A Multi-Faceted and Relational Approach to Gay Men’s Identities

Abstract

The idea of a ‘post-gay’ identity suggests sexuality no longer remains a key identifier to gay men’s sense of self. The concept provides a useful framework for theorising how gay men’s identities include and go beyond their sexuality, allowing scholars to conceptualise it in more complex ways. This study contributes to the literature, by drawing on the idea of ‘personal community’ to unpack how multiple connections inform gay men’s multi-faceted identities. It is based on in-depth qualitative interviews with gay South Asian men in Australia. Findings reveal that friends, partners and LGBT+ groups play important roles in informing respondents’ subjectivities. Significantly, the family of origin was important to identity formation, which challenges the dominant understanding that gay men’s identities exist separately to them. More broadly, findings from this study contribute to a deeper understanding of diverse gay male identities in contemporary multicultural Australia.