Gay Men’s Health and Identity: Social Change and the Life Course

Abstract

Due to significant historical change in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century related to both health and cultural attitudes toward homosexuality, gay men of distinct birth cohorts may diverge considerably in their health and identity development. We argue that research on gay men’s health has not adequately considered the significance of membership in distinct generation-cohorts, and we present a life course paradigm to address this problem. Focusing on the United States as an exemplar that can be adapted to other cultural contexts, we identify five generations of gay men alive today and review unique issues related to health and identity development for each. Implications for research, practice, and advocacy on gay men’s health and development are discussed.

Gay Men’s Identity Development in the Twenty-First Century: Continuity and Change, Normalization and Resistance

“…Taking an intersectional lens [Coston & Kimmel, 2012], I concluded that the data corpus comprised interviews from gay men of relative privilege in US society: privileged with regard to race, class, education, and accessibility of LGBTQ resources based on urban and suburban upbringing. I calculated that the majority of men were born in the late 1980s and early 1990s, members of what I and others have dubbed the "Equality Generation" of gay men because they experienced their adolescence at the height of the marriage equality movement [Hammack et al, 2018]. Savin-Williams [2016] acknowledges that these men are "not 'representative' of young gay men in the United States" (p. 301).…”

“…The explosion of research on the biological basis of homosexuality likely contributed to shifts in cultural perspectives and rhetoric toward greater acceptance [e.g., Hamer & Copeland, 1994;LeVay, 1996]. These men experienced their adolescence in the 2000s with the thrust of the marriage equality movement which, though it took time, resulted in an enormous civil rights victory for individuals with same-sex desire: the attainment of the legal right to marry throughout the USA [Hammack et al, 2018].…”

“…The young men whose interviews comprise the data corpus for Savin-Williams' [2016] book experienced their adolescence in the 2000s, about a decade after me and at a time when the discourse on homosexuality was centered on marriage equality [Hammack et al, 2018]. During my adolescence, being gay was incredibly stigmatizing and discrediting and largely associated with disease and death (i.e., AIDS).…”

“…My colleagues and I have dubbed gay men born in the 1990s the "Equality Generation" precisely because the dominant cultural discourse about homosexuality in their early development was grounded in equality [Hammack et al, 2018]. This equality discourse was part of a "normalizing" discourse that was dominant in the larger gay/queer community in the 1990s, as activists, scholars, and cultural critics debated the relative merits of assimilation [e.g., Sullivan, 1995;Warner, 1999].…”

“…For gay, lesbian, queer, and other sexual minorities, historical context matters deeply in the lived experience of human development, for life course possibilities have generally been severely constrained by laws and cultural ideologies that have privileged heterosexuality and denigrated (even criminalized and pathologized) same-sex desire [Hammack, Mayers, & Windell, 2013]. A life course theoretical perspective posits that gay men's development will vary across generations, as social and historical change alters the way in which they interpret and experience their same-sex desire [e.g., Cohler, 2007;Hammack, 2005;Hammack, Frost, Meyer, & Pletta, 2018]. As I engaged with the narratives in Savin-Williams ' [2016] text, I considered issues of continuity and change in gay men's development across generations.…”