Menegoisasikan Identitas Seksual dan Identitas Religius: Pengalaman Perempuan Kristen Berorientasi Homoseksual

Becoming a lesbian as well as a follower of a religion that opposes homosexuality creates an ambivalent and contradictory experience. This study aims to reveal the personal experiences of four homosexually oriented Christian women in Surabaya. All participants are members of Protestant Christian church congregations with different denominations. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and analyzed using an interpretive phenomenological analysis technique. The results of this study reveal three main themes, namely: living in two worlds, reconciling homosexual identity with religion, and making life decisions. The first theme reflects the dilemma experienced by the subjects when they realized that their choice as a homosexual was a sin in the perspective of their religion but they could not be able to force themselves to be a heterosexual woman. The second theme describes how the subjects tried to compromise between their homosexual orientation and their religious teachings. The last theme contains how choices are made when homosexual identity cannot be compromised with religious identity. This study concludes that most of the participants are trying to become a devout Christian and at the same time be able to engage in the same-sex sexual orientation. Keywords: homosexual identity, religious identity, lesbian, Christian Abstrak Menjadi lesbian sekaligus menjadi pemeluk suatu agama yang menentang homoseksualitas melahirkan pengalaman yang ambivalen dan kontradiktif. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengungkap pengalaman personal empat perempuan Kristen yang berorientasi homoseksual di Surabaya. Seluruh partisipan merupakan bagian dari anggota jemaat gereja Kristen Protestan dengan denominasi yang berbeda. Data dikumpulkan menggunakan wawancara semiterstruktur dan dianalisis dengan teknik analisis fenomenologi interpretatif. Penelitian ini berhasil mengungkap tiga tema utama yaitu: hidup dalam dua dunia, mendamaikan diri, dan mengambil keputusan hidup. Tema pertama mencerminkan dilema yang dialami para subjek ketika menyadari pilihannya sebagai homoseksual adalah dosa namun tidak mampu memaksakan diri untuk menyukai lawan jenis. Tema kedua menggambarkan bagaimana para subjek berupaya mengkompromikan antara orientasi homoseksualitasnya dengan ajaran agamanya. Tema terakhir memuat bagaimana pilihan diambil ketika identitas homoseksual tidak dapat dikompromikan dengan identitas religius. Hasil penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa sebagian besar partisipan berupaya menjadi seorang Kristen yang taat dan sekaligus dapat menjalani orientasi seksual sesama jenis.

RESHAPING THE HOMOSEXUAL IDENTITY OF MIDDLE-AGED GAY MEN IN AMERICA: A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF IDENTITY PROCESS ON ANDREW SEAN GREER’S LESS

The detrimental effects caused by the LGBT victimization in America are directly felt by middle-aged homosexuals nowadays and is internalized into their identity, creating problems that continuously affect them even after LGBT acceptance in the United States. The shift of homosexual identity in middle-aged American homosexuals is thus inevitable in order to regain their identity balance. Andrew Sean Greer’s Less depicts this issue through the internal conflicts of Arthur Less —a character struggling to accept his identity as an aging homosexual man. Arthur’s process in assimilating new experiences around him and accommodating his conceptionabout his homosexual identity become the highlights of this study. The writer utilizes Susan Krauss Whitbourne’s Identity Process Theory that deals with identity assimilation, identity accommodation, and identity balance. The result shows that past LGBT victimization has caused (1) HIV/AIDS trauma, (2) hyper-sexualized image, (3) cynicism towards marriage, and (4) internalized homonegativity, all of which creating the balance disruption on identity. When identity assimilation fails and identity accommodation occurs, middle-aged American homosexuals are encouraged to acknowledge that (1) homosexual identity exists beyond stereotyped sexual context, (2) there are no standardized attitudes that they must adopt, and (3) they are allowed to desire the same sense of comfort and intimacy through committed relationship or marriage, like their heterosexual counterparts.

Tourism and male homosexual identities: directions for sociocultural research

Purpose This paper aims to offer a critical review of the existing research on the relationships between tourism and male homosexual identities and, based on a sociocultural perspective, suggestions for specific directions in future research. Design/methodology/approach The analysis is based on a review of the literature that focuses on two independent yet intersecting topics: tourism and homosexuality and identity formation processes. Findings Specific directions for future research are offered regarding the role that tourism plays in homosexual identity development. The proposed paths for future research include the tangible contributions of tourism to the stages of homosexual tourists’ identity development and the (re)construction, negotiation and globalisation of homosexual and queer identities through tourists’ cultural interactions. Two further suggested directions are the significance of tourism for non-Western homosexual tourists and tourism’s impacts on local homosexual identities. Research limitations/implications This study is based solely on the existing literature on male homosexuality and mostly on studies published in English. Originality/value The research included a critical analysis of the commonly assumed significance of tourism in homosexual identity formation. The results provide directions for future empirical research and calls for a solid theoretical foundation that allows researchers to demonstrate, understand and explain how tourism contributes to gay and queer identities.

The “Gay Voice” and “Brospeak”: Toward a Systematic Model of Stance

Taking Elinor Ochs’s (1992) notion of indirect indexicality as a starting point, this chapter explores the significance of stance for studies of sexuality. Stance helps organize identity registers and is thus central in the creation and display of sexuality. After defining stance and reviewing ways in which it has been used in studies of language and sexuality, the chapter analyzes representations of two sexual identity registers: a “gay voice” homosexual identity and a “brospeak” heterosexual identity. The analysis reveals how these representations are based on different configurations of stances that in turn constitute the differential enregisterment of personae or characterological figures. The chapter concludes with an outline of the ways that the concept of stance may be used in further research, especially with respect to the analysis of sexuality in interaction.

Przez język ukrycia po słowo na „g”. Kim są bohaterowie czasów queer before gay?

Who (and what) was silent about the story told by heteronormative society? And how is the fragment of this story seen by “Others”? The article shows that the time of “queer before gay” includes (in Polish) not only well-known names such as: aunt or pedal, but also slang: ‘lala’ (doll), ‘przyjaciółki’ (friends), ‘siostry’ (sisters in Polish, girls in English), gays “from the outside of society”, as well as heterosexuals who got a ticket to the alternative world of the excluded. I tell this story from the perspective of the performative function of language (Althusser, Austin, Butler) and mechanisms of knowledge/power (Foucault). I focus on the activities of homosexual men encoded in their “hiding language” (sociopolitan gay). I show how the creation of the “homosexual” identity closed the community of aunts and pedals in a precisely defined form. And how camp and queering reality allowed them to function in this form. This article is thus another element of decoding the so-called language of concealment, so-called sociolect of Polish gays (aunts and pedals) and queering history of Poland (part of the queering history of Central and Eastern Europe).