Most people agree that discrimination is wrong, but the boundary between 'discrimination' and 'not discrimination' is often highly contested in everyday practice.We explore the social representations of 'discrimination' as an object of study in qualitative interviews and focus groups with both minority (self-identified as BAME and/ or gay men) and majority (self-identified as white and/ or heterosexual) participants (n= 54). Our analysis suggests three repeated and pervasive argumentative lines in social representations of discrimination; (1) that there are two distinct kinds of discrimination (hard versus soft), (2) that you need to understand the intention of the actor(s), and (3) that a claim of discrimination requires strong evidence. We outline the macro Functions of these resources to argue that each was non-performative: they appeared to be tools to make claims of discrimination, but in practice they were much more effective at making claims of what was not discrimination.

This paper draws on a small-scale qualitative study of the lived experiences of gay male students in their final year of undergraduate study at a UK university. In contrast to the narratives almost universally reported in academic literature, antigay victimisation and harassment were not experienced or framed as dominant discourses in the stories of the six participants. I discuss how despite heterosexuality being the assumed, expected and compulsory discourse at university, the participants made positive sense of their experiences, and how through careful negotiation they were able to address, explore and engage with their (homo)sexual identities and orientation. I challenge the common and (mostly) unquestioned practices of defining gay students solely on the basis of their negative accounts of their experiences, labelling them all as victims, and locating the entire population within a pathologised framework. Instead I advocate a nuanced and balanced perspective which acknowledges the alternate and non-victimised accounts of gay students to provide a more inclusive, comprehensive, fuller and richer understanding of their lived experiences at university.

Although the lives of gay men in the post-closet generation are easier in many ways, everyday discrimination still exists in the forms of heterosexism and microaggressions. These forms of discrimination are difficult and risky to talk about, partly because they are often ambiguous, but also because these conversations can disrupt the status quo. In this paper, we explore how the idea of 'discrimination' is more complex than it might first appear, and how the boundaries between 'discrimination' and 'not discrimination' are socially constructed. We conducted qualitative interviews with fifteen undergraduate students who self-identified as gay men, and used dialogical analysis to explore their identity work. Participants constructed discrimination/ not discrimination in different ways as they shifted between different I-positions: I-as authentic individual, I-as what I am not (not camp, and not a victim), and I-as powerful. Our analysis indicates the extent to which 'discrimination' is socially constructed (rather than an objective reality), and suggests means by which practitioners and advocates can support clients in talking about discrimination.

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