On Vulnerability, Coming out and Hiding

This essay is a call for action to support those experiencing hidden vulnerability in academic life. My experience as a gay man, who is often presumed to be straight, has shown me that people can experience unrecognized vulnerability when their differences or difficulties are not obvious to others. To respond to the issue of hidden vulnerability, I advocate (i) encouraging vulnerable people to craft spaces for visibility, (ii) encouraging others to form a community of care that disrupts the silences that otherwise leave hidden vulnerabilities unresolved, and (iii) mobilizing university leadership teams to transform institutional policies. In making this call, I distinguish hidden vulnerability, and the particular problems that it brings, from deliberate vulnerability to support personal growth. Deciding to be more open to others in the context of our work, even though that can leave us feeling exposed, can lead to important opportunities for learning and self-development. But choosing to accept vulnerability with the intention of learning is radically different to feeling vulnerable without any choice or hope of benefit (Brown, 2022). You cannot necessarily see the unchosen vulnerabilities that people experience, and some people encounter vulnerability in ways that are invisible to others with different back-stories from theirs. As a gay man from an economically and socially deprived background, seeking to navigate elite academic circles where most faculty members' stories have more nourishing roots than mine, hidden vulnerability has had a personal impact on me. Realizing the ways that I have experienced and responded to hidden vulnerability moves me to consider others who have experienced it in different ways. For example, neurodiversity, mental health concerns, precarity, dyslexia, menopause and many other personal situations can all be a source of hidden vulnerability. We need to develop better awareness and support for the vulnerabilities that others may be carrying silently, while we are oblivious to their struggles, and a climate of openness in which we feel more secure in sharing aspects of ourselves that would otherwise go unrecognized. Sometimes, in academic settings, vulnerability is not obvious. I am a gay man who is out, but I look like any other middle-aged white male professor. Moreover, when I was part of the Senior Management Team (SMT) at a university, people often assumed I had all the usual stocks of privilege. I am sure I had some of these stocks too, but working in such roles also re-awakened my awareness of vulnerabilities in ways that had been less obvious to me during earlier stages of my career. The experiences of hidden vulnerability that I share and explore here are connected to two important aspects of my personal life. The first and clearest connection relates to my sexuality. Even though I was one of the first people to be visible on my organization's LGBT+ role models web page, sometimes I felt that I had to remind people about my membership of the community before I could represent it. In some ways it felt as if coming out was a revolving door – with unsettling reminders of past trauma each time. The second way I experienced hidden vulnerability is related to class. I grew up in what was (at the time) England's worst area of social deprivation, and scrambled into higher education via part-time technical qualifications. As a result, involvement in some management settings made me feel that others had reservoirs of cultural capital – which they had been filling up since childhood – that I lacked. At such times, I would feel the need to gloss over the past, hiding my personal history. The result of such vulnerable experiences was a tension between a compulsion to speak out in defence of myself and others, while feeling a countervailing pressure to go (further) into hiding. A key example, that motivated me to reflect on my vulnerable experience, relates to the time when I was a dean and part of the SMT. I was attending a regular meeting, with a busy agenda as usual. We moved on to an item about recent tensions on campus, connected to wider media stories about how trans people were treated. There had been examples of transphobic graffiti (such as 'trans women are men') around the campus, and some contemporaneous news media was also full of similarly nasty comments. One of the senior team voiced sympathy for the difficult experience of trans people, but stated that their rights cut across other people's rights, so it was not straightforward. There was some muted nodding at this. I literally felt my heartbeat rising as I knew I would have to intervene. I simply said that I was on the university website as an LGBT+ role model and that for me and my community, trans rights are human rights. An apology followed, and in side-channels (chat messages) some people were supportive of my position. This was a doubly difficult experience for me because I had to speak up for others who needed to have their voice heard (and were not in the room), but mostly because I realized that website pages are easily forgotten and I was not visible, in the minds of my colleagues, as a member of the LGBT+ community. I want to be clear that my former SMT colleagues are good and decent people that I generally admire. I interpret my experience of vulnerability as being an effect of social and cultural influences, and not a result of individual choices by members of the SMT. I also want to emphasize that I never needed to defend my sexuality or combat direct discrimination in that context (despite having such experiences elsewhere – see Callagher et al., 2021). But working in a superficially accepting climate had the paradoxical consequence that my sexuality (and my full identity with it) disappeared. Without anything obvious to struggle against, there was no need for any explicit work to defend my identity. Without intending to, I had gradually become a kind of neutral person. This meant that on rare occasions when it was necessary, like the example explored above, pushing my sexuality back into the foreground felt like a coming out experience again. There were, however, other experiences where declaring my sexuality felt difficult and I found myself controlling and deflecting conversations. Formal dinners were a good example. I might find myself seated at a table among potential wealthy donors to the university, where the hinterland of class was already making me feel uneasy. Discovering that the potential donors were all of a highly conservative viewpoint, it was instinctive to decide that my personal life was not going feature in the conversation. I found it easy to divert the conversation from anything that might get close to my sexuality being relevant, but I still felt some residual and irrational fear. The past stays with me, however long ago it was. Memories of having had someone tell me to my face that 'people like you should be fucking shot', or being beaten up in a queue for a taxi for 'looking gay', leave visceral traces of vulnerability. I long ago learned that I have nothing to gain from being fully present in unfriendly, or even unsympathetic, settings. I never lie, but sometimes I evade… and feel myself diminish. It is not irrational to experience hidden vulnerability in the way that I do. LGBT+ people don't have to hear a slur or feel a punch to know there is a risk of hatred or diminishment in everyday life. For example, Pew Research (2020, 2022) studies in the USA show that around 28 per cent of people are not accepting of homosexuality, around 60 per cent believe that gender is defined by the sex assigned at birth (a percentage that has been increasing in recent years), and 66 per cent of Republicans believe that society has gone too far in accepting trans people. Statistically, in any group of even modest size, it is reasonable to assume that someone has negative views about LGBT+ people. An intersectional aspect of hidden vulnerability captured my attention at a surprising time – during the university's Pride Parade. The event was as you might expect. It was a good-natured stroll through the main street with all the usual rainbows, flags, costumes and songs. Quite a few members of the SMT were taking part to demonstrate allyship and I had some enjoyable conversation with them along the route. Once we reached the end point of the parade at the Student's Association building, most of the allies left and returned to their everyday activities elsewhere. As I wandered around the information stalls and clusters of people chatting, it was clear that no-one was really interested in talking with me. I can't say I blamed them – subsumed under the virtual mantle (and literal gown) of a dean, I looked and felt out of place, despite the addition of my Pride regalia. Moreover, my engagement with the community purely as a gay man was so infrequent that I don't think I was sure, anymore, what it involved. In the long run, what you do shapes who you are. I had invested so heavily in my role in academic administration that the other parts of me seemed to be atrophied or, at least, rather tenuous. In part, I can ascribe this to the unwritten norms and expectations that mark senior administration and work with external stakeholders. But my complicity was also evident. I was partly the architect of my own diminishment, shaped by but also shaping the conditions that caused it. However, in my defence, that complicity was driven by history and a key intersection with age. There are different back-stories for people from my generation. I survived the early years of the AIDS crisis as a young gay man, while some of my friends died. Back then, in the early 1980s in the UK, only around 10 per cent of people considered (in public surveys) that it was OK to be gay. We were seen as 'plague-carriers' by much of the populist media. It was a formative climate of everyday shame and enduring stigma. While I was quite often rebellious and resistant in my youth, I was gradually worn down and learned – especially as my career in academic administration developed – to be good at hiding. That didn't mean, necessarily, being 'in the closet' – it was possible to avoid lying or outright dissembling, as noted earlier. Instead, you could just be quiet and unassuming, make dull choices about self-presentation, and be careful not to talk much about your personal life (if you had one worth talking about). Making the conversation all about the other person is often welcomed anyway. Academia offers other ways of hiding too, including a focus on the scholarly self, by orienting your life more and more around academic research and teaching, while you forget the particularities of your intersectionality, at least for a while. The importance of intersectionality continues to resonate with me. As a gay man who grew up in a slum neighbourhood, who is now well beyond the age of nightlife and casual pick-ups, I feel my situation quite differently from, say, a middle-class gay man in their 20s. Similarly, a gay friend approaching the same age-bracket as me, whose background is comfortably middle-class and whose story leads through undergraduate years in an Oxbridge college, has made it clear that he does not experience vulnerability in the same way. However, those differences could also be amplified by the experience of the heteronormative contexts of management and leadership roles, which my career has led me through. Importantly, I have not always been aware of differing intersectionalities that can affect other individuals' lives either, and how these may amplify or change their experiences of vulnerability. When I engaged some colleagues in discussion about this, they added to my concerns about the wider issue by identifying a range of possible sources of vulnerability that I had not fully considered. These included employment precarity, dyslexia, menopause, impostor syndrome and mental health concerns – among others – that are connected to wider social issues. Some of these concerns – as with LGBT+ equality – are already the focus of some organizational policy developments and trade union campaigns. But that does not mean that we are sufficiently aware of people with particular (and intersectional) potential for vulnerability that may be unknown to us in the everyday contexts of organizational life. For example, employment precarity might have a strong impact on how people feel free to express other vulnerable aspects of themselves. It was the likelihood of so many people struggling with hidden vulnerability that persuaded me to explain my own experience and set out an urgent call for action. The realization that others may have hidden experiences of vulnerability also helps me to have some sympathy for those who are unintentionally implicated in my own difficult experiences. My call for action is intended to help them too. I make this call in the realization that I have been (at the least) complicit in the construction of conditions that are difficult for others, simply through the lack of any awareness of their life stories and how circumstances can impact differently on them. This is what motivates me to help develop wider awareness of these possibilities and to help drive change. It is only recently that I have started to change my approach and take personal action, by drawing more attention to my sexuality, first of all rather quietly: in publications where I felt that personal examples were relevant to the points I needed to make (e.g., Hibbert, 2021). More recently, I have also decided to be more direct in public and interactive contexts where it would be natural to do so. One recent situation where it was natural to refer to my sexuality was at a conference in 2023, where I was leading a workshop on reflexive practice. Reflexive practice is concerned with attention to ourselves – who we are and how we are changing – when we interpret the world or take action (Hibbert, 2021). In short, it is concerned with how our positionality affects how we experience and make sense of the world. So, in the workshop it made sense to mention my experience as a gay man in a particular research situation. I hoped that openness like this would help me to resist the assumed norms underpinning my otherwise hidden vulnerability, but the results have been mixed so far. After the reflexive practice workshop one of the participants, another gay man, emailed me to thank me for mentioning my sexuality so unproblematically and naturally during the session. That was encouraging… and helped to balance the sinking feeling of seeing a couple of people leave the workshop a few minutes after I had mentioned I was gay. Maybe that was just coincidence. But in three very similar versions of the workshop at other locations, where I had not mentioned my sexuality, no-one left. These signals, nevertheless, show me that I can take a more positive attitude to my sexuality, and take courage in talking about it where it makes sense to do so. I have also found similar experiences in relating the issues of class and deprivation that affected my upbringing, which has been especially helpful for students from similar backgrounds. Maybe – as with this essay – I will also construct more opportunities to involve my 'whole self' in my academic life. Nevertheless, there will always be some people for whom I am a problem, who can trigger my vulnerable emotions. But the core emotion could be anger (mixed with fear, if I am honest), and not the jaws of shame and stigma closing in on me again. The trouble is that it feels as if the damage is already done. I have become so invisible, quiet and neutral (neutered?) that it has been many, many years since I had an intimate relationship. You can let a work role take over your whole life and become a place to hide from everything, and only realize it has happened far too late. I need to – we need to – be more visible in the face of these negative possibilities and call for action to support change. Encouraging more resolute visibility is a key aspect of addressing hidden vulnerability. All of us who feel this kind of vulnerability can help others through speaking up at opportune moments, especially when we see evidence of the other, positive sort of vulnerability – that is, a willingness to learn and change – in those we interact with. I do not make this call purely with my own situation, and highly similar ones, in mind. I have become aware of other kinds of hidden vulnerability, and how my own assumptions may contribute to how those vulnerabilities are experienced. For example, an autistic person who took part in a recent workshop on reflexive practice let me know that, while I had thought about some of the things that impact on her experience in the context of the workshop, I didn't fully understand her situation (and neither did her colleagues). She helped me to understand that 'normal' assumptions about how people experience their embodiment and emotions (which are both involved in reflexive practice) can create a situation in which autistic people can experience heightened vulnerability. Her intervention has been transformative for me, and while I cannot (and should not) speak for autistic people, in similar workshops I can at least publicly acknowledge that there will be people in the room whose experience will be different, and make a space for them to speak if they wish. Some do. Calling for action through more resolute visibility is a hard ask for those with long experience of hidden vulnerability, and it must be an individual decision. But there is something empowering about transforming a vulnerability into a choice, especially with the interests of others in mind. My recent resolute openness about LGBT+ community membership has made it easier for others to speak, including those facing other forms of hidden vulnerability. So, I also call for people with their own specific hidden vulnerabilities to learn more about other kinds, and make an effort to make space for people to speak about themselves to further boost visibility and understanding. We need to construct an approach of mutual support among the hidden vulnerable, which makes visibility possible by looking out for and crafting space for each other. Those who feel that they do not have a hidden vulnerability will ask what they can do to help. I can recommend three ways in which you can take supportive action. First, I suggest that you can bring an awareness of hidden vulnerability into any discussion process. This awareness will be especially important in any discussion that deals with matters of identity, selfhood, health or wellbeing. If there is an assumption that everyone 'in the room' will be equally affected by the matter at hand or the decision to be taken, it is your role to disrupt this. Simply stating that you think some people might be particularly affected – or have particular insights – might provide us with the confidence to speak. Thoughtful interventions like this can begin to disrupt the silences that leave hidden vulnerabilities unresolved. Second, you might also 'read the room' if you are able; see if you can approach any person who shows signs of distress quietly, after the event – which is a caring action to take in any circumstance – and find a way to support them. Importantly, you should also treat this as an opportunity to learn, to find out how supporting someone with a specific hidden vulnerability could be best achieved. For example, as a member of the LGBT+ community, support for visibility feels like the most important point for me, but I do not presume to know how others in different situations might feel, and how they might want you to shape your support for them. It is up to you to find that out. Third, experience of engaging with individuals should lead you to agree that it is not reasonable to expect people in a situation of vulnerability to always be able to craft solutions to our suffering by ourselves. Sometimes it can feel disheartening to face demands to come up with all the answers if you are feeling vulnerable. Use your empathy, humanity and intellect to help us to explore together what an open, caring community might look like and how to bring it about. This is also the only way that the community will really work for you too. Beyond mutual support among the vulnerable and the development of a wider caring community, addressing hidden vulnerabilities needs institutional action to shift the discourse and thereby change how we act. Medical and formal social care discourse tends to see 'vulnerable adults' as those with serious, limiting conditions who cannot take care of themselves without help from others. This can help to focus essential support in health and social care policy, but for organizational contexts it is far too narrow. Senior academic managers – and especially university leadership teams – need to widen the concept of vulnerability to include a broader wellbeing focus, and embed support for the vulnerable in institutional policies. A wellbeing approach widens the focus from specialist treatment or adjustments for those with limiting conditions, to include non-specialist caring for those with everyday distress and suffering. That includes everyone, from time to time. Thus, a wellbeing focus can expand institutional action to encompass a caring community, embracing those whose flourishing is curtailed by experiences of hidden vulnerability. Putting an inclusive, wellbeing focus on vulnerability into practice could be approached in three steps. First, specific responsibility for tackling hidden vulnerability should be assigned to an appropriate member of the university top team, such as the vice-principal or director for diversity, equality and inclusion. (Where there is no member of the top team with this portfolio, that suggests a more urgent problem to be addressed first). Second, the responsible member of the top team should ensure that a regular pattern of staff surveys includes questions that allow people to identify and explain their experiences of hidden vulnerability. Third, the survey information should be used to construct policy interventions targeted at the situations in which members of the university interact to discuss and debate practical issues and intellectual matters, such as committee and department meetings, research seminars and discussion-oriented teaching contexts. The aim of the policy interventions would be to make space for visibility and learning about vulnerability, in all of these contexts, lining up with and facilitating the actions recommended for supportive individuals. Formally working to underpin awareness and support in this way can help university leadership teams and other responsible senior managers to realize where the vulnerable people actually are. Most of the time, if you look about you, we are right here. Through individual contributions to a climate of mutual support, community building and institutional policy developments, we can support processes that manifest and mitigate the kinds of vulnerability that are likely to be present in every context of interaction, including those that would otherwise be hidden. By doing so we will alleviate a form of everyday suffering through personal, community and above all institutional changes. Overall, these actions can create a climate of openness in which those of us who are vulnerable get to be present as our full and integrated selves for more of the time, rather than leaving some parts of ourselves in the closet, reserved for occasional events. I am determined to do this myself, so here I am: coming out again. I would like to thank my friend Lisa Callagher for her kind advice and support, and the editors at JMS for their constructive comments.