‘The fact they knew before I did upset me most’: Essentialism and normativity in lesbian and gay youths’ coming out stories

Abstract

This article demonstrates, via discourse analysis of a group of young gay and lesbian people’s coming out stories, the salience of essentialist ideologies on their identity construction. The study reveals underlying normative assumptions in the young people’s narratives, including those associated with binary gender and innate sexual desire, which they employ in order to construct a culturally authentic sexual identity. Through close sociolinguistic analysis of interactions, it is shown how identity construction is directly influenced by broader ideologies. The analysis provides evidence of the continued prevalence of heteronormativity and homonormativity as key influences in young queer people’s identity work.

‘I'm a boy, can't you see that?’: Dialogic embodiment and the construction of agency in trans youth discourse

“…I carried out ethnography with the support group between January and April 2015, during which time I met twelve young people: the youngest was fifteen and the oldest was twenty. Some of them already knew me because they were also members of a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (LGBT) youth group where I had conducted fieldwork previously (Jones 2016(Jones , 2018(Jones , 2020a. The youth worker who ran both groups invited me to come and meet the young people, at which point I explained my research aims.…”

‘I’m just not gay-gay’: Exploring same-sex desire and sexual minority identity formation in SKAM and its Western European remakes

“…The inquiry into popular culture, heteronormativity and sexual minority identity formation is important as many contemporary young people still rely on hegemonic sexual taxonomies and master narratives on sexual identity formation to make sense of their desires (Hammack et al, 2009; Jones, 2020) and, second, these narratives have been oftentimes used to represent sexual identity formation in media and popular culture (Cohler and Hammack, 2007; Dhaenens, 2013; Hackford-Peer, 2010; Jones, 2020). According to Bertram Cohler and Phillip Hammack (2007), two narratives are dominant in Western societies: the narrative of struggle and success and the narrative of emancipation.…”

“…As Susan Driver (2008) pointed out, the hegemony of heteronormative discourses on sexual identity formation do not annul the lived experiences of LGBTQ teens who are unable or unwilling to make sense of their sexualities in heteronormative terms. Yet, lacking knowledge or access to queer approaches to sexual desire, behaviour and identity, these youth often restrict and limit their sense of self by relying on traditional models and knowledge of sexuality (Jones, 2020).…”

“…Foregrounding a nonheterosexual character, however, does not automatically mean that outdated, stereotypical and/or heteronormative portrayals of LGBTQ teens are defied (Davis, 2004;Webber, 2019). Since heteronormativity remains dominant in shaping norms and values of gender and sexuality across Western Europe, teens experiencing same-sex desire configure their sexual identity in socio-cultural contexts where same-sex desire and nonheterosexual identities are treated as 'other' than, or inferior to, heterosexuality (Hammack et al, 2009;Jones, 2020). This helps understand why particular discourses on sexual identity formation remain hegemonic, in popular culture and society at large, even though lived realities of youth show a myriad of ways to make sense of one's sexuality.…”

Has There Been a Transgender Tipping Point? Gender Identification Differences in U.S. Cohorts Born Between 1935 and 2001

“…In response to this period, known as the Lavender Scare, and other mobilizations against sexual and gender minority rights since then (Robinson 2020;Stone 2019), many LGBTQ groups and individuals have employed strategically essentialist narratives that claim that sexual orientation and gender identity are immutable characteristics rooted in biological factors, or randomly distributed in populations, and not a matter of individual choice (Jones 2020;Schilt 2015;Vogler 2016). However, other queer theorists and activists have long maintained that periods of dramatic social change have played a crucial role in facilitating a non-random secular increase in the number of gender and sexual minority individuals, and even speculate that the presence of gender and sexual minority individuals as share of the total population could eventually be even higher given particular historical and material conditions (D'Emilio 1993).…”