, hetero-centric culture. And yet these moments are overt activisms.
Similarly, the primary theorists in this project, ex-exgays Michael, Alex, Brent, and Jack,
aren’t activists from self-proclamation (they don’t self-proclaim), for holding signs at Prop 8
rallies (they didn’t hold signs), or because they “occupy Wall Street” (they’re not occupying
Wall Street), but from how they tell stories that speak back to oppression. Their stories tell
us that every articulation – every story – counts.

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Chapter 4:
GLQ Rhetorical Responsibilities:
Sharing Sexual Stories
I have a love-hate relationship with gyms. Frankly, yes, these days, I’m one of those
gay guys who couldn’t live anywhere unless I had my choice of three to five workout
facilities near my home and work. When I was 13, I started working out to make the junior
high basketball team. At that early age, I was also required by coaches to work out in the
local weight room. I remember feeling discomfort with these spaces even then—the grunts,
the moans, the separation of the sexes, the implicit and explicit homophobia, all things that
still bother and annoy me to this day. For years, I actually did all my workouts in my own
room, basement, or any other personal, non-public space so as to avoid gyms. In the past
few years, I’ve returned to these facilities.
I worked out today. As big of a part gyms are to my livelihood, I don’t like being in
these “manly” spaces, except to work up a sweat and get my sets in. Frankly, I roll my eyes a
lot, mostly at other men, presumably straight, but curb this inclination to roll them too
much, instead wearing my Human Rights Campaign shirt and donning a collection of kindapink pastel and bright-purple muscle shirts. Unfortunately, because of my build and due to
the influx of metrosexual men’s styles, my clothing decisions to set myself apart are often
lost on most.
Most importantly, though, I blare non-traditional, queer18 music in my headset at
decibel-levels audible to audiences near me (think: Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Carrie

18

When I say “queer” here, I mean queer to the space’s norms and for its audience’s
expectations.
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Underwood, and the Glee cast). The thing is, I like lots of music, but with this rhetorical
move, I have a few activist outcomes in mind. First, I like talking to men, of course, but I
despise “gym talk”—talk that’s often sprinkled, if not doused, with brinkmanship, misogyny,
and homophobia. Hence, why I bring in Madonna and not my classic rock or Texas country
when I compile my gym play-lists. Frankly, as an activist who believes in both small-scale
and large-scale activism, I think these moments are activisms. Why? The body I inhabit is
relatively muscular, I’m broad, I’m tall, and I look male (*makes a growl sound*). When I
open my mouth to speak, I have a soft voice, but when people see me, they assume I
“belong” in the gym. It’s this belonging I try to speak back to, for despite my best efforts,
I’m still often lumped into the masculine, homophobic discourses before I can intercept.
While I don’t think I pass19 in demeanor and attitude, I think my body and stature
does some passing for me. For instance, last week, I was talking to a guy near me while I was
doing dead-lifts (I know, I know … this chapter makes me seem anti-social, so that might
come as a shock). I work out at a facility equipped with mounted televisions near the freeweights section. I zone out often at the gym, meaning I stare into space between sets, so I
was staring at one of the overhead TVs without really watching. There was a game on—two
southern teams. The game’s footage flashed to a bossomed, brunette cheerleader bouncing.
The guy near me, also paused between his set, said in my general direction, “I’d hit that.
Great tits. Whadduyah think?” See, you have to understand: I’m tired. Tired of being lumped
19

Here, I use “pass” as a verb that refers to one’s “ability” to appear, look, or act “straight” or
“non-gay” to vast audience, both gay, straight, and in-between. Passing isn’t always about
sexuality, as evidenced in novels like Nella Larsen’s Passing, which chronicles a light-skinned
black woman’s “ability” to pass for a different race and ultimately class position. I find the
concept of GLBTQ passing highly problematic, given GLBTQ cultures’ preoccupations with this
act and what passing presumably “affords” GLBTQ folks.
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into these elbow-nudging conversations. I’m tired of the shame-inducing subtexts that box
me into a recognizable body. When I hear questions like this, I don’t mean harm; I just need
a vehicle for my exhaustion. When I hear questions like this, I channel this question back to
hundreds of audiences who’ve shamed me over the years. So, dude, to answer your narrow
question: No, I don’t like women. No, her “tits” aren’t beautiful to me—well, not in that way
anyway (am I an advocate of women’s bodies? Of course). No, I don’t have a girlfriend. And
in case you’re gonna ask: no, I’m not married; such an occurrence isn’t currently legal in 42
states. And no, I’m not then asexual just because you’re not sure what to do with me or with
my response and my body.
In the moment, though, my gay/gay-friendly God (yes, for me, such a being exists,
and I’d bet my pecs that he’s gay) was on my side. The screen flashed from the buxom
cheerleader to a shirtless fan in the crowd, painted a color I can’t remember. He was cute,
frankly. To the guy talking to me, I said: “nah, he’s a little more my speed. I’d hit that.” That
was the polite version. The sarcastic dialogue unraveling in my head was “well, she’s not really
my speed, but I’d definitely not kick him out of bed. Hmmm, yeah, since you’re talking about tits, let’s open
up the conversation to cocks. I bet that painted guy has a beautiful cock. You know, the kind that’re set
against the backdrop of a slightly-oversized set of gorgeous balls? You know, I’m pretty versatile, too, so I’d
love to fuck him, then let him fuck me. Yeah, I’d totally hit that. Can I get a high-five?” I’m not a “canI-get-a-high-five?” nor an “I’d-hit-that” kind of guy. But I just have these moments where I
want to ask, “what gives you, straight guy, the right to ask me anything about anything?
Check your privilege.” Needless to say, the guy awkwardly uttered something back to me
(“huh, oh …”) and has never spoken to me again, even though I see him at least once a

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week at the gym. Fine, I’m the gym fag. At least I got to tell my story and say my piece,
right?
The thing is, the older I get the less I care about who I offend in these moments.
Certainly this statement might surprise audiences who know me as a polite, soft-spoken
Texan. Let me clarify, though: I mean that I’m less cautious about sharing my inner-thoughts
to audiences who I think need to hear the stories. Frankly, I’m not afraid anymore. I spent
too much of my life being polite in these moments. I’m okay with making people
uncomfortable, because I’ve spent a lifetime being made to feel uncomfortable. I hope my
story communicates that. For I’ve not told it today “just because” or because I like to say a
few filthy things. I tell you this story, audience, because I hope I can evoke thought in you.
Like the participants in this project, I want my body and its stories, both verbal and nonverbal, to tell other stories that force people to re-think grand narratives about the bodies
they assumed they’re surrounded by. In this story, I’ve been talking about presumed passing,
but this storytelling has implications far beyond simply these moments. For instance,
participants in this chapter share sexual stories and use words and phrases that make their
audiences potentially uncomfortable—and are doing so for a reason, as responsible
rhetoricians. As we’ve talked about in this dissertation, Ex-ex-gay men employ stories for
audience networks who are perceivably in need of hearing stories and who these rhetoricians
understand to have the ability to change the further articulations of stories. In this chapter,
we’ll focus on the kinds of stories these men tell—sexual, painful, uncomfortable,
disorienting—for both internal and external audiences (external, like mine from the gym;
internal, like within the online community) with purposeful outcomes in mind.

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Tracing Relationships with Alex
The Rhetoric & Composition job market is a place that’s dually impressed and
uncomfortable with this project as a rhetoric story, namely how “my story” fits into it. In
telephone interviews, I notice that audiences don’t always want to know why I’m invested in
this project, and further, I don’t always want to tell them. I notice that the shameful stories
or the uncomfortable pieces I unravel materialize in small bits to audiences I’m
uncomfortable with and in droves with audiences with whom I’m trying to really
communicate things about myself. I’m not trying to state the obvious, but to offer a rhetoric
for how I think about audiences, and how I see participants negotiate with audiences. That
said, in this section, I seek to trace what it means rhetorically to withhold a story at one
moment for a particular audience, but to disclose to another audience at another moment. In
the previous chapter, I talked about the outer audiences always needing to hear stories. In
this case, though, I’d like to recontextualize such a statement. Sometimes, activists have to
tell other activists things so that they can first hear each other. In listening to and for these
stories, audiences are different here for these rhetoricians. Sexual, shameful stories are told
for rhetorical reasons, often in order to connect with folks from the same community first in
order to face, speak back to, and educate outside audiences. Some stories aren’t for the outer
network, but for the inner networks. I’ve said before that much of my dissertation interviews
were about connecting with folks. I have strong opinions about how audiences function for
rhetorical purposes, for the inner circle of rhetoricians must often share common stories in
order to do the activist work necessary to reach outer networks.

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First, I look to Alex, with whom I have a close relationship and with whom I shared
many of my own stories before, during, and after speaking with him formally.
What you need to know about me in this context is that I came from an extremely
abusive home. I mean, I lived the model 1950s life on the outside, and on the inside it
was something totally different, which is why I could relate so intimately with what
you were talking about with being presented with an idealized family structure and
how things supposedly went wrong, and this is how it went wrong, when it really
bore no reality in your life.
I’d told him about my parents’ divorce in the late-1990s and how it was both hard but also
not, simultaneously. My family life was nothing like his, though he entrusted me with a series
of stories that unpacked a larger narrative of how he made it to the doorstep of the ex-gay
institution. His journey wasn’t too far removed from mine. We share many threads.
And you know, I know what that 50s thing was all about, and what people on the
outside saw had nothing to do with what was taking place on the inside of my house.
I mean, I still have friends today that think my parents were the most wonderful
people that ever walked the face of the earth, and I just sit there and – frankly, I don’t
miss either one of them, and I was very happy the day that I shoveled both of them
into the ground. That’s the bottom line. Long story short I was gang raped as a child,
and my parents did nothing to protect me. They didn’t even know it happened,
didn’t even care. Didn’t even raise an eyebrow at any changed behavior on my part in
the wake. I wasn’t even on their radar. I was not even fucking on their radar. No
no, I have not shared that the way I shared it with you. I shared it with you on a

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much more detailed and intimate way, because I wanted to be honest with you, I
wanted to let you know what I was trying to explain to you, what I was trying to tell
you, so that you would understand. I would do that with certain other people – close
friends and things like that, should the circumstance warrant.
Alex tells me that he’s not shared this story with many audiences. I understand. I don’t talk
about many of my stories, either. When I talked to my advisors about my fears of exposing
too much of myself on the job market, I realize that these are the kinds of things that scare
me. I can talk about being gay; I’ve been doing that for years. I can tell folks that at one
point in my life, I wanted to be straight and that I’ve spent parts of my life feeling ultimately
uncomfortable in my own body. But what I have trouble talking about is violence. It actually
took an outsider reader of this project to ask me if the story that closes this dissertation is
about sexual violence to get me to finally write a more explicit narrative thread in that
section. So, I get it. I hear Alex. He hears me. We’re building something here, and I know it’s
because we have to say things to each other so that we can say other things—important
things—to other people who don’t know us. We have to share in order to do more sharing.
He later says:
My mother was probably wacko. I mean, I look back on her behavior now and I
think to myself, “This is not a normal individual. She had mental problems.” In that
time, you didn’t even acknowledge them let alone talk about them […] I raised myself
is the bottom line. In all probabilities, my mother had multiple personality disorder.
After I suffered my attack, my rape, I developed multiple personality disorder. For
years I struggled with it. I struggled with post-traumatic stress for years and years. I

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couldn’t even stand in line at an ATM and have somebody stand behind me too close
without freaking out, without having to leave the fucking line. And sometimes leave
the bank shaking because somebody was behind me. But I didn’t remember what any
of that was. I had no idea, because by that time I was multiple, and I was switching
back and forth. There were separate identities in my head that I created as a survival
mechanism that I would switch into depending on whatever presented itself. If there
was a threat, then I was back into that, “Oh, my God, I’m being raped again, I’ve got
to get out of here.” And then as soon as I exited wherever it was, I flipped back – I
was no longer in the stress situation – I’d flip back into another part of my mind that
was separated, and again, you do it as a child. It’s a mental defense mechanism. It is
curable; I am cured from it now. It took me years of therapy on my own to do it, and
I have integrated, but I have not retrieved a lot of memories yet. I mean, there’s no
reason to.
Alex shares a story with me. I feel the story with him. He knows my story. My experiences
are completely different, yet similar violences have been marked on our bodies. To this day,
my family doesn’t know much about my experiences with violence. So there’s not been a
moment where I’ve felt like my family was covering up or ignoring my experiences, like his
family has. I’ve not had the exact same experiences as him, but the heavy burden of
remembering still plagues me. I revel in moments where I can tell people I trust. I can’t tell
these stories to everyone, nor can Alex, as we both disclose. We tell each other stories.
Terrible stories. We tell these to remind each other that we’re strong. We’re still here. People
might think we’re “weird” or “broken” (or insert victim adjective), but we talk about this

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stuff because if we can get these stories in the open, we get strength from these disclosures.
From there, we have the strength to speak back to homophobic uncles and to misogynistic
gym-goers. Together, as rhetoricians, Alex and I build a method for activism.
The next question is, perhaps, “how?” How do we build a method for activism, and
when speaking to each other first in a safer space, what does such story-sharing accomplish? I
return to Brent here.
Sometimes, I have to say something to someone who “gets it” first. ‘Cause so many
people don’t get it. I’ve experienced a lot of violence on my body in my lifetime. I
can’t always talk about this stuff to outside people without knowing what I want to
say first. I fumble over my words and my story if I don’t have a safe place to tell it
first. So running it by people who get it gives me strength. I can just get it out in the
open, where I’m not judged. Telling other people about the crazy experiences from
my youth gets me ready to talk through stuff when people just don’t understand
where I’m coming from. For instance, I remember back when I was telling a friend of
mine about when my parents set me up with the counselor. How degrading that
experience was for me – I mean, back then, I had to talk about masturbation
practices with a complete stranger. I didn’t realize it at the time but telling my college
friend who also a gay helped me when I encountered a conversation with my own
dad. I remember, we were riding in the car. I was an adult at this time, and I was
talking about some of that crazy stuff with my dad. Basically asking him why he and
my mom thought that was a good idea at the time. There was a pause. He said he
didn’t remember any of that. As if it had just never happened. I completely called him

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out about it. Telling him about the experiences – the having to talk about
masturbation with a complete stranger – the way it’s made me feel about my own
body over time. He eventually finally admitted to it and apologized to me. That was a
hard moment because the person who played a role in that stuff for me is actively
denying that it happened. I knew I had to be really frank about how I felt and what I
experienced in order to make him see where I was coming from. We couldn’t just
“not talk about it” in this very Midwestern “sweep it under the rug” kind of way. I
knew then that telling the story before to someone who understood [my gay college
friend] had given me the strength to stand up to my dad in that moment. Otherwise,
I’d have been too tired. Too hurt.
Brent hits home with me. My own family has sometimes actively “forgotten” things from
the past. I can think back to recent moments where they’ve said things like “wait, what are
you talking about? I don’t remember the ex-gay stuff.” I realize it’s painful to recount events
like those. If I were a parent, I’d feel the same way, but “forgetting” is unacceptable. The act
of “reminding” is an activism here—a way of saying “no, there’ll be no forgetting here.” It’s
often uncomfortable. It’s often unpleasant. I don’t make these rhetorical moves because I
want people to feel guilt, but what I do as a teacher and researcher is wrapped up in these
experiences. These experiences aren’t something I’m willing to forget or willing to let others
forget. Forgetting isn’t possible. I’d not have the strength for this act of reminding, perhaps,
without my communities—without, like Brent said, “running it by people who get it.” Gloria
Anzaldua calls this practice “spewing forth” (51) by which we don’t always know what to say
or how to say until we, well, say it. This telling offers a cleansing—getting our bodies healthy

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to be activists—to keep speaking back and out. Our stories to “people who get it” become a
rough draft—a self-reflective pedagogical space, where we learn what it is we want to say
and how to say.
Next, Alex says the following:
I remember I had one encounter with a person – I really had a connection. I’ve never
been one to go out and have losoe sexual contact. I don’t like that. Probably because
of my history of sexual violence, there needs to be a level of trust there. I was
connected to this one person, and I did have a sexual experience with him. And I
have to tell you that in no time in my previous existence on the face of the earth, in
no incarnation, as a child, in the context of the family group and Christianity and the
context of the Christian group and the Christian community in the context of the exgay community which was within a group of the Christian community – it took me
until post all of that to come to a point where I experience such a level of intimacy
and communication – non-verbal communication with a person that I had never
thought possible. It was finally – it was like I was finally at a point where I could
communicate on all levels, something that I had worked so hard for all of my life to
develop myself, to demolish all the internal walls that prevented me from accessing
everything that I was, all of what I was able to do, how I was able to communicate.
All I can say is that it was so right. It was so right.
I know when I hear his stories that we have to tell each other these things—things we’ve
probably only told a handful of people in our lives. We tell each other for strength because

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we’re stronger we’re likely more equipped to tell stories to outer audiences when the time
comes, if we can get these painful stories out to each other.
Some of our moments together are tough; others are funny, light-hearted. Alex makes
me laugh by using obscenities, which, given our relationship, are common between us, when
we’re being serious and when we’re joking. Alex mentions how supposedly shameful
sexualities impact the ex-gay movement:
So [the word] Exgay, I never subscribed to it, and I don’t like it because I think it
hinges into negativity to begin with. I think the whole structure is leaning against a
gay person out of just the way it was created, and to then label somebody ex-gay is
like, it’s the same damned thing. It’s the same structure that was leaning against you,
still leaning against you, and you’re forever ex-gay and if you’re in the damned group
Travis, from that point on, every single person in the church looks at you and
wonders if you’re still screwing somebody of the same sex. Are you still fucking him
up the ass? Don’t tell me they don’t think that, because they do. That’s the label, and
that’s what it brings to their mind. Do you sit there when you meet a heterosexual for
the first time, “Hi, my name is Robert. I am so glad to meet you.” The first thing that
comes through your mind, do you think, “Oh, Robert, did you fuck your girlfriend
last night? Was it good? Did you fuck her up the cunt or did you fuck her up the
ass?” Do you see what I’m saying? But if you introduce somebody to a gay person,
the first person they think of is, “I wonder if they smoked pole last night.” Why is it
different? That’s what I’m talking about, the structure.

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I laugh when I read this transcript, and I laughed when Alex made this statement. But I’ve
come to know Alex. We talk often online, send each other book and movie suggestions
(we’re both buffs), and have shared much with each other beyond the constraints of the
project’s interviews. Alex is one of the most polite and kind people I’ve ever encountered.
Firm in his beliefs, he’s still always polite, a listener, a truly good person. So, when he drops
this language, I know it’s for a rhetorical effect; it’s so that he won’t use this language later
with other outside audiences. He releases the energy of his frustrations with ex-gay rhetoric
in humorous ways in order to not only vent with an insider, but to protect his ethos in later
rhetorical situations. I want to say, though, that I feel that the word ethos is lacking here
because such a moment of protecting one’s credibility is beyond a simple Aristotelian lens.
I’d argue, as I have in this dissertation, that this face-saving is beyond the Greco-Roman
tradition grounded in a rhetorician’s privilege and power. For these rhetorical moments and
rhetors are not coming from a position of power or privilege; each has much to “save”
beyond “saving-face,” for so much is at stake for these gay men in terms of speaking back
against these kinds of oppressive institutions. Here, his politeness is something he uses to
invoke change, because from what I’ve seen, even his fiercest opponents recognize his
kindness and his patience. He listens, he hears. I know that he curses here, using the words
“cunt” and “ass” with me, so that he’s able to keep these words from audiences for whom
his ethos would be at stake, again I use ethos for the sake of clarity, but as I’ve mentioned in
earlier chapters, this sense of self in the rhetorical moment is much more complicated.
Outside audiences might identify these words as oppressive or misogynistic, and I believe in
many contexts they are. That said, he’s drawing attention to how seemingly shameful sex and

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sexuality are to this movement, by talking about what everyone’s actually thinking. As a
human race, we’re sexual beings. Sex and sexuality pervade our everyday thoughts, so to
pretend that these hypothetical audiences members (those who see ex-gay “reparations”)
aren’t wondering about sex and sexuality. Further, he pins sex and sexuality to cultural
“knowledge” about gay identity, commenting on how gay identity is perceived to be about
sex.
While Alex mentions to me particular sexual stories, so does Brent, but not before he
talks to me about being a “non-identity” and a “non-sexed person.” He’s establishing a
relationship with me; he tells me this series of stories because he knows I’ll understand.
Queer people are often without lives, without sexualities, throughout their lives. In some
familial circles, I’m still the only person at the Thanksgiving table without a story. I have
many to tell, but I, like many queer people, have to find entry points in order to share in lessthan-safe environments. So, when Brent shares these early stories with me, I know that he’s
trying to get me to think back to my own stories like these.
Brent says:
So since my identity, my non-identity as either a non-sexed person, right, as a
teenager who hadn’t had sex with anyone yet, or sort of like straight until proven gay,
right – as long as everybody kind of assumed I was straight, then I guess I kind of –
in my mind, I kind of still was straight. Like I hadn’t broken the seal yet, right,
whatever, like I hadn’t gone full on and had a gay sexual encounter or gone to a gay
pride meeting, so therefore I was still okay. So in my mind, I wasn’t gay yet, even
though I knew that I was. So I remember that when I started to talk to my parents –

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well, when they found out, when I had basically had gay porn and they found that,
and basically I began to tell them that I was bisexual. That was a way that I identified
first, and even when I first came out, I didn’t even know what that meant. I just
knew that that was less harsh for other people to hear and all I cared about was
telling people what hurt them the least. So that was kind of like a half admission, like
oh, I’m bisexual, it could be worse, I could just be gay.
Brent is fairly open, so, different from Alex’s stories, I imagine that the rhetorical
circumstances of this story are different. I get the impression he’s told this story before (I
later find out that he has and does). He’s similar to me and to Alex in that Brent’s telling
stories to an insider (me) in order to gain strength to face more oppressive audiences. But
given the candidness of this story, I understand that this one isn’t the kind of story that he
saves only for insiders. While particular audiences may be more or less comfortable, his
discussion of porn and masturbation contribute to how he understands his life trajectory. He
isn’t afraid to talk about sex, similar to many of the queer theorists we’ve seen in this project.
Sex is part of the story. In reflecting on his experiences with ex-gay therapy, Brent says:
Yeah, like my counselor for all those years was a very nice man, a middle-aged man,
and he was a licensed therapist. I always felt like he felt half-hearted at moments, like
him just being like “well, you should really think about women when you masturbate
and then like trying to help me think through places where I could find images of
women,” like “oh, well, you could find them in catalogs or you could look for
attractive women during your day and then go home at night and try to think about
them and masturbate to them.”

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Brent and I share experiences with having Christian counselors, specifically counselors who
felt might have had more complex thoughts about our “disdainful” sexualities. Brent tells
this sexual story to outside audiences he later tells me because he hopes to shed light on the
fact that his counselor was, indeed, skeptical. Brent hopes this story will make outsiders
question the very institution. From talking to Brent, I realize that he’s pedagogically-focused
in his story-telling. That is, he seeks to teach his audiences, not with harsh words or hate, but
with stories that might, perhaps, make them uncomfortable but that ultimately cause them to
reevaluate and revise the stories they tell others in their networks. He goes on:
Some of those practices, though, scarred me sexually for years after that because – for
me, he was asking me to identify sexual practices or sex with heteronormative, like
heavily, heavily straight world ideas of what’s proper and good and right and worth –
like there was just nothing sexy about that to me. The idea that I would fantasize
about like a pretty, beautiful, sweet-smelling, clean, freshly-scrubbed woman, was not
sexy. Like the idea to me of what was sexy was like the construction worker across
the street or like something really forbidden, right. And I think that these ideas just
reinforced that for me even more, such that, as an adult, I actually had difficulty in
some of my relationships with other men actually seeing sex as like a connected
emotional thing. Like I always saw sex as a very, very, dirty – but that was what was
really hot about it, like it was this really forbidden thing, and I think all those early
moments just reinforced that. And his ideas of either not masturbating at all or
thinking about women when I did masturbate just made the moment of orgasm like
that much more satisfying because I would think about a woman for five minutes and

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then I would just kind of give myself over to these real fantasies, right.
No offense ladies, but tell me to masturbate to women and I go soft most of the time. I have
better luck masturbating on a dose of Lexapro. That’s no disrespect to women; I’m talking
about my inner workings, as I know you have your own favored sex acts and sexualities.
When Brent speaks to me here, I know he’s speaking to me as an insider, but given his
openness with talking about sexuality, I know that he’s not afraid to share these stories with
outside audiences. I’ve heard him do so many times. I find Brent to be the paragon of
sexual- and sexuality-based fearlessness that Michael Warner and other queer theorists talk
about. Brent is the best example of a queer theorist who disrupts this cultural fear of sex that
I’ve met, read, or interacted with. He says:
Like at the moment that I gave myself over to these real fantasies, it was just like
incredibly hot, like in the way that you just know that you’re gonna run to the freezer
and eat that pint of ice cream and you’re gonna regret it later, but like every bite you
have is gonna be so amazing because you’re not supposed to be having it, you know.
In college, I just broke down finally and called a number on a bathroom wall and
went to some guy’s apartment and got a blow job from some ugly middle-aged guy
who limped around the room, who was like a maintenance worker at the university.
And here it was, like the most dirty, filthy sexual experience I could have ever
dreamed of and it felt absolutely incredible. And here’s the sad part – but it’s only sad
because like we’re told it’s sad, but like here’s this binary in action again, right, that I
would finally break down and have a sexual experience as an adult with another adult,
and it would just be so awful and so far from what I thought I wanted, but yet that I

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would still find it completely hot or enjoyable, and I think that I went back to see that
guy like four or five more times. Never did he do anything to me. Never did I kiss
him or touch him in any way. He would always put porn on the TV and then he
would give me a blowjob, and that was the extent of it. To me, it’s like that’s all I
could handle at that moment. I couldn’t even have thought about doing anything else
with him or anyone.
Brent spills his thoughts. He’s unapologetic. As a listener, I’m glad he is. Brent knows my
stories. He knows who I am as a person, as a theorist, as a pro-sex feminist. He knows what
he tells me not only connects with my stories, but also doesn’t phase me. Though, what I
know about Brent pushes me to think that he believes folks need to hear things that make
them uncomfortable. So, when his audience isn’t me, the story might be slightly different,
but he doesn’t cut corners. For that, I’m thankful.
How are, then, sexual, uncomfortable, and disorienting stories rhetorical and related to responsibility? How is
shame rhetorical?
Lately, I find myself saying uncomfortable things and telling disorienting stories, as
my participants have done in this previous section of this project. While these rhetorical
moments and these audiences help me to find agency, I find that I hold stories and words in
at some points, while spilling them at other moments. Here, I identify these narrative
offerings, of mine and of my participants, as rhetorical events that invoke audiences and seek
revisionary practices from audiences and look to analyze, how, and why particular kinds of
stories are told. Kenneth Plummer investigates sexual story-telling practices in western
culture, offering insight into the how and the why of these narrative practices. In his text

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Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change, and Social Worlds, Plummer’s arguments focus not on
textual analyses of stories, but on “the sociology of stories” (17). For him, the cultural act of
narrating, offering, confessing, and telling are grounded in symbolic-interactionism and
“social actions embedded in social worlds” (17). In this text, he points to what stories do for
tellers, audiences, and cultures by investigating rape-survival, coming-out, and confessional
stories with focus not on the textual, but the bodily. That is, what the telling and listening
bodies do with, for, within, and throughout the narratives. Plummer’s ultimate goal, then, is
to locate the ontological, sociological foundations of the acts of story-telling, namely sexual
narratives. I point to Plummer here because he offers us the beginnings of a rhetorical
approach to telling sexual stories. I use sexual stories in this chapter because I know firsthand (as do my participants) that, perhaps, nothing instills more fear than shame of our
bodies and what we do with them. To connect back to Plummer, the “what-sexual-stories
do” piece is to reclaim shame and to incite within an audiences a revised narrative (as I spoke
about in the previous chapter about networks). Most of us grow up and begin to let go of
many of these things as adults, though certainly not always. This chapter, then, was about
how participants use stories to talk through “shameful” moments with audiences in order to
elicit thought and change with those audiences or to speak with inner circles before seeking
activist forums. First, though, I unpack what I mean by shame and how it relates to
rhetorically situated stories.
I define shame as an emotion marked on our bodies related to interpretations of
knowledge. Mostly I’d argue that we both do the marking and are marked, sometimes
simultaneously. I’m not sure we can separate when those things happen. That is, I’d argue

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we have choice in how we let things (said things, implied things, explicit things) impact us.
For instance, people in my family can unknowingly shame me like no other. Over time, I’ve
taken control of how I feel when things are said and done, whether implicit or explicit. That
said, I can still think back to particular moments, where I wasn’t yet able to do so. Here, this
was knowledge about what I was supposed to “understand.” For instance, I was supposed to
“know” to always pee standing up when I was a kid. That’s what men and boys do, right?
When I was kid, though, I often sat down to pee. I was probably just lazy. When caught in
this act, my grandparents often shamed me. “Boys always stand up to pee. Are you a little
girl?” they’d say. As an educated adult, I look back on these words with horror. Clearly, the
argument at hand is one of misogyny and patriarchy, under which the motivating factor is to
shame a young male child by comparing him to a girl, the girl being the entity of utmost
disdain. That said, the way I’ve reclaimed shame over time is to educate myself and to
articulate my point of view for certain audiences at particular moments. No, I don’t often
speak about the right for young boys to pee sitting down, but I do see this moment as one
reflective of larger cultural metaphors that have impact on how we understand the world.
Thus, as an adult, I’ve experienced, read, and heard stories, then told alternative stories. I’m
outspoken when I hear about children being chastised for their non-normative practices. In
my early twenties, I’d have gone along with the feeling that some folks (myself included) are
just “weird” for how they act; now I tell different stories, embracing the queernesses, the
differences. Now I tell different stories and seek to educate others through these stories, for
I understand the impact of shame upon bodies and their emotional states.

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Sally Munt offers an analysis of emotions, bodies, and shame. For Munt, “[e]motions
are not neutral, they are charged with consequences” (13). First grounding her research in
her own experiences with being lesbian, working-class, and British in Yorkshire, England,
Munt examines the intersections of shame as part of a “national imaginary” through which
“diplomacy, of course, is the expensive international pastime of ‘saving face’”(3). She
purports “shame is an emotion that travels quickly, it has an infective contagious property
that means it can travel, circulate, and be exchanged with intensity. Shame is peculiarly
intrapsychic: it exceeds the bodily vessel of its containment – groups that are shamed contain
individuals who internalize the stigma of shame into the tapestry of their lives, each
reproduce discrete, shamed subjectivities, all with their own specific pathologies” (3). I use
Sarah Ahmed here to contextualize shame. For Ahmed in Queer Phenomenology: Objects,
Orientations, Others, “[…] the body gets directed in some ways more than others. We might be
used to thinking of simply which way we turn, or which way we are facing, at this or that
moment in time. Direction then would be a rather casual matter. But what if direction, as the
way we face as well as move, is organized rather than casual?” (15). Lines are created for us,
she claims. We don’t necessarily see them, understand them, articulate them—we can’t even
necessarily put our finger on why we are the way we are. Additionally, for her,
[…] what is ‘present’ or near to us is not casual: we do not acquire our orientations
just because we find things here or there. Rather certain objects are available to us
because of lines that we have already taken: our ‘life courses’ follow a certain
sequence, which is also a matter of following a direction or of ‘being directed’ in a
certain way (birth, childhood, adolescence, marriage, reproduction, death) […] (21).

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That is, these lines are no accident. She goes on: “[…] ‘what’ we think ‘from’ is an
orientation device [… as] the question of orientation becomes, then, a question not only
about how we ‘find our way’ but how we come to ‘feel at home’” (4-7). From my own
perspective, I see that this cultural “device” of “feeling at home” rests on the foundations of
myriad institutional communities, namely scientific and religious communities. What I would
add to Ahmed’s conversation is the notion of shame in relation to “feeling at home,”
especially when said communities seek to police marginalized bodies. When I visited an exgay conference I mentioned in this project’s opening, I sensed and ultimately heard all about
the shame in the room. Thus, “feeling at home” had less to do with my real feelings and
more to do with what a community expected me to think and say. Thus, this “homespace”
Ahmed mentions is a space of collective consciousness that exceeds the individual queer
body, which is a concept, I believe, she could grapple with more thoroughly. Because
certainly the lines are drawn for us—the home and its comfort is made—but I find it
necessary to draw a connection between just how inseparable the feeling of “being home” in
time, space, and body is to a dominant ideology. It’s nearly impossible to trace what is ours
and what is the institution’s. It is shame, then, that corrals and polices the body within the
institution—makes the body feel less “at home.”
The lines that Ahmed mention arouse cultural panic and shame through what
Michael Warner would refer to as “zoning”—zoning not only of the queer body (and all
bodies) but of spaces that bodies inhabit. To zone, then, for Warner, is to prevent sexual
variance, the very thing that keeps sexuality a space of policing. Warner asks and
subsequently answers: “what do we do with our shame? And the usual response is: pin it on

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someone else” (3). I find this question and answer interesting because an institution, like, say,
an ex-gay ministry arises out of a system of the bullying and the subsequent “pinning” that
Warner mentions. While I believe that many leaders involved with ex-gay reparative
processes genuinely believe they are helping people, a capitalist foundation informs this
movement. An economic exchange happens when a person transitions from gay to straight.
Family values, Americanism, and other nationalist tenets prevail and ultimately overthrow
any cultural or sexual variance. These nationalist ideologies reify “common sense,” as
Warner says “[w]hen a given sexual norm has such deep layers of sediment, or blankets
enough territory to seem universal, the effort of wriggling out from under it can be
enormous” (6). The body is zoned and ultimately corralled by shame; any deviation from
cultural lines of common sense rhetorics threatens the body’s capital. In his fourth chapter
of The Trouble with Normal, Warner sheds light on shame by examining zoning practices of
NYC’s sexual communities, namely Times Square. “Along Christopher Street, you can
immediately tell something is wrong” (149), he says, as he analyzes the “cleaning up” of
Time Square’s former hot spots for sexual paraphernalia and public sex. The lines are quite
literally shifting, as Ahmed might say. In Rudy Guiliani’s late-1990s push to clean up the area
for families, bodies are policed and institutionalized through his zoning amendment. One of
Warner’s central claims in this text is that culture pressures citizens of all kinds to repudiate
sex and sexual practices, especially queer practices, so as to continue the power elite’s
stronghold on the constitution of moral sex (read: heterosexual, vanilla). Here, in Warner’s
text, I see that what Ahmed doesn’t offer is an analysis of how lines that were once new

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paths, like Time Square, a gay Mecca, that historically offered sanctuary for non-normative
bodies, can, indeed, be redrawn to serve oppressive, dominant paradigms unfortunately.
Shame, for Munt, though, is grounded in disattachments and “can also incite willful
disintegration of collectivity, it can cause fragmentation, splitting and dissolution in all levels
of the social body, the community, and the psyche itself” (26). She then asks “[c]an there be
a homosexual subject who is not formed from shame” as she goes on: “the growing
consciousness of same-sex desire must, in a Western context, give rise to feelings of
difference and exclusion” (95). Along the same thread, she argues that “an identity may be
imposed, or it may even be wished for, but there is ultimately no choice, if one wants to live
out erotic attachment to one’s gender, in experiencing some form of ascribed
exclusion/prohibition” (95). We are a culture of shame; thus, I don’t always see merit in
perceiving shame as a black abyss in need of eradication from our lives. Conversely, I
believe, as other queer theorists have said, that shame is a necessity—a valuable tool—for
accessing one’s own identity.
For Eve Sedgwick, shame alters meaning, identity, knowledge, and is not “toxic” (63),
but part of identity formation. Most queer critical theorists will tell you shame is bad. But I’d
argue it’s not always entirely bad. Or even something that we can put into good-bad binaries.
Rather, I’d say that shame is often used as a form of disidentification and simply is. Here’s
where the rhetorical part of this argument finds fruition. Munoz describes “the survival
strategies the minority subject practices in order to negotiate a phobic majoritarian public
sphere that continuously elides or punishes the existence of subjects who do not conform to
the phantasm of normative citizenship” (4). Survival strategies, then, are about unlearning

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and reclaiming shame through stories that might make their audiences uncomfortable but
that are pedagogical in nature, like my early story that opened this chapter.
Extrapolating Rhetorical Theory from These Theorists About Sexual Stories
Alex and Brent are dear to me not only for their friendship, but for what they teach
me about rhetorics. In the previous chapter, Brent, Michael, and Jack taught me about how
rhetorics and responsibilities connect together to create rhetorical methods for interacting
with audiences. Here, Alex and Brent have contributed to this thread. Alex is politely coy
with his disruptive rhetorical moves. He saves face—establishes an ethos of politeness—with
audiences he’s less comfortable with. Given his experiences—some deeply traumatic—he
creates with me an insider community. When we tell each other stories—the painful ones—
we’re letting go, venting, prepping ourselves to be strong rhetors and activists. Ultimately,
we’re disrupting a grand narrative not only about ex-exgays, but about survivors of violence.
Together, Alex and I build a method and a rhetoric of activism that works for people like us.
As I’ve said before, I don’t always have the energy to tell my story. In fact, I often don’t.
Brent is different than us, though, and to this statement, I don’t attach any sort of valuejudgment on any one of us. Brent has had different experiences than both me and Alex. He’s
not, to my knowledge, experienced sexual violence. Thus, I believe his rhetoric and his
method to be more “in-your-face” with audiences, whether he trusts them or not. In the
case of both Alex and Brent, I deeply respect them as rhetors, theorists, and activists, for
both what they do and don’t say. In every case – through every story – they seek to not only
mediate but to reclaim shame for rhetorical purposes.

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Chapter 5:
GLQ Rhetorical Responsibilities:
Queering Grand Narratives
On a recent campus visit, a university dean asked me about my research. I was sitting
at a round-table with him, my first traditional interview of the day. After a few moments of
small talk about my experience thus far, he said: “What interesting research you’re doing.
The people in your research are gay, then straight, then gay again. Fascinating. Do you mind
me asking, since you’re also part of the group you study, you’re primarily gay now? That’s
what your application letter implied.” I answered, unphased. “Yeah, I’m gay.” In the
moment, I didn’t think much about it. Later, though, I wondered: How is a person primarily
gay? Does “primarily” mean “mostly” gay? Does he ask this because he thinks I was straight for a brief
window of time? What do I say? “Well, yes, except when I’m not”? I identify as a gay man. I love
men. I want to have sex with men. I want to build a life with a man. So, yes, I’m gay. But was
I ever not gay? No.
I wasn’t offended or shaken. Frankly, I get it; it’s confusing. But so are human
sexualities, desires, and the stories, discourses, and rhetorics that surround them. I don’t tell
this story to be the chief of the liberal police offended by anything and everything and ready
to point my finger at an oppressor. I knew I’d get this question frankly. Trixie Smith and
Malea Powell both warned me to be ready for it. This benign interaction points to a larger
cultural moment, whereby non-queer or straight folks want to understand. They want to nail
down this whole gay thing, once and for all, where seemingly identifiable names, like “gay”
and “ex-gay” “make sense.” Even the most liberal of academic-types often get it wrong, I
think, but in moments of trying to “get it,” folks mean well. But “getting it” often lies in a

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tradition of “understanding” that gay identity exists, and that it’s easily understood by
categories. This chapter is about how participants tell different stories to enact queerness for
activist rhetorical purposes—sometimes to disrupt stories themselves; other times, to
dismantle labels reflective of oppressive stories. In each case, the primary mode of
disruption occurs through stories about embodiment and lived experiences, and the entity
being disrupted is the idea of a grand narrative—narratives often about what it means to live
life as a gay, ex-gay, and ex-exgay, but also what it means to be a non-normative sexed being.
What are grand narratives associated with this movement and its counter-movements?
First, I identify a “grand narrative” as an over-arching, common story told under the
guise of “common sense.” Such a story’s telling results in oppressive outcomes (whether
those are explicit, inexplicit, or a hybrid of the two) for the entities of these stories, for we
know from rhetorical historiographies, like those of Walter Mignolo, Thomas King, and
Malea Powell, that not everyone has the agency to tell stories or to speak back against stories
that write bodies in oppressive ways. For postmodern theorists like Lyotard, grand narratives
take breath from difference, opposition, and plurality, as he theorizes in The Postmodern
Condition. Such modernist approaches inhibit possibilities. A western grand narrative about
gay, white middle and upper-middle class men is that we struggle with our sexualities early
on, come out (once, of course), move to urban gay meccas on the coasts, and party it up for
few years, before settling down with another male, getting “gay married,” and living a life
resembling many straight people (if we look closely, we can see threads of the straight
trajectories as well). Grand narratives evolve and depend greatly upon who’s telling the story
and for what purposes. For instance, we “learn” from 1980s and early 1990s text that being

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gay means dying from AIDS; films like 1985’s An Early Frost and 1990s’s Longtime Companion
become problematically pedagogical in this way. Further, we see grand narratives about gay
history position the “beginning” of gay history at the 1969 Greenwich Stonewall Inn Riots,
when other accounts point us to earlier activisms that undo this story, or at least make a
history alongside many other stories.
In defining the inner workings of an ex-gay or ex-exgay grand narrative, however
problematic, I struggle because an academic source won’t do justice to stories I’ve heard,
non-academic texts I’ve seen, and feelings that cycle back to things I’ve lived and embodied.
I don’t have a traditional “source” to point out for you about a sexual conversion grand
narrative. The closest thing I can think of might be the Newsweek article I refer to early in this
project. That said, I’m going to refer to two films, 2004’s Saved! and 2007’s Save Me to
highlight grand narratives about this phenomenon.
The film Saved! offers a comedic take on religious dogma through a look into a
private, Christian high school. The film’s protagonist, Mary, a teenaged girl who, after
finding out that her boyfriend (a prize-winning figure skater) is gay, breaks her vow of
celibacy in order to rid him of his homosexuality. She gets pregnant, whereby the plot turns
to her experiences of carrying a child out of wedlock at this high school. An ex-gay thread is
merely one side-story in the film’s trajectory, but this aside can help point us in the direction
of a grand narrative central to sexual conversion. The film’s gay, Dean, is, by default, a huge
homo—a figure skater struggling with his homosexuality, but dating Mary to fulfill a
heterosexual pressure from his community. When he’s found out, his parents send him away
to “Mercy House,” a place where young gay youth go in order to be healed of their gayness.

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Not surprisingly, we don’t see Dean again very often in the film, except when Mary talks to
him on the phone (he’s often seen in cinematic asides, partaking in all-male activities and
clearly falling in love with his roommate, Mitch, a fellow “struggler”—all the while saying
things, like: “this Mercy House stuff really works; they’ve medically proven it.”). Most of the
story focuses on Mary’s revision of her formerly conservative value systems in the face of
her conservative, judgmental nemesis, Hilary Faye. The film’s finale, however, takes us to
prom at the Christian high school, whereby a number of the film’s outcasts who’ve been
banished from the event, including Mary and her entourage, as well as Dean and his new
boyfriends (as well as the other boys from Mercy House) storm the prom and demand
inclusion.
While this film is incredibly progressive and gay-friendly in its satirical approaches, we
see a thread stemming from the character, Dean. Because his character is relatively flat (to
occupy literary terms), audiences can only really see him as a series of events that he
undergoes. Frankly, given that the manner in which ex-gay and ex-exgay people have been
carnivalized in the media, this approach to Dean isn’t surprising: he’s a gay guy (gay at heart,
not more complicated than that) who struggles with his sexuality and who feels internalized
homophobia. Upon being caught and punished for looking at gay bear-daddy magazines,
he’s sent away, where he first trusts in the institution Mercy House, but later rebels and
claims his gay identity. I’m not saying this is a poor representation of a gay character, or even
of a pseudo-ex-ex-gay character (the film doesn’t use that language). What I do point to here
is that this flat but progressive character isn’t benign. There’s a story written on to this body
about what it means to be gay and to undergo reparative therapy. Though, I can assure you;

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it’s much more complicated than this cinematic representation, as my participants and I can
attest.
A more “round” character (again to use literary terms), Mark of 2007’s Save Me is a
meth-addicted train-wreck who we meet in a hotel in the film’s opening, where we see him
after an anonymous sexual encounter. After he’s been on a two-day drug excursion, his
brother finds him and says that he’ll turn him into the police unless he agrees to go to an onsite gay conversion ministry. He agrees, and audiences are taken into an ex-gay-like world of
an on-site sexual conversion home. Here, Mark is never not gay, per se, but feels a sense of
homophobia that he’s told relates to a series of unfortunate events, but falls in love with and
learns to love another of his housemates. His “struggle,” we’re supposed to understand as
audience members, is about “his journey to loving himself,” as the film’s trailer implies. The
conversion practices and ideologies he faces are always-already a space of contention, as
we’re clearly supposed to despise these practices. Mark, though, briefly falls for their
rhetorical practices, as he becomes a Bible-toting believer in sexual conversion for a
moment, but then a few encounters with his white, beefy housemate points him in the
direction of “true love,” whereby he becomes a “good gay.”
Mark goes through a similar process to Saved!’s Dean, whereby Mark finds himself in
a pinch, feels guilt and internalized homophobia, undergoes reparative practices, but then
ultimately he only finds “wholeness” from a white, beefy hunk who can take him away from
all the internalized homophobia and pain. I’m not saying these cinematic representations are
entirely bad. We need characters who disrupt normative (hetero)sexualities. What I’m saying
is that, as my participants will point to, the paths are rarely as well-defined as they are in

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these movies. A grand narrative about ex-gay or ex-exgay, indeed, exists, but our embodied
rhetorical experiences are far more complex.
Queering with Brent, Alex, and Jack
I first look to Brent to introduce the complicated nature of stories surrounding
sexualities as narratives or paths:
At this point in my life, I definitely identify as a gay man. At the time in my life when
I was trying to deny gay identity or keep the identity from developing, the
conversations around terms like ex-gay didn’t exist as coherently as they do now. I
know that those things were around at that point, but we’re talking 20 years ago, and
I think that the ex-gay movement is much more developed now, as are the counter
movements. At the time, I didn’t know the term ex-gay because I was a teen, and I
just knew that being gay was bad and that I hadn’t come out yet or come out at all.
He identifies now as a gay male, but he remembers a time when identifiers like “gay” and “exgay” were less prevalent. Though, the time he speaks about happen in the early 1990s—the
time of the gay 1990s—so while I trust his memory, it is still memory. Here, Brent helps me
to disrupt my own ideas about the 1990s. I was a child in the 1990s. When I’m offered
stories about “collective” grand narratives about U.S. sexual politics, I’m told, through
books, movies, and even others’ memories, that the 1990s were “very gay.” This isn’t Brent’s
experience. This comment in and of itself strikes me because it forces me to disrupt my own
biases about gay history, thus making “history” plural. Add an “s.” His account offers a
meta-moment, where I, as an interviewer (and friend), challenge my own assumptions about
queer grand narratives. This meta-moment about remembering a history sets the tone for

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much of what he says later. It helps me conceptualize this entire chapter, where the topic is a
queering (of sorts), a disrupting of a single path—disabling and challenging one story. In the
moment, I see this story as being incredibly disruptive to my own understanding of gay
history. From this disruption, I conceptualized this entire chapter about queering grand
narratives.
I want to return to Brent’s words from the previous chapter for a moment, where he
says:
I had this non-identity as either a non-sexed person, as a teenager who hadn’t
had sex with anyone yet, or sort of like straight until proven gay, right – as long as
everybody kind of assumed I was straight, then I guess I kind of – in my mind, I kind
of still was straight. Like I hadn’t broken the seal yet, right, whatever, like I hadn’
gone full on and had a gay sexual encounter or gone to a gay pride meeting, so
therefore I was still okay. So in my mind, I wasn’t gay yet, even though I knew that I
was.
An ex-gay grand narrative often puts in place a identify signifier, whether that signifier is
“gay,” “ex-ex-gay” as the story goes. But Brent makes a deliberate rhetorical move here by
identifying himself as a “non-identity.” I understand this first-hand. My family, for instance,
often have non-memories of me, whereby they say, “oh, yes, now we see it all clearly—of
course, you were gay” (when I first told my mom, she said, “no, you’re not; you play
basketball”). They see me as gay then; gay in the past. But I side with Brent here. For years,
both he and I were non-identities; I wasn’t gay then. Was I—was he—emotionally and
sexually attracted to men? Probably, yes. But being gay doesn’t easily translate into a

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coherent, single sex identity. We’re born into this world to be heterosexuals. The smallest
early inkling that we’re different brings a great deal of dissolution, disdain, and disruption.
Thus, a non-identity status is a likely approach to the world. Brent makes a disruptive
argument, for the non-identity isn’t one that’s as culturally recognizable, as, say, the “I-wasalways-always-‘gay’” narrative.
Further, I understand that Brent has “[broken] the seal.” But he must continue to
break it over and over again with many different audiences. I look to Brent here to coin a
rhetorical term that adds to queer theories, like those of Butler and Sedgwick. “Breaking the
seal” offers us a way to think about how one approaches the early coming out process.
“Coming out” is overdone and oversimplified. Butler and Sedgwick argue that we approach
many closets often simultaneously. Closets are professional, personal, ideological, political.
Breaking the seal, then, continues the unraveling of the idea of one closet, for it is, for Brent,
a series of potential rhetorical events (like a pride event), or, perhaps, bodily experiences
(like, say, gay sex) that gives way to this coming-out performance. I realize that I’ll take this
term to my own stories for audiences like the dean I mentioned earlier (though, perhaps, I
won’t bring it with me on a job interview).
By the time I’m writing this chapter, Brent and I are friends. I know his coming out
story backward and forward because it’s come up often over the years. We’re both grad
students, so we’re familiar with texts like Sedgwick that articulate complicated sets of closets
queer people face. That is, these arguments about being in and out as more complicated than
a single “coming out” utterance are on both our radars. The arguments he makes (and the
ones that I agree with) offer a “duh” moment to many academics relatively familiar with

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queer theory. In the worlds we both inhabit, plenty of folks, like the dean on my campus
visit, understand these conversations as less obvious. For non-queer people and nonacademics, a process of juggling multiple closets doesn’t register as a reality. For instance,
Brent is talking about inhabiting multiple spaces simultaneously. He’s gay on the inside (as
far as he knows), but he’s read as straight sometimes (but other times, not, he tells me later).
That said, he’s “not quite yet” because he’s yet to make a series of coming-outs (read: a
public declaration or attendance at a pride parade). Here, sexuality is a battlefield for cultural
ideologies playing out for myriad audiences. That is, we often can’t separate our stories from
the stories written on and about us. When he remembers his sexuality and speaks about it
retrospectively, his sexuality encompasses a rhetorical sphere of internal and external
audiences (related to rhetorical situations) coming together. For instance, his words “in my
mind, I wasn’t gay yet, even though I knew I was” offer disjunction with a rhetorical
purpose. Brent is speaking about fluidity; his story unravels his audience’s expectations (to
use Jack’s rhetorical methods from the third chapter). I’m his audience in this case, but I
know that he, like Alex did in the last chapter, speaks to me first to face later, moreaggressive audiences who need to hear stories that dismantle a single narrative trajectory
about ex-gay transitions but also about sexuality in general. Brent later tells me that he tells
these stories because people want to simplify his sexuality; they want to simplify their
sexuality—their desire. Ours.
Later on, Brent tells me:
So I remember that when I started to talk to my parents – well, when they found out,
when I had basically had gay porn and they found that, and basically I began to tell

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them that I was bisexual. That was a way that I identified first, and even when I first
came out, I didn’t even know what that meant. I just knew that that was less harsh
for other people to hear and all I cared about was telling people what hurt them the
least. So that was kind of like a half admission, like oh, I’m bisexual, it could be
worse, I could just be gay. So for me, that was like – that was the path of identity for
me. It was kind of child/preteen/early teens that was kind of non-sexed, right,
because unlike a lot people, I didn’t try to show a lot of interest in girls or – I didn’t
ask a lot of girls on dates, but at the same time, I really kept in check the amount of
gazes or looks or things that I would give towards men, right. I was very careful not
to get caught or openly be seen as gay in any way. So I think I kind of felt like asexual
for a lot of my childhood and early teen years, and then at the point that I had to start
identifying as something – like my last year of high school, it’s really interesting.
“[Breaking] the seal” to his audiences, Brent’s narration of his trajectory does, in some ways,
mirror the cultural narrative because of its relationship to a claim to “bisexuality.” I don’t
have source that I can point to here, but I can draw upon years of stories I’ve heard time and
time again—and I can draw from my own experience. Gay men do, indeed, often “break the
seal” in order to ease into a non-normative sexual identity (read: being gay). That said, he has
offered a queer trajectory, but this moment points, perhaps, to a more traditional narrative
about his sexuality. Though, Brent, as he’s said himself, hasn’t been one to attach himself to
labels that clearly mark transitions between “gay” and “ex-gay” and so on.
My last year of high school, I did finally go to prom, and I asked a girl from my
church to go to prom with me, and she went to a different high school than mine,

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and that kind of like let me off the hook a little because all those people in my high
school that were already wondering if I was gay, then there was this really pretty girl
that they didn’t know anything about from another high school, and so it kind of like
saved me the scrutiny of, oh, well, he’s just going to prom with this girl that nobody
would ask out anyway. You know what I mean? So I think that was like the only
moment that I kind of tried a little bit at heterosexuality.
I know by this point from Brent’s side stories that he’s already “broken the seal,” but his
attempt to “try” heterosexuality points us in a direction different than many stories. For
instance, Brent’s Christian background doesn’t dictate his path. For most the “trying” of
heterosexuality, as many ex-exgays will tell you, marks a clear moment of internalized
homophobia predicated upon a religious belief system. While Brent is raised in a
conservative religious household, his story doesn’t push the idea that his religious beliefs
cause his “trying out” of heterosexuality. This rhetorical move strikes me, for I realize that
very few stories that any of these men have told me, minus Jack’s, have pointed to their
religious affiliations. I pause to wonder if there’s something going on here because it seems
that rhetorics of the ex-gay movement and its stories always translate to religious identities.
Many of these men are spiritual, but as an observer (and from my own experiences), I don’t
see these religious moments as always-already parts of these stories, like I’d anticipated. In
fact, what strikes me further is that I realize this dissertation could have taken on a tone as a
project about religious rhetorics. It hasn’t, though. From this moment on, I start to
understand that a rhetorical move that’s happening is that ex-exgays are taking the religion
out of these conversations. Are there religious overtones? Sure, of course. But what I come

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to understand is that these rhetorical practices are about taking the religion out of the
conversation. This act, then, is a form of further activism. Religion is a highly personal,
intimate construct that doesn’t help audiences to see beyond their own beliefs. But these
men position these stories in relation to broken infrastructures, rather than personal battles
with their own religious identities. Through this lens, these men can, then, approach their
audience networks from a standpoint of logic.
It was like the very end of my high school time. I thought I would make this attempt
to be seen like – and I remember like she was really nice and we made a great couple,
and I think she – we kinda liked each other a little. I think that had I been straight,
like there could have been something there, and – but it didn’t go anywhere, and that
was just yet another one of those moments in life that reinforced for me, okay, I’m
not straight. So then that trajectory was kinda like childhood, asexual teen, really sad
attempt at being straight, straight until like sort of this bisexual identification but then
sort of became gay eventually, right.
Here, Brent identifies a queer path. It does follow a narrative form, but it doesn’t reflect
those we see in the cultural narratives seen earlier in this chapter. From stories like these, he
challenges his audiences to move beyond a simple narrative. By telling these stories, Brent
sends audiences back to the drawing board to ask “what is my path been, and how has it
been different than what culture tells me it is?” Activism lies here. For when his audiences,
whether liberal-progressive (like the dean in my campus visit) or antagonistic (like his
Christmas-card-sending uncle), do some reflection here that ultimately challenges the way we
think about our life paths—paths that rarely reflect the grand narratives that cultures create

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for us. Here, activism is happening, for if his audiences can unravel their own different
paths, then they can see that others go through similar processes. When they go through
such a process—when they’re shown a story that’s outside of a grand narrative—they’re less
likely to point fingers to the “weird gays over there.” When they’re less likely to point
fingers, they’re also less likely to tell harmful stories to their own networks or vote against
things like marriage equality. It’s quite a cosmic process. Brent knows this.
When I went away to college, I had already kind of decided in my mind that
there was no changing my feelings and my urges and my temptations because I still
very much thought of them as temptations at that point. I had just decided after
those two years of counseling therapy that I was not going to ever not be saddled
with these feelings, these urges, right, and that the best that I could do was to be this
kind of asexual person, a person who is single the rest of their life, a person who
never married. So I kind of just like accepted that I was gonna be alone the rest of my
life, which was like a really sad thing, I think, and that I thought that the way around
that was maybe to go into the ministry, like become a pastor or, at the every least, just
be extremely involved in church, and I started really, I think, falling into some
extremes. Like I went away to a really large liberal state university, but I
immediately joined a really conservative campus ministry. So here I was – in a way,
wanted away from my family and away from my church, and I went to this place that
was really liberal and open, but then I like immediately avoided the reason that I had
gone there. So like I was always in between these two extremes, like flirting with
different extremes and never quite knowing. So this is why it’s difficult for me to

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think about the ways that people will sometimes try to label gay or not gay, ex-gay,
ex-ex-gay, sexual, asexual. Like these are hard spaces for me to contemplate because
for me, like they were always these layers that were partially like – I don’t know.
Brent’s “I don’t know” here is a place of knowing and not-knowing. I understand. These
audiences he mentions—these “people who will try to label”—he’s mentioned them before.
They’re his audience networks. There’s more.
Like there’s a lot of intricacy and – it’s like a dance, like this really highly
choreographed dance or a chess match or whatever to figure out, like where things
end up, and I don’t even think I knew where it was going to end up, but it had to play
out in ways that gave respect or credibility to both of the things that were at work in
me, and so I think I did start to turn away from that sort of Christian non-gay
identity, maybe like what we might now call ex-gay, right, but I had never come out
before that. I mean, this was all happening at a time in my teenage years where I
hadn’t had a chance to be out.
Often, calling one’s self “ex-gay” is part of accepting one’s body as a site of healing. Brent
disrupts this positionality, in many ways deeming the language of this institution untenable.
He’s not identified often in his life. What does a movement such as this one do when people
don’t identify at all or don’t have words for their experiences—not words but only complex,
intricate stories.
Like I think nowadays, there are probably – and even maybe shortly after I did, there
probably were people who were out at 14 or 15 or 16 and then could then go back in
and then come out again, and for me, that was a different trajectory. But I did in my

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early 20s then start to slowly turn away from denying that part of me and began to
slowly start embracing the idea that I was gay, but even then, I was at this large liberal
state university with an extremely active LGBT group that met every week, and in
four years at that university, I never went to one of those meetings, never, and I was
petrified of going to those meetings. I thought that I would become this drinking gay
person, this drug-using gay person, this promiscuous gay person, this really vulgar,
cussing, just like practically a gay Satanist, right. I mean, like I really thought that this
is what it would mean for me to finally then embrace gay identity, and I think that the
religious right and the conservative religious groups have done a very successful job
selling to their people the idea that if you choose to be openly gay, whatever that
means, that you will then become all these things.
Here, Brent speaks directly back to the ex-gay movement and its rhetorical power. He points
to the fact that his awareness of a particular narrative, one where he’d fall to a series of
temptations. These are stories. What kind of stories, the audience has to decide. Brent tells
different stories, and he’s aware of such a rhetorical move—aware of his activism.
But that had to happen really gradually. I couldn’t just say like – and honestly, like
something like making a new gay friend or having gay sex for the first or second or
fifth time wasn’t going to be this moment like this. And I think that’s what people
think is, you know, then you get your first boyfriend or then you have gay sex for the
first time, and it’s just rainbows and this epiphany and like choirs of angels are singing
and you realize like, I’m not ex-gay, I’m gay. And that doesn’t happen. Like there has
to be a bunch of like really, really hard moments. Like you have gay sex for the first

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time and you love it, but you hate yourself or you get a boyfriend and you practically
can’t function because you’re both 22 and you’re both F’d up from an entire life of
trying to deny being gay and you don’t even know what it means to be emotionally
available to yourself, let alone to a boyfriend, and every time you have sex, you
wonder if you should have done it and you feel dirty, and so your first
associations of love and romance are with like dirtiness. So I just don’t think people
get it, like I think it tries to get like put into these neat categories, and it’s just a big
huge mess.
As Brent has said before, he continues telling these stories to audiences because these “neat
categories” don’t help; they’re not helping a gay cause and ultimately, they don’t do anything
for us, as minorities, in a culture where, for instance, in 2012, women’s bodies are still under
attack under the right’s guise of “morality.” Women are in position of having to account for
things like their reproductive health—ultimately being accountable to men. These moments
point to problematic, misogynistic stories about women and men. In this realm, women are
subservient and second-classed to men. Thus, when Brent tells these stories, I see that he’s
aware of how these complexities reach to other groups of folks, not just gay folks. If his
story can shed light on how labels and normative trajectories create rhetorical prisons for
those labeled and for those non-normative, he can point to rhetorical contexts that impact
folks harmed by said labels and trajectories. His disruption of “neat categories” translates
broadly. Complementary to Brent’s queer narratives, Alex and I theorize together. I say:
In Exodus culture, I was constantly confused. X guy is gay and ex-gay simultaneously,
but what does that mean? Doesn’t that also kind of mean he’s gay until he’s not ex-

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gay anymore, and then is he straight? Just juggling the labels alone is enough to undo
the movement. The language is absurd and doesn’t hold weight. It’s not rhetorically
effective, as we’d say in my field. It’s just this interesting overlap between these words
essentially, going back to what you were saying. I think what they don’t realize is that
their stories, their trajectories, and their labels are so incredibly fragile. One misstep in
language, and their movement goes up in flames. It already has a few times, in fact.
For instance, they had narratives about what gay men are, and how you change. They
make the argument that gay men are often disconnected from feeling like boys. They
equate this feeling with particular activities, like football. Well, I was gay, but was
always athletic. I didn’t have the same “problems.” They didn’t know how to help me
at times, I don’t think. Their literature doesn’t account for that. It follows a trajectory.
Gay men are X, Y, and Z. But thankfully, there’s a problem with that kind of story.
Number one problem, it’s not everyone’s story. When say that something is
everyone’s story, you risk people look at your foundation and being skeptical.
Thankfully, over time, even the most conservative of people are looking more and
more closely at sexual conversion practices and saying, “these arguments don’t hold
up.” When these stories and labels are so fragile, you risk your entire institution.
Which in this case is good. That’s why we all need to keep telling different stories and
fucking with these labels like you and I have been doing today.
Alex responds to me:
Yeah, it is. It’s more complicated. It’s a timeline, that’s all I look at it. It’s just a line of
progression, a line of growth where things because of experiences, because of

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activities, because of thought and growth in thought and growth in understanding
growth in comprehension, things morph. Things change. So you know, I went from
being an abused child to finding solace in Christianity, a community in Christianity,
finding the ex-gay ministry, to trying to reconcile some of the desperate experiences
in my life within the context of Christianity then finding out further if I investigated it
that that wasn’t possible to reconcile those things. In fact, maybe they didn’t even
need to be reconciled. But maybe it was okay, that that was part and parcel to who I
was. Moving again, morphing beyond all of that into now what could be labeled as
ex-ex-gay, but what for me Travis is nothing more than me becoming more and more
into who and what I am, and my sexuality, being gay, being attracted to other men,
that’s just part of who I am. It’s not all of who I am, but it’s part of who I am. And I
know that because I was a Christian and because I became a Christian as a teenager, I
did not have sex with anybody. I just didn’t. Because I knew I wasn’t supposed to
have sex before marriage with a woman, and it didn’t really matter because women
don’t do it for me. That wasn’t a problem. It’s was like, “Oh, so you want me to be
celibate with women? So not a problem.” My mind doesn’t even go that way.
Like Brent, Alex doesn’t buy labels, as his “mind doesn’t go that way”—a reference to a
metaphor for a queer path. In part of the interview I’ve not included in this chapter, he tells
me he, in fact, “hates fucking labels.” Putting a label attached to a particular story doesn’t
work for him. While Brent does give homage to a few labels in his stories, Alex’s only label,
he says, has been “himself,” all along. Every moment, every experience, points back to his
trajectory of being himself. He implies he was never actually the other things, these ex-gay

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things. He even rejects “ex-ex-gay,” as I do and as do many of the men in this project. In
previous chapter, Michael spoke about using “ex-ex-gay” when he’s doing activisms for
particular audiences. Alex doesn’t buy it, though. Labels point to institutionally-sanctioned
stories. Alex queers. He is the action.
A person of action and resistance, Jack brings us back to the complicated nature of
coming out. When he conducts this interview, he’s less out; he’s out to me, to his friends,
and to some of his family. Since this interview, he’s continued his coming out, but using it as
an activist space. He’s moving away from law enforcement to a profession in the ministries,
where he plans to position himself to help people with embracing their sexualities. At the
time of the interview, he identified as gay, but now he’s out to more people. From our
weekly phone conversations, I know that he’s less concerned with the problematic stories
people in his unit told about him when he first brought his former partner to department
events. The stories must not matter much, though, given that he was nominated to be the
chief of police recently. He’s stopped making excuses and apologies. He’s stopped changing
pronouns, he’s told me. These acts, perhaps, have disrupted any stories that have been told
about him. What I respect about him is he moved from being a person incredibly closeted,
but in later life, he’s become a gay activist. Jack is the true kind of activist. He doesn’t hold
signs, he doesn’t protest. He’s the activist who isn’t afraid to use male pronouns to the
cashier at the check-out line anymore. He’s the kind who now tells stories about his life to
his co-workers. In previous chapters, I mentioned Jack’s stories about being a “law-abiding
citizen.” In his small town, he capitalizes on this image for activist purposes. When he tells
stories differently from the norm, people listen.

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Early on, Jack says:
As far as describing myself now, I consider myself gay. Do I share that with
everybody? No, I do not. But the people that are close to me like at work or in some
different settings or wherever, I would just not say anything. In the past, probably
like whereas that I was straight, and I told everybody I was straight, and, you know,
try to live the life of being straight and sharing that with everybody. And then for a
while then I probably still lived the straight life but had like the gay relationship. Like
it still was perpetrated as being a straight relationship, like a friendship relationship.
As I’ve said before, this note from Jack points to a different person than I know now. That
said, I see threads of activisms in later parts of his queer story when Jack says:
Well, I actually think that there was a sermon. And I kind of remember what it was,
and in the sermon, you know, the preacher was condemning homosexuality,
condemning all of these different things as being wrong and basically making
homosexual people out to be these horrible people that are like perverts and society
and everything, the unraveling of society, and that they’re child molesters and that
everybody’s got to watch their kids. And I’m thinking I’m not like that, so I can’t
believe that everybody who is gay is like that. It was like, you know, why am I
continuing to listen to this. And then when I left, I would feel bad about myself and
just keep thinking, you know, I’m not good enough to get loved by God or to get
changed. So I think it was like, well, it’s never going to happen. I mean, I’ve been
doing this for nine years; it’s not going to happen. I mean, I can still be a good person
and be the way I am, and I guess that was the big thing. And, you know, after that,

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there was some point in my life. The first gay relationship I ever had was a very, very
abusive relationship, and it ended really bad. And I actually went back to the church
after that ended and tried to get – tried, you know, like a last-ditch thing to think,
well, maybe I was wrong and I can change and didn’t. And I knew that wasn’t the
case. I sat in the back of the church after being there for how many years, that church
that I went to my whole life, and basically that feeling wasn’t there. And I knew then
that, you know, it was just the relationship, and it was a hurt that I was going to have
to deal with that it wasn’t anything I had done wrong, that it was just a bad
relationship. And if I just kept on, every time there’s something going wrong, trying
to ask God to change me, that wasn’t going to be the thing. I mean, I was just going
to have to deal with the issues as they come because even if it was straight, you know,
it would be the same way. I mean, I would still have problems and stuff. So – and
like I said, when I went back there and sat in the back of the church and people came
up to me, it was like it’s just not there anymore. I mean, that feeling that I had, you
know, I felt okay with how I was. And I can’t keep asking God to change me, and
that was the last time I ever did.
I adore Jack’s story. It’s queer in the sense that he’s not rejecting God, but an institution that
uses God in particular ways. Earlier, I mentioned that these participatory theorists aren’t
talking much about their religion. This is story is an exception. But I do believe that this
story speaks more to his experience with an institution, for as a grand narrative goes, he’s
queerly disconnected himself from a place of religion. He and I are spiritual people, both of
whom believe in a greater power that we do, indeed, call God. That said, this is a moment

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where he’s speaking about an institution that makes a god for their purposes. He tells this
story to point out that he eventually stopped asking for forgiveness. He never went back, he
says. I’ve heard him tell this story in our church before. People clapped. People smiled.
People were moved. They stood when he finished telling it. When a leader in the church, like
Jack, says that people can’t change their sexualities and that institutions that support these
activities are problematic, his audiences listen. It’s not in the interview data, but I’ve seen it
with my own two eyes. Jack, like Brent and Alex, lives the verb “queer.” This story isn’t
easily put into grand narrative form; he knows this, as do his audiences who listen. His story
is queer in its nature of how he speaks about his relationship to the church. He makes a
clean break; he doesn’t stay with the institution longer than he feels humanly comfortable.
Further, he doesn’t struggle long with this institution. He’s ultimately a person writes a new
story, but claiming a queer Christian identity. From this story, he embodies survival.

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Chapter 6:
So, What Can Ex-Ex-Gays Teach Us
About Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Rhetorics?
Revisiting the First Pedagogical Snapshots
Pedagogical Snapshot 1: Stories teach us that all our bodies are complicated spaces, and we have a
responsibility to talk about these complications …
At a CCCC panel about bodies, methodologies, and archival rhetorics, Casie Cobos,
Madhu Narayan, Donnie Sackey, and Malea Powell offered their audience perspectives about
their bodies within the oft-disembodied, institutional archive. During the Q&A, Andrea
Riley Mukavetz asked each of the participants, “Could you talk about how your bodies are
feeling in these difficult spaces?” This question was frankly jarring to me, for through
relationships, I began to realize, I was able to articulate that my body is not often safe,
sound, healthy, and strong. Relationships help with the telling of these stories, we often need
to speak first to each other before we can speak to others. I take Andrea’s question with me
nearly everywhere I go. In the final stages of this dissertation-writing process, I think her
question is one that we should continue to ask ourselves and each other especially as we
enact local and global activisms, for ...
Pedagogical Snap Shot 2: … GLQ rhetorics are grounded in building relationships ...
In 2008, I’d introduced myself to Michael Bussee, and we exchanged stories online.
At the time, I was working on a project that was about rhetorically analyzing ex-gay websites,
so I was not yet invested in stories as a research method or interpretive lens. Since working
together on this project, we’ve remained in contact on Facebook. He’s always kind to me—
delightfully so—and often asks about how the dissertation is going. He’s one of the busiest,

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most devoted activists I know. This week, he had dinner with Alan Chambers, a major
public advocate of sexual conversion therapies. He’s tirelessly devoted to our cause.
Alex and I became fast friends. We’ve become allies for each other. We check in with
each other on Facebook at least once a week to say hello and offer encouragement. We send
each other cards, Facebook wall posts, and many laughs. We both love movies, especially
Steel Magnolias, and we often swap movie quotes in private messages or wall messages. He
knows about the emotional weight of the job market and has acted as a support system for
this entire year, as I’ve neared completion of this project and gone on campus visits and
done phone interviews. We also have lived in similar places over the course of our lives. He’s
someone I’ve come to care about deeply.
I visit Jack a couple of times a year when I visit the metropolitan city that neighbors
his small town. He attends a gay-affirmative church, and because of his church leadership
and life devoted to just being a down-right good human, he’s been encouraged to follow
what he understands as his calling. He’d be an out, gay priest in a gay-friendly sect of his
primary denomination. He and I chat on the phone about this a couple of times a month,
and over the years, we’ve also become friends. He came to my graduation, in fact. Further,
Brent and I see each other everyday. We’ve stayed friends for years now, and we’ve
supported each other through hardships of academia (this year in particular). He’s currently
finishing his graduate work, like I am, and will be taking an academic job in the fall, also like
me.
What I find interesting is that I sat with my “data” for many months before I was
able to really do much of anything with it. At the time, I felt incredibly disabled by such

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inactivity. As an academic, I’m expected to produce and work daily, but frankly, I couldn’t
do much with the data; I was overwhelmed by it—the stories, the emotions, the bodies. But
as my relationships with participants continued to develop over the course of a year, I was
able to read, hear, and listen for what their stories were actually saying. Getting to know
these men helped with interpretation and analysis. From the stance of traditional research
methods, this process sounds backwards. I should start with a clump of data that I’d then
interpret, where I’d then learn about participants. But the process was quite the opposite.
The relationships made the data for me. As I said before, I’ve never felt comfortable with
the idea of “applying” a rhetorical lens to this project. That is, I sought to let the rhetorics
and meaning-making processes arise out of the stories. I realize now that I could have never
seen, heard, or listened for anything at all if not for the relationships I built with these men. I
say this because I’d not have known them well enough to know what was arising without
time and trust.
Pedagogical Snapshot 3: … we’re responsible for telling the hard stories even if and/or when they’re hard on
our bodies.
As I said before, this project is about theorizing with stories—the good, the bad, and
all the in-between. Though, if I seek to make this claim, I have to also acknowledge that my
story up to this point has little prominence in this project. Below, while difficult to do, I’ll
offer you a piece of my story—the one that most impacts my role and investment in this
project. People ask me often why this research matters to me, and I normally give them a
Cliff’s Notes, business card-length explanation. It is always awkward. It is always a moment
where people even upon hearing the abridged version feel sorry for me or exercise their need

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to pat me on the shoulder. My story is one of many, constellated among many others and
puts me in an odd relationship with this research project, for I am both a stakeholder and a
scholar here. Everything about this research process is both awkward and liberating, for I
feel the personal weight of the project, but also the professional, “researcher” pressure of the
discipline. In tracing a GLQ rhetoric linked to ex-exgays, I fear that I will regret telling this
story because it is emotional, but as I’ve said before: this project is not about revisiting victim
narratives, but about tracing rhetorics of survival. The short version goes something like this:
I came out when I was sixteen, I went back in the closet because I was religious and because
I briefly joined a Houston-based ex-gay ministry, and I came back out at twenty-one. That
said, I rarely tell the long version.
In the fall of 1999, I came out officially and told a few people about my sexuality. In
the small suburb of Houston where I grew up, this would have been a big deal, but I was
invisible in high school. I had played basketball, but I wasn’t an uber-jock, was painfully shy,
and hardly said two words to anyone ever. My teachers only knew me because I was “wellbehaved,” a signifier branded on me from Kindergarten on. I was very Molly Ringwald in
Sixteen Candles—minus the vagina, the Jake Ryan, the Thompson Twins serenade, and the
“happy birthday, Samantha.” When I came out, a few folks paused, perhaps, to hear this
news from the rumor mill, but no one paid much attention, nor made a scene. I didn’t get
beaten up or harassed, as I was a tall, broad, and relatively muscular seventeen-year-old who,
while very queer and “weird” according to high school politics, had passed.
By early junior year, I’d moved lunch tables, from invisibility with the b-jocks into
relative visibility with the “freaks” (read: the people who would go on for graduate degrees).

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I came out to “the weird girl” who identified as bisexual. A few years before, she and I had
dated, and she was one of the few school people who I thought really knew me—a good
person to hear my “news.” The truth is, I’d known what I was since I was a kid, but this act
of telling was something I needed to say aloud—a test, perhaps, to see if I could. While I
could pass, I was actually a fairly queer kid who was pretty self-aware and knew himself.
When I came out to her—in the parking lot of a slummy McDonald’s, my shaking fingers
greasy from French fries—the saying of it was pretty painless. She already knew, as I imagine
most folks did.
She introduced me to the “weirdest” guy at school—a gay guy who had come out in,
like, sixth grade or something, as the lore went. He was everything I imagined a typical gay
guy to be, with his blonde, spiky hair, tattoos, piercings, tight pants—a handsome clone of
1999 boy bands. Both terrified and intrigued, I met him at a coffee house and gay bookstore
in Montrose, Houston’s gay neighborhood, a space that soon became my roaming grounds.
Fast friends we became. I transitioned from wallflower, but into what I’m not exactly sure. I
had friends, I had weekly weekend plans, I capitalized on a “gay jock” image (but was far
from a jock, of course), and I worked out every day and as often as I could (this was what
made me “a jock” in gay communities, though I was far from it). Sure, I went a little wild for
a bit: I lied to my parents often, failed a semester of chemistry and Algebra II, failed a few
English papers about The Inferno, and got into a relationship with a guy who was sixteen years
older than me and with whom I fell madly in love. When I met him, he was the most
handsome man I’d ever seen; soon, the sun set and rose by him in my world.

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He was a turning point. Meeting him would change my life in more ways than I could
have known or imagined. He was from the Midwest and had moved south during his
military career. Deeply religious, he was out and lived as a gay man, but, from my
understanding, he dealt with internalized homophobia. On three to four occasions over the
years (before I knew him), he involved himself in Houston’s sexual conversion therapies and
ministries. While I was aware of his history with these affiliations, I didn’t know or think
much about them or his specific experiences; they rarely came up in conversation. That
changed.
On October 31, 2000, Halloween night, I was out and about getting into trouble in
the gayborhood. Dressed as a “bum,” I made my way around to a few holiday parties. That
night, a few guys—older, “hot” and “so mature” in my eyes—invited me to a private party.
Once I made it there, I immediately felt like something was wrong, but I stayed. If I’d
listened to that feeling and left, my life would be infinitely different, perhaps, or maybe not,
but it feels like it. But I didn’t leave. I was a physically strong seventeen-year-old, but I
wasn’t strong enough, I guess. I had deep bruises. I had to drive myself to a doctor soon
after to see what damage had been done. I never told anyone. My skin was red for a few
nights, where I sat in scalding water and took baths as often as I could. I can and could
never quite forget. Forgetting took a few different forms early on, though.
I went about my life as per usual as best I could. I went to school—by that time, I
was a senior—and I found ways to reach out to God or some entity that I hoped would tell
me something eventually. Somewhere in there, I wrote a poem that talked about my
experiences from that night. The poetry made it to some regional poetry and prose thing in

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my area, but no one really got what it was about. Around that same time, my application to
give blood at my school blood drive was rejected for undisclosed reasons. I got what it was
about. Though, they didn’t, I felt like everyone knew, but by that point, all they knew was
that I was gay and that I was “weird.” I had a few panic attacks at school—well, quite a
few—and startled really easily. I had flashbacks often.
When things really started to change, Thanksgiving was near, I remember fairly
clearly. While I was sitting with him on his bed, he said, “we’re living in sin.” I believed him
and knew why he said such a thing. I didn’t have much else to believe in. My pursuit of a
straight life through ex-gay ministries began soon after. A few weeks later, we met his old
advisor at a breakfast place in Houston, where I could eat and couldn’t do much else but
listen. The advisor guy was one of the kindest people I’d ever met. Having talked to him
relatively recently (as in the past five years), I still believe this statement. He’s a good man—
one who believes drastically differently than me—but a good person, nonetheless.
So, what did this process look like? Well, for one, it was never a seamless transition
from gay to straight or any other bodily category. When I decided, as I did, to meet a major
figure from an ex-gay branch in Houston, I wasn’t immediately straight, nor was anything
but gay, but I wasn’t even ex-gay, either. You can imagine the confusion. Burke talks about
the fact that an audience plays a big part in the ways that they’re persuaded; they have to
want to be persuaded, he says. I wanted to be, for, in retrospect, I see that no amount of
unwanted persuasion could make me want to be with women. In those moments of my past,
it wasn’t so much that I wanted to be straight, but I wanted to be with the guy I loved. If I
needed to pretend to want to be straight to do so, I would.

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I graduated high school on May 26, 2001. I wanted to worship God, but in
retrospect, I see that I actually worshipped my ex-boyfriend. By this point, he no longer
talked to me and was dating someone else. He was the reason I was doing all of this stuff,
and he was gone now. I felt like I should have known, but by this point, I was just trying to
deal with feeling the pain of violence, I think. I stayed “ex-gay,” but I never called myself
this name. I was kind of “straight” now, or at least I was trying to be, but I was also kind of
“gay.” I really only used the term “ex-gay” to talk to other folks like me. I met often with
other men like me and spent great amounts of time praying. I went to meetings and socials
that encouraged me to leave my homosexual behaviors in the past. I could do this just by
being celibate; I didn’t necessarily have to be or claim to be straight. I could meet a woman,
or I might not, they said, but what mattered was my journey to healing.
My parents realizing something was terribly wrong felt I should go to college and
encouraged me to apply late to a small state college in east Texas. Highly resistant, I finally
did enroll in classes, declared a major, and made plans to leave Houston for a more
traditional college route in August 2001. Soon before I left, I met a woman with whom I am
close still (we talk about once a week). We became fast friends and eventually decided to be
together, later getting engaged. My life then made me forget my past. I didn’t have anything
to do with ex-gay organizations any longer, for I was content with disconnecting with all
events from those times in my life.
She and I fell in love. I did and still do love her, though my love for her will always be
platonic. That said, because I had love for her, I convinced myself I could be straight. By this
point, it wasn’t so much that I wanted to be straight, but that I was used to not identifying as

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gay. People were kinder to me, my parents seemed more content, and ultimately I felt safer
living in Texas and being “straight.” Violent experiences dictated this desire and need to feel
safer. While she and I broke up in October 2002, we stayed close friends. Meanwhile, I spent
the next year of life single with no real love interests or pursuits. I knew I was gay, but I
didn’t care to admit it. Soon after my twenty-first birthday in 2003, I met and soon fell in
love with my dorm suitemate. While spending the better part of a year not admitting that we
were in love, we spent all of our time together. It was then that I realized I couldn’t and
didn’t want to continue on with the “lessons” I’d learned from my past experiences. In 2004,
I re-came out (Webster, 2008). Since then, I have identified as a gay male and have sought to
make meaning of my experience by telling my story. I’ve done this by speaking selectively
about these experiences in my field and in relatively safe online spaces with other people
who’ve experienced similar things. It’s hard to tell this story, for when I tell it, I risk my own
body. I risk seeing raised eyebrows, feeling immense shame, and even being judged by those
within and outside communities where I feel safe. I continue these snapshots here and as
separate “lessons” because, as I mentioned in the first chapters, if I’d introduced them
earlier, they’d have made less sense to you as audience members. Much of this dissertation is
experiential. You had to see, feel, hear, and embody it with me, as we told a series of
unifying and disparate stories. Hence, these pedagogies come as final snapshots that make
meaning alongside the first three.
Extending the Pedagogical Snapshots
Pedagogical Snapshot 4: Discomfort is okay, for it often leads to something.

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This dissertation should actually be titled “This dissertation is going to make you
uncomfortable potentially, but everyone in it has a rhetorical purpose for doing so, and you
will learn from the purposes.” I think back to a story Trixie Smith told me toward the end of
this process. She mentioned that her former partner bought the 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry,
which chronicles the life of Brandon Teena, a transperson who was assaulted and murdered
in early 1990s. The film is incredibly raw with its scenes of rape and murder. Trixie said that
she’d not actually want to own this film. While the film made her uncomfortable and she’d
only seen it once, that’s all she needed. Hearing the story once was powerful in its own
regard. The discomfort with the story, its images, and its messages resonated with her. The
single meaning-making moment for Trixie was knowing the story, interacting with it, and
adding it to her own repertoire of activisms through stories. So, audience, in reading my
dissertation, I’m not asking you to read the stories in this project multiple times. You might
only seek to hear each of these stories only once, but do listen at least once, and do decide
what you hope to do with these stories for your own rhetorical purposes, but keep in mind
that …
Pedagogical Snapshot 5: When we tell our stories, our bodies are on display.
This one sounds obvious. But never has it been more apparent than today as I have
to make a decision about what to include in the final deposit of this dissertation. Questions
running through my head: “Will and for whom will this dissertation be google-able?” From
that question, I also have to ask what stories of mine that I’d want “out there.” My
participants minus Michael are mostly protected by pseudonyms, but my name is forever
connected to this project—a project where so much of me is on display. I have to admit that

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in the story I told above is slightly abridged with slight modifications. The original written
version that I defended before my committee was more raw. I realize that I have a
responsibility to tell my story, but I do also have to make rhetorical decisions about how
vulnerable I want to be when connected to this project. I don’t have a pseudonym. I want
my body in all my projects in my field, but the extent to which I want my body in my work is
a decision I have to weigh carefully. For instance, in my field, I’ll always be connected to this
project, so I have to make decisions about audiences. Are broader, Google-able audiences,
or even my entire discipline, the audiences who need to hear all the nuances of my stories?
I’m constantly negotiating display of my body and for what audiences I want to enact this
display—and to what extent. I might not tell my story every time, and I might be selective
about my stories, but …
Pedagogical Snapshot 6: Each articulation of activism is different for each rhetorician, but no activist moment
is any less rhetorical than any other.
You’ll notice that Michael in some ways appears silent in this project. He’s not at all:
he’s our group’s biggest advocate. I don’t know a more involved activist, and I, perhaps,
never will. When I first began this project, I noticed that Michael’s stories were often
different from the rest. For instance, Michael wasn’t telling sexual stories as often. His
activism is embedded in a public persona, where telling particular kinds of stories could
potentially set our activisms back. Earlier in the project, I mentioned that many of the men
in this project consider themselves small-scale activists, whereby their daily interactions with
people (e.g. in the grocery store check-out line) are the sites that offer them activist venues. I
interpret Michael’s activisms as related to a public persona of moving forward conversations

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about ex-exgay activisms, and this persona often changes the kind of stories that activists can
and do tell. Other forms of activisms arise in this project, too, as we’ve seen. For instance,
telling sexual stories affords rhetoricians particular rhetorical moments for particular
audiences and contexts; in Michael’s case, I understand that he’s constantly weighing his
public identity, differently from the other rhetoricians who’re often weighing their rhetorical
decisions within everyday, more private rhetorical situations. Each moment for each
rhetorician is, without a doubt, a moment of activism, but the audiences and ultimately
spaces are often different …
Pedagogical Snapshot 7: Stories make space for conversation and awareness.
The final two snapshots are married by the fact that they’re cohesive but also
symbiotic. Stories make space for rhetoricians, audiences, and those in between. Stories
make spaces for people, for other stories, and for moments of healing, outreach, and
activism. We’ve been talking throughout most of this dissertation about telling difficult
stories that evoke activisms. But stories help to operationalize these activisms. Space is made.
The theorists in this project are making space for conversations that are often left unspoken
and unarticulated, for …
Pedagogical Snapshot 8: Stories help us all mediate and reclaim shame.
Nearly everyone in this project has in someway articulated a discomfort or at very
least an awareness of culturally-visible and institutionally-imposed shame. This project is
embedded in men telling stories about rape, in stories of violence, and in stories that are
often difficult to tell and to hear. But in telling stories that evoke discomfort (for rhetoricians
and for audiences), we seek to manage our own bodies in relation to these kinds of

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oppressive cultural phenomenon. In western culture, we spend a great deal of time managing
our shame. Such story-telling practices are difficult, yet cathartic. Even in telling my own
stories here, I’ve had moments of discomfort with telling and even hearing my own stories,
yet I’ve felt a great sense of relief in offering them to audience networks. I learned this first
from my participants, though, for they have been the ultimate teachers of me and for those
audiences with whom they come in contact.

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