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ABSTRACT
Young people who discover their sexual attraction to people of the same sex often go through a period of ambivalence or distress, especially when they grow up in an environment that condemns homosexuality. The Dutch sociopolitical context makes the expression of same-sex desires among those with non-Dutch roots even more complicated and risky, as prevailing schemes of interpretation render the two identities incompatible. This study explores the expressions of same-sex desires and identities as well as the different forms of agency of bicultural gay youth. In-depth interviews with 14 young adults reveal how young people negotiate bicultural identities in Dutch society that brings to the fore complexities in managing diverse sexual identities and strong religious and cultural affiliations in tandem. Their strategies have the effect of questioning dominant discourses and transcend the oppositional dichotomy between sexual and ethnic forms of sociocultural otherness.
Acknowledgments
Parts of this article were presented at the symposium Rethinking Agency: Acting in Practice, Acting Together, Bradford 2013, and at the 12th Conference of the European Sociological Association, Prague 2015.
The authors would like to thank the participants who took part in this study. We would also like to express our gratitude to the inspiring feedback of the reviewers and to Margreet Zwarteveen, Mark Spiering, and Mark McCormack for reading through early drafts of the article.