The rise and fall of gay: A cultural-historical approach to gay identity development

Abstract

Research on identity development has paid relatively little attention to the development of marginalised identities such as those of gays and lesbians, whose isolation from the canonical narrative of sexuality may limit the available resources required for establishing a coherent identity. We examined these contested identities in relation to cultural-historical factors that may have played a role in shaping these identities over the past 50 years, and looked at how such factors have impacted the voicing and silencing of gay experiences. Participants (N=251) reported (1) a memory of a cultural event relevant to their sexuality, and (2) a self-defining memory about their sexuality. Those in older cohorts reported cultural memories centred on politics and other external events (e.g., Stonewall riots), and younger cohorts reported more personal memories (e.g., coming out), suggesting that homosexual identities have become less culturally defined, and instead more personally defined. Further, participants of older cohorts reported self-defining events that were predominantly from one private domain (e.g., sex). In contrast, younger participants reported a variety of self-defining events. These results suggest that cultural-historical factors play an important role in defining the developmental pathway of individuals, perhaps especially those who have marginalised identities.

Keywords:

• Narrative
• Master narrative
• Homosexuality
• Culture
• Identity

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Andrea V. Breen, Lewis W. Jones, Phillip L. Hammack, and two anonymous reviewers for extraordinarily thoughtful and helpful comments on previous versions of this manuscript. We thank Alvi Dandal for help with coding. This study was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada awarded to the second author.

Notes

¹In the current paper there are many instances where the term “gay” is used to capture the experiences of both males and females who identify as homosexual. The usage of this term is intended only for convenience sake, as in mainstream discourse we often find “gay” used as such a catchall phrase. We are not in any way trying to offer a male-centred view of sexuality. We will identify and attempt to explain those points at which our results diverge for males and females.

²There are some exceptions to this rule, where silence can conversely represent a form of power (Fivush, 2010 this issue), such as when one's personal narrative is so powerful it need not be voiced. For example, one need not voice one's heterosexual orientation, because heteronormativity assumes this to be the case unless otherwise told. Fivush (2010 this issue) conceptualises this form of silence as “being silent”, in contrast to “being silenced”. The latter is an imposed form of silence and is the focus of the current study.

³One might challenge this claim, given the large collection of research that has examined coming-out narratives (e.g., King & Noelle, 2005; King & Smith, 2004). Certainly for many gay individuals this is an important developmental milestone, a turning point where the gay person claims their voice. However, coming-out experiences are only one possible narrative among a potentially vast number of experiences that a gay identity might be built around. To this end, we have taken a broader approach to gay identity development that is reflective of the pervasive silencing that we believe to be typical of this non-canonical narrative.

⁴We note that we are coming more from a historical framework than a collective memory framework, viewing historical events as possible vehicles for creating shared master narratives.

⁵For the cultural memory sex and romance were treated as one category, unlike the distinct categories in the coding of the self-defining memory. This was done because both categories are personal memories in response to a cultural prompt and only comprised 6% of the responses to the cultural memory combined, whereas they made up 30% of the narratives in the self-defining memory.

⁶See Loiacano (1989) who discusses how racial and sexual identity interact to produce marginalisation among the marginalised, specifically examining the challenges associated with identification as an African American in the predominantly white gay community.