scholarly journals The Limits of Labelling: Incidental Sex Work Among Gay, Bisexual, and Queer Young Men on Social Media

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Morris
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Social Stigma ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Photo Elicitation ◽  
Hidden Population ◽  
Sexual Identities

Abstract Introduction The term incidental sex work refers to forms of casual, occasional, unsolicited commercial sex, arranged between gay, bisexual, and queer men on social media platforms such as Grindr. This paper explores the limits of labelling sexual identities, and how definitions of “sex” and “work” have become increasingly unstable in the digital age. Methods This study used mixed methods, with the primary mode of data collection being qualitative interviews with young gay, bisexual, and queer men conducted between May 2015 and April 2016. The interviews incorporated a nine-point sexuality scale and photo-elicitation procedures to prompt further discussions. Through the participant recruitment process, the study also generated an informal survey of 1473 Grindr users aged 18 to 28, finding that 14.6% had been paid for sex, most of whom (8.2%) had done so “incidentally.” Results The 50 interview participants discussed being paid for sex 358 times. This paper focuses on their narratives of labelling, identity politics, sexual normativity, and social stigma. All participants distanced themselves from labels such as “prostitute,” “rent boy,” or “sex worker” given that their behaviours were not seen as “regular” or “professional” enough, alongside seeking to avoid association with stigmatising stereotypes of sex work. These results are compared with the participants’ experiences of coming out as gay, bisexual, and queer. Discussion These narratives are interpreted using queer theory to understand those whose behaviours and identities do not conform to normative (legal, medical, social) discourses of sex work. The implications of this hidden population for campaigners, policymakers, and healthcare practitioners are discussed, contributing to ongoing debates around harm reduction and social policy.

Alternatives to Coming Out Discourses

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuzhen Huang
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Queer Of Color Critique ◽  
Queer People ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Queer Of Color

The discourse of coming out has historically served as an effective vehicle to build and sustain the LGBTQ movement in the United States. It has also been utilized as an empowering resource that enables queer people to establish a queer identity organized around self-awareness and self-expression. However, queer of color critique and transnational queer theory argue that the prevalent discourse of coming out is built on a particular kind of queer experience and geography, which is usually from the standpoint of White, middle-class men of urban U.S. citizenship and is rarely derived from the experience of queer people of color and non-Western queer subjects. Taking an intersectional perspective, Snorton interrogates the racialization of the closet and proposes a sexual politics of ignorance—opposed to the disclosure imperative in coming out discourse—as a tactic of ungovernability. Centering the experience of Russian American immigrants who are queer-identified, Fisher proposes a fluid and productive relationship between the “closeted” and the “out” sexuality that resists any fixed categorization. Focusing on the masking tactic deployed by local queer activists, Martin theorizes the model of xianshen, a local identity politics in Taiwan that questions the very conditions of visibility in dominant coming out discourse. As a decolonial response to the transnational circulation of coming out discourse, Chou delineates a “coming home” approach that emphasizes familial piety and harmony by reining in and concealing queer desires. Being cautious against the nationalist impulse in Chou’s works, Huang and Brouwer propose a “coming with” model to capture the struggles among Chinese queers to disidentify with the family institution. These alternative paradigms serve as epistemic tools that aim to revise understanding of queer resistance and queer relationality and help people to go beyond the imagination of coming out for a livable queer future.

Tongzhi on the move: digital/social media and placemaking practices among young gay Chinese in Australia

2019 ◽  
Vol 173 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haiqing Yu ◽  
Hayden Blain
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Gay Men ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
First Generation ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Gay Identity ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Cultural Empowerment

This article examines the placemaking experience of first-generation Chinese gay migrants (18–35 years old) in negotiating their cultural and sexual identities in Sydney and Melbourne. Tongzhi is used as a lingua-cultural reference to their double identity as Chinese and gay. Drawing from interviews and contact with 22 Chinese gay men who initially arrived in Australia on student visas, this article explores how tongzhi migrants use digital/social media to reconstitute their home abroad and to live out their transnational gay identity, politics and desire. Their placemaking practices take place in the intersections of the Internet and outernets, as well as the interzones of one’s gay desires for sexual fulfilment and cultural empowerment.

scholarly journals Habitual Disclosure: Routine, Affordance, and the Ethics of Young Peoples Social Media Data Surveillance

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512091561
Author(s):  
Clare Southerton ◽  
Emmeline Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
Data Privacy ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Photo Elicitation ◽  
Active Engagement ◽  
Social Media Data ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Data Surveillance ◽  
Media Data

Drawing on findings from qualitative interviews and photo elicitation, this article explores young people’s experiences of breaches of trust with social media platforms and how comfort is re-established despite continual violations. It provides rich qualitative accounts of users habitual relations with social media platforms. In particular, we seek to trace the process by which online affordances create conditions in which “sharing” is regarded as not only routine and benign but pleasurable. Rather it is the withholding of data that is abnormalized. This process has significant implications for the ethics of data collection by problematizing a focus on “consent” to data collection by social media platforms. Active engagement with social media, we argue, is premised on a tentative, temporary, shaky trust that is repeatedly ruptured and repaired. We seek to understand the process by which violations of privacy and trust in social media platforms are remediated by their users and rendered ordinary again through everyday habits. We argue that the processes by which users become comfortable with social media platforms, through these routines, call for an urgent reimagining of data privacy beyond the limited terms of consent.

scholarly journals COME OUT OR REMAIN SILENT: SPORT AND GENDERED HOMOPHOBIA

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Giovanni Collura
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Original Research ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
Gender Performativity ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
And Bisexual ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Impact

This Major Research Paper explores the sporting environment and the impact certain sport spaces can have on lesbian, gay or bisexual athletes. Through an in-depth analysis of the literature, I explore how key scholars have critically examined themes of masculinity and femininity in sport. This was done in order to understand how coming out differs for athletes depending on their gender identity and the sport that they participate in. I engage with the theories of intersectionality, queer theory, ideology, cultural hegemony and gender performativity to enhance this analysis. I also developed original research by interviewing six male- and female-identifying athletes. Their experiences help explain why certain sporting environments are more or less accepting of sexual minorities in sports. This body of work is important because it provides readers with the opportunity to fully grasp and understand the hardships lesbian, gay and bisexual athletes endure in sports. Key Words: Team-Based Sports, Single-Person Sports, Sexuality, Gender, Intersectionality, Race, Class, Identity Politics, Queer Theory, Ideology, Hegemonic Masculinity, Orthodox Masculinity, Cultural Hegemony, and Gender Performativity.

Closets and institutions: Queer teacher exclusion in the Israeli high school system

Sexualities ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 883-900
Author(s):  
Izat El Amoor
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
High School Teachers ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Teacher Identity ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
School Teachers ◽  
Political News ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Queer Politics

Drawing on an analysis of 12 in-person qualitative interviews with queer, male, Israeli high school teachers, and Israeli queer social and political news stories, this study explores the intersection of queer teachers’ professional and personal sexual identities. The study contends that this intersection is one characterized by exclusion, particularly attributable to institutional homophobia and queer politics situated within the Israeli national regional ground. Utilizing queer and educational discourses regarding teacher identity and institutional homophobia, this article documents and reports on queer teachers’ resistance in the educational system and the navigation of the coming-out process in socio-politically complex Israel.

scholarly journals COME OUT OR REMAIN SILENT: SPORT AND GENDERED HOMOPHOBIA

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Giovanni Collura
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Original Research ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
Gender Performativity ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
And Bisexual ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Impact

This Major Research Paper explores the sporting environment and the impact certain sport spaces can have on lesbian, gay or bisexual athletes. Through an in-depth analysis of the literature, I explore how key scholars have critically examined themes of masculinity and femininity in sport. This was done in order to understand how coming out differs for athletes depending on their gender identity and the sport that they participate in. I engage with the theories of intersectionality, queer theory, ideology, cultural hegemony and gender performativity to enhance this analysis. I also developed original research by interviewing six male- and female-identifying athletes. Their experiences help explain why certain sporting environments are more or less accepting of sexual minorities in sports. This body of work is important because it provides readers with the opportunity to fully grasp and understand the hardships lesbian, gay and bisexual athletes endure in sports. Key Words: Team-Based Sports, Single-Person Sports, Sexuality, Gender, Intersectionality, Race, Class, Identity Politics, Queer Theory, Ideology, Hegemonic Masculinity, Orthodox Masculinity, Cultural Hegemony, and Gender Performativity.

Cut, Snap

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-136
Author(s):  
Dominic Pecoraro
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
Sexual Minority ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Communication Theory ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Minority Status ◽  
Interpersonal Interactions ◽  
Queer Identity

Inspired by critical interpersonal communication scholarship and queer autoethnography, this piece depicts interpersonal interactions mute or challenge queer identity. I explore the nexus of interpersonal communication theory, identity work, and queer theory to contextualize coming out and coming into sexual minority status. This piece explores narratives in which the legitimacy of queerness is unaccepted, unassured, and undermined.

Coming out of the closet? Audience reactions to the heteronormative disruptive advertising

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-102
Author(s):  
Ramasela Semang L. Mathobela ◽  
Shepherd Mpofu ◽  
Samukezi Mrubula-Ngwenya
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Gender Issues ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Positive Development ◽  
Global Trend ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Media

An emerging global trend of brands advertising their products through LGBTIQ+ individuals and couples indicates growth of gender awareness across the globe. The media, through advertising, deconstructs homophobia and associated cultures through the use of LGBTIQ+s in commercials. This qualitative research paper centres the advancement of debates on human rights and social media as critical in the interaction between corporates and consumers. The Gillette, Chicken Licken‘s Soul Sisters and We the Brave advertisements were used to critically analyse how audiences react to the use of LGBTIQ+ characters and casts through comments posted on the brands‘ social media platforms. Further, the paper explored the role of social media in the mediation of significant gender issues such as homosexuality that are considered taboo to engage in. The paper used a qualitative approach. Using the digital ethnography method to observe comments and interactions from the chosen advertisement‘s online platforms, the paper employed queer and constructionist theories to deconstruct discourses around same-sex relations as used in commercials, especially in quasiconservative. The data used in the paper included thirty comments of the brands customers and audiences obtained from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The paper concludes there are positive development in human rights awareness as seen through advertisements and campaigns that use LGBTIQ+ communities in a positive light across the world.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Colm Hogan
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Social Constructionism ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
The Third ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Sexual Part ◽  
The One ◽  
And Behavior

The introduction first sets out some preliminary definitions of sex, sexuality, and gender. It then turns from the sexual part of Sexual Identities to the identity part. A great deal of confusion results from failing to distinguish between identity in the sense of a category with which one identifies (categorial identity) and identity in the sense of a set of patterns that characterize one’s cognition, emotion, and behavior (practical identity). The second section gives a brief summary of this difference. The third and fourth sections sketch the relation of the book to social constructionism and queer theory, on the one hand, and evolutionary-cognitive approaches to sex, sexuality, and gender, on the other. The fifth section outlines the value of literature in not only illustrating, but advancing a research program in sex, sexuality, and gender identity. Finally, the introduction provides an overview of the chapters in this volume.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document