Solidarity, Disdain, and the Imagined Center of the Gay Imagined Community

Abstract

The concept of imagined community has been deeply influential in scholarly understandings of nationality. In the three decades since its inception, however, the concept has expanded to be applied to a wider array of communities and identities, such as the elderly, secularists, hackers, and the LGBTQ + community. The bulk of this research has emphasized the in‐group solidarity produced by imagined communities. Yet, a small body of research specifically on LGBTQ + imagined communities suggests that imagined community may also be alienating and marginalizing. Based on analysis of interviews with 29 non‐heterosexual men, I find that respondents simultaneously discursively use the gay imagined community to stake a claim in community membership and to distance themselves from what they perceive to be negative aspects of that same community. This suggests that imagined communities can serve a more ambivalent function, both fostering solidarity and building boundaries. Moreover, my findings suggest the importance of studying communities’ “imagined centers.”

Changing Levels of Social Engagement with Gay Men Is Associated with HIV Related Outcomes and Behaviors: Trends in Australian Behavioral Surveillance 1998–2020

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“The queers hate me because I’m too butch”: Goldilocks masculinity among non-heterosexual men

“…Navigating these dueling pressures can create something of a tight-rope experience for these men. Worth noting, however, is that the ideal these men describe may be just that: an imagined, ideal type rather than a literal individual or group (Winer, 2020). Also worth noting is that respondents frame certain sexual roles (i.e., top and bottom) as fixed, but it is undoubtedly possible for individuals to move between sexual positions—and to label one’s sexual position preference as “versatile,” or enjoying both bottoming and topping.…”

St. Petersburg as a Place of Belonging: Sticker Artists Inhabit and Imagine the City

“…In a sense, the inhabitants of one particular city can be called an imagined community based on the abstract sense of sameness or solidarity, which occurs in strangers who identify with a certain social group or territory, especially if that territory is actively mediated and branded-acquiring various images, myths, and representations created and disseminated through various media. The concept of imagined community was originally introduced by Anderson (2006) to analyze nation-building and the maintenance of a sense of belonging to a nation and then drawn upon to approach a wide range of communities, shaped e.g., by sexuality (Winer, 2020), age (Conway, 2003), appearance (Adamczyk, 2010), or the use of certain social media (Gruzd et al, 2011) to examine the dynamics of social inclusion and exclusion.…”