The careful balance of gender and sexuality: rural gay men, the heterosexual matrix, and "effeminophobia"

Based on life narratives, this article explores rural gay men's subjectivity in France and the United States. After growing up in rural cultures, these gay men tend to adopt similar hetero-centered ideas about masculinity. We show that these "conventional" ideas impact their sense of self as they express feelings of "effeminophobia." They differentiate themselves from effeminate gay men and emphasize their similarities with straight men. These ideas are both coercive and disciplinary as they homogenize rural gay men's discourse and masculine identities.     

At the Intersection of Church and Gay: A Review of the Psychological Research on Gay and Lesbian Christians

While the psychological research literature on gay and lesbian Christians is rich and continually expanding, it is also quite fragmented—consisting mainly of studies with small sample sizes that focus narrowly on specific subgroups within the phenomena. Furthermore, the recent research and theories assessing and underlying the integration of these two identities have never been presented in one cohesive review. Therefore, working within a new theoretical paradigm that views gays and lesbians as spiritual and religious beings in and of themselves, the purpose of this article is threefold: 1) to integrate a fractured body of literature on gay and lesbian Christians; 2) to review and critique relevant psychological theories currently in use in this area; and 3) to introduce to the field the relevant theoretical concepts of integration as process and empowerment to better outline comprehensive pathways for future research on not just the lives of gay and lesbian Christians, but of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender people of faith.     

Forgive Me Father for I Have Sinned: The Role of a Christian Upbringing on Lesbian,Gay, and Bisexual Identity Development

This study (n = 84) examined the extent to which a Christian upbringing may inhibit same-sex attracted individuals from accepting a lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) identity. No significant differences were found between current and former Christians' positive or negative gay identities. Participants who had left Christianity were more liberal and viewed God as hostile. Participants' “outness” as LGB to their primary network was associated with a greater positive and lesser negative gay identity. Participants' LGB network size was not related to either their positive or negative gay identifications. Finally, the participants' sexual histories were not related to their negative identities, but were related to their positive identities.     

“Not Hiding,Not Shouting,Just Me”: Gay Men Negotiate Their Visual Identities

This study explored how British gay men make sense of their appearance and clothing practices and the pressures and concerns they attend to in discursively negotiating their visual identities. A convenience sample of 20 mostly young, White, and middle-class self-identified gay men responded to a qualitative survey on dress and appearance. The participants clearly understood the rules of compulsory heterosexuality and the risks of looking “too gay.” In the data, there was both a strong resistance to the notion of gay as a “master status” and an orientation to the “coming out” imperative in gay communities. The analysis revealed the overriding importance of discourses of authentic individuality for making sense of visual identity and the reported cultivation of appearance and clothing practices that communicate the message that: “I’m not hiding (too closeted), I’m not shouting (too gay), I’m just me (an authentic individual who just happens to be gay).”     

What Aspects of Society Matter for the Quality of Life of a Minority? Global Evidence from the New Gay Happiness Index

There is great variation in views on and treatment of minorities such as gay men across the world. We are the first to pinpoint what features of societies are beneficial to gay men’s quality of life by using a unique new cross-country dataset covering 110 countries, the Gay Happiness Index. It covers how gays perceive public opinion about them, how they experience behavior towards them and how satisfied they are with their lives. Our study is based on the premise that it is important to look at minority-specific effects of policies and institutions and not solely at the effects for the average citizen, as well as the transmission mechanisms through which policies and institutions affect life satisfaction. We find that factors such as equal legal rights for gay people, GDP per capita, democracy and globalization relate positively to the quality of life of gay men, primarily by shaping public opinion and behavior in a pro-gay direction. Religion (the shares of Muslims and Orthodox Christians) and living in a post-communist country tend to relate negatively to our quality of life indicators. Most of these factors have been shown to matter for the well-being of people in general as well, which may be taken to suggest that gay people benefit from being included in society—legally, socially and economically—on the same terms as others.     

Getting out in the "real world": young men, queer and theories of gay community

A recent opinion piece published in the Sydney Morning Herald expresses a widely held perception that, among young same-sex attracted men in Australia, "queer" has well and truly supplanted "gay" as the language and lens through which self and practice is generated. In this article, I discuss findings from a qualitative research project that studied notions of community among young gay men, and argue that this assumption should not be taken for granted. The article explores participants' understandings of the concept of "gay community," arguing that the young men studied share a common definition of community: one based on a conventional liberal model which prioritizes sameness and the cooperation of individuals to achieve common goals. This is of particular importance in that problems around "fitting in" with these understandings are also raised. In examining the potential place for queer alternatives to these formulations, however, the article finds that queer attracts little support among participants, raising questions about the bind young men may find themselves in if they prioritize sameness as fundamental to community, yet feel themselves to be excluded from community by their own or others' perceived difference.     

Balancing acts: drag queens, gender and faith

While engaged in research on the same-sex marriage debate in mainline denominations, I interviewed 23 LGBT Christians, four of whom were drag queens. While it is not possible to generalize from such a small sample, the drag queens in this study insist on maintaining their identity as Christians despite the hegemonic discourse that renders faith and LGBT identities mutually exclusive. They developed innovative approaches to reconciling their gender and sexual identities with their spirituality. Their innovations are potentially liberating not just for them personally, but for LGBT people generally because they challenge Christianity's rigid dichotomies of gender and sexuality.     

The case of "riding bareback": sexual practices and the paradoxes of identity in the era of AIDS

Barebacking, the deliberate practice of unprotected anal intercourse, is a new reality for many gay men. How does bareback sex create, maintain, and challenge personal and collective gay identities? Drawing from the works of Foucault, Weeks, Epstein, and popular gay literature, this essay explores these intersections and conflicts. Specifically, we examine the nature of identity and the conflicts and divisions in gay communities, analyze the barebacking phenomenon and its interconnection with the paradoxes of identity, and conclude by discussing the implications for HIV/AIDS education, suggestions for future research, and ways of engaging in community dialogue.     

"Josh wears pink cleats": inclusive masculinity on the soccer field

In this ethnographic research of a college-based soccer team at a large liberal college in Northeast America, I document the existence of more inclusive versions of masculinity that contrast conventional understandings of male teamsport athletes. Using participant observation and 21 in-depth interviews, I show that these men demonstrate metrosexual and inclusive behaviors and attitudes. The styles of masculinity these men enact are more relaxed, liberal, and inclusive; they are well styled, well groomed, gay friendly, and they are emotionally and physically close to other men. They are far removed from the traditional orthodox sporting masculinities of previous generations. Symbolizing their difference, their gendered expressions also extend to the wearing of pink soccer boots (cleats), without homophobic judgment from teammates. I discuss the wearing of pink cleats as a symbolic sociological moment, revealing the changing nature of masculinities among this group of college-based soccer players.     

Is It Facebook Official? Coming Out and Passing Strategies of Young Adult Gay Men on Social Media

The rapid proliferation of social media, mobile applications, and Internet technologies has shifted a wide variety of social interaction from physical spaces to an online environment. Drawing from 42 semistructured, in-depth interviews with gay college-aged men between the ages of 18 and 27, this article explores these changing patterns of social interaction among gay men. I discuss three strategies of identity management college-aged gay men use to disclose or conceal their sexual identity to others. The first group of men, “Out and Proud,” uses Facebook as a way to celebrate and reaffirm their sexual identity, in addition to actively coming out to others on the social media Web site. The second group, “Out and Discreet,” uses Facebook to indirectly come out to some of their friends while hiding this information from others. The men in the last group I identify, “Facebook Closeted,” actively manage their online profiles to ensure their sexual identity is not exposed. Facebook is both transformative and risky for college-aged gay men, as it represents a new platform for them to come out as gay to friends and family, as well as other areas of their lives where they must actively manage the presentation of their sexual identity.     

Interpersonal contact experiences with gay men: a qualitative investigation of "fag hags" and gay-supportive heterosexual men

The purpose of this investigation was to understand how "fag hags" and gay-supportive heterosexual men (GSHM) describe the nature and quality of their interpersonal contact experiences with gay men. Eight archival interviews were analyzed using the methodologies outlined in Hill, Thompson, and Williams (1997); i.e., consensual qualitative research. The results yielded suggest that the nature of contact experiences relates to direct contact with gay men in institutional or social settings or via indirect, formative experiences. The possible roles that contact plays in attitudes formation include: (1) normalizing homosexuality, (2) challenging previously held myths and stereotypes, and (3) increasing a person's likelihood of having contact experiences with gay men and developing gay-supportive attitudes. Participants described the quality of the contact as taking place in the context of a friendship that developed between them and a gay male that strengthened after the gay friend came out. Furthermore, the impact of these contact experiences did not change fag hags' sense of morality, but "improved" their attitudes toward gay men. The results from this study have broader social implications in that they contribute to the much-needed discourse, from a qualitative perspective, on the ways in which people form gay-supportive attitudes. Future research should focus on describing the transformational nature of contact between gay men and heterosexuals in order to uncover any processes or stages that heterosexuals go through in developing gay-supportive attitudes.     

Part 2: Fear of contagion, fear of intimacy

In this second part of the trilogy, I review the concepts of panic, the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, and how internally inconsistent opinions and attitudes can be made consistent (or consonant). The theory explains, in some measure, how AIDS has been socialized into our thinking about identity, and goes beyond a medical condition. The pervasive identification of gay men with HIV and AIDS has resulted for many in an over-identification with fears of contagion and on a societal level in a fear of all gays as pools of contagion. The conversion of dissonance to consonance has taken many forms; within the gay community it has resulted in the rejection of the "100% safe-100% of the time" safe-sex message, and the adoption (for many) of a new form of deviant label-someone who is not in conformity with the social norm of gay community sexual behavior. However, we shall see that this so-called norm is a sham-that many gay men do not, as a rule, practice safe(r) sex on a consistent basis. This information indicates that the educational efforts of the last decade have at best lost their potency, and at worst were less than efficacious to begin with. The dissonant messages have also informed both the construction of the gay community and its interpretation of what it means to be gay. The result has been a tri-lateral perception of HIV and AIDS as either a medical, political or a social phenomenon. This fragmented understanding has exacerbated the already polarized ASOs and GSOs in that each has determined its ideology based on a particular interpretation of HIV and AIDS. This polarization has been operationalized by the GSOs and ASOs primarily in the manner by which they define their target markets, and more importantly, in the manner by which they exclude certain gays from participation. At the extreme, some gay men feel entirely left out of the community, and are consequently unable to convert their dissonance regarding being gay into consonance, if only by developing some associational ties with the community. The central question of the sustainability of the gay movement is thus partly answered by restating the nature of the fractures in the community. Kiesler's determinants regarding change relate directly to the sustainability question-can GSOs and ASOs, given their pluralistic ideologies and constituencies, break free of the constraints that are posed by these determinants? Would the adherents and conscious constituents defect from their organizations, and form new ones (thus reifying the fractures that already exist)? On the other hand, is there a sense of community and identity that will function as a bonding agent to encourage coalition building and social reorganization? The matter may turn on the issue of selective rewards: can a coalition of ASOs and GSOs provide staff, volunteers and clients sufficient motivation for making the inevitable compromises? Given the selective nature of the rewards, as they now stand, the probability of being able to so do is remote. The influence of the non-gay community, as well as the attitudes and beliefs of the majority of gays who do not belong to any gay organizations, hampers success.     

Neoliberal homophobic discourse: heteronormative human capital and the exclusion of queer citizens

In this article, I examine the relationship between homophobic language use and its broader social context, focusing on how a U.S.-based, conservative Christian organization's institutionalized homophobic text-making practices seek to derive legitimacy from the broader political economic discourses associated with the neoliberal moment. Using the Family Research Council's statement on marriage and the family as the basis for analysis, I demonstrate how the organization seeks to represent lesbian and gay subjects and their kinship formations as a threat to human capital development because they are based on affectional relationships that neither reflect nor respond to the kinds of self-governance and marketization that neoliberalism requires of all citizen-subjects and their families. Linguistic strategies for creating such representations include lexical choices that avoid overtly identifying lesbian and gay subjects as the object of discussion, the creation of a taxonomy for what constitutes "proper" families-based on neoliberal principles--that implicitly excludes lesbian and gay kinship formations, and the use of neoliberal discourses of self-governance and marketization as the basis for that exclusion.     

"Asian" men on the scene: challenges to "gay communities"

This article examines common assumptions behind the notion of "gay community," contrasting these views with the experiences of homosexual men originating from Southeast Asia on the commercial gay scene in Melbourne, Australia. The narratives here reveal fragmented social networks involving various social groups, categories of people and an "In/Out" culture where informants were culturally marginal. Fitting into the scene culture involves processes of assimilation, and loss of connection even with supportive ethnic networks. While all men who look for a place to belong on the scene generally feel pressure to assimilate to a predominantly white middle-class gay culture, Southeast Asian men generally had more cultural distance to cover. Men who are not well assimilated face exclusion, invisibility and discrimination. Differences and discrimination within Southeast Asian based networks also contributed towards fragmented relations. This article raises questions about dominant gay cultural forms, assumptions of gay solidarity, and how ethnic minority men make sense of and negotiate their sexual and social experiences.     

From Navigation to Negotiation: An Examination of the Lived Experiences of Black Gay Male Alumni of Historically Black Colleges and Universities

This research presents an examination of Black gay men and their lived experiences while undergraduates at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Based on 10 in-depth interviews with self-identified Black gay men, the author presents four emergent themes, which reveal the complex ways in which Black gay men navigate and negotiate the intersections of their multiple identities as related to race, sexual orientation, and gender at HBCUs. The findings of this research have implications for larger discussions of community, Black masculinity, and gay identity in predominantly Black and non-Black contexts.     

Alcoholism and non-acceptance of gay self: the critical link

As part of a larger research project designed to generate grounded theory on the nature of gay sobriety, this study was designed to explore the etiology of alcoholism among gay American men and how etiology is related to gay bars or non-acceptance of gay self or both. In-depth interviews were conducted in Seattle, Iowa City, Chicago, and Oklahoma City with 20 gay recovering alcoholic men, each of whom had at least one year of sobriety. It was found that: (a) Gay bars were totally unrelated to the etiology in any of the informants, yet most thought that this gay bar ethnotheory could explain why there was a high incidence of alcoholism in the gay community; (b) none of the men saw being gay as a positive thing before sobriety, yet many didn't realize their non-acceptance until after sobriety was chosen; (c) accepting being gay as a positive aspect of self occurred only after sobriety was chosen and lived; and (d) not accepting being gay as a positive thing may therefore explain the etiology and thus the high incidence of alcoholism among gay American men.     

Part 1: HIV as'the line in the sand'

There is a growing rift between HIV-positive and HIV-negative gay men, which finds expression in social, economic, structural and political divisiveness that, if not resolved, may 'kill' the "gay liberation movement." While disasters generally tend to create organizational solidarity, the AIDS crisis has operated in reverse, spawning a variety of competitive AIDS service organizations, alienating seropositive gays from the mainstream gay community, and in turn disenfranchising seronegative gay men as human and financial resources are redirected toward persons living with HIV and AIDS. Serostatus has become a social marker of societal status, operating in a bimodal discriminatory manner. Seronegative gay men experience discrimination from within the gay community as funding for and services to this sector diminish. Seropositive gay men (and the organizations that provide for some of their needs) have culturally, economically and socially dismissed the socio/psychological needs of seronegative gay men (survivor guilt, safer sex education, etc.) in favour of providing social and resource-based services to seropositive gay men. As the disparities in service and advocacy increase, the social distance between the gay movement and the AIDS movement correspondingly increases. If this trend continues, the social gap will serve further to push HIV-positive and HIV-negative gay men into polarized camps, resulting in a wider separation of the gay movement and the AIDS movement. The stigmatization of HIV-positive people will subsequently increase both within and outside the gay movement, and any ability to present a unified Gay Liberation front will correspondingly diminish. Additionally, the emergent notion within and without the gay communities that to be gay is to be HIV-positive will solidify. This will (a) further stigmatize all gay men in the eyes of the non-gay population, and (b) exacerbate the rift between HIV-positive and HIV-negative gay men within the gay community, reversing the stigma of HIV such that to be HIV-negative will be a marker of non-gay identity. In short, seropositivity will become the defining element of gayness.     

"He's a big old girl!" Negotiation by gender inversion in gay men's speech

On the basis of participant observation in the gay communities of San Francisco, Paris and Oslo, this article charts a pattern of gender inversion in the negotiation of identities and social relations that can be related to an international gay culture. The use of gender inversion in gay men's speech is seen as evidence of the discursive construction of specific generic identities whose capacity to carry meaning is dependent on conventional categories of gender.     

Part 3: A community divided

The task of those who seek to encourage and offer social support has become more difficult as the majority of social institutions, and the state have established, over time, stronger and more pervasive modes of communication. The intricacies of gay identity have been articulated largely by forces outside of the gay movement, with the inevitable result that GSOs and ASOs have occupied less space in the consciousness of gay men. Additionally, I hypothesize that men who are HIV-positive are engaging in fewer sexual contacts than men who are HIV-negative, and consequently lessening their attendance at venues where cruising is the main event. Financially and structurally, I shall demonstrate the disparity between GSOs and ASOs, and suggest that there is a natural intersection wherein the two SMOs could, and ought to cooperate, especially in the areas of fund-raising, joint program development, recruitment and political lobbying. However, their ideological bases appear to be sufficiently different to preclude such affiliations. These disparate ideologies are amplified by the mass media, and are consequently internalized by the members of the gay community. In the longer term, the divisiveness that manifests itself in the proliferation of numerous collectivities within the gay movement will contribute to the further isolation of gays from each other, and thwart any future attempts at coalition building, which could obviate the continued existence of a gay movement. Some writers suggest that the gay movement is going through a phase in an inevitable process of paradigm shifting, and in the end, the community will come back together-stronger and more unified than it was previously. However, if this is a phase it is clear that the gay movement is in the 'dark before the dawn' initial phase of this paradigmatic shift, and subsequent phases are by no means guaranteed. As AIDS spreads beyond marginalized groups, and infiltrates the social majority, it is possible that much of the discrimination that has positioned gay men as 'other' will be abandoned in favour of a more enlightened, pluralistic conviction of the humanity of gays as full-fledged members of a mosaic-type community structure. On the other hand, it is also possible that as AIDS spreads into mainstream Western communities, gays will be further vilified and scapegoated as the perpetrators of this deadly disease. Preventative action is required to offset this possibility-preventative action can be affected by building a strong and unified gay community ready to withstand the onslaught of the mainstream enmity. This action would frame AIDS and gayness such that this type of situation would not come about. What is required is a new mode of co-operation among ASOs and GSOs, a model which firstly puts the gay house in order, and is then suitably structured to be more inclusive of all gay men's needs, and positioned to assist in the second wave of HIV infection-the general public.     

Heterosexual Attitudes Toward Same-Sex Marriage

Negative attitudes of heterosexual people toward same-sex marriage relate to the degree to which they are homophobic. However, it has been understudied whether there exists a gender difference in this association. Our results indicated that homophobia was the best predictor of attitudes toward gay male and lesbian marriage, and this was equally true for both heterosexual men and women. However, the attitudinal difference between gay male and lesbian marriage was related to homophobia in men but not in women. That is, for men only, being less homophobic toward lesbians than toward gay men was associated with favoring lesbian over gay men marriage. Considering these results, the role of gender in attitudes toward same-sex marriage seems to be as an important moderator of homophobia.