Heteronormativity and the (re)construction of gay male entrepreneurial identities

This article explores how heteronormativity shapes the (re)construction of gay male entrepreneurial identities. Drawing on in-depth interview data and utilising conceptual resources from queer theory, this article traces the effects of heteronormative entrepreneurial discourses, evident in the types of gay male sexualities discursively mobilised by study participants to (re)construct normal gay male entrepreneurial identities. Study data reveal the regulatory and normalising impact of heteronormativity along three discursive themes: entrepreneurial gay masculine identities; the entrepreneurial (gay) ‘family type guy’; and repudiating the feminine in women and other gay men. This article contributes to the limited LGBT entrepreneurship literature, in particular, the scholarship on heteronormativity and entrepreneurial identities, showing how heteronormativity retrenches both the heterosexual/homosexual binary and the male norm at the core of dominant entrepreneurial discourses.

Reflecting on the interview as an erotic encounter

As researchers, our sexualities are always relevant to the research process. However, when woman researchers engage in research with men about their (hetero)sexual experiences, our positionality becomes more explicitly central. This article makes a methodological contribution to critical research into male sexualities by providing a reflexive analysis of cross-gender interviews conducted with 43 men about paying for sex. It employs an understanding of both the participant and the interviewer as defended subjects and it interrogates the complex interviewer-participant power relationship, offering a critical approach to understanding the knowledge that is produced by and within our research encounters.

Gay men in the performing arts: Performing sexualities within ‘gay-friendly’ work contexts

Building on emerging research on ‘gay-friendly’ organizations, this article examines if and how work contexts understood and experienced as ‘gay-friendly’ can be characterized as exhibiting a serious breakdown in heteronormativity. Taking the performing arts as a research setting, one that is often stereotyped as ‘gay-friendly’, and drawing on in-depth interview data with 20 gay male performers in the UK, this article examines how everyday activities and encounters involving drama school educators, casters and peers are shaped by heteronormative standards of gay male sexuality. Adopting a queer theory perspective and connecting with an emergent queer theory literature in organization studies, one concern articulated in this article is that heteronormative constructions of gay male sexualities constrain participants’ access to work; suggesting limits to the abilities and roles gay men possess and are able to play. Another concern is that when gay male sexualities become normalized in performing work contexts, they reinforce organizational heteronormativity and the heterosexual/homosexual binary upon which it relies. This study contributes towards theorizing the heteronormative dynamics of ‘gay-friendly’ places of work, arguing that gay male sexualities are performatively instituted according to localized heteronormativities which reinforce contextually contingent, restrictive heteronormative standards of gay male sexuality which performers are encouraged to embody and perform both professionally and personally.

“Being gay has been a curse for me”

In this essay, I draw on ethnographic research with South Asian Muslim American gay men of Pakistani descent in Houston to explore everyday negotiations of religion, race, sexuality and transnationalism. The essay highlights three intersecting registers that situate gay Muslim American sexual cultural formations in local, transnational and cultural contexts. Drawing on participant observation and oral life history interviews, this essay examines: (a) culturally constructed male sexualities that are informed by the scripts, language, and cultural idioms of homo-sociality and same-sex eroticism, love and relationships in the homeland; (b) the increasing centrality of belonging to a transnational Muslim ummah; and (c) the appropriation of western terminologies and categories of sexuality in constructing a gay identity. The narratives examined in this essay contribute to cultural analyses of transnational sexual cultures, and ethnographies of Muslim Americans and LGBTQIA immigrant communities in the West.

Health and Sexuality

The concept of sexuality is being deployed as a prism through which a rich range of social, cultural, and political issues can be explored. This article considers the ways in which female and male sexualities have been constructed and problematized in modern Western history. The medical role is stressed, bearing in mind the ambivalent historical relationship that has existed between physicians, sexual science, and society. With reference to the ‘double standard’, this article shows how female sexuality has been particularly prone to pathologization and psychiatrization when believed to drift from the marital or reproductive ideal. Social and political concerns surrounding sexually transmitted diseases are discussed as they are seen to both reflect and reinforce society's most fundamental assumptions and fears surrounding sexuality and disease. The questions that this article seeks to answer are arguably of increasing relevance to modern Western society.

Filipino Cyborg Sexualities, Chatroom Masculinities, Self-Ascribed Identities, Ephemeral Selves

This cyberethnographic study aims to describe the creation of male sexualities among self-ascribed Filipino men in online chatrooms, describe the virtual environments wherein cyber male sexualities are constructed, and discuss the extent to which virtual male sexualities reflect contemporary physical world male sexualities and implicate masculinities. Chatroom selves are self-ascribed and ephemeral selves that abound in an indulgent ambiance. Chatrooms sanction a whole range of behaviors that afford meaningfully lived freedom to persons. The author argues that under similar conditions, the practice of masculinities can become non-oppressive, egalitarian, and liberating for the self and for others.