‘Acting Gay’: Embodiments of Gay Male Identity
(Southwestern University)
In this paper I explore what may lie behind what it means to “act gay.” Gay men are imagined to exhibit a range of behaviors characterized as typically gay and often are seen as inherent to the gay body, yet many gay men do not display these behaviors at all. Through interviews, participant-observation in the gay community in Austin, Texas, and autoethnography, I analyze what my gay male respondents think it means to “act gay,” how they themselves behave, and whether they think this type of behavior is “natural” or “cultural.” In my analysis, I use the theoretical frames of phenomenology and performativity; phenomenology focuses on a world in which subjects orient themselves and move towards particular objects, opening up new paths to follow and closing off others, and performativity focuses on a subject that is constructed by society and the self based on particular roles the subject is expected to perform. My preliminary results suggest that gay men’s understandings and practices of ‘acting gay’ are more nuanced than perhaps either theoretical approach takes into account.