TY - JOUR
T1 - A multi-faceted and relational approach to gay men’s identities
AU - Chandra, Shiva
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - The idea of a ‘post-gay’ identity suggests sexuality no longer remains a key identifier to gay men’s sense of self. The concept provides a useful framework for theorising how gay men’s identities include and go beyond their sexuality, allowing scholars to conceptualise it in more complex ways. This study contributes to the literature, by drawing on the idea of ‘personal community’ to unpack how multiple connections inform gay men’s multi-faceted identities. It is based on in-depth qualitative interviews with gay South Asian men in Australia. Findings reveal that friends, partners and LGBT+ groups play important roles in informing respondents’ subjectivities. Significantly, the family of origin was important to identity formation, which challenges the dominant understanding that gay men’s identities exist separately to them. More broadly, findings from this study contribute to a deeper understanding of diverse gay male identities in contemporary multicultural Australia.
AB - The idea of a ‘post-gay’ identity suggests sexuality no longer remains a key identifier to gay men’s sense of self. The concept provides a useful framework for theorising how gay men’s identities include and go beyond their sexuality, allowing scholars to conceptualise it in more complex ways. This study contributes to the literature, by drawing on the idea of ‘personal community’ to unpack how multiple connections inform gay men’s multi-faceted identities. It is based on in-depth qualitative interviews with gay South Asian men in Australia. Findings reveal that friends, partners and LGBT+ groups play important roles in informing respondents’ subjectivities. Significantly, the family of origin was important to identity formation, which challenges the dominant understanding that gay men’s identities exist separately to them. More broadly, findings from this study contribute to a deeper understanding of diverse gay male identities in contemporary multicultural Australia.
UR - https://hdl.handle.net/1959.7/uws:70477
U2 - 10.1177/00380385221081389
DO - 10.1177/00380385221081389
M3 - Article
SN - 1469-8684
SN - 0038-0385
VL - 56
SP - 1070
EP - 1086
JO - Sociology
JF - Sociology
IS - 6
ER -