Sociology

In this article we seek to rehabilitate the radical insights of the pragmatist/interactionist tradition and to establish its continued relevance to a distinctively sociological and feminist analysis of sexuality. We argue for the importance of the contribution of Gagnon and Simon in arguing for a fully social understanding of sexuality. We offer an account of the process whereby interactionism has been rendered all but invisible and make a case for recovering its insights. We argue that interactionism accounts for the processes through which sexuality is constituted culturally, inter-personally and intrapsychically and addresses the actualities of everyday social practices and is therefore ideally suited to grappling with the complexities of contemporary sexual life.

Even though the normativity of heterosexuality has come into question in recent years, heterosexual norms continue to figure as a structuring principle in contemporary social life. Drawing on 40 qualitative interviews with a diverse group of young German and British women, this article analyses empirical research on feminist disidentification to show that heteronormativity plays a central role in young women’s negotiations of feminism. Numerous respondents established a link between feminism, unfemininity, man-hatred and lesbianism. By exploring constructions of ‘the feminist’, and by reconceptualizing the figure of ‘the feminist’ as a constitutive outside of heterosexual norms that haunts the interviews, this article foregrounds the importance of examining the dimension of sexuality in analyses of contemporary social phenomena.

This ethnographic research interrogates the relationship between sexuality, gender and homophobia and how they impact on 16- to 18-year-old boys in a coeducational sixth form in the south of England. Framing our research with inclusive masculinity theory, we find that, unlike the elevated rates of homophobia typically described in academic literature, the boys at ‘Standard High’ espouse pro-gay attitudes and eliminate homophobic language. This inclusivity simultaneously permits an expansion of heteromasculine boundaries, so that boys are able to express physical tactility and emotional intimacy without being homosexualized by their behaviours. However, we add to inclusive masculinity theory by showing the ways in which boys continue to privilege and regulate heterosexuality in the absence of homophobia: we find that heterosexual boundary maintenance continues, heterosexual identities are further consolidated, and the presumption of heterosexuality remains. Accordingly, we argue that even in inclusive cultures, it is necessary to examine for the processes of heteronormativity.

Scholars have interpreted changes in sexual discourses from behaviouralist and structuralist perspectives, in the context of social movements, as expressions of power relations, among other approaches. This ar ticle advocates the study of shifting discourses of sexualities from the viewpoint of transformations in individuals’ moral orientations over time. To this end, thematically, the article recovers Foucault’s view of sexuality as a field of moral self-formation; conceptually, it follows Taylor and examines selfhood through the person’s moral sources. The article uses this framework to observe reformulations in sexual narratives across three generations of Chilean women. From grandmothers’ stories to granddaughters’ accounts, this analysis identifies a deactivation of the equation between being a ‘good woman’ and sexual disengagement. This movement reveals a change in the moral principle regulating Chilean women’s sexualities (from a morality of decency to one of authenticity) and a displacement of moral authority from the community to the person.

This article explores how theories of diversity and intersectionality can improve our understandings of the lives of older lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) adults. In so doing, it argues that theories of diversity help us to understand both the structural constraints and the advantages that may arise from being an older LGB adult. However, these theories are unable to fully account for differences that may exist within this social group. In order to address this omission, we argue that we need to move beyond a focus on diversity per se, to incorporate the multiplicity of identities suggested by intersectionality theory. We conclude by assessing the implications of this debate for policy and research. Throughout the article we draw on existing research as well as our own empirical studies with older LGB adults.

During the last decade in particular, the scope of queer scholarship has expanded. Queer readings, theories and problematics now pervade multiple sites of cultural and sociological thinking, reaching beyond the specificities of gender and sexuality and their attendant politics. While there is still impor tant work to be done in these areas, thinking beyond the sexual act allows for an understanding of ‘queer’ through culture and as lifestyle. Here, I relate this specifically to music scene participation and middle age by exploring the significance of music and dance-based activities in the lives of queer people who do not perform their age in accordance with heteronormative conventions of social propriety and thus do not conform to desirable heteronormative temporalities. The concept of ‘queer temporality’ is not new, however this article demonstrates the relationship of musical time to this temporal scheme thus offering an additional perspective on queer time.

This article explores how sexual orientation¹ may impact on concerns about, and experiences of, end of life care and bereavement within same-sex relationships. We draw on exploratory data from four focus groups with lesbian and gay elders ( N = 15), which formed part of a larger project investigating a range of older people’s concerns about end of life care. We set the findings in the context of debates about broader changes to family forms within late modernity, alongside social change and demographic shifts. Our focus on end of life care and bereavement sheds light on a series of relatively neglected issues associated with lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) ageing and, more broadly, the topics of care and support within ‘non-traditional’ intimate relationships and personal networks. We point to the importance of further research into the lives of older lesbians and gay men facing issues of end of life care and bereavement.

This article addresses the intersection of sexual orientation and religion and belief through a focus on a specific religious community — the worldwide Anglican Communion. It does so by unpacking a particular event within this Communion debate: the decennial Lambeth Conference, at Canterbury, UK. Events have received little attention within sociology, yet case studies of particular events potentially represent an effective way of empirically researching the complexity of the ways that intersections of categories, such as sexual orientation and religion and belief, are experienced in everyday life. By focusing on the strategies of pro-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) groups at Lambeth, this article demonstrates how, in the material space of an ‘event’, abstract discourses and positionings in diffuse social networks become transformed into tangible emplaced social relations where power is outworked.

I begin by identifying characterizations of Muslim identities as antithetical to a wide range of western values, including democracy, secularization, gender equality and sexual diversity. I argue that issues of gender and sexuality represent a problematic around modernity and its values but one that is more complex than the putative clash of civilizations discourse. I suggest that gay Muslims represent an intersectional location that productively illuminates this problematic, because their existence challenges the positioning of western and eastern cultures as mutually exclusive and oppositional. I then theorize this intersectionality using queer theory, arguing that there is an affinity between the queer emphasis on deferred ontology and intersectional emphasis on standpoint, suggesting an understanding of intersectionality as productively queer, and queer as necessarily intersectional. In conclusion I sketch out the implications of such theorizing for research on gay Muslim identities.

Sexuality features prominently in European debates on multiculturalism and in Orientalist discourses on Islam. This article argues that representations of gay emancipation are mobilized to shape narratives in which Muslims are framed as non-modern subjects, a development that can best be understood in relation to the ‘culturalization of citizenship’ and the rise of Islamophobia in Europe. We focus on the Netherlands where the entanglement of gay rights discourses with anti-Muslim politics and representations is especially salient. The thorough-going secularization of Dutch society, transformations in the realms of sex and morality since the ‘long 1960s’ and the ‘normalization’ of gay identities since the 1980s have made sexuality a malleable discourse in the framing of ‘modernity’ against ‘tradition’. This development is highly problematic, but also offers possibilities for new alliances and solidarities in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and questioning (LGBTQ) politics and sexual and cultural citizenship.

This article employs an intersectional approach to examine the ways in which lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people evaluate the severity of hate-motivated violence. Previous studies of LGBT hate crime victims have typically focused on the psychological effects of violence. In contrast, this article explores the sociological components of hate crime by comparing the perceptions of poor and working-class LGBT people of colour with the perceptions of white, middle-class LGBT people. Data were collected from semi-structured, in-depth interviews, conducted in New York City, with 44 people who experienced anti-LGBT violence. Results indicate that middle-class white respondents were more likely than low-income people of colour to perceive their violent experiences as severe, even though the latter experienced more physical violence than the former. This finding suggests that the social position of LGBT people plays an instrumental role in structuring how they evaluate the severity of hate-motivated violence.

The notion of intersectionality has been the subject of uncertainty, with debates taking place as to whether intersectionality studies should focus on the interstices between social characteristics, or should encompass approaches that interrogate the structuring effects of specific social forces. This article contributes to these debates by exploring intersectionality in relation to lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) equalities initiatives in UK local government. The article demonstrates the importance of two social categories, sexuality and the spatial, in structuring LGB equalities work. By citing analysis partially at the institutional level, it also reveals the way in which an individualizing approach to intersectionality studies, which focuses only on the interstices, is problematic. The article therefore provides an argument for an intersectionality studies that incorporates category-based analysis, whilst retaining a concern with the interstices between foundational categories.