Creative Survival: Disclosure Decisions for Gay Identified Males Through Heuristic and Arts-Based Inquiry

This empirical exploration introduces the concept of creative survival as experienced by young adult gay-identified males across three cultures. Qualitative designs including Grounded Theory, Arts-Based Research, and Heuristic Inquiry were used to analyze the narratives of 36 co-researchers, 12 each from the U.S., Brazil, and Turkey. The outcomes of the analysis highlighted how creative skills were employed to assist in the decision to disclose their sexual identity as an event and also how creativity effectively contributed to their survival across cultural norms, laws and traditions. A creative synthesis, a final process step in heuristic inquiry, offers three vignettes that demonstrate through the co-researchers’ own words how this was accomplished. This unique form of research including arts-based inquiry assists in making the research outcomes more accessible to the broader public and beyond academia. The sense of belonging through community and reflection on internal and relational mediators is emphasized and offers hope beyond merely surviving to include thriving as a gay man.