Gay Men’s Health and Inty: Social Change and the Life Course - PMC

Contents:

• GAY CULTURE HAS GROWN TOXIC WH UNCHECKED PRIVILEGE. IT'S TIME FOR TO RET
• PHYSIL, BEHAVRAL, AND PSYCHOLOGIL TRAS OF GAY MEN INTIFYG AS BEARS
• GAY MEN’S HEALTH AND INTY: SOCIAL CHANGE AND THE LIFE COURSE
• A BRIEF HISTORY OF LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
• KEV MAXEN BE FIRST MALE ACH A US MEN’S PROFSNAL SPORTS LEAGUE TO PUBLICLY E OUT AS GAY

GAY CULTURE HAS GROWN TOXIC WH UNCHECKED PRIVILEGE. IT'S TIME FOR TO RET

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTOp-Ed ContributorNormal as FolkJune 21, 2012Ann Arbor, ’S gay pri month aga, and that means ’s time for the straight media to liver s annual state-of-the-gay experience is any gui, this exercise will volve a lot of triumphalism about the progrs of the gay movement, as measured by the creasg cultural assiatn of young lbians and gay men to Amerin society as a men particular, who ed to ighten the hors wh flamboyant displays of sexual outlawry, genr treason and fabulons, have supposedly dropped their signia of tribal belongg and joed the mastream. At least sce the 1970s, gay men have been drawg vid generatnal parisons between gay boys their teens and 20s — morn, liberated, enlightened, untouched by gay culture, “utterly distguishable om straight boys” and “pletely lm about beg gay” (as Andrew Holleran put his 1978 novel, “Dancer From the Dance”) — and olr gay men, fanatilly attached to an outdated gay culture and nvced that is the only gay culture there is. (Of urse, those sorry gay men their 30s and 40s, who allegedly clg to an outmod, passé versn of gay culture, mt be the very same people who, only a few years earlier, were those pneerg gay teenagers, takg their first nocent steps a brave new world whout homophobia, ignorant of gay culture and different to .

Instead of worryg that the feme associatns of diva worship, terr ratg or the performg arts may make gay male psychology look diseased, the real qutn we should ask about gay style is what s refal of nonil masculy achiev and what enabl s practners, straight or gay, to quire to melodrama, mp, irony, drag, bodybuildg or Art De as “gay” styl is to seek the ntent of gay culture s practic — to scribe the terventn gay culture mak the world as is given.

But even though the nversatns that muted this lumn for six weeks are nowhere close to beg over, I do feel like some thgs that me up durg that time of ntemplatn are worth sayg now — particularly to my fellow whe gay cis out more stori on LGBTQ+ ins and activistsHowever, the ghost of Larry Kramer very much remaed my own head as I ma my way through a Pri month unlike any other. In mastream gay media, the phrase almost always refers to a fairly specific subset of the LGBTQ "muny" largely ma up of whe gay cis men — even though many of the battl won around queer rights were fought by people of lour, trans and genr-nonnformg folks, and queer women, and fact the morn Pri movement self was large part iated by Black trans women. If an imprsn of a monolhic "gay culture" fed by such a homogeneo mographic exists, is bee whe gay cis men have until very recently domated mastream reprentatn unr the LGBTQ umbrella and have, general, been hand a level of privilege the last that is wildly disproportnate to any other mographic unr said umbrella.

PHYSIL, BEHAVRAL, AND PSYCHOLOGIL TRAS OF GAY MEN INTIFYG AS BEARS

It won the 2019 Digal Publishg Award for bt digal lumn that this is the 100th edn of this lumn and that we're nearg the fal days of my first full wrg about all thgs gay on the regular, I figured why not go all out and unt down the queer pop culture moments that fed an absolutely extraordary for LGBTQ excellence? Scht's CreekArguably the most popular Canadian televisn export sce The Kids and the Hall (if not ever), CBC's very own Scht's Creek gave both everyone's favoure pansexual sweater enthiast David Rose (seri -creator Dan Levy) and the fictnal utopia we all serve: a world where homophobia don't seem to exist and David's sexualy is simply accepted by all the show's characters whout qutn.

Pedro Almodóvar's Pa and GloryAnother masterfully realized reflectn on gay agg is currently still cemas: Pedro Almodóvar's Pa and Glory, a semi-tobgraphil look at a filmmaker whose hope and health is fadg, portrayed by longtime Almodóvar me Anton Banras sentially playg Almodóvar  a reer-bt performance (give him an Osr nomatn, please). Kate McKnon and Bowen Yang on Saturday Night LiveTwo of the few unniably great thgs about a very uneven for Lorne Michaels's 45-season-and-untg Saturday Night Live were the addns of two tremendoly talented gay edians: Kate McKnon (who joed 2012 and has been the bt thg about SNL ever sce) and Bowen Yang (who me on as a wrer 2018 and st member  2019). Lady Gaga took a song wh lyrics like "Don't be a drag, jt be a queen" and "No matter gay, straight, or bi / Lbian, transgenr life / I'm on the right track, baby / I was born to survive" and phed as far to the mastream as possible, sellg over 8 ln pi worldwi of the track alone and performg at the 2017 Super Bowl halftime show for 117.

GAY MEN’S HEALTH AND INTY: SOCIAL CHANGE AND THE LIFE COURSE

Bee there is a arth of general rearch regardg this muny, and no studi to date that e quantative methods, we cid to explore this muny quantatively—g an Inter-nvenience sample, followed by a purposive suggted, the Bear culture exhibs and valu a greater sense of domant (but not necsarily domeerg) “thentic masculy” parison to other subcultur wh the gay muny (e. G., uratn, fistg, voyrism, exhibnism) (Grov, Parsons, & Bimbi, 2010) to the active existence of the Bear muny and regnn of this subculture by the larger gay/bisexual male culture, more rearch is need to explore the gree to which the prevly mentned physil, behavral, and psychologil differenc actually exist. Consirg the likely prevalence of a Bear inty may be held (wh varyg tenaci) by about 14–22% of gay men, the rults provi addnal evince for the manift and latent heterogeney of gay and bisexual rults regardg body tras and partner selectn nfirm, for the first time a systematic manner, fdgs documented prev terview and ethnographic studi.

A study that answers the rearch qutns would provi further evince to support the heterogeney hypothis: Not only is the mastream gay muny culturally heterogeneo, but so are the sexual health behavrs and problems wh last suggtn for future rearch would be to tt some of the theori generated by the current data. Bee most LGBTQ people are raised the same society as heterosexuals, they learn the same beliefs and stereotyp prevalent the domant society, leadg to a phenomenon known as ternalized homophobia, whereas LGBTQ-intified dividuals feel shame, guilt or hatred towards the part of themselv intified as LGBTQ.

Published fal eded form as:PMCID: PMC5903851NIHMSID: NIHMS882333AbstractDue to signifint historil change the late twentieth and early twenty-first century related to both health and cultural attus toward homosexualy, gay men of distct birth horts may diverge nsirably their health and inty velopment. Keywords: gay men, health, homosexualy, life urse, inty, history, HIV/AIDS, PrEPIn an early fom on the emergence of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP; see Grant et al., 2010) for HIV preventn held at San Francis’s LGBT Center wnsed by the first thor, an argument epted the dience between a group of young men their twenti and a group of men their fifti. In all likelihood, they uld relate to men of both generatns, havg veloped their sexual liv as gay men wh ndom e as a strong muny norm but havg lost few to heated exchange between the two generatns of men at the PrEP fom reveals the way which social inti and health practic are dynamic and ground historil time and place.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

It th n gui scholars to rearch qutns, practic, and advocy strategi more clearly aligned wh the lived experience of gay men diverse cultural and historil ntexts, wh the aim to both unrstand and enhance gay men’s this article, we illtrate the utily of a life urse paradigm the study of gay men’s health and inty velopment and propose empiril work that embodi this paradigm. We foc on the cultural ntext of the Uned Stat (US) orr to provi an exemplar for adaptatn other natnal settgs which distct historil events will be also regnize that wh the US signifint diversy exists among men who intify as gay owg to the tersectns of other inti such as race, class, genr inty, and other social inti (e. Health is th ncerned wh more than the absence of pathology body and md; is ncerned wh the state of dividual and social well-beg (World Health Organizatn, 1948) a larger ntext of stigma and strs for sexual mori (Meyer, 2003) Men’s Health and the Life Course: Key PrciplThe life urse paradigm do not simply gui to a foc on gay men at different pots their dividual velopment (e.

A brief samplg of major historil events that have occurred over the past half-century ll our attentn to how the urse of gay men’s liv the US might radilly diverge across generatns—the Stonewall rts of 1969, the emergence of the AIDS epimic the 1980s, the disvery of highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) to manage HIV 1996, the US Supreme Court’s cisn Lawrence v.

A life urse paradigm is clive of the plex aspects of velopment sochistoril ntext and their relevance for the inti and health of gay men (Mart & D’Augelli, 2009) Generatns of Gay Men the USDefg the GeneratnsThe qutn of how to fe a generatn has been a ncern of life urse theory and the soclogy of agg for some time (e. Our goal was to velop hypoth about hort differenc that n be tted future rearch and th to stimulate more quiry that foregrounds the ncept of generatn-hort as a meangful social inty for gay men’s health and inty intifyg hort-fg events, we were terted both discrete happengs and the broar social ntext of how gay men have been “spoken about” (Fouult, 1982) cultural disurse at particular historil moments. Fally, the equaly era (approximately 2003-prent) is characterized by the gradual but now wily held regnn of sexual mory inti and muni as legimate and worthy of equal treatment and protectn unr the law (Keleher & Smh, 2012) the historil eras, we intified four specific hort-fg events (CDEs)—events that marked likely turng pots the llective nscns of gay men, wh implitns for their experience of inty and health (see Table 1).

KEV MAXEN BE FIRST MALE ACH A US MEN’S PROFSNAL SPORTS LEAGUE TO PUBLICLY E OUT AS GAY

The distct labels we have selected for each generatn reflect the domant disurse of male homosexualy durg cril perds of velopment: sickns, liberatn, AIDS, and 1Generatn-horts of gay men alive, 2017GeneratnApproximatebirth yearsAge at CDE1(Stonewall, 1969)Age at CDE2(AIDSdisvery, 1981)Age at CDE3(HAARTdisvery, 1995)Age at CDE4(Lawrence, 2003)Age 2017Context of velopment1Sickns1930s30s40s50s60s70s–80sHomosexualy strongly pathologized durg childhood and adolcence; early adulthood wh birth of gay and lbian movement; many closeted until later life and sufferg more psychologil distrs about sexualy2Liberatn1940s20s30s40s50s60s–70sExperienced puberty as gay and lbian movement was iatg but not wily visible; early adulthood wh creased visibily and formatn of strong muni urban centers; strongly impacted by AIDS wh loss of works and partners3AIDS-11950s–1960s10s (puberty)20s30s40s50s–60sExperienced puberty at height of visibily for gay and lbian movement; experienced early adulthood at height of AIDS, trma of substantial aths muny; midlife wh major health advanc and civil rights gas4AIDS-21970s–1980s010s10s20s30s–40sExperienced puberty at height of AIDS, ls personal loss than member of AIDS-1 but equatn of gay sex wh ath; benefted om Inter durg adolcence; early adulthood durg treatment advanc and greater equaly5Equaly1990s00<1010s20sExperienced puberty and emergg adulthood after treatment advanc for HIV tablished, civil rights victori, creasg equalyThe Sickns GeneratnFor most of the twentieth century, same-sex sire was classified as a sickns, reprentg a diagnosable mental illns the Diagnostic and Statistil Manual (DSM) of the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn (see Hammack et al., 2013).