Like members of many social identity groups, gay men within certain racial or ethnic groups (e.g., gay white men in the United States) generally share a sense of group entitativity that is characterized by the experiences of unity, coherence, and organization. Notwithstanding its members’ overall sense of entitativity, gay white male culture in the United States, specifically, has formed an array of diverse subgroups along dimensions such as physical attractiveness, musculature, masculinity, and age. These subgroup categorizations often are highly salient to individuals, and they frequently serve these gay men’s drive to self-enhance through intragroup comparisons. Given that many of these subgroups are well established, with members who share not only unique physical characteristics but also particular communication patterns and/or traditions that contribute to group stereotype formation, it is possible to consider communication and comparisons across these subgroups to be intergroup in nature as well.
Social psychological theory provides useful frameworks for understanding the intra-/intergroup dynamics among such subgroups of gay men. One framework is self-categorization theory. According to this theory, individuals engage in self-stereotyping. That is, they react to themselves and others not as unique individuals, but as members of a group who share common characteristics and have similar needs, goals, and norms. It is through such categorization that group members differentiate themselves from members of other groups or subgroups. Another framework, social identity theory, also sheds light on intergroup dynamics within the gay white culture in the United States. In line with this theory, gay men may cope with discrimination from the heterosexual mainstream through the adoption of one or more coping strategies. These strategies include leaving their group or changing negative values assigned to the in-group into more positive ones. Additionally, they may avoid the use of the higher-status heterosexual group as a comparative frame of reference, instead making downward comparisons with members of other gay male groups that they consider to be inferior in order to self-enhance. Of course, though not to achieve positive distinctiveness, members of lower-status groups also orient themselves in gay culture by making upward comparisons with members of subgroups they consider to be superior to their own. Again, these subgroup distinctions may include those based on physical attractiveness, musculature, masculinity, and age.
Article
Gay Male Culture and Intergroup Communication
Christopher Hajek
Article
Gay Pornography
Joseph Brennan
Commercial, moving-image, hardcore, all-male pornography (otherwise known as “gay pornography”) emerged in the United States in the 1970s when, for the first time, many of the cultural inhibitions and legal restrictions on explicit gay sexual content were swept away with the current of a sexual revolution—prompted in large part by the 1969 Stonewall riots. In 2022, its study constitutes a thriving subfield of porn studies.
This qualitative review starts with the contributions of foundational essayists (Richard Dyer and Thomas Waugh) in a 1985 edition of Jump Cut, followed by discussion of the contributions of three special issues on the subject (in 2004, 2015 and 2017) in the Journal of Homosexuality, Psychology & Sexuality, and Porn Studies—through which a case is made for the instrumental role of these specials in the subfield’s exponential growth, commencing circa 2015. “Bareback” (the on-screen abandonment of the condom) and “gay-for-pay” (a gay-sex-strictly-for-remuneration fantasy and career construction/identity) are marked out for separate consideration as two profoundly dominant (and uniquely gay-aligned) conditions to which much of the subfield’s (relatively) recent flourishing can be attributed. The final section organizes extant literature according to key bulges and thrusts across text, industry, and audience concerns, with John Mercer, Jeffrey Escoffier, and Todd G. Morrison, respectively, nominated as the key architects of the critical, 21st-century groundwork on which the subfield owes much of its contemporary vibrancy.
This is a dynamic survey, acknowledging the author’s own disciplinary stake (cultural studies) via qualitative, strategic selection of some eminent and emerging themes from across the literature. Crucially, allowance for future updates is built into its structure and method; key themes can be added as new priorities emerge, expanded, or shifted, with the ebb and flow of the subfield’s agenda items (should thrusts come to bulge or bulges lose impetus).
Article
Gay Straight Communication
Fabio Fasoli
Sexual orientation is a private matter that individuals can decide to disclose or conceal. Nevertheless, when interacting with others, people look for cues of sexual orientation. Hence, the person’s face, voice, or non-verbal behavior is taken as a cue revealing sexual orientation. As research on “gaydar” has shown, this detecting ability can sometimes be accurate or stereotype-based. Sometimes gay, lesbian, and bisexual people themselves intentionally communicate their sexual identity explicitly or through more subtle cues. Intentional or not, several cues are taken as communicating sexual orientation with the consequences of shaping interpersonal interactions.
Identifying someone as gay or lesbian has several implications. On the one hand, it leads straight men and women to non-verbally behave differently than when interacting with other straight individuals (e.g., more physical distance, more self-touching). On the other hand, it also affects verbal communication (e.g., topics of conversation, questions, and statements). The harshest consequence is hate speech and homophobic language. Research has shown that being labeled as “faggot” or “dyke” not only negatively affects those who are the target of such verbal derogation but also negatively impacts on straight bystanders. Indeed, gay and lesbian targets of homophobic language report a lower level of well-being and self-acceptance, while being exposed to such language increases prejudice toward gay men and lesbians among straight people. In the case of straight men, the use of homophobic language is often associated with identity self-affirmation and self-presentation. Interestingly, a recent trend among gay people has been noticed: they use homophobic labels among them as a form of “reclaimed language,” meaning that these derogatory terms are used with a different intent and reframed in a more positive way.
Moreover, communicating sexual orientation can increase self-acceptance, social support, and positive social comparison among gay men and lesbians and can also increase positive attitudes toward gay people, especially when it happens with friends and family members.
Article
Gender and Journalism
Linda Steiner
Understanding the role of gender in the newsroom involves tracing a shift from an initial consensus that women’s only journalistic role was to write with “a woman’s touch” about women, for women readers, to a claim that women should be allowed to produce the same “unmarked” news as men. The claim became that women’s forms—women’s sections or other materials intended for women audiences—represented professional ghettos, and that women were needed to produce better, more ethical journalism. That is, within the newsroom, gender was first dichotomized, rendering the interests of women and men as opposites, and then it claimed to be irrelevant. Feminist scholars point out that, over time, men have consistently tried to protect their status, jobs, and salaries, and have failed to acknowledge how journalism was set up as a male enclave with “macho” values and a culture that disadvantaged women, especially mothers, with its tradition of long and irregular hours and lack of childcare.
Research on gender and journalism can be divided into two categories: (a) gender “at work” in newsrooms (including opportunities or inequities in jobs, promotions, and salaries, as well as sexism), and (b) representations of women. Scholars often assume that the first issue over-determines the second. On both issues, research shows improvement, but also continuing problems. Now women journalists appear to be well established; the news includes issues associated with women’s quotidian concerns, and it takes women seriously. Yet a variety of gender divides continue to characterize journalism. Researchers find gendered patterns in coverage, especially in politics and sports. Women television journalists are routinely sexualized, and their high visibility in television broadcasting—through explicit scrutiny of their bodies, hairstyles, clothing, and voices—is countered by their invisibility in management. Gendered double standards and a glass ceiling continue to stymie the promotion of women to key decision-making and governance positions in print and broadcast news organizations. Moreover, women are far from enjoying equity in the online context.
Women continue to be concentrated in low-status media outlets and beats: they dominate community, small-town, and regional news organizations, and they produce “soft news,” human-interest stories and features. Men still dominate, although they do not monopolize, most of the high status areas of news production, particularly politics and business, as well as the lucrative and popular area of sports, a highly gendered and sexist domain. The most overtly gendered arena is war correspondence. Women who report on war and conflict are judged by very different standards than men. In particular, mothers are condemned when they go off to dangerous conflict areas, although fathers who cover war continue to be largely immune from public criticism. Women war reporters run a high risk of sexual violence and harassment, although women who have been sexually attacked rarely tell their supervisors—probably for fear of being pulled off an assignment.
Countless platforms are now available to citizens to disseminate their views as citizen journalists, including blogs and Twitter; these provide opportunities for challenging gender roles and democratizing relations between men and women. On the other hand, social media threaten the business model of professional journalism; the resulting trend to part-time, freelance, and even unpaid work creates a precarious and potentially highly feminized labor force.
Article
Gender as a Consideration When Designing Health and Risk Messages
E. Michele Ramsey
Given the impact of gender on health, healthcare decisions, and treatments for illness, as well as the increased inequities encountered by non-white men and women, messages about health and health risks are affected by purposeful assumptions about gender identity. While the term sex denotes the biological sex of an individual, gender identity is about the psychological, cultural, and social assumptions about a person associated with that person because of his or her sex. Gender and health are intimately connected in a number of ways, and such connections can differ based on race, ethnicity, age, class, religion, region, country, and even continent. Thus, understanding the myriad ways that notions of gender affect the health of females and males is fundamental to understanding how communicating about risks and prevention may be tailored to each group.
Gender role expectations and assumptions have serious impacts on men’s health and life expectancy rates, including self-destructive behaviors associated with mental health and tobacco use, self-neglecting behaviors linked to the reluctance of men to seek treatment for ailments, reluctance to follow a physician’s instructions after finally seeking help, and risk-taking behaviors linked to drug and alcohol use, fast driving, guns, physical aggression, and other dangerous endeavors. Because gender role expectations tend to disfavor females, it is not surprising that gender generally has an even greater impact on women’s health than on men’s. Even though biological factors allow women, on average, to live longer than men worldwide, various gendered practices (social, legal, criminal, and unethical) have serious impacts on the lives and health of women. From sex discrimination in research and treatment regarding issues linked to reproductive health, depression, sexual abuse, alcohol and drug abuse, the sex trade, and normalized violence against women (such as rape, female genital mutilation, forced prostitution/trafficking, and domestic violence), women’s lives across the globe are severely affected by gender role expectations that privilege males over females.
While some general consistencies in the relationships between gender, women, and health are experienced worldwide, intersections of race, ethnicity, class, age, country, region, and religion can make for very different experiences of women globally, and even within the same country.
The recent years have seen an increasing call to reconsider the binary means by which we have defined sex and gender. Advances in our understandings of lesbian, gay, bisexual, intersex, and transgendered individuals have challenged traditional notions and definitions of sex and gender in important and complex ways. Such an important shift warrants a stand-alone discussion, as well as the recognition that sexual orientation should not be automatically linked to discussions of sex and gender, given that such categorization reifies the problematic sex/gender binaries that ground sexist and homophobic attitudes in the first place.
Article
Gender Bias and Sexism in Language
Michela Menegatti and Monica Rubini
Language is one of the most powerful means through which sexism and gender discrimination are perpetrated and reproduced. The content of gender stereotypes, according to which women should display communal/warmth traits and men should display agentic/competence traits, is reflected in the lexical choices of everyday communication. As a consequence, language subtly reproduces the societal asymmetries of status and power in favor of men, which are attached to the corresponding social roles. Moreover, the hidden yet consensual norm according to which the prototypical human being is male is embedded in the structure of many languages. Grammatical and syntactical rules are built in a way that feminine terms usually derive from the corresponding masculine form. Similarly, masculine nouns and pronouns are often used with a generic function to refer to both men and women. However, such linguistic forms have the negative effects of making women disappear in mental representations. Although the use of gender-fair linguistic expressions can effectively prevent these negative consequences and promote gender equality, there are even more implicit forms of gender bias in language that are difficult to suppress. By choosing terms at different levels of abstraction, people can affect the attributions of the receiver in a way that is consistent with their stereotypical beliefs. Linguistic abstraction, thus, is a very subtle resource used to represent women in a less favorable way and thus to enact gender discrimination without meaning to discriminate or even be aware that this linguistic behavior has discriminatory results. In order to reduce gender bias, it is necessary to change people’s linguistic habits by making them aware of the beneficial effects of gender-fair expressions.
Article
Gender in Rhetorical Theory
Faber McAlister
The phrase gender in rhetorical theory refers to how gendered identities and dynamics have shaped the conceptualizing of rhetorical performances and interactions. Scholars have attended to this dimension of rhetoric by examining problems relating to gendered norms and representations as contexts, conditions, and functions for rhetoric. Despite the different aims and times of these inquiries, they share central concerns about the gendered productions and exclusions of discourses and rhetorical practices. Scholars also contribute to work in both rhetorical scholarship and gender studies by bringing diverse projects into contact to create new insights.
Scholarly attention to gender in rhetorical studies has often critiqued conventional theories of rhetoric for importing simplistic accounts of gender or for failing to address its importance at all. Many crucial contributions to rhetorical studies have worked to correct this problem by drawing on interdisciplinary literature—particularly from feminist theory, intersectional analysis, queer theory, trans theory, and masculinity studies—enriching understandings of how rhetoric functions. Such research has enabled rhetorical theory to begin to account for distinct embodied encounters, material conditions, and performative agencies.
Scholars have drawn on interdisciplinary literature to advance a more nuanced account of gendered experiences and representations in rhetorical theory. This research has often related sexism and misogyny to a host of other forms of bias and bigotry that are evident in some of the scholarly assumptions and abstractions guiding the discipline of rhetorical studies. These include universal and neutral standards of rhetorical efficacy, individualistic accounts of the rhetorical agent, and definitions of rhetoric as a representation of (or response to) an external reality that appeals to a preexisting audience.
Rhetorical theorists have also contributed to broader conversations engaging complexities of gender by highlighting the role of discourse in the production of biological essentialisms; gender binaries; interlocking oppressions; and multiple vectors of marginalization, discrimination, erasure, exclusion, and violence.
Article
Gender Issues in Intergroup Communication
V. Skye Wingate and Nicholas A. Palomares
Gender is conceptualized as a social construct rather than biologically determined. Gender shapes communication in intergroup contexts. Gender influences communication in assorted domains, such as nonverbal behavior and emotion, language, friendship, self-disclosure, social support and advice, group decision making, leadership emergence, gaming, and aggression. Considering gender-based communication in each of these domains provides insight into the manner in which gender-based communication is conceptualized and understood. Gender is a meaningful factor, but not the sole determinant, of communication because other factors can moderate gender’s influence.
Article
HIV/AIDS: The Queer Communication of HIV in the LGBTQ Community
Andrew R. Spieldenner and Bolivar X. Nieto
After four decades of living, organizing, and even dying in the HIV epidemic, individuals, communities, and institutions have been disrupted. The disease that would become known as HIV was first diagnosed among gay men in Los Angeles and New York in 1983. The epidemic in the United States began in a few communities—gay and bisexual men, trans people, injection drug users, hemophiliacs, and Haitian immigrants—all communities already stigmatized in society. The lack of knowledge, scientific research, and effective treatment fueled a new kind of stigma focused on HIV as a disease and the assumption of HIV infection. Community organizing—especially in those groups first identified in HIV—would provide life-saving services, community centers, and advocacy before governments would respond. HIV became a global pandemic revealing vast differences in health infrastructures and access to medicines. The emergence of effective HIV treatment began a different narrative about the disease—from automatic death to addressing how to live and age with the disease. The institutionalization of the HIV industry, which includes community activists, health care clinics, pharmaceutical companies, and governments, has been vital to firming up health services and advocacy groups. The impact of HIV on queer communication has stretched across understandings of health, community, organizations, and policies. In addition, HIV has made more visible queer practices of the body, disability, and dying in particular contrast to middle-class, hetero, White, cisgender, and able-bodied expectations.
Article
Homonationalism and Media
Alexander Dhoest
Homonationalism, as defined by Jasbir Puar, refers to the growing embrace of LGBT rights by (mostly Western) nations, as well as the parallel complicity of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals and associations with nationalist politics. First developed in the context of the U.S. “war on terror,” where the United States presented itself as exceptionally LGBT-friendly in contrast to “homophobic” Muslim others, the concept of homonationalism was quickly adopted by authors across the world and in different disciplines, writing on a number of LGBT-friendly in-groups in contrast to a number of homophobic out-groups. Besides the United States, other Western countries figure prominently as in-groups in this literature, particularly Western and Northern European ones, but also larger regions such as the European Union (EU) as well as subnations such as Catalonia and Québec. Muslims constitute the most prominent out-group in homonationalist discourses, although other groups and regions also appear, in particular, African countries and, in the European context, Central and Eastern Europe as well as Russia. In each case, a simplistic opposition is set up between a homogeneously modern and LGBT-friendly “us” and an equally homogeneous antimodern homophobic “them.” These discourses are prominent in (often right-wing) politics but are equally replicated across a range of media, which play a crucial role in the spread of homonationalist discourses but remain underexplored to date.
Article
Homonationalism’s Viral Travels
Hana Masri
First defined by Jasbir Puar in 2007, homonationalism refers to the collusion between LGBTQ subjects or rights discourses and nationalism. This definition contrasts with previous transnational queer and feminist analyses. Homonationalism instead describes a form of national homonormativity and sexual exceptionalism in which some LGBTQ subjects are complicit with, rather than excluded from, nationalism and imperialism. This recognition and incorporation into the nation is predicated on the nation’s production and disposal of populations of racial and sexual others, particularly through Orientalist constructions of undesirable Muslim and Arab sexualities and genders. The literature on homonationalism thus explains how certain queer and trans subjectivities are mobilized in service of modernity’s racial, capitalist, imperial, and colonial projects, such as the U.S. “War on Terror.”
In addition to this original definition, the framework of homonationalism has been expanded to refer to the way LGBTQ rights have become a barometer by which to evaluate nations’ and populations’ right to sovereignty at the global political scale. This includes, for example, discourses that use notions of sexually progressive multiculturalism to justify foreign intervention.
Scholars and activists alike have applied the framework of homonationalism widely, to the degree that the homonationalism has been referred to as a viral concept. Much of this uptake focuses on “pinkwashing,” a manifestation of homonationalism that refers to a nation-state’s promotion of its “gay-friendly” record in order to obscure other types of political violence, including colonialism, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing. At the same time, homonationalism’s extensive uptake has led to a proliferation of perspectives that complicate, challenge, and expand the concept’s usage; though the conditions it names emerge across contexts, its instantiations vary based on historical and geopolitical context. These differences in application inform critiques of the concept, which tend to focus on the overextension and universalization of the concept at the expense of its clarity, context specificity, and utility for activism seeking to contest homonationalist policies and practices.
Article
Homonormativity
Dawn Marie D. McIntosh
Homonormativity emerged as an interdisciplinary theory that rendered valuable understandings of power relations within and beyond the LGBTQ community. Homonormativity is a discursive and embodied practice, or set of practices, by sexual minorities that aligns with and reinforces power constructs. The transitions from macro-orientations (political strategies and movements) to microstructures (aesthetics and embodied performances) of homonormativity are arguably best located within the communication studies field. This article examines how communication studies contributes to and directs the workings of homonormativity. To accomplish that goal, the article articulates four trajectories of homonormativity: intersectional homonormativity, homonormative whiteness, transnational homonormativity, and homonormative possibilities. Embodied and/or intersectional homonormativity considers the theory of intersectionality in relationship to homonormativity. Next, homonormative whiteness details the role whiteness plays in homonormativity. Whiteness depends on the erasure of difference, and this erasure is critical to how sexually marginalized individuals as a community acquire power through racism, sexism, and classism. Homonormativity, then, is dependent on workings of whiteness to acquire power. Following this, transnational homonormativity explores the relationship between homonationalism, homo-colonialism, and homonormativity. Homonormativity is grounded in the understanding of queer bodies in relationship to nationalism, transnationalism, and xenophobia. Finally, homonormative possibilities articulates the potentialities that exist in the embodied critiques of homonormativity and possibilities provided by academic work that deconstructs it.
Article
Jotería Studies and/in Communication
Luis M. Andrade
In recent decades, Communication scholars have drawn from and added to the subdiscipline of Jotería Studies, a relatively modern branch of gender and queer studies that draws from history, sociology, ethnic studies, and other fields. Jotería Studies provide a glimpse into the lives of Jotería, a unique group and subculture that includes Latina/o/x, Chicana/o/x, and mestiza/o/x noncisheteronormative and/or gender-nonconforming persons. Latina/o/x are terms that loosely refer to persons from Latin America, Chicana/o/x loosely refer to people with Mexican origins and/or part of a collective movement from the 1960s/1970s that was rooted in indigenous and/or Mexica ancestry and mythologies, and mestiza/o/x loosely refer to people that have mixed identities as Mexican, Latin American, indigenous, and/or white/Spanish. The use of x signifies gender nonconformance since the “-a” and “-o” are gendered terms. Of interest to scholars are the ways that Jotería communities survive oppressive conditions, despite the constant persecution of the subgroup by modern/colonial gender, racist, classist, ableist, and other oppressive institutions.
As Jotería Studies arose in the United States, scholars in Communication research started integrating the unique epistemologies and methodologies of the subdiscipline into their own studies in unique and fascinating ways. Communication scholars add to or draw from the myriad definitions for the term Jotería and its different variations, the histories of the subdiscipline, and Jotería Studies methodologies. As Communication and Jotería Studies converge, complement, or diverge, future directions and potential applications of Jotería Studies in Communication remain.
Article
Judith Butler and Communication Studies
Fiona Jenkins
Judith Butler is one of the most important contemporary critical theorists. Best known for her influential concept of gender as performance and her critique of the idea of natural binary sexual difference, Butler also develops a critical perspective on wider issues arising from the idea that “being is doing,” insisting on the many alternate possibilities of lives that can always be “done” differently. In this context Butler develops a complex account of what it is to be a subject and revises some basic philosophical assumptions regarding how to think about moral deliberation. Butler displaces the assumption that the human subject is responsible only on the condition of being autonomous in order to reconceptualize subjects as beings thrown into a world of interdependency and cohabitation. Butler characterizes us as part of “precarious life,” beings whose exposure to desire, loss, and grief is constitutive of our existence, but who nonetheless find agency within a critical relation to constituting social norms and through building more generous public worlds.
It is helpful to understand the rich engagement that Butler’s work has with the philosophical perspectives in the background of these ideas, from the Hegelian criticism of abstract universalism to genealogy, deconstruction, queer and feminist theory, speech act theory, and the psychoanalytic account of subject formation, as well as the interlocutors who have become increasingly important in Butler’s recent work, including Levinas, Benjamin, and Arendt. These engagements ground a distinctive ethical and political approach that Butler brings to bear on contemporary and urgent questions, central to which is how alterity is engaged with. With a focus on how lives become “intelligible” as those of the kinds of beings that are recognized and find protection in law, Butler contributes rich insights into contemporary political phenomena. In particular, she describes how only certain lives appear as valuable in public discourses, while others lives and deaths become a matter of indifference, tracking the role of images and rhetoric in enforcing such differences. In demonstrating how state violence is bound up with this differentiation between “grievable and ungrievable lives,” Butler draws out a complex account of the relationship between violence, law, and justice. There are clear continuities between Butler’s earliest and latest work in the exploration of these issues, based in her methodological commitments to practices of critique and genealogy.
Article
Kuaer Theory
Ryan M. Lescure
Although queer theory was profoundly influenced by the womanist feminism of the 1980s and its emphasis on the ways in which intersectionality affects lived experience, popular queer theorizing generally lost this as it became more popular in academic contexts during the 1990s. Generally, the popular queer scholarship that was being published in the 1990s did not pay much attention to the diversity of queer experiences and subjectivities. Because many popular queer theorists at the time were White, affluent, cisgender, and based in the United States, their scholarship, while anti-heteronormative, tended to reflect their privileged racial, socioeconomic, gendered, national, and cultural standpoints. Subsequently, this scholarship tended to construct a singular, definitive, and universal queer subject position as White, affluent, cisgender, and based in the United States.
Wenshu Lee’s kuaer theory is an example of one of the first significant theoretical challenges to queer theory’s problematic universalizing tendencies. Initially advanced in 2003, kuaer theory is influenced by postcolonialism, womanism, and E. Patrick Johnson’s quare studies, which Lee characterizes as having advanced queer theory in a similar way that womanism did for feminism. Finding inspiration in the writing of Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, Cherríe Moraga, and Gloria Anzaldúa, kuaer theory applies womanist concepts to expand on the foundation built by Johnson’s quare studies, which calls for queer theorists to focus on the particularity and diversity of sexualities as well as the ways in which sexualities relate to and are shaped by race, gender, socioeconomic class, and culture. Kuaer theory agrees with and advocates for all of these things, but it notably adds a transnational perspective and emphasizes that queer theorists must also highlight the relationships between sexualities and nation, nationality, power, and culture at the local, national, and transnational levels. Kuaer theory notes that queerness, queer activism, and queer knowledges are not exclusive to the United States or to the Western world. Because of this, kuaer theory encourages queer theorists to emphasize the local and intersectional particularities of people’s sexual experiences and subjectivities while simultaneously being critical of the ways in which queer theory itself often reproduces imperialism and cultural hierarchies at the global level.
Kuaer theory continues to be influential among queer theorists, especially for its critique of queer theory’s often implicit reproduction of hierarchies. Like quare studies, kuaer theory is often cited by queer theorists who challenge queer theory’s continued general inattention to intersectionality and to the multiplicity of queer subjectivities. Finally, kuaer theory’s emphasis on transnational and transcultural perspectives as well as its criticism of queer theory’s imperialistic consequences has proven to be a substantial influence on critical intercultural communication and the emerging field of queer intercultural communication.
Article
LGBTI and Indigenous Groups in Ecuadoran Media
Palmira Chavero Ramírez and Martín Oller Alonso
Public opinion is strongly influenced by the images that media present of the outside world and the frames of the main issues. In the case of Ecuador, this media content has been characterized by a strong presence of discriminatory and biased content. This kind of content contributes to the exclusion of some citizens, especially social minorities such as LGBTI; indigenous; and other identities people. As a consequence, the role of the state is more important to generate public policies in order to protect the minorities and to recognize others kinds of media.
In the last three decades, some of these groups have taken an important role in the social and political sphere, in addition to the academic one. The LGBTI collective has seen some of the historically denied rights recognized (such as equal marriage, approved in 2019), and progress has been made in the public debate on some women’s rights. For their part, indigenous people have taken a leading role in political action and have managed, at least for a time, to stop regressive public policies of rights, thereby becoming one of the main political actors today. The role played by the media in making these actors and their actions visible has also taken center stage.
The situation of these groups is currently in a drastic process of change, although they still feel discriminated against and judged by society and by current legislation. This situation is aggravated due to the image that the media show of them, based on stereotypes and the lack of knowledge of their diversity identity.
The main challenge continues to be for the mainstream media to move away from their economic and political nature to approach an inclusive communication, with a rights-based approach that recognizes and allows the development of equality in all citizens.
Article
LGBTQ+ Workers
Elizabeth K. Eger, Morgan L. Litrenta, Sierra R. Kane, and Lace D. Senegal
LGBTQ+ people face unique organizational communication dilemmas at work. In the United States, LGBTQ+ workers communicate their gender, sexuality, and other intersecting identities and experiences through complex interactions with coworkers, supervisors, customers, publics, organizations, and institutions. They also utilize specific communication strategies to navigate exclusionary policies and practices and organize for intersectional justice. Five central research themes for LGBTQ+ workers in the current literature include (a) workplace discrimination, (b) disclosure at work, (c) navigating interpersonal relationships at work, (d) inclusive and exclusive policies, and (e) intersectional work experiences and organizing.
First, the lived experiences of discrimination, exclusion, and violence in organizations, including from coworkers, managers, and customers, present a plethora of challenges from organizational entry to exit. LGBTQ+ workers face high levels of unemployment and underemployment and experience frequent microaggressions. Queer, trans, and intersex workers also experience prevalent workplace discrimination, uncertainty, and systemic barriers when attempting to use fluctuating national and state laws for workplace protections. Second, such discrimination creates unique risks that LGBTQ+ workers must navigate when it comes to disclosing their identities at work. The complexities of workplace disclosure of LGBTQ+ identities and experiences become apparent through closeting, passing, and outing communication. These three communication strategies for queer, trans, and intersex survival are often read as secretive or deceptive by heterosexual or cisgender coworkers and managers. Closeting communication may also involve concealing information about personal and family relationships at work and other identity intersections. Third, LGBTQ+ people must navigate workplace relationships, particularly with heterosexual and/or cisgender coworkers and managers and in organizations that assume cisheteronormativity. Fourth, policies structure LGBTQ+ workers’ lives, including both the positive impacts of inclusive policies and discrimination and violence via exclusionary policies. Fifth and finally, intersectionality is crucial to theorize when examining LGBTQ+ workers’ communication. It is not enough to just investigate sexuality or gender identity, as they are interwoven with race, class, disability, religion, nationality, age, and more. Important exemplars also showcase how intersectional organizing can create transformative and empowering experiences for LGBTQ+ people. By centering LGBTQ+ workers, this article examines their unique and complex organizational communication needs and proposes future research.
Article
LGBTQ+ Epistolary Rhetoric/Letter Writing
Pamela VanHaitsma
Approaching letter writing as a rhetorical practice—as epistolary rhetoric—is not an obvious priority for queer studies in communication. Yet the importance of letters to LGBTQ+ studies of rhetoric have come to the fore in two key ways. In a first approach, following the long-standing use of letters as evidence within interdisciplinary LGBTQ+ histories, letters serve as vital primary sources in histories of LGBTQ+ rhetoric. Letters act as evidence of LGBTQ+ romantic, erotic, and sexual relations within queer studies of public memory. Also, acting as so-called hidden transcripts, letters document other kinds of background information about rhetorical situations. In a second approach LGBTQ+ letters have been analyzed as rhetoric. Receiving the most attention are obviously public and political letters, such as those appearing in movement publications, the rhetoric of public officials and their political campaigns, and activist letter-writing campaigns. Especially in the case of LGBTQ+ life, however, letters often blur the lines between genres that are public and private, political and intimate. As such, even those letters considered most intimate, such as romantic and erotic letters, have been theorized as forms of epistolary rhetoric. Both approaches persist and are in productive tension with each other. Whether scholars underscore how LGBTQ+ letters are rhetoric or simply draw on them as records of information, letters are indispensable sources for the development of LGBTQ+ histories of rhetoric, studies of public memory, and research on communication.
Article
LGBTQ+ Marriage: Relational Communication Perspectives
Pamela J. Lannutti and Hilary Wermers
Researchers have examined the relational, social, and communicative aspects of legally recognized marriage for LGBTQ+ people. Legally recognized marriage has been found to affect the experiences of and communication within the relational lives of LGBTQ+ people in a variety of ways. First, LGBTQ+ marriage has been found to have psychological effects for LGBTQ+ individuals and has been found to impact aspects of LGBTQ+ identity. Legal marriage has also been found to impact LGBTQ+ romantic relationships by influencing relationship-related perceptions, marriage-related deliberations for couples, and changes to couples as a result of marrying. LGBTQ+ people also report changes in their family relationships related to legal marriage that marriage has influenced relationships with family-of-origin members and family building for LGBTQ+ people. The current research is limited because of a reliance on samples that are predominantly cisgender and White and identify as gay or lesbian, therefore underrepresenting the experiences of marginalized members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Article
LGBTQ Youth Cultures and Social Media
Olu Jenzen
Research has established that access to the Internet and social media is vital for many lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer + (LGBTQ+) young people. LGBTQ+ social media youth cultures form across platforms and are shaped by a range of media affordances and vernaculars. LGBTQ+ youth use social media for self-expression, connecting with other LGBTQ+ young people, entertainment, activism, and collecting and curating information. Through a digital cultural studies approach, the essay discusses themes of LGBTQ+ youth identity work, communities and networked publics, and youth voice to explore how digital and social media imaginaries and practices produce new forms of socialites. It situates LGBTQ+ youth social media practices in relation to the affective economy and algorithmic exclusion of platforms, as well as in relation to neoliberal paradigms of gender and sexuality and homotolerance.
