Complicating the Coming Out Narrative: Becoming Oneself in a Heterosexist and Cissexist World

Traditional stage models of LGBTQ identity development have conceptualized coming out as a linear process from “closeted” to “out” that all queer/trans individuals must follow if they are to be considered healthy and well adjusted. These stage models have been critiqued for their rigidity and absence of a dynamic understanding of the coming out process. In this article we explore the findings from a qualitative photovoice study with 15 LGBTQ youths in a small urban center in Ontario that supports these critiques. We explore the efficacy of the photovoice technique in investigating questions of sexual and gender identity. This article identifies some contextual factors that are important in understanding coming out as a social (rather than internal) process; it also identifies some of the ways in which these youths’ experiences challenge normative understandings of the “good, out queer.”     

Rural Men,Sexual Identity and Community

The relationship between rurality and men's sexuality remain relatively unexplored. This study addresses the knowledge gap in the research literature by focusing on men who have sex with men in rural areas across Ontario, Canada. Employing a constructivist grounded theory methodology, interviews were conducted with 32 men across 28 geographic locales consisting of populations of less than 10,000 people. Men identified as gay, bisexual, queer/bisexual, or refused labels. These self-selected identifiers were then explored to determine how participants conceptualized and organized their sexual identities in relation to context. Participants held divergent management strategies that resulted in two general identity grouping: “natives” and “transplanters.”     

LGBQ-Specific Elderly Housing as a “Sparkling Sanctuary”: Boundary Work on LGBQ Identity and Community in Relationship to Potential LGBQ-Specific Elderly Housing in Sweden

This study explored how boundaries in relationship to community and identity were created and negotiated among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) people within the framework of picturing LGBQ-specific elderly housing as a housing alternative in older age, by applying focus group methodology. “An island as a sparkling sanctuary” was identified as a metaphor for how symbolic resources defining the LGBQ community can be manifested in LGBQ-specific qualities of elderly housing. The boundary work underlying this manifestation included elaborations on the dilemma between exclusiveness and normality. The findings illustrate further how symbolic resources and collective identities were developed through dialectic interplay between internal and external definitions. Further, the findings show how boundary work generated shared feelings of similarity and group membership. The associated symbolic and social resources not only served to deal with difficult situations but also to manifest LGBQ identity and sense of community as a “gold medal.”     

Truth or Dare

The performative identities of both Black and queer characters in film have been noted by academics in “Black queer diasporic theory” (Rinaldo Walcott) and artists such as Cheryl Dunye and Isaac Julien, with particular focus on the ways in which these identities have been constructed from both within and outside of their respective communities. Australian Indigenous and lesbian filmmaker Sonja Dare took the discourse one step further, however, in her 2007 release Destiny in Alice, a twenty-seven-minute mockumentary film which parodies a David Attenborough-style search for the rare “desert lesbian” of Alice Springs in Australia's outback. Her film actively pursues the intersection of cultural and sexual expressiveness and suppression, interrogates notions of belonging and exclusion within these communities, and challenges marginalisations of all subaltern identities in the evolving criticality of performing race, sex and gender in modernity.     

Embracing the “And”: Between Queer and Bisexual Theory at Brighton BiFest

Questions of bi identities can be invisibilized and overlooked by queer theorizing and LGBT studies. This article explores the ways in which complex performances of bisexuality can simultaneously encompass and deconstructively critique bi identity in a manner that embraces the “and” between bi and queer, offering important insights into how bi is lived, contested, and reaffirmed. Drawing on the BiCon and BiFest events in the UK, we argue that both the materialities (and supposed fixities) of bi erasures and exclusions and the fluidities that trouble the heterosexual/homosexual divides offer key insights into the spatial and temporal fixing and unfixing of identities.     

Walt Whitman,Our Great Gay Poet?

ABSTRACT

This article surveys the critical debates around Walt Whitman's “Calamus” cluster, arguing that a “queer” reading of Whitman—one that does not see him as, for example, a closeted homosexual who censored his work for fear of being “outed”—is both historically accurate and politically efficacious. While previous efforts to reclaim Whitman as “our great gay poet” are understandable—particularly given critical readings of Whitman that denied the homoeroticism of his poems—today, a reading of Whitman as homosexual threatens to simplify our understanding of the history of homosexuality and to blunt the power of Whitman's poetry to continue to “queer” normative understandings of sex and gender identity categories and their relationship to politics.     

“I’m Not like That,So Am I Gay?” The Use of Queer-Spectrum Identity Labels Among Minor-Attracted People

ABSTRACT

Largely based on an erroneous belief that individuals who are preferentially attracted to minors are necessarily sex offenders, queer communities have distanced themselves from this population over the past several decades. There are now those who object to the use of labels such as “gay” and “queer” by minor-attracted people (MAPs), raising the question, “to whom do queer-spectrum identity labels belong?” I engage with this question using data from my research with 42 MAPs, exploring their uses of queer-spectrum identity labels and the conflicts they have encountered regarding their use of these terms. I then discuss the potential consequences of accepting the use of these labels by MAPs.     

Predator,Pet Lesbian,or Just The Nanny? LGBTQ Parents of Children With Disabilities Describe Categorization

How are lesbian/gay/bisexual/trans/queer (LGBTQ) parents of children with disabilities categorized by service providers, and how do parents anticipate, interpret, and respond to such categorizations? This intersectional study investigated the experiences of LGBTQ parents of children with disabilities with service providers in Toronto, Canada. Parents described pressures to “fit” into providers’ limited understanding of family. Some parents described facing overt discrimination, including one parent who was seen as a possible sexual predator. Some described being perceived as representatives of “diversity” for organizations, or “pet lesbians” in the words of one couple. Others described being misread as a non-parent, as in “just the nanny,” particularly in conjunction with their racial minority status. Parents described how their experiences of being “outside the mainstream” helped them challenge systems and normative beliefs. Findings suggest that a context of scarce disability resources shapes parents’ experiences of how LGBTQ identity comes to matter.     

Queering Poetics: The Impact of Poetry on LGBT+ Identity in Singaporean Adolescents

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study explores identity formation in LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents, and how reading, writing, and listening to poetry shapes Singaporean adolescents’ social identities as queer people. Analyzing in-depth interviews with nine LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents, four themes were found: (1) LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents interested in poetry believe that reading, writing, and/or listening to poetry has been an integral part of constructing their queer identities; (2) the poems that have impacted LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents’ queer identities the most have been informed by queer sociocultural values; (3) poetry provides validation to LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents that their identities are real and that others before them have experienced the same challenges they are going through; and (4) poetry serves as a third space for LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents to safely construct their growing queer identities. Implications for teachers, counselors, and adult supporters of queer Singaporean adolescents are discussed, and recommendations for future research are provided.     

Lesbian brides: post-queer popular culture

The last decade has witnessed a proliferation of lesbian representations in European and North American popular culture, particularly within television drama and broader celebrity culture. The abundance of “positive” and “ordinary” representations of lesbians is widely celebrated as signifying progress in queer struggles for social equality. Yet, as this article details, the terms of the visibility extended to lesbians within popular culture often affirm ideals of hetero-patriarchal, white femininity. Focusing on the visual and narrative registers within which lesbian romances are mediated within television drama, this article examines the emergence of what we describe as “the lesbian normal.” Tracking the ways in which the lesbian normal is anchored in a longer history of “the normal gay,” it argues that the lesbian normal is indicative of the emergence of a broader post-feminist and post-queer popular culture, in which feminist and queer struggles are imagined as completed and belonging to the past. Post-queer popular culture is depoliticising in its effects, diminishing the critical potential of feminist and queer politics, and silencing the actually existing conditions of inequality, prejudice, and stigma that continue to shape lesbian lives.     

Destroying False Images of God: The Experiences of LGBT Catholics

This article is about how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (LGBT) Catholics imagine God and how images of God change in parallel with their self-image. The study is based on qualitative research with LGBT Catholics, most of whom are members of Drachma LGBTI in Malta or Ali d’Aquila in Palermo, Sicily. LGBT Catholics’ image of God changes as they struggle to reconcile their religious and sexual identities and as they go through a process of “conversion” from deviants and sinners to loved children of God. One study participant compares his faith in God to peeling an onion: “With every layer one peels off, one destroys false images of God.” Most study participants have moved away from the image of God as a bearded old man and father of creation and moved more toward a conception of God as love once identity conflicts are resolved.     

LGBTQ+ Young Adults on the Street and on Campus: Identity as a Product of Social Context

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and other sexual and gender minority (LGBTQ+) young adults face unique identity-related experiences based on their immersion in distinctive social contexts. The predominant framework of performing separate analyses on samples of LGBTQ+ young people by their primary social status obfuscates more holistic understandings of the role of social context. Using 46 in-depth interviews with LGBTQ+ college students and LGBTQ+ homeless young adults, we ask: How are LGBTQ+ young adults’ capacities for “doing” their gender and sexual identities shaped by their distinctive social contexts? In developing their identities, both groups of LGBTQ+ young adults navigated their social environments to seek out resources and support. Most college students described their educational contexts as conducive to helping them develop their identities, or “undo” rigid norms of gender and sexuality. Homeless young adults’ social environments, meanwhile, imposed complex barriers to self-expression that reinforced more normative expectations of “doing” gender and sexual identities.     

Poor Queer Studies: Class,Race, and the Field

ABSTRACT

This study asks, What are the material conditions under which queer studies is done in the academy? It finds a longstanding association of queer studies with the well-resourced, selective colleges and flagship campuses that are the drivers of class and race stratification in higher education in the U.S. That is, the field of queer studies, as a recognizable academic formation, has been structured by the material and intellectual resources of precisely those institutions that most steadfastly refuse to adequately serve poor and minority students, including poor and minority queer students. In response, “poor queer studies” calls for a critical reorientation of queer studies toward working-poor schools, students, theories, and pedagogies. Taking the College of Staten Island, CUNY as a case study, it argues for structural crossing over or “queer-class ferrying” between high-status institutions that have so brilliantly dominated queer studies’ history and low-status worksites of poor queer studies.     

Space,Agency, and the Transfiguring of Lesbian/Queer Desire

In this study, the author uses ethnographic and interview data from Pussy Palace, a lesbian/queer bathhouse in Toronto, Canada, to examine the ways in which the bathhouse space impacted participants' sexuality, behaviors, and notions of self. The Toronto Women's Bathhouse Committee (TWBC), an explicitly feminist and queer organization, is responsible for putting on Pussy Palace events and in creating an atmosphere that is simultaneously sexual and safe. Findings indicate elements of both spatial praxis and sexual agency, wherein individuals expressed being able to “take risks,” “find their sexuality,” and “discover who they are” in a safe space, where nonnormative bodies and sexualities are to be celebrated. Although participants expressed feeling “liberated,” many also described feeling anxious, awkward, and insecure. Within a sexual space where bodies are exposed and highly salient, these anxieties worked to inhibit and curtail bodily expression. The author concludes by discussing the significance of spaces like Pussy Palace for lesbian/queer individuals when it comes to sexual expression and the need for further research when it comes to examining lesbian/queer sexualities and public sexual cultures.     

Coming In: Queer Narratives of Sexual Self-Discovery

Many models of queer sexuality continue to depict a linear narrative of sexual development, beginning in repression/concealment and eventuating in coming out. The present study sought to challenge this by engaging in a hermeneutically informed thematic analysis of interviews with eight queer people living in Western Australia. Four themes were identified: “searching for identity,” “society, stigma, and self,” “sexual self-discovery,” and “coming in.” Interviewees discussed internalized homophobia and its impact on their life; experiences and implications of finding a community and achieving a sense of belonging; the concept of sexual self-discovery being a lifelong process; and sexuality as fluid, dynamic, and situational rather than static. The article concludes by suggesting that the idea of “coming in”—arriving at a place of acceptance of one’s sexuality, regardless of its fluidity or how it is viewed by society—offers considerable analytic leverage for understanding the journeys of sexual self-discovery of queer-identified people.     

Patriarchy,Power, and Female Masculinity

ABSTRACT

This article examines the place of “butch” within the women's movement. The political potentials of butch in both her refusal of patriarchal constructs of femininity and her transmutation of masculinity will be explored. It will be argued that the butch lesbian threatens male power by severing the naturalized connection between masculinity and male bodies, by causing masculinity to appear “queer,” and by usurping men's roles. However, for “butch” to truly have feminist potential, it also needs to be accompanied by a feminist awareness and a rejection of aspects of masculinity that are oppressive to women. Hence, “butch feminist” need not be an oxymoron, but a strategy for challenging male domination and power.     

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.     

Debating LGBT Workplace Protections in the Bible Belt: Social Identities in Legislative and Media Discourse

ABSTRACT

This article reports a case study of the legislative and media discourse surrounding the addition of sexual orientation and gender identity language to the employment nondiscrimination ordinance of a city in the heart of the Bible Belt. The purpose of the study is to uncover how different identities were constructed and contested at city council meetings and in the news media on the way to passing legal protection for LGBT city employees in a region that is often characterized by anti-gay prejudice. This debate over the nondiscrimination ordinance centered on the question of whether LGBT identities are equivalent to identity categories based on race, gender, or religious belief, and it was shaped by various intergroup communication dynamics, specifically between members of the LGBT minority and the straight majority, between LGBT and Christian identities, and between “true” and “false” Christian identities.     

Mapping Queer Bioethics: Space,Place, and Locality

ABSTRACT

This article, which introduces the special issue of the Journal of Homosexuality on “Mapping Queer Bioethics,” begins by offering an overview of the analytical scope of the issue. Specifically, the first half of this essay raises critical questions central to the concept of a space-related queer bioethics, such as: How do we appreciate and understand the special needs of queer parties given the constraints of location, space, and geography? The second half of this article describes each feature article in the issue, as well as the subsequent special sections on the ethics of reading literal, health-related maps (“Cartographies”) and scrutinizing the history of this journal as concerns LGBT health (“Mapping the Journal of Homosexuality”).     

Intersectionality in the Lives of LGBTQ Youth: Identifying as LGBTQ and Finding Community in Small Cities and Rural Towns

This article presents an analysis of the views of younger bisexual and lesbian women and transgender youth living in a western Canadian small city on their sexual and gender identities. Data were collected through focus groups and interviews and analyzed thematically through an intersectional lens. The purposive sample was composed of 13 youth who identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ) and whose average age was 19.8 years. The analytical themes of (1) living in a small town, (2) identifying and being identified, and (3) talking intersectionality indicate that the sexual identities and gender identities and expressions of LGBTQ youth change across time and context and are impacted by often overlooked factors including faith, Indigenous ancestry, disability, and class. Further, the size and character of the community significantly impacts LGBTQ youth identity development and expression. This research demonstrates the uniqueness of individual youth’s experiences—opposing notions of milestone events as singularly important in queer youth identity development.