West Hollywood Is Not That Big on Anything but White People: Constructing “Gay Men of Color”

Abstract

Rather than a defined endpoint that is waiting to be discovered or developed, racial and sexual identities can be considered social identities which are fluid, malleable, and socially created through a social process that defines what it means to be a member of a social group. This paper expands the work on how social identities are constructed by examining personal anecdotes used by gay men of color to discuss how they come to see themselves as “gay men of color.” In doing so, we find that gay men of color use a number of cultural tropes that provide them the framework necessary to structure their experiences within a larger social context of a largely white, heterosexual society. Drawing on these cultural tropes, gay men of color create a social identity that is simultaneously raced and sexed through the use of shared cultural tropes that define what it means to be a member of this group.

Evidence of Diverse Identities in a Large National Sample of Sexual and Gender Minority Adolescents

“…Racism experienced within gay communities, and homophobia experienced within ethnoracial minority communities, can exert a “dual oppression” for ethnoracial minority adolescents (Martinez & Sullivan, ). Competing identity demands manifest in the identity development process for youth of color and influence the way sexual and gender identities are understood and expressed (Han, Ayala, Paul, & Choi, ). As a result, emerging or alternative identities may be formed in opposition to hegemonic “gay” identities, which can be perceived as stereotypically “white” (Bérubé, ).…”

Multidimensional issue preferences of the European lavender vote

“…The electorate support for (P)RRPs among lavender voters (Chalk 2017;Huneke 2019;Mahdawi 2017) Whilst evidence from the US points towards LGB being more liberal on issues related to race and immigration (Grollman 2017(Grollman , 2018, it is important to note that the LGB community is not a monolith. Just as there are those with xenophobic and nativist preferences within the heteronormative majority, there are subcultures within the LGB community that display racist tendencies (Han 2007;Han et al 2017). The emergence of groups like "Alternative Homosexuelle" in Germany or "Twinks4Trump" in the US who claim to be motivated by a desire to defend their state against (allegedly) anti-gay immigrants (Hatfield 2018) is also indicative of LGB subgroups with strong and salient nativist preferences.…”

Aligning Our Maps: A Call to Reconcile Distinct Visions of Literatures on Sexualities, Space, and Place

“…I also called for scholarship on those with limited access to gayborhood institutions, which researchers have also addressed (see Greene ; Han et al. ; Hunter ).…”

“…In the same 2008 essay, I also noted a dearth of scholarship on smaller places, which has since begun to be filled (Barton 2012;Kazyak 2011Kazyak , 2001Kazyak , 2012McFarland Bruce 2016). I also called for scholarship on those with limited access to gayborhood institutions, which researchers have also addressed (see Greene 2014;Han et al 2017;Hunter 2010b).…”

“…As a result, given the visibility of such spaces (Orne 2017;Reed 2003), this scholarship receives outsized attention, and has come to stand in for what is actually a more heterogeneous literature. Despite scholarship on queer women's urban settlements (Podmore 2006;Tang 2011;Valentine 2013), the experiences of rural queer residents (Gray 2008;Halberstam 2005;Kazyak 2010Kazyak , 2011Kirkey and Forsyth 2001), and sexual minorities of color in the city (Greene 2014;Han et al 2017;Hunter 2010aHunter , 2010bMoore 2011), work that primarily centers (mostly male) "gayborhoods" in central city neighborhoods has only peripherally engaged this parallel scholarship. Would the call for more heterogeneous studies of queer life be as urgent if the literature on queer women, racial minorities, and transgender individuals constituted our theoretical touchstones?…”