Sexuality Doesn't Matter, but...”: Friendships in Post-gay and Pre-Cueer communities

• In Event: 431 - Regular Session. Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies 2

Abstract

This paper challenges the urban post-gay framework by demonstrating that post-gay narratives emerge even in community contexts that researchers deem hostile or unfriendly: those with a low proportion of LGBTQ residents, few or no LGBTQ institutions, and strong connections to religion and family. I find that the “friendliness” of a community context, determined by the presence of identifiable gay community in the form of spaces, institutions, symbols, and relationships is unrelated to whether a community might be considered post-gay. I focus on post-gay narratives in a particular, underexplored relationship in the LGBTQ community, friendship, in “River City,” a small, Midwestern city participants described as Catholic and lacking in a unified LGBTQ community. Friendship, a sociologically underexplored relationship, offers a lens through which questions of assimilation and senses of community might be explored. Preliminary results from my research on LGBTQ friendships suggest that normativity offers a fruitful dimension along which to consider shifting LGBTQ communities, as being seen as “normal” for gay, lesbian, transgender, queer, and ally participants marks integration within the community more than simply sexuality or gender identity. I suggest “pre-queer” as a supplemental, possibly alternative, interpretation to help us understand how national, regional, local, and extra-local contexts determine LGBTQ community and relationships.

Author

• Clare Forstie, Northwestern University