In the Chinese patriarchy and the Chinese society that values filial piety, gay men are often regarded as defective gender other people, and they have to bear the crime of ""unfilial son."" When gay men came out to their fathers, how to repair their relationship with their fathers, and filial changes in the restoration process are the two questions to be explored in this study.
This study is based on the narrative research and interviews with 3 adult males who have had a rupture relationship with their fathers after coming out and have been successfully repaired. The data analysis method is Gee’s discourse analysis, which is used to achieve the social context hidden in the discourse. Finally, integrating the following results by cross-case analysis.
The study found that the repair process of father-son relationship can be divided into five periods, which correspond to different filial pieties. (1) In Sudden-Drop period, the son ""told the truth and hoped the father understood"" and ""obeyed discipline to avoid physical conflicts."" (2) In Low-Valley period, the son could ""increase physical or psychological distance to maintain harmony"" and ""adjust their appearance or life to please his father."" (3) In Wave period, filial piety temporarily disappeared. (4) During the Recovery period, the son ""increased for no children with other achievements"" and ""fed back and accompanied his father."" (5) In Step-over period, the son had adopted ""the way of companionship and compassion to his father"", and ""actively revealed his love relationship to communicate"", and ""restrained his gay status to reduce father’s pressure.""
The process of repairing the relationship echoes the process of father ’s loss of his son, and this phenomenon is related to the high gay identity, the presence of social support systems, and the involuntary coming out of this research participants. The key events in the restoration process include leaving home and economic autonomy, the intervention of the role of the mother and the presence of survival threats. This study also found that the integration of positive and negative filial dimensions can be close to understanding the filial practice of gay sons. Positive filial dimension refer to those that have made a difference, such as better achievements or traditionally emphasized lineage succession. Negative filial dimension is more implicit, such as obedience to authority discipline, control information to maintain harmony that seem to have no special actions.
When the gay son came out to his father, he continued to face the dilemma of conflicting the two identities or roles of the son and the gay. From the perspective of role conflicts, individuals need to try a variety of different strategies to integrate role identity, and to respond to role conflicts through the performance of cognitive acrobatics during the role identity transition. In this study, we can find that in the relationship between father and son, the two roles of son and gay grow and change with the restoration process. In addition, in Chinese culture, filial practice is almost the same as filial piety. Gay son came out to face a dilemma of filial piety. Therefore, the filial changes in the relationship restoration process is also the negotiation and transformation of filial piety belief. As for the degree of relationship repair and whether it is ""successful"" coming out depends on the interaction and joint efforts of father and son in the relationship.
Finally, the limitations of this study were explained. The three gay men in this study were involuntary to come out to their fathers, and the relationship repair process lasted for 3-8 years. Therefore, the results of this study may be restricted to gay men who are psychologically prepared and voluntarily come out to their fathers. In addition, in this study, the focus of the research was limited to the son’s filial changes, and only the gay son was the research participant. Therefore, the appearance of depicting and explaining the relationship repair may not be comprehensive. Based on the research results, relevant suggestions for future research and helpers were also put forward.
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