LGBTQ culture


LGBTQ culture or queer culture is the shared culture, experiences, values, and expressions of LGBTQ people, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals. It may be referred to by other variants of the initialism LGBTQ, while the term gay culture can refer either to LGBTQ culture in general or specifically to homosexual culture.
LGBTQ culture varies widely by geography and the identity of the participants. Elements common to cultures of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people include:
Not all LGBTQ people identify with LGBTQ culture; this may be due to geographic distance, unawareness of the subculture's existence, fear of social stigma or a preference for remaining unidentified with sexuality- or gender-based subcultures or communities. The Queercore and Gay Shame movements critique what they see as the commercialization and self-imposed "ghettoization" of LGBTQ culture.
In some cities, particularly in North America, some LGBTQ people live in neighborhoods with a high proportion of gay residents, otherwise known as gay villages or gayborhoods—examples of these neighborhoods include Greenwich Village, Hell's Kitchen, and Chelsea in Manhattan; Castro and West Hollywood in California, United States; Le Village in Montreal, Canada; and Church and Wellesley in Toronto, Canada. Such LGBTQ communities organize special events in addition to pride parades celebrating their culture such as the Gay Games and Southern Decadence. On June 27, 2019, the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor was inaugurated at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village.

Lesbian culture

As with gay men, lesbian culture includes elements from the larger LGBTQ culture, as well as other elements specific to the lesbian community. Pre-Stonewall organizations that advocated for lesbian rights, and provided networking opportunities for lesbians, included the Daughters of Bilitis, formed in San Francisco in 1955. Members held public demonstrations, spoke to the media, and published a newsletter.
Primarily associated with lesbians in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, lesbian culture has often involved large, predominantly lesbian "women's" events such as the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival and the Club Skirts Dinah Shore Weekend. Lesbian culture has its own icons, such as Melissa Etheridge, k.d. lang, Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi. Lesbian culture since the late 20th century has often been entwined with the evolution of feminism. Lesbian separatism is an example of a lesbian theory and practice identifying specifically lesbian interests and ideas and promoting a specific lesbian culture. Examples of this included womyn's land and women's music. Identity-based sports teams have also been associated with lesbian culture, particularly with the rise of lesbian softball teams and leagues in the 1980s and 1990s. Softball and other athletic teams created social community and allowed lesbians to reject social expectations of physicality, but were typically considered separated from lesbian feminism and political activism.
1950s and early '60s stereotypes of lesbian women stressed a binary of "butch" women, or dykes and "femmes", or lipstick lesbians, and considered a stereotypical lesbian couple a butch-femme pair. In the 1970s, androgyny, political lesbianism, and lesbian separatism became more common, along with the creation of women's land communities. The late 1980s and 1990s saw a resurgence of butch-femme, and influences from punk, grunge, riot grrrl, emo, and hipster subcultures. A genderqueer subculture developed in the 1980s and 1990s. In the 2010s, the rise of non-binary gender identities brought some degree of return to androgynous styles, though at times with different intentions and interpretations than in the 1970s.

Gay men's culture

According to Herdt, "homosexuality" was the main term used until the late 1950s and early 1960s; after that, a new "gay" culture emerged. "This new gay culture increasingly marks a full spectrum of social life: not only same-sex desires but gay selves, gay neighbors, and gay social practices that are distinctive of our affluent, postindustrial society".
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, gay culture was largely underground or coded, relying on in-group symbols and codes woven into ostensibly straight appearances. Gay influence in early America was more often visible in high culture, where it was nominally safer to be out. The association of gay men with opera, ballet, haute couture, fine cuisine, musical theater, the Golden Age of Hollywood and interior design began with wealthy homosexual men using the straight themes of these media to send their own signals. In the heterocentric Marilyn Monroe film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a musical number features Jane Russell singing "Anyone Here for Love" in a gym while muscled men dance around her. The men's costumes were designed by a man, the dance was choreographed by a man and the dancers "seem more interested in each other than in Russell"; however, her presence gets the sequence past the censors and works it into an overall heterocentric theme.
After the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City was covered on the mainstream news channels, showing images of gay men rioting in the streets, gay male culture among the working classes, people of color, street people, radical political activists and hippies became more visible to mainstream America. Groups such as the Gay Liberation Front formed in New York City, and the Mattachine Society, which had been in existence and doing media since 1950, gained more visibility as they addressed the crowds and media in the wake of the uprisings in Greenwich Village. On June 28, 1970, the first Christopher Street Liberation Day was held, marking the beginning of annual Gay Pride marches.
In 1980 a group of seven gay men formed The Violet Quill in New York City, a literary club focused on writing about the gay experience as a normal plotline instead of a "naughty" sideline in a mostly straight story. An example is the novel A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White. In this first volume of a trilogy, White writes as a young homophilic narrator growing up with a corrupt and remote father. The young man learns bad habits from his straight father, applying them to his gay existence.
American female celebrities such as Liza Minnelli, Jane Fonda, and Bette Midler spent a significant amount of their social time with urban gay men, and more male celebrities were open about their relationships. Such openness was still limited to the largest and most progressive urban areas, however, until AIDS forced several popular celebrities out of the closet due to their illness with what was known at first as the "gay cancer".
Elements identified more closely with gay men than with other groups include:
  • Pop-culture gay icons who have had a traditionally gay-male following
  • Familiarity with aspects of romantic, sexual and social life common among gay men
  • Beefcake, physique magazines and fitness culture
There are a number of subcultures within gay male culture, such as bears and chubbies. There are also subcultures with an historically large gay-male population, such as leather and SM. Gay critic Michael Musto opined, "I am a harsh critic of the gay community because I feel that when I first came out I thought I would be entering a world of nonconformity and individuality and, au contraire, it turned out to be a world of clones in a certain way. I also hated the whole body fascism thing that took over the gays for a long time."

Relationships

Some U.S. studies have found that the majority of gay male couples are in monogamous relationships. A representative U.S. study in 2018 found that 32% of gay male couples had open relationships. Research by Colleen Hoff of 566 gay male couples from the San Francisco Bay Area funded by the National Institute of Mental Health found that 45 percent were in monogamous relationships, however it did not use a representative sample. Gay actor Neil Patrick Harris has remarked, "I'm a big proponent of monogamous relationships regardless of sexuality, and I'm proud of how the nation is steering toward that."
During the 1980s and 1990s, Sean Martin drew a comic strip which featured a gay couple living in Toronto's Gay Village. His characters have recently been updated and moved to the internet. Although primarily humorous, the comic sometimes addressed issues such as gay-bashing, HIV, and spousal abuse.
An Australian study conducted by Roffee and Waling in 2016 discovered how some gay men felt like they were expected to be hyper-sexual. Participants reported how other gay men would automatically assume that any interaction had sexual motivations. Furthermore, if it was then clarified that this is not the case then these gay men would suddenly feel excluded and ignored by the other gay men with which they had been interacting with. They felt that they could not obtain purely platonic friendships with other gay men. One participant reported feeling alienated and disregarded as a person if they were not deemed by other gay men as sexually attractive. This presumption and attitude of hypersexuality is damaging, for it enforces preconceived ideals upon people, who are then ostracised if they do not meet these ideals.