Overview
- Draws attention to the ongoing inequalities and prejudices that characterise and shape gay male life today
- Makes a timely intervention in the ongoing ‘gay vs. queer’ debate in order to provoke new discussion
- Illuminates the risks engendered by queer critical work that ignores the always contingent nature of homonormativity
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender (PSRG)
Access this book
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Other ways to access
About this book
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
Table of contents (8 chapters)
Reviews
In Interrogating Homonormativity Sharif Mowlabocus offers a deeply nuanced exploration of the lives of gay men who have benefitted from increasing legal equalities and assimilation into normative middle class life. Like Mowlabocus I have material and affectively benefited from these legal changes and the commodification of sexual difference, but I also feel deeply ambiguous about them. At the heart of this book is an exploration of those contradictions – the difference that homonormativity makes in some gay men’s everyday lives, but also how the lived experiences of those men often exceeds the assumed boundaries of ‘the homonormative’, revealing the needs and desires that remain unmet by the legal equalities of the last two decades. This is an exceptional book, which interrogates the complex ways in which marriage equality has changed the place of gay men in contemporary (British) society, exposing how formal equality continues to overlook sexual difference and ends up obscuring demands for genuine equity. Its key message is that gay marriage, specific forms of consumption, and workplace equality and diversity initiatives are not intrinsically ‘homonormative’, but they continue to be appropriated by neoliberal actors to shore up heteronormativity and discipline gay men’s social and sexual lives. — Dr. Gavin Brown, Professor of Political Geography & Sexualities, Leicester, UK.
This book considers how contemporary Western societies shape and discipline the ways that men can express same-sex intimacy and sexuality despite major gains in civil rights. It’s not a book to castigate anyone for lack of moral correctness; it listens carefully to the voices of gay men interviewed on how they navigate through such current questions as marriage, cruising on Grindr, PrEP, chemsex, and corporate-identified employee groups rallying at Pride. A pleasure to read, this book offers reflections that are refreshingly grounded in the experiences of gay men today dealing with a new world of legal rights in a context of declining public gay spaces and at best conditional public acceptance.
— Dr. Barry Adam, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Windsor, Canada.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Interrogating Homonormativity
Book Subtitle: Gay Men, Identity and Everyday Life
Authors: Sharif Mowlabocus
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87070-6
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-87069-0Published: 27 November 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-87072-0Published: 28 November 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-87070-6Published: 26 November 2021
Series ISSN: 2662-9364
Series E-ISSN: 2662-9372
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 241
Topics: Culture and Gender, European Culture, Queer Theory, Global/International Culture, American Culture