Under the Rainbow Flag: Webbing Global Gay Identities

This essay analyzes contemporary global and local constructions of gay identities on World Wide Web sites. The authors rely on core cultural symbol analysis and visual imagery content analysis in their rhetorical-critical examination of texts and images. Three heavily trafficked, U.S.-domained Web sites are analyzed first, acknowledging the hegemonic positioning of U.S. cultural space as a physical, ideological, and cyber realm that enables the coming out process but also a realm in which cultural imperialism and commodification of other experiences reign. By comparing and contrasting the analyses of these sites with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender sites originating in Mainland China, Japan, and Germany, the authors document both the transformative and empowering aspects of transnational identity constructions and the dynamics of localized constructions that take part in, support, negotiate, and resist such global constructions.