CHAPTER 5: HETERO- AND HOMONORMATIVE INFLUENCES ON GAY AND
5.4 The “popular” and “perfect” gay and lesbian campus identity
5.4.1 Sources for what it means to be gay, lesbian or straight
Participants were asked what the possible sources were from which they gained their understanding of what it meant to be gay or lesbian, and straight. Again, themes overlapped with what it meant to be gay or lesbian.
5.4.1.1 “Doing” gay and lesbian
Participants indicated that they learnt what it meant to be gay or lesbian from “friends” (Edgar, Granger, Heidi, IDK, Jennifer, Martha, Matthew, Tanya) or “peers” (Brett, Eric, Henry, Ikai, Sienna, Tanya). Granger (lesbian) mentioned that she did not know what “gay” meant until her “best friend in Grade 7 … informed her … before her I didn’t know a person could be anything else but straight”. Similarly, Sienna (lesbian) recalled the ignorance of others, which necessitated her to remain closeted while growing up in her very conservative “little town”. She noted:
… nobody ever spoke about being gay or that such a thing even existed and when it was talked about it was to tell us how wrong it was and to ridicule the gay person. I kept quiet about being gay, because my parents were strongly against it.
However, her current campus life afforded her the opportunity to:
… discover likeminded individuals who were living out and proud and spoke about their experiences openly … I [then] started to gain a better understanding of my own sexual identity to know that I wasn’t alone and the only person who has experienced this was so comforting. It opened my eyes to all the possibilities and that being away from my hometown was a good thing. I was free to be me.
I was also able to do research with all the information that was available to me on campus, explore and discover.
Participants also gained understanding from “social media” (Bambi, Bernice, Brett, Granger, Heidi, Lindsey, Matthew, Mukwevho, Richy, Yellow). Examples of the social media participants used included “Instagram” (Matthew, Mukwevho), “YouTube” (Bambi, Matthew, Yellow),
“Facebook” (Mukwevho), and “TikTok” (Bambi). Additionally, participants identified “media”
(Carol, IDK, May, Max) such as “television” (Bambi, Hein, Jennifer, Martha, Mukwevho, Tanya) and “movies” (Hein, Jennifer, Tanya) as a source of their understanding of what it meant to be gay or lesbian. Mukwevho (lesbian) responded that when she “started seeing these things on TV
… like sometimes when you see maybe like two girls kissing or two guys kissing, you feel some type of way”. Max (gay) explained:
The media always portrayed gayness with something comical. My earliest example I can think of is when they continue to mock Raj (in The Big Bang Theory) when stuff he says ‘comes out sounding wrong’ when he accidentally makes gay references.
Participants also identified “searching the Internet” (Eric, Hein, Lindsey, May, Mukwevho) if they had questions on sites such as “Google” (Hein, Mukwevho) and “Wikipedia” (May). IDK, Jennifer, Martha and Padro identified “books” as a source of their understanding. Padro (gay) specifically identified “academic books” and said “ever since I realised or discovered my sexuality, I started investing lots of my time teaching myself about sexualities as subject and more specifically homosexuality”. Participants also identified sources of their understanding as “church” (Henry, Max), “parents” (Heidi, Henry, Lindsey, Skylar), “family members” (Tanya), “school” (Jennifer) and
“fanfiction” (Granger).
Participants identified blogs (Bernice) and pornography (Max) as sources of their understanding of what it meant to be gay. Max (gay) stated that he “never quite understood what being gay was, until the first time I watched gay pornography. After that, I finally understood some of the references bullies used”. Yellow (lesbian) identified “quizzes” as a source of her understanding of
what it means to be lesbian and commented “Am I really like this? Yeah, I guess it was denial phase or whatever, so I had to like look for it, does it exist?”
5.4.1.2 “Doing” straight
Participants identified the source of their understanding of what it meant to be heterosexual as the “norm” (Bambi, Eric, Heidi, Granger, Henry, Martha, Matthew) in society, as they are “visible everywhere” (Carol, Granger, Lindsey, Richy, Padro, Tanya). Padro (gay) commented that heterosexual individuals are “the majority of humankind”. Eric (gay) recalled his experience growing up: “it was seen as the standard and assumed to apply to all except for occasional LGBTQ+ cases”. Similarly, Henry (gay) also recalled his experience growing up:
Because heterosexuality was presented by my parents and their religious community as normative, I only came to really realise that being straight was only one of many alternative identities far into my teenage years. Being straight has become more and more clearly delineated as the only ethical, godly, viable, healthy, sexuality and identity to associate with.
In this regard, four participants (Bernice, IDK, Jennifer, Tanya), along with Henry, identified religion as a source of their understanding. Bernice (lesbian) spoke of how church and religion preached heterosexuality as “the basis of the ‘perfect’ marriage”. Media (Granger, Henry, IDK, Jennifer, Lindsey, Max, Mukwevho) was also identified as a source of understanding. Max (gay) spoke to how relationships tend to be portrayed in the media as “heterosexual”, where “love only existing between the damsel in distress and the knight in shining armour that comes to her rescue”. A significant socialisation agent was as the family (IDK, Jennifer, Matthew, May, Tanya) or parents (Bambi, Henry), which may indicate the pressure participants experienced at home to conform to heteronormativity. May (pansexual) provided a striking description of the nuclear family as the antithesis of an ideal and supportive context:
My parents were my primary source for this…They had two kids, three dogs, and a house in Durban overlooking the sea. We were a textbook nuclear family.
I’m glad for having had that, because it taught me how toxic and unsustainable nuclear family units can be. My father is an alcoholic, abused my mother, and my mother herself has been on anti-depressants for twenty years now. They let expectations of what they should want and be shape their lives, and they both wound up absolutely miserable.
Sienna (lesbian) identified her parents and surrounding as primary socialisation agent of what it meant to be straight. Participants also identified various sources of their understanding of what it
meant to be straight, namely “friends” (Brett, Edgar) and “peers” (Brett, Carol, Ikai, Lindsey),
“internet searches” (Lee, Yellow), and “school” (Brett, Jennifer).
5.5 GROUP IDENTIFICATION: STUDENT ORGANISATIONS AND