Gays: A Fictional Narrative

Within the 1990s there is a persistent problem of Gay culture. Early in the 1990s it was hard to come out and let the world know that you are gay. Within the early 1990s The Wedding Banquet (1993), although it approached the issue of Wei-Tung Gao trying to tell his parents that he is gay and still accepting as who he is. Contrastingly within the late 1990s it becomes more acceptable to society by having celebrities coming out like Ellen Degeneres during her tv show Ellen. The two kinds of media contrast as a form of whether or not to come out as a gay or not during a time when AIDs was prominent and new.

About a year ago one of my best friends and I bought some glow-in-the-dark stars to paste on my ceiling. After about four hours of neck-straining work, we shut off all the lights in my room, closed the door, jumped onto my bed and looked up to admire the green glowing wonders above us. After a few minutes of quiet talking, my friend said something that totally blew me away. It might have been that he was tired from the day's work, or maybe a little light-headed from all the dust and stucco we inhaled while placing those stars on my ceiling. Or maybe it was the darkness that made him feel as if he had some kind of security. But something about the situation made him say one of the most serious things he

The development of gay identity emerged from men and women not being comfortable with the lives they were living. Traditional heterosexual roles caused both men and women to become unsatisfied with the way they were supposed to act. In a sense, they expressed heterosexual roles so that they won’t receive any backlash from the community they were a part of. The sexuality of someone was socially constructed, and that caused many people to have a difficult time coming out about which sex they prefer over the other. In Jeffrey Week’s “Sexuality in History”, Week discussed how sexuality is socially constructed as it gives aid in the development of one’s identity. Sexuality is something that people are able to express by the people they have something in common with. However, it is socially constructed since people labeled everything. “Indeed, I would go so far to say that sexuality only exists through its social forms and social organization” (Weeks 6). Sexuality was not based on the person, but how people will view their nonconformity in society.

Homosexuality remains one of the most important concepts in the sociological study of sexuality. It has not been proven in any way that homosexuality is induced by genetic makeup, by an individuals cultural, or societal practices. Homosexuality is defined as: one who has a sexual attraction towards someone else of the same sex. This topic will be examined with the socio conflict approach, and therefore critical sociology, due to the inequalities that have arisen in most cultures throughout the existence of the modern world, and the early modern world. Before 1960 homosexuality was not accepted in any sense in Canada, or the United Sates. Homosexuality was labeled by mental health professionals as a sickness, and a means for being

The purpose of this lecture was to discuss the invention of homosexuality. Professor Chiang reiterated some of Foucault’s theories discussed in the last lecture, mentioning that sexuality must not be thought of as a kind of natural given which power tries to hold in check, or an obscure domain which is knowledge tries to gradually uncover. There have been many ways that scientist have tried to explain homosexuality through biology. One theory suggests, the number of older brother’s one has effects one’s sexual orientation. This is called “The Older Brother Effect”, and only accounts for a portion of homosexuals. When the idea of homosexuality shifted from sodomy to homosexuality, it changed from “What I did” to “Who I am”. Additionally, homosexuality

In “The Myth of Homosexuality” by Christine Downing, there is the discussion of homosexuality and its meaning over the years. Downing begins the article by stating how a myth has classified women-on-women and men-on-men relationships to fall under the same term of homosexuality, but there is much deeper understanding to it than that. The classification under one word has caused a lot of shaping concerning how they are viewed or how they view themselves. In order to look past the surface of what defines the myth, Downing states that we must start with the culture’s myth and it’s origin.

The topic of homosexuality elicits many reactions. It is forever played upon in pop culture for it's shock value if nothing else. Some demonize it, holding things like religion as proving, "alternative lifestyles," to be wrong. Some have erotisied homosexuality as in many of Anne Rice's vampire novels. Some laugh at homosexuality or people who are homosexual, calling it, "weird". Some react violently, as in the case of Matthew Shepard. And yet others have gradually turned towards acceptance shown (debatably) in such movies as, " To Wong-Fu Love Julie Newmar" and " In and Out".

In Stephanie Fairyington's essay, “The Gay Option”, the author expresses regret about the framing she used to explain her sexuality when coming out as a homosexual to her mother. She told her mother that her homosexuality was a result of biology and not choice. As a result, Fairyington's mother began to refer to her sexually as a birth defect. This in not the outcome Fairyington desired. She explains that her intent was to gain acceptance from her mother not pity. That experience lead her to conclude that the best course of action for the LGBT community should be for them to turn away from using biology to explain their sexuality but to look instead to an argument of choice. Fairyington explains that an argument of choice will force the rest

The article don’t be so Gay: Challenging homophobic language by Erika L. Kirby is Professor of Communication Studies; she has been at Creighton since 1998. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in organizational communication, and she studies the everyday intersections of working and personal life, emphasizing how differing social identities (especially gender) assimilate into and collide with organizational structures. The following piece was originally published in 2008. The author’s main purpose is to educate the reader on the power of certain words. The author’s tone is truly concerned with how common homophobic slurs are use. The overall topic is to demonstrate what little thought we put in to our words.

Gay men and women in the 1940s learned very early on in life just how detrimental it was to keep their homosexual identities a secret. It was not as simple as playing a fun, innocent game of secret identity, but rather a tactic employed to avoid the violence, the discrimination, and the many other ways that heterosexual Americans attacked homosexual Americans. Hiding their true selves was the only way for gay people to ensure their safety in at least one manner during the 1940s. In The Evening Crowd at Kirmser’s, Ricardo Brown implicated the secretive nature of gay men in the 1940s as imperative to their survival. Brown continually acknowledged the challenges accompanying the concealment of their true identities and divulged some of the various complications that arose both within and outside of the gay community, contributing to the need for their secrecy.

“The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pains of Growing up Gay in a Straight Man’s World”

Imagine four teenagers: Craig, Lucy, David, and Gina. Really think about their appearances and personalities. I’m going to say that you imagined all of them as heterosexual, cisgender, white, average-sized boys and girls. If you did, it’s okay. It’s our brain's default. It’s what is “normal”. What if I said that Craig was gay? What if I said Gina was African-American? Or that David used to be Diana? And Lucy was Buddhist? Most minds of our generation wouldn’t care. It wouldn’t harbor negative feelings now that these people have “breached” if you will, the societies perception of normal. America’s gift to our generation is acceptance.

After the 19th century European history, we merge into American history. There was close to no studies done up until Post World War II. There was some encouraging growth for gay life that was very much apparent in Greenwich and Harlem in the 1920’s and this is also when the community adopted the pink and black triangle. The war allowed for gay men and lesbian women to insert themselves into the war efforts without being constantly chastised. There were efforts to work towards gaining more acknowledgement of this community. One of whom that led for this justice in the 1950’s was Senator Joseph McCarthy with his investigation of homosexuals in government positions. His investigation is what led up to the first politically inclined demand for

Nussbaum also believes that the stereotypical portrayal of homosexuals and the homophobia towards homosexuals is created by a disgust and that disgust is is what makes minority groups look inferior to majority groups. Nussbaum believes that “projective disgust plays no proper role in arguing for legal regulation, because of the emotion’s irrationality and its connection to stigma and hierarchy…Disgust, however, often prevents us from looking for those good reasons, creating the misleading impression that the policy has already been well defended. Turning it to legitimize polices” (Nussbaum, 20). Due to the “politics of disgust,” Nussbaum believes that homosexual couples should be given suspect classification unlike the Lawrence v. Texas

In the above image, nine men dressed in identical striped shirts seem to march or walk in a line. Beside them a men in uniform gives the back to the photographer. The expression on the men’s faces says much about what they might be thinking in this specific situation. They seem sad, scared, cold, and hungry. On their striped shirts, there is a white triangular badge and below it a white rectangular badge with four digits numbers. The image is in black and white. The title of the image says, “Gay prisoners at Sachsenhausen, 1938.”