“And then AIDS came along”: A life course turning point and sub-cohorts of older gay men

Research on life course turning points focuses on heterosexuals. Scholars acknowledge that the early AIDS epidemic was a period of crisis for current older gay men, and that this period has shaped and will likely continue to impact their lives. However, few studies have considered the range of early AIDS-related experiences within this group. In this article, I use a life course perspective and in-depth interviews with 40 gay men (60+) in Atlanta to address the following questions: (1) How did current older gay men's experiences vary during the AIDS years? (2) What social factors shaped this variation? I identified three AIDS-related sub-cohorts, which were defined by how participants' social and spatial relationships to urban gay communities influenced their experiences of personal loss, community loss, personal support, and community support between 1981 and 1996. The results suggest that scholars and service providers interested in how early life experiences impact later life should consider the divergent early AIDS-related experiences within the group “older gay men.”     

Differentiating selves: middle‐aged gay men in Manchester's less visible ‘homospaces’

Scholarship on gay bars/‘villages’ has overshadowed study of ‘homospaces’ (gay fields of existence) less available/inaccessible to a wider public – websites, saunas and social/support groups. Based on interviews with 27 men aged 39–61 living in Manchester, this article addresses what middle‐aged gay men's accounts of these particular homospaces say about their experiences of age/ageing and how relations of ageism work within them. Specifically, I focus on how study participants use ‘ageing capital’ in these fields to differentiate themselves from their younger counterparts in three ways. First, ageing capital is implicated in capitulation to gay ageism and a reverse ageism – visible in accounts of differentiation from the ‘superficial,’ reckless ways of sexualized space that participants associated with younger gay men. Second, it was visible in accounts of resistance to/questioning of gay ageism – strategies that could make sexualized homospaces more habitable. Third, ageing capital was implicated in negotiation with ageing/gay ageism – visible in ambivalent stances hovering between compliance and resistance – towards ageing and ageism, which could reinforce constraints on uses/display of the body. The first and third accounts indicate the multidirectional character of gay ageism, limits on the deployment on ageing capital and show how middle‐aged men can undermine their generational claims to represent a more authentic form of gay male embodiment. En route, I also complicate stereotypical thinking that gay social/support groups represent more inclusive, empowering space whilst overtly sexualized spaces of the ‘gay scene’ represent the opposite.     

Space,gentrification and traditional open-air markets: how do vendors in the Carmel market in Tel Aviv interpret changes?

Space is often believed to lose its importance in the global era as individuals cease to interact face-to-face in favor of online communication. Studying the Carmel market located in city center Tel Aviv, Israel aims to show how space, in a global city, is constantly produced, reproduced, and transformed in reaction to the changes in the community that uses the space and remains an invaluable resource for its users. By specifying the vendors’ perspective on the changes the market undergoes, this article offers an often missing aspect of the study of space, gentrification, and human action. It argues that public spaces in gentrified areas provide the vendors with means to instill their actions, traditional values which often lose their primacy in a global era and gain social recognition. I spent two years of participant observation and detailed ethnographic interviews with vendors. These have led me to conclude that in addition to a steady income that access to space provides, the vendors claim access to space to enable them to sustain familial values and offer to members of the community the opportunity of face-to-face interaction. Also they interpret their interaction with the new clients as a means of compensating for lack of social upward mobility.     

Re-examining the Transnational Nanny

This article explores whether the concept of a global care chain is useful in understanding the migration of careworkers internationally. It examines how an affective approach to understanding migration could supplement the care chain analysis by accounting for the overlapping, shifting, contingent and non-linear networks of emotion that arise during migrations. Analyzing carework through the lens of an “affective economy” is more revealing of the multiple experiences of Filipino gay and transgender caregivers in Tel Aviv and New York, Peruvian careworkers in Spain and Polish careworkers in Germany, as but three brief, illustrative examples. First I will discuss what the care chain approach can illuminate about the multiple and varied stories of migrant careworkers and how it may also essentialize or oversimplify their experiences. I will then suggest that the model naturalizes the caring, biological mother and reinforces geographical and ideological binaries such as North/South, winner/loser and domination/dependency. Finally, I will discuss how the care chain model presents a linear conception of time and space, obscuring the overlapping and multi-directional routes of migration that careworkers travel. Ultimately I will argue that an affective approach creates the theoretical language that can help build what Chela Sandoval calls a coalitional consciousness.     

“Tel Aviv Is Not Foreign to You”: Urban Incorporation Policy on Labor Migrants in Israel1

This article addresses the growing disjuncture between urban and national policies regarding the incorporation of labor migrants in Israel. Drawing on fieldwork, in‐depth interviews with Tel Aviv municipal officials, and archive analysis of Tel Aviv municipality minutes, we argue that urban migrant‐directed policy elicits new understandings of membership and participation, other than those envisaged by national parameters, which bear important, even if unintended, consequences for the de facto incorporation of non‐Jewish labor migrants. The crux of the Tel Aviv case is that its migrant‐directed policy bears especially on undocumented labor migrants, who make up approximately 16 percent of the city's population and who are the most problematic category of resident from the state's point of view. In demanding recognition for the rights of migrant workers in the name of a territorial category of “residence,” and by activating channels of participation for migrant communities, local authorities in Tel Aviv are introducing definitions of “urban membership” for noncitizens which conflict sharply with the hegemonic ethnonational policy. We suggest that the disjuncture between urban and national incorporation policies on labor migrants in Israel is part of a general process of political realignment between the urban and the national taking place within a globalized context of labor migration.     

Queering reproductive justice: Framing reproduction of gay men from a transnational perspective—Taiwan as a case

This article uses Taiwan as an example to argue that reproductive justice for gay men should be conceptualised within social, legal, and political contexts. Taiwan is the first Asian country to legalise same-sex marriage, yet the law favours heterosexual couples and denies LGBTQ+ reproductive rights. Thus, Taiwanese gay men seek third-party reproduction overseas to become parents. This article exemplifies gay men's unequal conditions from a non-Western perspective. I re-examine scholarly literature on the interlocking concepts of reproductive justice, stratified reproduction, and queer reproduction to answer what reproductive justice gay men need and how their injustice position situates within and beyond the nation-state borders. Drawing on the reproductive justice framework and studies of queer reproduction, this article proposes a transnational perspective to understand queer reproductive justice through the case that elucidates the specific context of Taiwanese gay men. This article aims to make two contributions. Firstly, it reconsiders the reproductive framework from a transnational perspective to argue that gay men's reproductive justice should be conceptualised at the intersection with other dimensions of injustice. Secondly, this article suggests that the transnational approach could be applied as a critical lens for future research in queer reproduction and reproductive justice.     

Developmentalism and the Rhetoric of Best Interests of the Child

Abstract

The foster care system in Australia has recently recognised the importance of encouraging lesbians and gay men to become foster carers. Whilst this may be seen as an important step towards overcoming social stereotypes that position lesbians and gay men as unfit parents, I propose that foster care public policy in Australia is shaped by a number of key assumptions that effectively exclude lesbian and gay foster parents. In particular, I focus on how the logic of developmentalism [where children are assumed to follow a (hetero)normative developmental pathway] and the rhetoric of best interests of the child (within which a particular moral framework is employed to judge who can and who cannot protect children) work to recenter a normative understanding of families and parenting that encourages lesbians and gay parents to adopt a heterosexual model of parenting.     

Asian Girls are Prettier: Gendered Presentations as Stigma Management among Gay Asian Men

Despite the well‐documented cases of racism toward gay Asian men in the gay community, there is currently little research on how gay Asian men manage racial stigma. In this article, I examine the racial stigma management strategies of gay Asian men. I examine the nature of gay racial stigma toward gay Asian men and find that they use gendered presentations to counter the stereotype that they are more feminine than gay white men. While some gay Asian men engender a hypermasculine presentation, others use a hyperfeminine presentation to trade a more‐stigmatized status for one that is less stigmatizing. More important, these men actively embrace stereotypes to successfully make these transitions. This article demonstrates that stigmatized groups can manage stigma by highlighting their spoiled identities rather than attempting to minimize them.     

Assessing lesbian and gay prospective foster and adoptive families: a focus on the home study process

Foster care and adoption by gay men and lesbians is not a new phenomenon. Children and youth have always been placed by states and public agencies in homes with gay and lesbian parents. Some gay men and lesbians have fostered or adopted children independently from private agencies or have made private adoption arrangements with individual birthmothers, while others have fostered or adopted through the public system. Drawing on research literature, practice wisdom from 31 years of child welfare experiences, and case examples, this article offers child welfare professionals guidelines for competent assessment with prospective foster or adoptive parents who identify as lesbian or gay.     

Moving Beyond Agency: A Review of Gender and Intimate Relationships in Conservative Religions

Studies of gender regimes within conservative religion have often focused on the dynamics of intimate relationships to separately analyze women's agency and men's authority. By bridging studies of men and women in a variety of intimate relationships, this article provides a relational analysis of how gender and religion intersect in daily life. Given the importance of marriage within conservative religions, I first review studies of married women and married men to illustrate the varied ways these institutions intersect. Next, I present findings from the limited but burgeoning scholarship on those who have not yet or cannot live up to the religious goal of heterosexual marriage: unmarried heterosexuals and gay and lesbian relationships.     

Coming out and coming back: Rural gay migration and the city

This research focuses on the complex meaning and role of the city in American and French rural gay men’s imaginary and life experience. It explores how gay men who grew up in the country build their sense of self through back-and-forth movement from rural to urban spaces. Therefore, it questions traditional gay migration studies, which have often equated gay migration and rural–urban migration, positing a unidirectional pattern. After contextualizing rural male homosexuality, this paper presents four life itineraries which highlight the central role the city has for rural gay men when exploring their same-sex desires and attractions. Based on the analysis of their life narratives, we show that for most of them, their coming out, their first same-sex experience, and coming to terms with their sexuality happens “far from home” in a city or a college town. However, this research suggests that the city has a more ambivalent role for rural gay men. While the city exists as a space of social practices where alternative sexualities can be experienced and explored, at the same time for many rural gay men the city remains substantially unattractive. In their view, the perceived “effeminizing power” of the city questions and challenges their attraction for this space. Therefore, the experience of the city becomes both liberating and disciplinary – liberating because it allows the exploration of their same-sex desires and attractions, disciplinary because it (re)presents a gay identity in which they find no resonance. Thus this research indicates that rural gay migration to the urban spaces, which is key to identity formation, includes not only departure to the city but also a necessary return to the country to maintain rural gay men’s understanding of themselves.     

A Modern Conceptualization of Sexual Prejudice for Social Work Educators

The existence of bias against gay men and lesbians presents an issue for the profession of social work since social workers are committed to working with vulnerable populations without prejudice. Public opinion polls suggest a growing complexity in heterosexuals' attitudes toward lesbians and gay men and this article explores a modern multidimensional perspective to assist social work educators to improve the educational curriculum in this area. This more complex view of social workers' attitudes toward lesbians and gay men identifies overt, as well as subtle, forms of sexual prejudice.     

Queering the Home

Abstract

In the West, the private sphere of the home is traditionally associated with the heterosexual nuclear family. Through social, cultural, and legal processes, the heterosexual bond has been constructed as central to the family home. Despite these dominant discourses, the home is also a space in which heteronormativity (or the unacknowledged assumption that heterosexuality is the natural and normal form of sexuality) may be subverted. This article considers how the domestic lives of lesbian and gay couples in England challenge the heteronormativity prevalent in dominant discourses of the home. Drawing on in-depth interviews with lesbians and gay men, the article continues to extend and build on the existing literature on queer domesticity by focusing on how lesbian and gay couples divide and understand domestic labor in their homes. The perceived normativity of coupled domesticity and childrearing means that on the one hand the lesbian and gay participants in this study could be seen to fit in with normative ideals of domestic family life. On the other hand, I show how these couples subvert heteronormative assumptions about gendered household practices through their approaches and attitudes towards domestic labor and parenting. In particular, the article focuses on the complex ways in which lesbian and gay couples destabilize traditional domestic gender roles and queer the spaces of the home through the seemingly unremarkable, mundane practices and negotiations of domestic labor and childcare.     

SUBURBAN LABOR MARKETS, URBAN LABOR MARKETS, AND GENDER INEQUALITY IN EARNINGS

This study focuses on the role of labor market location in generating gender inequality in earnings. Specifically, the article examines whether suburban versus urban labor market conditions differentially affect gender-based earnings inequality. Tel Aviv metropolitan area labor force data support the thesis that women's tendency to settle for jobs in the vicinity of home is an exchange between economic opportunities and convenience, to avoid conflict with traditional roles. The cost of staying in the suburban labor market is greater for women than men, and suburban exceeds urban labor market gender-linked economic discrimination.     

Men in the valley: gay male life on the suburban-rural fringe

This study examines the geography of the population of gay men located in the Connecticut River Valley area of Massachusetts where, by the 1990s, a significant minority lived on the metropolitan edge and in rural towns. Previous research has focused on the rich social life of urban gay men or on the isolation of those in rural areas. In contrast, in this study, interview data indicated that many gay men have created a way of life that was gay, non-urban and home centered, with gay men integrated into the larger community. Interviewees described their lives in the region as being positively affected by a level of tolerance, if not complete acceptance, more often associated with large urban centers.Gay men's attitudes toward the relatively large and public lesbian population in the region were complicated. The legacy of lesbian separatism from the 1970s and early 1980s caused some division, and there had been some resentment on the part of gay men in being the less visible and powerful part of the gay and lesbian population. However, in the Valley lesbians had done much of the hard work of increasing acceptance of lesbian and gay people, and recently gay men and lesbians have collaborated on significant projects. Overall, a gay male culture has formed at relatively low densities indicating both the diversity of rural areas and the de-linking of gay social networks from urban cores and the presence of self-conscious diversity in rural areas.

We don’t have a neighborhood we all live in and one or two bars that we all go to, or everybody flocks to a certain bar on Sundays at 3 o’clock, or another bar on Saturdays at 11 o’clock, or you’ll find us at this restaurant and that restaurant and this restaurant, only. But because we’re everywhere in the area, we sit in parking commission, we haul garbage, and we treat the sick and we teach schools, and we are police officers, and we are administrators, and we are clerical staff, and whatever. … I think we’re ahead of the curve in that way in that we’re very strong and … for the most part we are so comfortable with it that we don’t need to ghettoize ourselves. And yet we want to be around each other, and so volleyball's very popular. Potlucks are very popular. You know there's still a need for an opportunity for us to meet each other, but our day to day lives are lived in the larger community, and are involved in the larger running of our towns, and I think that's ahead of the curve for the larger general gay population. (Paul, age 35, human resources specialist, partnered, white, non-native, upper Valley resident, homeowner)

“What About the Rest of Us?” An Overview of LGBT Poverty Issues and a Call to Action

In this article, I argue that, despite the myth of gay affluence, existing research is conclusive enough to claim that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) adults are overall less financially secure than their heterosexual, cisgendered counterparts. I demonstrate that LGBT poverty is a broad social issue that can no longer be viewed as affecting only specific subpopulations of LGBT communities. I argue that the social work profession and the LGBT movement need to recognize LGBT poverty as a social issue. I then present a call to action for social work practitioners, researchers and LGBT organizations.     

Exploring Queer Consciousness Among Social Workers

The purpose of this study is to examine the attitudes of MSW practitioners toward lesbians and gay men using a recently developed instrument. Whereas prior research focused on blatantly homophobic or heterosexist attitudes, this research uses a measurement tool based on the concept of queer consciousness (QC) and measures subtle forms of prejudice, including both positive and negative attitudes along four dimensions: Value gay and lesbian progress/diversity, resist traditional sex and gender roles, positive beliefs about lesbians, and positive beliefs about gay men. Research findings indicate negative attitudes toward lesbians and gay men in three out of the four dimensions for the sample of social work practitioners. This article concludes with suggestions for social work educators who want to redress areas of subtle prejudice and promote higher levels of QC.     

HIV Risk Behavior in Gay Men with Unstable Self-Esteem

This article describes a model of interpersonal factors that may help to explain why some gay men have difficulty in adopting or maintaining safer sex habits. These men may have self-esteem that is unstable. The condition of self-esteem fragility is likely to lead to deficits in the experience of intimacy and social support, and to feelings of loneliness, among these men. When they use avoidant Coping to deal with the stress associated with such experiences, these men may engage in unsafe sex. The article considers implications of this model for HIV prevention efforts, counseling, and research. Prevention must stress the importance of gay men's identification and involvement with a gay/lesbian community.     

Cross‐border,cross‐ethnic,and transnational networks of a trapped minority: Israeli Arab citizens in Tel Aviv‐Jaffa

In this article, I provide a framework for studying the transnational networks of minority members as a political phenomenon. I make two claims. First, it is necessary to take into account the state and its capacity to limit transnational networks if one is to capture, analytically, the full range of such networks. Second, it is important to extend the theoretical framework of transnationalism to include populations other than migrants and to account for networks established by national minority members whose loyalty to the state can be challanged. I offer a typology of networks organized along two major axes – the state in‐border–cross‐border axis and the ethnic or religious identity axis. These two axes yield different types of in‐border and cross‐border, intranational and transnational networks. I base these claims on an analysis of four case studies of cross‐border and cross‐ethnic networks maintained by Israeli Palestinian citizens in Tel Aviv‐Jaffa.     

Stress and Safety for Gay Men at Work Within Masculinized Industries

Lesbians and gay men still have concerns related to being openly gay at work and maintaining health and wellness. A gay man working within a masculinized industry (historically male-dominated and higher risk, with an emphasis on authority and masculinity) may have additional concerns that are augmented by the nature of his work and related to maintaining safety and reducing stress experienced on the job. The purpose of this article is to examine some of the safety and stress concerns gay men in these industries may face. Fictional, composite cases—derived from relevant news stories and literature published in academic journals—were analyzed through a guided inquiry process based loosely on Riessman's (1993) narrative evaluation. Discussion and implications focus on policies, practices, and future directions for research that may help to ameliorate some of the issues faced by gay men at work within masculinized industries.