scholarly journals ‘The fact they knew before I did upset me most’: Essentialism and normativity in lesbian and gay youths’ coming out stories

Sexualities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-515
Author(s):  
Lucy Jones
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Sexual Identity ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Sexual Desire ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Gay And Lesbian ◽  
Lesbian And Gay ◽  
Binary Gender

This article demonstrates, via discourse analysis of a group of young gay and lesbian people’s coming out stories, the salience of essentialist ideologies on their identity construction. The study reveals underlying normative assumptions in the young people’s narratives, including those associated with binary gender and innate sexual desire, which they employ in order to construct a culturally authentic sexual identity. Through close sociolinguistic analysis of interactions, it is shown how identity construction is directly influenced by broader ideologies. The analysis provides evidence of the continued prevalence of heteronormativity and homonormativity as key influences in young queer people’s identity work.

Reading between the Lines: An Approach to the Musical and Sexual Ambiguities of Death in Venice

2005 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-364
Author(s):  
RUTH SARA LONGOBARDI
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Sexual Identity ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Untimely Death ◽  
Musical Gesture ◽  
Death In Venice

ABSTRACT Framing opera as a collaborative genre compels an examination of differences. In particular, opera's media may be understood as simultaneous but not necessarily as cooperative or neutral. This conception of opera raises issues of power dynamics and the politics of voice, both within the work and among its artists. In Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice, musico-dramatic dissonances center on the protagonist's homoerotic obsession with a young boy. His momentous ““I love you”” at the end of the act 1 finale is accompanied by a musical gesture that does not affirm but rather resists this coming-out event. The gesture's subsequent transformations in other passages that contain no text, and two years later in Britten's Third String Quartet, reinforce the sense of musical opposition to the libretto's homosexual trajectory——a trajectory that results in the protagonist's shame and untimely death. If musical detachment from the libretto suggests subtext, then it also points to alternative voices. Britten's homosexuality, and the pressures that accumulated around sexual identity in postwar England, argue for connections between musical distance and closeted discourse. Analysis must acknowledge the role of the composer's experiences in the varying characterizations of the protagonist but must also cope with the limits to this type of investigation: The attempt to draw definitive connections between music and sexuality limits the suppleness of our critical apparatus. Conceiving of opera as collaboration prompts a reevaluation of the work as potentially contradictory and fragmented but also advocates against the resolution of such contradictions into coherent authorial statements. Collaboration dislodges autonomy and unity and in their place recommends polyphonies——of authors and voices, among media but also within them.

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.

Out in Time

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Perry N. Halkitis
Keyword(s):  
Identity Development ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Sexual Identity ◽  
Gay Men ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Generational Differences ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Sexual Identity Development ◽  
Three Generations ◽  
American Society

The life experiences and sexual identity development of three generations of gay men, the Stonewall, AIDS, and Queer generations, are explored. While there are generational differences in the lived experiences of young gay men shaped by the sociopolitical contexts of the historical epoch in which they emerged into adulthood, and a crisis that has come to define each generation, there also are consistencies across generations and across time in the psychological process of coming out that defines identity formation of gay men, as these individuals transition from a period of sexual identity awareness to sexual identity integration. The life experiences are also shaped by conceptions of hypermasculinity, racism and discrimination, substance use, and adventurous sexuality. Despite the many challenges that have defined the lives of gay men across time and that are informed by the homophobia of American society, the vast majority of the population also has demonstrated resilience and fortitude in achieving both pride and dignity. These ideas are explored through the life narratives of fifteen diverse gay men, across the three generations.

scholarly journals The Enemy Next Door: The Image of Russia in Georgian and Ukrainian Political Discourses Amid Conflicts Escalation

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 194-203
Author(s):  
Aram Terzyan
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Image Representation ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Democratic Values ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
The Core ◽  
Standing Up

Abstract This article presents an analysis of the evolution of Russia’s image representation in Georgian and Ukrainian political discourses amid Russian-Georgian and Russian-Ukrainian conflicts escalation. Even though Georgia’s and Ukraine’s troubled relations with neighboring Russia have been extensively studied, there has been little attention to the ideational dimensions of the confrontations, manifested in elite narratives, that would redraw the discursive boundaries between “Us” and “Them.” This study represents an attempt to fill the void, by examining the core narratives of the enemy, along with the discursive strategies of its othering in Georgian and Ukrainian presidential discourses through critical discourse analysis. The findings suggest that the image of the enemy has become a part of “New Georgia’s” and “New Ukraine’s” identity construction - inherently linked to the two countries’ “choice for Europe.” Russia has been largely framed as Europe’s other, with its “inherently imperial,” “irremediably aggressive” nature and adherence to illiberal, non-democratic values. The axiological and moral evaluations have been accompanied by the claims that the most effective way of standing up to the enemy’s aggression is the “consolidation of democratic nations,” coming down to the two countries’ quests for EU and NATO membership.

All change please: education, mobility and habitus dislocation

2019 ◽  
pp. 119-136
Author(s):  
Jill Wilkens
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Sexual Identity ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Bisexual Women ◽  
Affinity Groups ◽  
And Bisexual ◽  
Positive Ageing

This chapter examines the intersection of ageing, gender, class and sexual identity, and highlights the significance of same-sexuality social groups for older lesbians and bisexual women. Interviews with 35 women aged between 57 and 73, discussed ‘coming out’ in the 1950s and 1960s, loneliness and isolation and the experience of attending affinity groups. Many participants were rendered ‘out of place’ by aspects of their social mobility, generation, gender and sexuality. The chapter draws on Bourdieu’s concept of ‘cleft habitus’ to consider the contradictions of these mobilities, suggesting that these women faced unprecedented and unique disjuncture between their original habitus and the new classed, sexual and gendered locations in which they finally ‘arrived’. The chapter looks at the potential of social groups to alleviate loneliness and isolation; for many, they are sites of resilience, helping to promote positive ageing for those who have faced marginalisation across their life course.

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