ABSTRACT
This chapter considers a popular explanation of how homosexual identities may be formed, and describe what can be termed “Soviet gay identity.” Homosexual identity is an important and incontrovertible manifestation of homosexuality as a phenomenon, whether homosexuality is, in fact, determined either by bio-chemical influences or by socio-psychological factors. Identity is not just a state of being like someone else in some way, but of being exactly like, or identical to, him or her in that respect. Identity “acquisition” goes further to imply that the individual actively seeks to take on an identity, as if s/he is aware that one can define and redefine oneself at will. The act of self-identification as homosexual in English gay slang is specially termed “coming out,” probably a reference to the age-old quip that refers to a family’s eccentric or immoral members as “skeletons in the closet.”
