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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN (RE)PRESENTING GENDER
SERIES EDITOR: EMMA REES

Interrogating
Homonormativity
Gay Men, Identity and Everyday Life
Sharif Mowlabocus
Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender

Series Editor
Emma Rees
Director, Institute of Gender Studies
University of Chester
Chester, UK
​ he focus of Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender is on gender and
T
representation. The ‘arts’ in their broadest sense – TV, music, film, dance,
and performance – and media re-present (where ‘to represent’ is taken in
its literal sense of ‘to present again’, or ‘to give back’) gender globally.
How this re-presentation might be understood is core to the series.
In re-presenting gendered bodies, the contributing authors can shift
the spotlight to focus on marginalised individuals’ negotiations of gender
and identity. In this way, minority genders, subcultural genders, and gen-
der inscribed on, in, and by queer bodies, take centre stage. When the
‘self’ must participate in and interact with the world through the body,
how that body’s gender is talked about – and side-lined or embraced by
hegemonic forces – becomes paramount. These processes of representa-
tion – how cultures ‘give back’ gender to the individual – are at the heart
of this series.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/16541
 Sharif Mowlabocus

Interrogating
Homonormativity
Gay Men, Identity and Everyday Life
Sharif Mowlabocus
Communication and Media Studies
Fordham University
New York, NY, USA

ISSN 2662-9364     ISSN 2662-9372 (electronic)

Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender
ISBN 978-3-030-87069-0    ISBN 978-3-030-87070-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87070-6

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 Acknowledgements

Music journalists routinely talk of the ‘awkward second album’ when ref-
erencing the challenge many recording artists face as they try to show the
world they are more than just a one-hit wonder. While I don’t claim that
my first book was in any way a ‘hit’, I most certainly identify with the anxi-
ety and self-doubt that comes with the production of the ‘second act’. It
is over ten years since I published Gaydar Culture; a book that drew heav-
ily upon research I produced within the privileged confines of a PhD pro-
gramme. That project was nurtured and sustained through regular
feedback and mentorship, not least from Andy Medhurst, someone who I
am proud to have called a supervisor, colleague and collaborator, and who
remains a very dear friend. While Andy was kind enough to provide feed-
back on some of the work contained in this second book, working on a
manuscript of this length, outside the structures of a PhD program, has
been a daunting task. Perhaps that is why I put it off for so long, preferring
instead to work on a series of shorter, exciting projects, the end products
of which were community reports and journal articles. I am indebted to
David Hendy and Tim Jordan for the advice and friendly push they gave
me to start writing book two.
I began working on this project in 2016 and I could never have pre-
dicted where the next five years would take me, both professionally and
personally. Indeed, in some sense the world has completely changed in
that time. Brexit, Trump, BoJo. Extinction Rebellion and the righteous
anger of a Swedish teenager and her generation. The resurgence of the
Black Lives Matter movement amidst ongoing police brutality. Grenfell.
The Xinjiang internment camps. Renewed demands that former colonial

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

powers acknowledge their crimes and cease to lionize those who prose-
cuted them in the name of God, Monarchy and Mamon. The revitalizing
of the Feminist movement. The ramping up of both the Trans rights
movement and of transphobia. A frenzy of mass murders and killing
sprees—from Christchurch to Paris to Orlando. The storming of the US
Capitol.
And, of course, the pandemic.
I write these acknowledgements in the summer of 2021, as the world
continues to grapple with COVID-19. The UK has only recently moved
out of a state of lockdown and the global race to distribute vaccines con-
tinues. I am not currently in the UK, and I have not been there for almost
three years. Indeed, I have not lived in England permanently since I signed
the contract to write this book. I’ve swapped London for New York, via
San Francisco and Boston, and my stack of dusty books has travelled from
my old office at the University of Sussex, to my new one at Fordham
University. I could not have predicted any of this (who could?), nor could
I have predicted the amount of support I have received while preparing
this book.
I begin by thanking those who read draft chapters or provided feedback
on conference presentations and the like. Chief among these good people
is Dylan Mulvin. In 2017, I was fortunate enough to be a visiting scholar
at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, MA, where I got to work with some
fantastic researchers, including Dr Mulvin. I want to thank him for being
the very best work-husband I could wish for, and for providing construc-
tive feedback and support on almost all of the chapters in this book. I am
honored to count him as a friend. Thanks D, I owe you a Mountain Dew.
I also want to thank my former PhD students and colleagues at Sussex—
Matt Beetar, Oscar Zhou, Lizzie Reed, Gaspard Pelurson, Kate O’Riordan,
Luke Robinson, Caroline Bassett, Kate Lacey and Janice Winship—for
reading draft chapters, providing inspiration and for being wonderful peo-
ple who regularly reminded me how lucky I am to be an academic. Tanya
Kant kindly provided several rounds of feedback on Chap. 5 and it was
thanks to Gemma Cobb that I ended up looking at the corporate invest-
ment in gay Pride in Chap. 7. To this list I can add my colleagues at
Fordham, especially Jackie Reich, Amy Aronson, Beth Knobel, Garrett
Broad and Gregory Donovan. Their support and advice made the transi-
tion from Sussex to Fordham as seamless as possible and I really do feel
like I’ve found a new home at Lincoln Center.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii

Beyond the confines of Sussex and Fordham, I owe a debt of gratitude

to Kristian Møller, Jamie Hakim, Kane Race, Andrew J Shield, Gavin
Brown, Kylie Jarrett, Susanna Paasonen, Ben Light, Regner Ramos, Bill
Leap, Stef DuGuay, Jean Burgess, Róisín Ryan-Flood, Jenny Sundén,
John Mercer, Tobias Raun, Steven Epstein, Florian Vörös, Lukasz Szulc,
Ysabel Gerrard, Tarleton Gillespie and Nancy Baym. Each, in their own
way, has influenced my thinking and collectively they have helped me
think through the intellectual and practical challenges that come with
writing a book. I also want to acknowledge the broader community of
scholars who regularly attend the AoIR and ICA conferences for their
feedback on presentations. The last group of scholars I wish to acknowl-
edge here is that small cluster of anonymous reviewers who kindly read my
initial proposal and provided valuable feedback, and/or who went on to
read the final manuscript of the book, again providing me with invaluable
suggestions and recommendations. And then there is the unceasing
patience of the editorial team at Palgrave. You’ve put up with a retinue of
excuses (spinal surgery, moving countries, changing jobs, breaking bones,
the pandemic) and have been gracious in your awarding of numerous
extensions to deadlines. Thank you.
This book simply would not exist were it not for all the people who
kindly gave up their time to talk to me about their experiences of life, sex
and work. Institutional codes of ethics prevent me from naming them
here, but I am eternally grateful that they were willing to participate in
interviews, and allowed me to ask probing, sensitive questions. Y’all are
wonderful.
To my kith and kin—my totally crazy family in Cambridge, my queer
brothers in Brighton, my cycling crew in NYC and my London friends—
you have kept me by turns, kept me sane and grounded, and joined me in
my moments of insanity. You’ve given me distractions (and gin) when
needed, and you’ve reminded me that there is more to life than my com-
puter screen and keyboard. I love you all.
Finally, to Andrew—someone who was, and remains, generous enough
to share their life with me. Your faith in me is unwavering. Your sense of
humour lightens my darkest moods. Your wanderlust and sense of adven-
ture is infectious. I think you owe me another pen, but then again, I owe
you everything. Thank you.
 Contents

1 Introduction  1
The Shape of Things to Come   7
References  13

2 Contextualising Homonormativity 15
Contextualising Homonormativity  16
The New Homonormativity  22
Beyond the New Homonormativity  29
References  32

3 Forsaking all others? Same-Sex Marriage and the Politics of

Everyday Life 35
I do (but should I?): The promises and pitfalls of marriage equality  36
“Stop Fucking Around”: The Homonormative Argument for
Marriage  37
Questioning the Pursuit of Same-Sex Marriage (Legislation)  40
Marriage, Property and Financial Benefits  41
Marriage and Relational Rights  42
Marriage and Politics  43
Queering the Knot: Gay Men’s Reasons for Marrying  45
Public Recognition  49
The Privileged and the Political  52
‘Dropping the H-bomb’: The language of married life  58

ix
x Contents

On (not) being a (real) husband  60

Beyond the Dyad  64
Conclusion  70
References  71

4 Conditional Acceptance: British Attitudes Towards

Homonormativity in the Context of PrEP 75
The “Wonder Drug”: Introducing PrEP as a Public Good  78
Pills (but no) Thrills  80
Passing the Buck  85
Suffer Little Children  87
Privatising PrEP  89
Cost/Benefit?  91
Conclusion: Framing (Homo)Normativity  95
References 103

5 ‘Kindness is Our Preference’: Hook-Up Apps As

Technologies of Polite Incivility109
Kindness is Our Preference 110
The Hidden Labour of Content Moderation 118
The Cultural Politics of Platform Design 123
“You’re Cancelled”: The Politics of Blocking 127
Polite Incivility 129
Conclusion 133
References 135

6 Something for the Weekend? Nostalgia, Vulnerability and

Discipline in Chemsex Heterotopias141
Chemsex in Context 144
Moving Towards Chemsex 148
Spaced Out: The Geographies of Chemsex 152
Chemsex Heterotopia 154
Crossing the Threshold 162
After the Party 164
Fucking with History 167
References 173
 Contents  xi

7 Marching to a Different Tune: Inside the Corporate

Sponsorship of LGBTQ Lives179
Reflections on Pride 184
Employee Resource Groups 187
Employee Benefits and Mutual Investments 195
Net Gains: Corporate Benefits of Pride Participation 201
A View from the Sidelines: Corporations and Community 204
The Privatisation of Activism 209
Marching to a Different Tune 210
Commodifying the Whole Self 213
References 218

8 Conclusion: Reflections on Homonormativity223

Reflection One: Homonormativity is (even more) relevant today 225
Reflection Two: Homonormativity Increasingly Frames Public
Attitudes Towards Gay Men 228
Reflection Three: Homonormativity Frames Gay Men’s (Use of)
Space 230
Where We Go from Here: The Vanishing Point of
Homonormativity 232
References 235

Index237
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

December, 2013
It is 3am and I am lying awake in a hotel bedroom in Paris. My head is pound-
ing from having had too much champagne earlier in the evening. My anxiety
spikes as my mind careens from one thought to another, crashing up against
unanswerable questions, like waves breaking against rocks. What have I just
agreed to? It isn’t even legal yet. I understand why he wants to do it, but I don’t
know what I think about it, or even how to go about it. I mean it goes against
a lot of what I believe in. Or does it? I said yes, so maybe I didn’t really believe
that much? Does that make me a fraud? A charlatan? What will other people
say? I could sense my parents’ sense of bewilderment when I phoned them to tell
them the news. Then again, that was hardly surprising, I myself am bewildered.
What was it exactly that I was phoning to tell them anyway? Do gay men even
get ‘engaged’?

June, 2017
I am in another European city to give a keynote presentation at a conference.
My hosts have kindly taken me out for dinner and as we graze on tapas, they ask
about my current research. I reply that I’m exploring news coverage of PrEP,
the anti-HIV treatment. A discussion ensues regarding the cost of providing
this drug via universal healthcare systems and I shift uncomfortably in my seat
as things get ever so slightly heated between two of the organisers—one a PhD
student, the other a senior professor. The conversation comes to an abrupt end
when the professor says ‘as someone who had to wait years for IVF, I just think

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
S. Mowlabocus, Interrogating Homonormativity, Palgrave Studies
in (Re)Presenting Gender,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87070-6_1
2 S. MOWLABOCUS

the government has their priorities wrong. There are women out there having to
wait to get fertility treatment. Why should all that money be spent on gay men
just because they don’t want to use a condom?’. The waiter comes to clear away
the plates and another colleague diplomatically intervenes to change the subject.

June, 2018
I’m in a hotel function room in downtown San Francisco. Children with
painted faces are running around waving tiny rainbow flags while adults
huddle in small groups, sipping mimosas and snacking on fresh fruit and
bagels. The atmosphere is one of corporate socializing: intensely upbeat with an
undercurrent of nervousness. Like everyone else, I am wearing a white T-shirt
emblazoned with a corporate logo and an affirmative slogan written in pink.
The bartender looks bored and slightly fed up but his face mechanically rear-
ranges itself into a smile as I approach the bar. Someone taps on a microphone
and introduces the CEO of the tech giant that is paying for this brunch. A white
middle-aged man with a sun-weathered complexion steps up, utters a few pleas-
antries and cracks a few jokes before affirming the company’s commitment to
diversity and inclusion. The crowd dutifully applauds before filing out of the
hotel to take up position in a side-street off of Market Street. There we wait for
three hours until it is our turn to join the annual Pride parade. As we receive
the signal to start marching the CEO reappears, this time flanked by two body-
guards, and joins the contingent as it pours onto Market waving giant flags
bearing the company’s logo.

I begin this book with these three vignettes because they serve three
key purposes.
Firstly, they tell you a great deal about who I am: a middle-class gay
man prone to anxiety, drinking slightly too much and feeling uncomfort-
able in social situations. The first vignette suggests that I am married,
while the second informs you of my profession. My comment regarding
the CEO’s racial identity in the third telegraphs my sensitivity to race,
which might lead one to surmise that I myself do not identify as white.
Meanwhile, my presence at a corporate event in San Francisco signposts
both my social and economic capital. That said, the fact that I seem to be
somewhat apart from the rest of the brunch crowd hints that I am there as
someone’s guest; this isn’t home turf for me. That I’ve been invited to
give a keynote address in the second vignette suggests I’m at least part-­
way through an academic career, which perhaps also insinuates my age.
And while the mention of expensive alcohol and international hotel bed-
rooms in the first vignette suggests an avowedly middle-class life, my
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

attention to the bartender’s emotional labour in the third perhaps also

reveals that this is not a lifestyle I have always occupied: I’m definitely
middle-class today, but I seem somewhat nervous about this identity.
Indeed, I think a certain uncertainty pours out of all three vignettes. So,
the first reason for including these three episodes is to introduce myself to
you, dear reader.
The second reason I include these three anecdotes is because they sign-
post the critical foci that occupy this book: same-sex marriage, health,
race(ism), sexual practice, and corporate diversity & inclusion initiatives.
They also articulate the critical approach I intend to adopt in addressing
these foci; an approach that is grounded in cultural studies, and which
questions the consequences and impacts of what Jeffrey Weeks (2007)
termed ‘the world we have won’. While the ‘we’ of Weeks’ book title rep-
resents all who gather underneath the umbrella term of LGBTQ, the three
vignettes identify the specific focus of this book: gay men living in the West.
Finally, I draw upon these recollections because they identify my per-
sonal and professional investment in the main theme of this book: homo-
normativity. Just writing that sentence makes me rush to qualify its
meaning, but here’s the truth of the matter: whether I like it or not, I do
have an investment in homonormativity, or at the very least, in the conse-
quences of homonormativity. By this I mean that I have actively benefitted
from the rhetoric of assimilation, normativity and equality that homonor-
mativity promulgates. I would run a mile over broken glass before align-
ing myself with some of homonormativity’s most notable spokesmen (the
gendering is intentional here, for they are more often than not men), but
I cannot ignore the fact that the freedoms and rights I enjoy today as a
middle-class gay man are inseparable from the political aims of homonor-
mativity, which have played a central role in securing such rights, and
which continue to broker the terms and conditions upon which I, and
countless other gay men, have been granted a degree of acceptance: a
‘virtual equality’, if you will (and to reference the work of Urvashi
Vaid, 1996).
Let me be quite clear in what I mean here. I am not suggesting that
homonormativity was responsible for marriage equality, for increasing
equality in the access to goods and services, or for anti-discrimination
employment law. All of these legal rights have been hard won and are the
result of tireless work by activists and organisations. I also believe these
rights broadly represent a step in the right direction inasmuch as they seek
to rectify long-standing inequalities within the current social order. Nor
4 S. MOWLABOCUS

am I suggesting that any of these rights are homonormative per se. As will
become apparent in this book, homonormativity doesn’t do activism so
much as frame, appropriate, highjack and re-interpret it, harnessing such
energy and labour for its own ends. In doing so, it also places such work
in the service of a broader political philosophy: neoliberalism. When I talk
of a personal and professional investment in homonormativity then, I am
not suggesting a belief in, or an alignment with, the politics of homonor-
mativity. Rather, I seek to signpost the fact that how I live my life today—
as an out and proud cis-gender, mixed-raced, middle-class gay man—and
the ‘privileges’ of equality that allow me to live my life as I do, are inti-
mately tied to the political-economy of the global north, especially the
United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (USA); the two
countries in which I’ve lived while writing this book. In other words, my
investment in homonormativity refers to the cultural space that the domi-
nant ideology of Western society has afforded me and many other gay
men. This affordance is the direct result of an alignment between gay male
identity and neoliberalism’s celebration of privatisation and individualism.
This alignment is the work of homonormativity. Does this mean, there-
fore, that I am homonormative? I would like to think not, but I also think
this is a less important question than the one I am trying to answer here:
have I benefitted from some of what homonormativity promotes? To me,
the answer is clear: absolutely yes.
Furthermore, I would argue that a good many of the folk who read this
book have also benefitted from the politics of homonormativity, including
many queer scholars. If we are to get anywhere in the interrogation of
homonormativity, I think we need to start by recognising this fact: it is
time we ‘fess up. Some of what homonormativity has argued for, pro-
moted, brokered and supported has been of benefit to those of us who
otherwise criticise that ideological perspective. Indeed, the ability to be a
queer academic—to hold a permanent academic position in a university
while doing the kind of queer research we do—is in some part due to what
Lisa Duggan (2002) termed the ‘sexual politics of neoliberalism’. That
does not mean that queer theory, queer studies or queer research is homo-
normative—of course it isn’t. But I would argue that late capitalism’s
focus on commodifying difference—especially sexual and gender differ-
ence—has played a key role in the creation of an intellectual climate in
which the study of such difference can be undertaken, recognised, cele-
brated and promoted. I cannot remember the number of times my own
research has been wheeled out by management when they’ve needed to
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

‘sell’ the diverse credentials of the institutions in which I have worked.

And I use the word ‘sell’ intentionally here, for queer research, like all
academic research, is now undertaken within the context of the free mar-
ket economy of higher education. In many respects, the approach that
universities take to diversity and inclusion today looks alarmingly similar
to that which has been adopted by the corporations over the last fifteen
years—an approach I discuss in Chap. 7.
I begin this book by signposting my relationship to homonormativity
because I have grown tired and frustrated of this relationship being hidden
by other scholars. Scholars who rail against homonormativity yet have
entered into same-sex marriages and civil partnerships, and have enjoyed
the financial, legal and social privileges that come with that status. Those
who criticise the commodification of gay and lesbian culture by tourism
boards and urban planners, and then head to Key West, Mykonos or Sitges
for their holidays. Those who challenge corporate incursions into gay
Pride, but still use Google as their search engine, or Facebook to promote
their new book. To repeat, it is not my belief that any of these activities is
homonormative. I am also not seeking to call out some kind of intellectual
hypocrisy. You can both critique homonormativity and go on a gay cruise;
you just need to acknowledge the contradictions that exist between your
(genuine and valid) critical-political beliefs, and your leisure practices.
Doing so allows you—allows us all—to begin to understand how homo-
normativity has played a role in our lives, for better and for worse.
An exercise in this kind of critical self-reflexivity provided the intellec-
tual spark for this book. On that drunken night in Paris—the one that
features in the first vignette—I began an internal dialogue on the topic of
homonormativity and my relationship to it, which has continued through-
out the preparation of this book. That conversation has acted like a con-
trary friend during my research, continually challenging me to question
my understanding of the practices, ideas and identities that I was explor-
ing. When it comes to sexual politics and sexual rights, I’ve always been
one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Nurturing this instinct has been
integral to my academic training. But writing this book has also forced me
to recognise that I have, at different times, also gladly accepted that gift. I
do not think this makes me fraudulent in my endeavours, or some kind of
intellectual phoney. If anything, it has offered me an opportunity to be
more intellectually engaged than before, by helping me to recognise my
own investments in, and attachments to, that which I might other-
wise oppose.
6 S. MOWLABOCUS

I want to reassure the reader at this point that this book is not an auto-
biography, nor is it intended to be an exercise in self-flagellation. I have
not donned a hairshirt while writing this introduction, nor am I seeking to
emulate the High Sparrow of Game of Thrones. Likewise, I am not asking
anyone to renounce the rights and acceptance they enjoy today. Why on
earth would anyone get rid of such things when they make life more bear-
able? I have misgivings about Dan Savage’s It Gets Better project, but I
also acknowledge that for many of us that catchphrase rings true; at a
personal level, things have gotten (a lot) better in my lifetime. We must
resist throwing the ‘gayby’ out with the bathwater.
This book is not designed to castigate married men or celebrate sexual
outlaws. It does not set out to instruct readers as to how to live their life,
or to teach them what is and what isn’t homonormative. I have waded
through enough polemical screeds that label this person or that practice
homonormative to recognise that such an exercise is not only pointless,
but also rather dangerous. The very last thing that we should be doing in
our work is writing off entire groups of people simply because they don’t
fully conform to an ideal that, in my experience, is only really open to
those who enjoy more than a modicum of privilege. In the course of my
research, I have met couples who are staunchly conservative (not to men-
tion racist and transphobic) but who rail against the institution of mar-
riage and engage in casual anonymous sex, together and separately. I have
interviewed queer intellectuals who enjoy the gendered roles they occupy
in their marriage. I’ve met chemsex practitioners who party all weekend
and go to work for investment banks on Monday morning. I’ve met men
who relish referring to their ‘husband’ in the face of heterosexist assump-
tions. And I’ve met business professionals who express discomfort with
the concept of employee resource groups, while also pointing out the ways
in which such groups influence company decisions that carry financial
implications. Depending on which journal article or book chapter you
read, these folks are by turn queer, homonormative, assimilationist or radi-
cal. The reality is they are all of these things, at different times and depend-
ing on the context.
This book does not, therefore, offer a Richter scale for measuring
homonormativity. Instead, it sets out to explore how the politics of homo-
normativity, a product of late capitalism and neoliberal philosophy, is
framing the lives and practices of gay men today. Furthermore, and
acknowledging an intellectual debt to John D’Emilio’s (1983) critical
account of capitalism and gay identity, it contends that homonormativity
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

today has expanded far beyond the rantings of a few upper-middle class
homocons, gathered together for a political circle-jerk. It is now a domi-
nant ideological force, which has, over the last twenty years, shaped gay
men’s relationship to, and increasing acceptance by, heteronormative soci-
ety. In doing so, homonormativity has set the terms of that relationship,
defining the ways in which gay men should behave, act and operate as
privatised sexual citizens.

The Shape of Things to Come

I should, at this point, apologise to readers. Almost 3000 words in and
I’ve yet to offer a concrete definition of homonormativity. I address this
absence in the next chapter, where I provide a culturally specific definition
of this term. Following that contextualising chapter, the rest of the book
is arranged around a series of discrete case studies. Chapters 3 to 7 operate
as a set of individual analyses that allow the individual reader to dive in and
take what they want without having to wade through the book from cover
to cover. In some instances, those chapters build on earlier work I have
undertaken, and the aim of each chapter is to provide a critical analysis of
homonormativity from a specific perspective. I shall conclude this intro-
duction by providing a brief introduction to these analytical chapters.
I begin my interrogation of homonormativity by considering the issue
of same-sex marriage, and in many respects, this is a no-brainer. Marriage
equality has been a core belief of homonormative ideology, and marriage
is seen by many conservative gay men and lesbians as the key to increasing
the social acceptance of LGBT people, ending AIDS, and providing queer
folk with both a reason and a method to become part of mainstream soci-
ety. It is for these very reasons that same-sex marriage routinely invokes
suspicion from those invested in the more revolutionary potential of queer
politics. Such scepticism means that the push for marriage equality has not
only been challenged by social conservatives and religious organisations,
but has also been questioned by many who align themselves with (what we
used to call) the Gay Left. This is unsurprising, given the role that mar-
riage has historically played in the subordination of women and the disci-
plining of sexuality. Why would non-heterosexual people wish to enter
into, and thereby support, an institution that perpetuates the very same
ideology that labels us sinful sick, deviant and dangerous? Does it make
sense to spend so much political (and financial) capital on securing entrance
8 S. MOWLABOCUS

into an antiquated institution from which even the straights are distancing
themselves?
My own lived experience of marriage was one of the motivations for
writing this book. As a child I detested weddings, but it was only when I
went to university that I learned why: they represented society’s rebuttal
to my queerness. As I began attending the weddings of friends (as opposed
to family friends) I started to enjoy myself a bit more, but I always felt
somewhat out of place. There was also something ferocious, something
violent, about the celebration of heterosexuality at these events, which
always put me on edge. This is why I was so surprised when I agreed to get
married. It was also why I was so uncertain as to what that actually meant
for me, and for my relationship to Andrew, my parents and my family, to
society more broadly, and also to my political beliefs. The truth is that my
relationship with all of the above has changed since getting married. I
experience more acceptance in certain contexts, while in others I feel ever
more distanced. I am alarmed by the cultural, legal and financial privileges
suddenly bestowed on me, many of which I had no idea existed. I find
myself questioning and challenging people about their assumptions far
more than I ever did—and not just about sexuality, but about race, gender
and class. I have been afforded an altogether new position in the social
order by virtue of my marital status and yet I feel angrier than ever about
the structural inequality that maintains that social order. I am not for a
second suggesting that marriage somehow made me more ‘woke’, but it
has definitely placed me in a different position to where I was before, with
some surprising consequences.
I wanted to explore whether my experiences of being married to
another man was an anomaly, or whether other couples shared similar
experiences once they’d tied the knot. Therefore, the first analysis chapter
in this book—Chap. 3—documents those experiences and considers the
politics of same-sex marriage from the perspective of those who have
entered into such unions. Following a review of the arguments made for
and against same-sex marriage, I explore the motivations for marriage,
shifts in the recognition and validation of relationships post-marriage, the
privileges that married couples enjoy, and the acts of resistance they engage
in as married men. As with the rest of this book, my aim is not to defend
marriage or to recuperate it as a radical queer act. Instead, by talking with
men who have chosen to get married, and who are now experiencing life
as a married couple, I want to bring nuance, complexity and detail to a
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

discussion that has been going on for a long time, but which has perhaps
hitherto lacked the voices of those who’ve gone ahead and gotten hitched.
Chapter 4 shifts the focus away from relationships between gay men and
towards the more abstract relationship gay men have with broader main-
stream society. If the homonormative argument for marriage equality has
been predicated on the belief that marriage will help secure a ‘place at the
table’ for gay men (Bawer, 1993), I am interested in what that place looks
like. What does our supposed acceptance by society look like and what are
the terms and conditions of that acceptance? Such terms and conditions
become visible in those moments where a once subaltern group chooses
not to, or is otherwise unable to, live up to the expectations of the domi-
nant social order. In the UK, one such moment occurred when gay men
sought access to the anti-HIV treatment, PrEP, on the National Health
Service. The story of PrEP is a fascinating one, not least because it dem-
onstrates the role that intellectual property rights have played in the his-
tory of HIV/AIDS. But PrEP also represents a revolution in the sexual
health and well-being of gay men.
In 2012, Truvada, a drug used to treat people living with HIV, received
FDA approval for use as a prophylactic in the USA. However, it wasn’t
until 2020 that this treatment became universally available on the NHS in
England. The media coverage of PrEP during that eight-year window
offers a valuable insight into the distance that gay men in the UK have
travelled in terms of public acceptance, and since the beginning of the
AIDS epidemic. It also foregrounds the concessions that have been made
in order to secure that acceptance. Chief among these has been the repu-
diation of difference, meaning that gay men are increasingly understood as
being just like their heterosexual counterparts. While this sounds like a
winning move in terms of equality, it obscures ongoing issues of equity,
not least in the arena of health. Chapter 4 revisits the fight for (and against)
PrEP funding in England, which took place in the summer of 2016, and
utilizes the British press as a proxy for public opinion in order to measure
and assess the precarious position that gay men occupy in British society.
My assessment points to the ways in which homonormative ideology has
shaped understandings of gay men in Britain, and the way it has foreclosed
opportunities to fully acknowledge and address HIV as a health inequality
that gay men continue to face.
Given the focus of my previous research, it is perhaps unsurprising that
I would dedicate a chapter of this book to considering the digital life of
gay men. In Gaydar Culture (2010), I examined hook-up apps within a
10 S. MOWLABOCUS

broader culture of sexual and technological mobility. In Chap. 5 of this

book, I focus my attention on Grindr, the most popular gay male dating
and hook-up platform in the West. In the summer of 2018, and in a
marked departure from its historically laissez-faire attitude towards such
matters, Grindr decided to address the issue of discrimination, especially
sexual racism; a problem that had plagued the app since its inception.
Almost ten years after it was launched, the platform rebranded itself as ‘the
world’s largest social networking app for Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer people’
(as opposed to ‘the world’s largest gay social network’), and launched the
Kindr campaign. This initiative was designed to address all forms of dis-
crimination, including HIV stigmatism, body-shaming, sexual racism,
transphobia and femme-phobia. On the front end, the campaign featured
new promotional material featuring a diverse range of bodies and talking
heads. This was accompanied on the back end by a beefed up response to
discrimination and hate speech via updated content moderation policies.
Users were invited to ‘say something kind’ to one another and reminded
to use the app’s reporting and blocking features to help police the platform.
Three years on sexual racism, transphobia and a myriad of other forms
of discrimination persist on Grindr and it is fair to say that Kindr achieved
relatively little. Indeed, when I mentioned the initiative to friends and col-
leagues at the time of its launch, very few had heard of it. However, I think
Grindr’s attempt to clean up its act offers an opportunity to consider the
relationship between homonormativity, respectability politics and neolib-
eralism. By deconstructing the Kindr campaign, I demonstrate how this
initiative invested in a performance of inclusivity while maintaining the
very same forms of inequality that it sought to challenge. I argue that this
was inevitable given that capitalism relies on such inequalities, and that
Grindr is, first and foremost, a mechanism for translating sexual prefer-
ences into exchange value. This process of translation is facilitated by a
commitment to the homonormative belief in the neoliberal individual,
and the primacy of consumer choice in the free market of sexual desire.
Chapter 5 thus details what happens when the politics of homonormativ-
ity meets the algorithmic logic of a dating platform.
If Grindr is routinely called out for facilitating discrimination, chemsex
is most often spoken of as the number one health crisis facing gay men
today. Much ink has been spilt detailing horror stories of men being
drugged, raped and murdered, their bodies dumped in dustbins, skips and
laybys. It is easy to overdose on the drugs that are used in chemsex prac-
tice, and numerous studies have suggested that these highly addictive
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

substances reduce inhibitions and increase risky behaviours. Yet it remains

the case that many gay men engage in this socio-sexual practice without
experiencing the kind of nightmarish consequences depicted in tabloid
reporting. In Chap. 6, I spend time talking to men who engage, or have
engaged, in chemsex and examine their motivations for doing so. My con-
versations with them reveal the way in which this practice serves as a sub-
cultural response to the increasing cultural acceptance gay men are
experiencing today. Echoing my findings in Chap. 4, my interviewees
identify the conditions of this acceptance, and the ramifications these have
both for gay commercial spaces and their own use of straight spaces.
Understood from this perspective I suggest that chemsex is a subcultural
response to the disciplining of gay male sociality that has been the price of
social acceptance. Referencing Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, I sug-
gest that this socio-sexual experience offers an opportunity for gay men to
(re)connect with each other, and with forms of relationality that are
unavailable in everyday life. This desire for connection and intimacy points
towards what has been lost, forgotten or otherwise sublimated in the drive
towards assimilation and acceptance; a drive that has been spearheaded by
homonormativity.
At the same time that I signpost these attempts to establish new (or,
perhaps renewed) forms of connection and communality, I do not seek to
celebrate or glorify chemsex practice, or to ignore the significant health
risks that drugs like crystal meth and GHB pose. Indeed, the final section
of this chapter considers life ‘after’ the chemsex party and draws attention
to the ways in which a rhetoric of self-governance, self-reliance and self-­
discipline shapes understandings of ‘chemsex management’. In stark con-
trast to the sense of connection and queer kinship that participants enjoy
during chemsex, the days and weeks after the event are often experienced
as deeply isolating. Furthermore, the ways in which individuals are judged
as managing (or not managing) their involvement with chemsex is rou-
tinely framed in distinctly neoliberal terms. Thus, while chemsex repre-
sents a desire to experiment with queer forms of sexual and social
association, those experiments struggle to be maintained outside of this
environment. I suggest that this is not least because once we step outside
the chemsex heterotopia, we are forced to reintegrate with the moral
order that homonormativity situates us within. Chapter 6 thus explores
the ambivalent politics of chemsex in the time of homonormativity.
The final chapter of this book departs from the others in several ways.
Firstly, and echoing my own geographical transition, it draws upon
12 S. MOWLABOCUS

research conducted in the USA, primarily San Francisco and the Bay area
of Northern California. Secondly, while the rest of this book focuses on
the experiences of gay men, this chapter includes the voices of a more
diverse range of participants including lesbians, bisexual men and women,
Transgender folk and non-binary/gender queer people. This diversity
echoes the central theme of this final analysis chapter: LGBTQ employees,
the corporate resource groups that support them, and their role in the
corporate sponsorship of Pride. Similar to the debate over marriage equal-
ity, Pride represents a political battlefield in queer culture. Critics call out
the corporate sponsorship of Pride and decry the capitalist takeover of
what should still be a protest rally. Gay professionals argue that Pride is
both an important cultural event and a source of revenue for local organ-
isations and businesses, which must therefore be produced, policed and
marketed accordingly. Assimilationists cite displays of public nudity along
the parade route as a reason why LGBTQ people are still not fully accepted.
And the circuit boys don’t give a damn about any of the above, just so
long as they can wear short shorts and dance in the middle of the street on
a Saturday afternoon.
While acknowledging these arguments and, in some cases, pointing out
their merits, this chapter seeks to move the conversation on by bringing in
the voices of those who make up (and in some cases choose not to make
up) the corporate contingents that increasingly feature in major Pride
parades. These folk, who work for the global companies that sponsor
Pride, often play a key role in representing and advocating for LGBTQ
employees in the workplace. This advocacy work is mobilised via employee
resource groups (ERGs), which have become a fixture in the majority of
Fortune 500 companies. ERGs have existed in some form since the 1960s
but have risen to prominence in the twenty-first century as part of the
‘whole-self’ movement, whereby employees are encouraged to celebrate
their identities at work (in an appropriate fashion). ‘Bringing your whole
self to work’ is understood as benefitting both the employee (who no lon-
ger feels they have to hide an aspect of their identity such as their sexual-
ity), and the employer (who reaps the reward of a more engaged and
productive worker). In Chap. 7, I use the corporate involvement in Pride
as an entry point into a broader discussion regarding the role of ERGs in
framing relationships between LGBTQ employers and the companies they
work for.
While acknowledging the success that these groups can have in shaping
policies relating to recruitment, promotion, benefits and philanthropy, I
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

also demonstrate the role that ERGs play in securing an alignment between
employee and employer. This alignment ensures that ‘work appropriate’
versions of the self are promoted in order that further resources (subcul-
tural knowledge, social networks, voluntary labour) can be harnessed by
the company for the purposes of advertising, promotion and recruitment.
As such, the corporate investment in Pride represents a public stage upon
which employees are invited to re-articulate their personal investment in
the corporation. It also signposts what I term the ‘privatisation of activ-
ism’ that is now taking place in America, whereby multinational corpora-
tions are ‘investing’ in diversity initiatives and, in doing so, are shaping the
nature and goals of activism. At the same time, and as a result of such
initiatives, these companies work to extract ever more from their work-
force: not just their labour but their identities. In sum, Chap. 7 provides a
snapshot of what happens when homonormativity enters the corpo-
rate office.
Through these five case study chapters, I hope to interrogate homonor-
mativity from a variety of perspectives. To repeat, my aim is not to evaluate
or judge whether this particular practice or that particular identity is
homonormative. Instead, what I offer is a critical introduction to homo-
normativity and a consideration of the way in which the politics of homo-
normativity can be traced through the everyday lives of gay men and other
queer folk, and their interactions with heteronormative society. In some
instances these politics are met with resistance. At other times they are
celebrated. More often than not, however, they become a point of nego-
tiation—between the self and other, but also within the self. I hope that in
what follows, I manage to articulate the subtle, nebulous, and all too per-
vasive nature of homonormativity today, while also signposting the fact
that homonormativity does not so much reside in any one place or person-
age, but instead flows through contemporary culture. In doing so it also
delineates an understanding of what it is to be a gay man in Western soci-
ety today.

References
Bawer, B. (1993). Place at the table: The gay individual in American society.
Poseidon Press.
D’Emilio, J. (1983). Capitalism and gay identity. In A. Snitow, C. Stansell, &
S. Thompson (Eds.), Powers of desire: The politics of sexuality (pp. 100–113).
Monthly Review Press.
14 S. MOWLABOCUS

Duggan, L. (2002). The new homonormativity: The sexual politics of neoliberal-

ism. In R. Castronovo & D. D. Nelson (Eds.), Materializing democracy:
Toward a revitalized cultural politics (pp. 175–194). Duke University Press.
Mowlabocus, S. (2010). Gaydar Culture: Gay men, technology and embodiment.
Surrey, Ashgate Books.
Vaid, U. (1996). Virtual equality: The mainstreaming of gay and lesbian liberation.
Anchor Books.
Weeks, J. (2007). The world we have won: The remaking of erotic and intimate life.
Routledge.
 CHAPTER 2

Contextualising Homonormativity

Since Lisa Duggan repurposed1 the term in 2002, ‘homonormativity’ has

become a key concept in scholarship that examines the relationship
between neoliberalism, capitalism and LGBTQ culture, politics and dis-
course. The term has found purchase across a broad range of disciplines
including geography, media and cultural studies, anthropology, film stud-
ies, gender studies, critical legal studies, critical race studies, performance
studies, sociology, international relations, linguistics, sport studies, his-
tory, education studies, leisure studies and organisational studies, to name
just a few. Its utility has extended beyond its original definition, providing
a foundation for the equally useful concept of ‘homonationalism’ (Puar,
2007). Together, these two terms have offered new avenues for interro-
gating a range of relationships that exist within Western LGBTQ culture,
between that culture and broader Western society, and between Western
and non-Western societies. They have also (re)emphasised the need to
consider issues of race, ethnicity, class, gender, religion, economics and
embodiment in discussions of LGBTQ cultures, especially Western gay
male culture; the focus of much of this book.

1
Susan Stryker (2008) writes of a prior use of the term ‘homonormativity’ by Trans activ-
ists working and living in San Francisco in the 1990s. The term was deployed as a method
for identifying the dominance of gender normativity in constructions of both heterosexuality
and homosexuality.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 15

Switzerland AG 2021
S. Mowlabocus, Interrogating Homonormativity, Palgrave Studies
in (Re)Presenting Gender,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87070-6_2
16 S. MOWLABOCUS

My chief aim in this chapter is to summarise the concept of homonorma-

tivity as defined by Duggan in her (2002) essay ‘The New Homonormativity’
and her subsequent monograph, The Twilight of Equality? (2003). I do so in
order that readers unfamiliar with Duggan’s work will have a general under-
standing of the concept that underpins this book. This endeavour will also go
some way to explaining my own interpretation of homonormativity, which I
draw upon as a frame of reference in the following chapters. At the same
time, given the context of Duggan’s writing—namely the USA at the turn of
the century—it is also necessary to offer a slight reframing of this concept.
This, I hope, will furnish the reader with an understanding of homonorma-
tivity that (re)locates it within British culture, and will go some way to ensur-
ing that my references to it in subsequent chapters make sense. In many
respects, those chapters ‘write back’ to Duggan’s original concept, not to test
or evaluate it, but rather to understand how the concept of homonormativity
is materialised in discussions with, among and about gay men in the twenty-
first century.
Given the broader focus of this book, I can offer little more here than
a thumbnail sketch of British LGBTQ culture in the years and decades
prior to Duggan’s definition of homonormativity. Far more in-depth and
nuanced analyses of British queer history have been undertaken by (among
others) the likes of Stephen Jeffrey-Poulter (1991), Jeffrey Weeks (2007,
2016), Matt Houlbrook (2006), Matt Cook (2014), Brian Lewis (2015)
and Paul Flynn (2017). I encourage readers to seek out these texts should
they wish to put flesh on the bare bones I provide here. However, I hope
that the pared-back approach I am forced to adopt will suffice in terms of
getting us to where we need to go in this chapter.

Contextualising Homonormativity
The 1970s are often remembered as a period of sexual freedom, experi-
mentation and hedonism, and while such memories are often rose-tinted
and highly mediated, that decade was an important one for British LGBTQ
culture, and especially for gay men. It was also shaped by two key events
that took place in the latter half of the previous decade. The first occurred
in 1967, when the British government decriminalised homosexual activi-
ties taking place in private between consenting males over the age of 21.
The second occurred in 1969, when patrons of New York’s Stonewall Inn
resisted arrest and harassment by the NYPD, sparking a five-day riot.
Together, these two events meant that as British gay male subculture
 2 CONTEXTUALISING HOMONORMATIVITY 17

began to step into the light and grow into a recognisable scene, it did so
within a specific political milieu.
The first chapter of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was formed in
New York in the aftermath of the Stonewall Riots and in 1971 the first
meeting of the UK GLF was convened. Although this British chapter was
operational for just three years, its impact and influence extended far
beyond its own existence. As Lisa Power has suggested (1995: 283),

If you see GLF as a dandelion which grew, flowered and then degenerated
into a fluffy but insubstantial head full of seeds which were then blown by
several gusts into new areas of the meadow, it is easy to understand the way
in which it is connected to a whole host of major lesbian and gay initiatives
of the 1970s, 1980s and even 1990s.

The GLF situated the struggle for lesbian and gay freedom within the
broader struggle for social justice and equality. In doing so, it aligned itself
with the politics of the left, and with the women’s movement, the labour
movement, and the Black civil rights movement. This identification with,
and support for, other oppressed and marginalized groups continued long
after the GLF disbanded, and its ethos of solidarity continued to ripple
through the 1980s via activist groups such as Lesbians and Gay Support
the Miners (LGSM), Outrage! and The Lesbian Avengers. It is in large
part due to the GLF that gay and lesbian politics was characterised as left-­
wing throughout the 1970s and 1980s. This characterisation was further
emphasised by those who opposed non-heterosexual lives and lifestyles.
During the general election campaigning of 1979, the Conservative Party
cited the funding of lesbian and gay support groups as evidence that a vote
for the Labour Party was a vote for the ‘Loony Left’. That year, the
Conservatives swept to power and there they remained until 1997.
During this eighteen-year period of Conservative rule two further
events impacted British lesbian and gay politics and culture. The first was
the advent of HIV/AIDS, which began to claim victims in Britain in
1981, and which ushered in decades of fear, anxiety and stigma. While the
AIDS epidemic in the UK proved to be of a smaller magnitude than in the
USA, the virus had a significant impact on gay men—physically, psycho-
logically, culturally and politically. A chapter of ACTUP2 was formed in

2
ACTUP—The AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power—is a grassroots direct action group,
originally formed in New York in 1987.
18 S. MOWLABOCUS

London in the late 1980s and gay men, lesbians and allies engaged in acts
of civil disobedience to protest the governmental response to the health
crisis. Public protests such as ‘die-ins’ were designed to be provocative
eye-catching events, and the British media were often on hand to report
on the spectacle. However, as Simon Watney (1997) has documented,
much of the reporting about gay men during this decade was anything but
supportive. AIDS gave Fleet Street a fresh opportunity to frame gay men
as diseased sexual deviants who threatened the health of society.
This revitalised discourse of homophobia helped build support for the
second key event that took place in the 1980s: the passing of Section 28
of the Local Government Act 1988. Section 28 articulated the Conservative
government’s commitment to traditional family values, even as its neolib-
eral economic policies sought to erode the material foundations of many
working-class families. The legislation prohibited the use of public funds
for the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality, and the vagueness of the Act’s
wording belied the clarity of its message: lesbian and gay lives might be
legal, but they were not normal, and queer families were not to be consid-
ered real families.
Section 28 was successful in cutting funding for support groups, and
stymieing discussion of homosexuality in schools, but it ultimately scored
an own goal. Several lesbian and gay activist groups were formed in the
wake of protests against the legislation. These included Outrage!, Lesbian
Avengers and Stonewall. As mentioned above, the first two groups drew
from the direct-action tactics of the GLF and ACTUP, the Lesbian
Avengers famously storming a BBC TV studio during a live news broad-
cast in 1998. Meanwhile, Stonewall focused on combatting Section 28 by
lobbying politicians and securing legal rights for lesbian and gay citizens.
From this beginning in 1989, the organisation went on to become Britain’s
largest and most influential LGBT rights charity and has been tremen-
dously successful in its endeavours. Stonewall was instrumental in the
repeal of Section 28, the lowering of the male age of consent, the lifting of
the ban on LGB people serving in the armed forces, the securing of LGB
adoption rights, and the legalizing of same-sex civil partnerships. It also
lobbied for immigration reform pertaining to LGB people and (somewhat
reluctantly) supported proposals for marriage equality. It helped strengthen
hate crime legislation and played a key role in the development of anti-­
discriminatory laws regarding access to goods and services. Alongside this
political work, the charity has also become a leader in workplace diversity
 2 CONTEXTUALISING HOMONORMATIVITY 19

training in the UK and publishes the annual workplace equality index,

which identifies the nation’s most LGBT-friendly employers.
Stonewall has been phenomenally successful in its endeavours and in no
way do I wish to play down its achievements. I have benefitted, both
directly and indirectly, from the charity’s political work and I would argue
that this is the case for every LGBTQ person living in the UK today. From
housing to healthcare to shopping to safety, the organisation has done a
lot of good for queer folk in Britain. This success is largely down to the
organisation’s commitment to a form of assimilationist pragmatism; an
approach to social change akin to liberal feminism, and which focuses on
carving out a space for LGBTQ people within the prevailing system, rather
than overthrowing that system. Thus, while not diminishing the successes
of its campaigns, we must acknowledge that the organization represents a
significant departure from the political rhetoric of the pre-AIDS era, and
a weakening of those earlier ties to other forms of activism.
Stonewall’s success is also tied to broader shifts that have taken place in
the landscape of British politics since 1989. Ironically, some of those shifts
are the result of Conservative government policy in the 1980s. Thus, while
Margaret Thatcher railed against left-wing councils for supporting ‘pre-
tended family relationships’, her economic policies were working to restruc-
ture British society in such a way that those relationships could in fact thrive,
so long as they were self-sustaining and required little to no input from the
state. I am, of course, referring to the rise of neoliberalism during this period;
an economic model that promotes deregulation, privatisation, a reduction in
government spending, oversight and support, the loosening of trade restric-
tions and a seemingly unwavering commitment to the free market. I men-
tioned LGSM earlier, and the miner’s strike they supported was a direct
response to the Conservative government’s attempt to break the power of
the trade unions and usher in a period of neoliberal economic reform.
This reform was seen as both a solution to the problem of rising gov-
ernment debt and a response to the competitive market environment that
globalisation represented. Trade unions such as the National Union of
Miners represented a powerful opposition to free trade agreements and
the outsourcing of manufacturing and production. Thatcher’s govern-
ment worked tirelessly to crush this opposition and in doing so it paved
the way for a programme of market deregulation. Concurrent with this,
the government sought to weaken the basic structures of the welfare state,
while promoting the idea that there was ‘no such thing as society’. As
Thatcher (1987: np) famously stated:
20 S. MOWLABOCUS

‘There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are
families and no government can do anything except through people and
people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then
also to help look after our neighbour [,] and life is a reciprocal business and
people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations,
because there is no such thing as an entitlement unless someone has first met
an obligation.’

Thus, as social safety nets were being weakened or withdrawn, the very
jobs that Conservative MPs were saying the unemployed should go out
and get were either being shipped abroad or stripped of their benefits and
entitlements. The weakened trade unions became less and less effective at
ensuring workers were paid a fair wage, and the idea of a working-class job
for life slowly gave way to today’s reality of low-paying zero-hour con-
tracts that offer little to no guarantee of consistent employment. In this
way, Margaret Thatcher’s government brought neoliberalism to the UK.
But where do gay men fit into this picture? What role does the rise of
neoliberalism play in the story of gay men in Britain? And what is the rela-
tionship between neoliberalism and homonormativity? To understand
this, we need to move on from the 1980s and into the 1990s. By the end
of that earlier decade, the Tories had been branded the ‘nasty party’, and
their leader was infamous for ‘snatching’ free milk away from schoolchil-
dren. This legacy haunted John Major’s government during the 1990s
and, sensing an opportunity to seize power, the Labour party began to
(re)present itself as a viable alternative to the Tories in 1994, with a prom-
ise that things could only get better.3 In 1997, after almost two decades of
Conservative rule, the British public decided that it was indeed time for a
change and handed this ‘New Labour’ a decisive win, and a chance to
prove itself.
Led by Tony Blair, this rebranded version of Britain’s centre-left party
marked a decisive break with Labour’s socialist heritage and its depen-
dence on trade union support. It also sought to challenge the stereotype
of Labour governments as fiscally irresponsible and prone to running large
deficits. In many respects, Thatcher’s assault on the unions and her efforts
to privatise large swathes of the UK’s production and manufacturing
industries made New Labour’s move away from its traditional grassroots

3
The official theme tune to Labour’s 1997 election campaign was titled ‘Things can only
get better’. The song was originally written and performed by D:Ream, a Northern Irish
music group that topped the UK singles charts with the song in 1994.
 2 CONTEXTUALISING HOMONORMATIVITY 21

base comparatively easy. By 1997, trade unions could not command the
same loyalty from their membership as they once did. Meanwhile, Tory
politicians had grown less fearful of union leaders, and Labour MPs less
reliant on them. Finally, the Conservative project of deregulation that
took place in the previous decade meant that the economic reforms Blair’s
government pursued were considered more an evolution than a revolution
of what had come before. Put bluntly, the Conservative government of
Margaret Thatcher had done a great deal of the heavy lifting and had
cleared the way for New Labour’s mandate.
At the same time, New Labour was different to the Conservative gov-
ernment and that difference materialised most profoundly in relation to
issues of social justice. It reframed the party’s historical commitment to
equality by focusing its energies on creating an equality of opportunity. In
doing so, it promoted the belief that Britain was a meritocratic society.
This meant that if children, for instance, could be given the right start in
life—a “sure start” was the term used in the policy—they would be in a
better position to take advantage of future opportunities, or even create
their own. This commitment to equal access translated into vote-winning
policies and the results were impressive. Under Blair’s tenure, child pov-
erty was reduced, tax credits for working families were introduced, and
funding for both the NHS and the education system was increased.
Equality of opportunity also manifested itself in a raft of legislation that
supported minority groups, not least lesbians and gay men. This included
lifting the ban on LGB people serving in the armed forces in 2000, intro-
ducing more progressive child adoption laws in 2002, the passing of the
Civil Partnership Act in 2003 and the Equalities Act in 2010. In addition,
the Criminal Justice Act of 2003 allowed tougher sentences to be given in
response to homophobic hate crimes, and under New Labour the police
force engaged in a series of reforms designed to better meet the needs of
LGBTQ people. Compared to the Conservative government of the previ-
ous decade (and with input from Stonewall), New Labour appeared decid-
edly gay friendly in its outlook.
This balancing act—between ongoing privatisation and deregulation,
on the one hand, and social justice initiatives, on the other hand—was
achieved primarily through the adoption of a specific political philosophy.
As any student of British politics will tell you, New Labour was invested in
Anthony Giddens’ (1994) concept of the Third Way; a centrist position
that married centre-right economic policies with the progressive social
policies of the centre-left. Such an approach was adopted by the Clinton
22 S. MOWLABOCUS

Administration in the USA around the same time, and in both the UK and
the US contexts this shift in political philosophy can be seen as a response
to the ideology of the new right in the mid-1980s. The Third Way sought
to reconcile the differences between the left and right by offering eco-
nomically minded solutions to issues of equality. This represented a depar-
ture from traditional left-wing politics, with its investment in the
working-class and its use of public funding and government regulation to
address issues of economic inequity.
Critics of the Third Way have argued that Giddens’ model represents a
method by which centre-left governments can maintain their socially pro-
gressive credentials while acquiescing to the core tenets of capitalism. It
certainly is the case that New Labour made peace with the private sector
during its first term in office. Gordon Brown, Blair’s Chancellor of the
Exchequer, extolled the virtues of the free market while also drawing
investment and strategy from it in order to promulgate a programme of
social reform. Labour continued to promote the Private Finance Initiative
(PFI) set up by the previous administration and this scheme encouraged
private companies to compete for contracts to run state infrastructure.
The cost of social reforms was to be met by private–public partnerships,
which ensured the public got the services they needed, while the private
sector got a return on its investment. Anyone who has had the misfortune
of parking in an NHS car park will have paid (through the nose) to see this
kind of partnership in action. Thus, while the Conservative Party intro-
duced Britain to the hard economic edge of neoliberalism in the 1980s,
Labour’s Third Way strategy tempered those economic shifts with a
‘softer’, altogether more tolerant approach to culture and society in the
following decade. This (finally) brings us to the subject of this chapter. For
it is in that balance between social reform and economic liberalism that we
can locate the rise of homonormativity.

The New Homonormativity

According to Duggan’s (2002) definition of the term, homonormativity
claims to speak on behalf of the centre, the rational and the reasonable. It
allegedly represents a ‘silent majority’ of lesbian and gay people who (it
alleges) are less interested in revolution than in being allowed to live a
‘regular’ life alongside their heterosexual neighbours. Indeed, all this
‘majority’ supposedly desires are the legal rights necessary to secure a
 2 CONTEXTUALISING HOMONORMATIVITY 23

‘place at the table’ (Bawer, 1993). This appeal to fitting in and assimilating
underscores homonormativity’s investment in neoliberalism and its claim
of political neutrality. Duggan describes neoliberalism as such:

‘a kind of non-politics—a way of being reasonable, and of promoting uni-

versally desirable forms of economic expansion and democratic government
around the world.’ (2003: 10)

Homonormativity continues the shift in the focus of lesbian and gay

activism that I mentioned earlier, away from the broader political project
of social change and liberation, and towards the pursuit of a narrow set of
rights and interests that benefit the individual. At the same time, a reduced
engagement with (for instance) matters of racial justice, gender equality or
the working class, means that these rights and interests are inevitably ones
that are prioritised by, and which most directly benefit, white, cis-­gendered
middle-class people. Back in 2002, the two key rights at the top of the US
homonormative agenda were the right for gay people to serve in the US
military and the right to same-sex marriage. Together, they illustrate
homonormativity’s overarching aim:

‘a rhetorical remapping of public/private boundaries designed to shrink gay

public spheres, and redefine gay equality against the “civil rights agenda”
and “liberationism”, as access to the institutions of domestic privacy, the
“free” market, and patriotism.’ (2003: 50-51)

While Duggan situated her critique within the US context, the list of
rights that were secured under the Blair administration in the UK demon-
strates the similarity between these transatlantic cousins. The right to serve
in the military and to form legally recognised relationships were key issues
for gay rights activists in Britain around the time Duggan first published
her work on homonormativity.
Likewise, the remapping of public and private boundaries Duggan
identified echoes the Third Way neoliberal rhetoric I discussed earlier, spe-
cifically its focus on creating an equality of opportunity within the context
of free market economics. Such an approach suggests that one need only
ensure that the necessary rights are put in place in order for equality to
spring forth. With its focus on issues such as marriage, spousal privileges
and inheritance entitlements, homonormativity assumes that the majority
of other (perhaps more necessary) rights have already been secured.
24 S. MOWLABOCUS

Of course, what a transgender person of colour experiencing homeless-

ness might consider a necessary right (such as the right not to be harassed,
abused or killed by the police), might well be something that a white
middle-class gay man considers long ago secured, and therefore unworthy
of further consideration. In the summer of 2020, as the world watched
George Floyd being murdered by a member of the Minneapolis police, we
were reminded that while racial minorities in the USA (and in many other
countries) have been granted legal rights, those rights—those people—still
do not matter in the eyes of many, including those charged with protect-
ing them. Rights are not enough if they are granted within a landscape of
structural inequality. Homonormativity’s blinkered view of the world fails
to take this into account and its politics relies on a view of the world that
(wilfully) ignores this fact.
Thus, what Duggan saw homonormativity promoting in 2002 was a
divorcing of gay and lesbian lives from the broader public sphere, and the
concentration of gay and lesbian activism around a set of issues concerning
private lives. This leads her to conclude that the contemporaneous focus
on campaigns for marriage equality represent

‘a new public/private distinction that mobilizes gay equality rhetoric on

behalf of a miniaturized state and constricted public life, confined to a very
few policy decisions, coupled with a vast zone of “private” life’ (2002:188).

From this perspective, homonormativity becomes ‘a strategy for priva-

tizing gay politics and culture for the new neoliberal world order’ (ibid.).
This strategy, while typically benefiting middle and upper-middle class
white folk (who, for instance, have wealth to manage, bequeath or shelter
from taxation), tacitly supports the myriad forms of structural and social
inequality that wound people of colour and, especially, working and lower-­
class people.
Homonormativity is thus characterised as

‘a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and

institutions but upholds and sustains them while promising the possibility of
a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized culture
anchored in domesticity and consumption.’ (2002: 179)

Arguably the most quoted line of Duggan’s 2002 essay, this sentence
encapsulates the essence of homonormativity. It is, therefore, worth
 2 CONTEXTUALISING HOMONORMATIVITY 25

lingering on it for a moment in order to briefly situate Duggan’s essay

within the broader context of queer critique.
Firstly, in referencing heteronormativity, Duggan aligns her thinking
with that of Michael Warner (1999) and her thinking draws from the same
critical wellspring. The term ‘heteronormativity’ has become a useful tool
in queer readings of mainstream politics and culture, offering a method
for deconstructing the ‘natural order’ of heterosexuality, reproduction and
gender (as well as race and class). Duggan’s identification of heteronorma-
tivity’s role in the development of homonormativity demonstrates the
intellectual debt her concept owes to Warner’s work; both his edited col-
lection, Fear of a Queer Planet (1993) and his later book, The Trouble with
Normal (1999). In this latter text, Warner outlines the social and political
shifts that have occurred in Western gay male culture during the preceding
ten years, before arguing against gay marriage and for a public politics of
sex built on ethics, not moralism. While Warner does not name neoliberal-
ism in his critique, it is clear that his discussion of gay male sexual and
identity politics is framed as a response to the political-economic landscape
produced by neoliberalism.
Traces of Warner’s thinking are present in Duggan’s essay, such as when
she critiques Andrew Sullivan’s support for same-sex marriage, in which
he both defines and defends the sanctity of marriage as the ‘social and
public recognition of a private commitment’ (2002: 187). Her argument
against Sullivan’s faming of marriage echoes Warner’s assertion that,

‘As long as people marry, the state will continue to regulate the sexual lives
of those who do not marry. It will continue to refuse to recognize our inti-
mate relations—including cohabiting partnerships—as having the same
rights or validity as a married couple. It will criminalize our consensual sex.’
(1999: 96)

Likewise, when Duggan suggests that homonormativity serves to

decouple gay and lesbian individuals from the broader queer public, she
rearticulates Warner’s assertion that such an approach works to ‘sanctif[y]
some couples at the expense of others’, offering at best a form of ‘selective
legitimacy’ (1999: 82). Duggan goes further than Warner in her critique
of the new political landscape, identifying the manner in which contempo-
rary ‘gay equality rhetoric’ offers ‘new window dressing for a broad multi-­
issue neoliberal politics’ (2002: 190). In doing so, she argues that
homonormativity signals an allegiance to a particularly pernicious set of
26 S. MOWLABOCUS

political beliefs, which (continue to) attack the most vulnerable and mar-
ginalized members of society.
Alongside Warner’s writing, Duggan’s work follows in the footsteps of
writers such as John D’Emilio (1983), Dennis Altman (1997) and
Rosemary Hennessey (1994, 2002). Each of these authors identified
aspects of homonormativity emerging within Western gay cultures several
years, if not decades, before Duggan’s coining of the term. For instance,
in ‘Capitalism & Gay Identity’, D’Emilio mapped out the contradictory
relationship that exists between homosexual liberation and (late) capital-
ism. Identifying the opportunities that capitalism has provided for gay
men and lesbians to fashion lives outside of the family unit, he suggested
that such a reliance on capitalist modes of production ‘has implications for
us today’ (109). Specifically, he wrote that ‘it can affect our perception of
our identity, our formulation of political goals, and our decisions about
strategy’ (1983: ibid.). Arguing against a ‘return’ to the normativity of the
family, D’Emilio signposted the dangers of domesticating homosexuality
long before same-sex marriage became a hot topic in lesbian and gay activ-
ism. As such, his earlier analysis can be heard in Duggan’s theory of
homonormativity.
Likewise, Dennis Altman’s (1997) work on the development of a
lifestyle-­oriented, consumer-friendly ‘globalised’ gay identity acts as a pre-
cursor to Duggan’s work. Altman also identified the political-economic
dimension of gay and lesbian acceptance, writing that,

‘The reasons for these developments lie in both economic and cultural shifts
which are producing sufficiently large and self-confident groups of men
(and some women) who wish to live as homosexuals in the western sense of
that term (i.e., expressing their sexual identity openly, mixing with other
homosexuals, and having long-term primary relations with other homosex-
uals).’ (425)

Altman examined the tension between local ‘queer’ practices, politics

and identities, and the cultural imperialism of an Anglo-American model
of gay identity politics. In doing so, he presaged Duggan’s focus on the
globalising forces of neoliberalism and warned of the dangers that such a
political operation might have for understandings of diverse sexual
cultures.
The final scholar I want to signpost here is Rosemary Hennessy, and
specifically her work on sexuality and capitalism, which acts as an
 2 CONTEXTUALISING HOMONORMATIVITY 27

important antecedent to Duggan’s analysis. In Profit and Pleasure: sexual

identities in late capitalism (2002), Hennessy adopts a Marxist-feminist
approach in order to identify the ways in which neoliberalism helps secure
the legitimacy of (certain) lesbian and gay identities, while maintaining
(and further increasing) forms of inequality that remain fundamental to
capitalism. Remarking that this inequality must be ‘agreed to and legiti-
mized’ (11) by society, Hennessy argues that ‘culture-ideology’ provides
‘a variety of different practices or ways of making sense … that displace,
condense, compensate, mask, and contest the basic inequality of capital-
ism’ (ibid.).
Importantly, Hennessy asserts that the increasing acceptance of (some)
non-heterosexual identities provides one such method of displacement
and disavowal. For how can we suggest that society is becoming more
unequal, when the rights of gays and lesbians are increasingly enshrined in
law, and when public life is filled with ever more ‘out and proud’ LGBTQ
people? The same can be said for gender and for race (but rather less so for
class). In other words, the equalities agendas of neoliberal governments
permit them to tout their progressive credentials while simultaneously
ignoring the structural inequities that underpin capitalist societies.
Hennessy’s work foreshadows Duggan’s analysis by identifying the ways in
which sexuality is put into service by neoliberalism. The awarding of a
select portfolio of rights to (some) queer folk serves to mask other, more
pervasive disparities, while promoting the belief that the prevailing
political-­economy is working for (rather than against) social equality. This
paves the way for the production of homonormativity, which, as Duggan
suggests, is the ‘new sexual politics of neoliberalism’ (2002: 50).
Thus, while not all the authors referred to above point directly towards
the rise of a neoliberal gay movement in their writing, a clear line of think-
ing can be traced from these earlier critiques of Western gay and lesbian
politics and Duggan’s own analysis. As such, while we might consider
Duggan’s term original, it is a misnomer to read the politics of homonor-
mativity as a wholly new project. And although scholars have been quick
to identify Duggan’s essay as the starting point for a critique of assimila-
tion, privatisation, domestication and centre-right thinking in gay politics,
the author herself explicitly recognises the intellectual foundations upon
which she makes her claims.
To return to the original definition of the term then, and as outlined
above, the new homonormativity is not ‘simply’ the ‘domesticating’ of
homosexuality, or the distillation of the gay civil rights movement down to
28 S. MOWLABOCUS

a handful of issues. It is both far more nuanced and far more political. As
Duggan notes ‘[t]his gay right wing, self-constituted as a new center, is
definitively not a single-issue political lobby.’ (190). Such an argument
suggests that homonormativity is in fact closely wedded to a political-­
economic model that actively undermines what British historians refer to
as the post-war consensus (Dutton, 1997), and what American historians
refer to as The Great Society (Unger, 1996).
At the same time, just as it is incorrect to divorce homonormativity
from the broader political context, it is also incorrect to frame a critique of
homonormativity as an attack on identity politics. Many queer scholars
have quoted Duggan’s work on homonormativity while also blaming
identity politics for its rise, yet this is not what she originally intended. In
the final chapter of The Twilight of Equality (2003), Duggan takes to task
a number of prominent writers from the progressive left who have launched
vitriolic attacks on political activism based around identities and culture.
In each case, Duggan undermines these attacks, pointing towards a diver-
sity of opinions and ideas that cluster under the umbrella of identity poli-
tics. She highlights the critical self-reflexivity engendered in much cultural
studies work (while noting a severe lack of such self-reflection in much left
thinking) and argues for a recognition of what has been achieved through
activism based around a politics of identity:

‘The impulse to caricature identity or cultural politics as political “other”

underwrites the critic’s authority more than it usefully describes the political
landscape […] Rather than admonish and advise, it would make more politi-
cal sense to locate, engage and expand productive political moments for
future elaboration.’ (2003: 80-81)

Duggan does not advocate the wholesale dismantling of identity poli-

tics, nor is she comfortable with criticising those who have had some suc-
cess using such a political strategy. Taking on Naomi Klein’s criticisms of
post-1980s equality activism, she responds that the (inevitable) commodi-
fication of such politics does not mean they were always redundant or
misguided. Nor does it mean that such political endeavours are fruitless:
‘to ascribe such successes to the commodification of diversity is to ascribe
all importance to the corporate arena’ (75). In short, by slamming identity
politics for being co-opted by commerce, not only do we fail to recognise
the achievements of identity politics (however limited and unevenly dis-
tributed they might be), we also disingenuously reject the political efforts
 2 CONTEXTUALISING HOMONORMATIVITY 29

of generations of activists. Duggan finds plenty wrong with identity poli-

tics (not least its focus on single-issue campaigns, its blindness to intersec-
tionality and its boundary-marking practices, which inhibit efforts to
establish a broader, collectivist approach to social justice). However, there
is a difference between critique and complaint. Duggan advocates the for-
mer, while warning against the latter. In doing so, she recognises the
ongoing political capital that can be made from a more self-­reflexive and
reformed version of identity politics; one influenced by queer theory,
rather than at odds with it.

Beyond the New Homonormativity

The timeliness of Duggan’s work cannot be overstated. At the beginning
of the twenty-first century, it provided us with the tools we needed to
begin understanding the rhetoric of groups such as the Log Cabin
Republicans (in the USA), and LGBTory4 (in the UK context). But since
then, I would argue that it has gone on to offer us a critical lens with
which to consider the broader landscape of Western democracies, and the
relationship between LGBTQ people and these democracies. Indeed, it is
my contention that homonormativity has not only become an outlook
adopted by major lesbian and gay activist groups and commentators, but
has also offered a method by which governments, private companies and
the free market can promote their own progressive credentials.
Acknowledging this use of homonormativity helps us, for instance, to
understand how and why same-sex marriage in the UK became a legal
reality under a Conservative government in 2014; something that was
unimaginable ten years previously, and which more than one of my
research participants (grudgingly) acknowledged during their interviews.
Three years prior to this legislation, Prime Minister David Cameron out-
lined his plan for introducing marriage equality during his party confer-
ence speech:

To anyone who has reservations, I say: Yes, it’s about equality, but it's also
about something else: commitment. Conservatives believe in the ties that
bind us; that society is stronger when we make vows to each other and sup-
port each other. So I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative.
I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative. (Cameron, 2011, np.)

4
The LGBTQ campaign group affiliated to the UK’s Conservative party.
30 S. MOWLABOCUS

Marriage was mentioned seven times during this keynote address: three
times in relation to same-sex relationships; twice to signpost the role it
must play in creating a stable society; once in relation to increasing tax
benefits for married couples; and once in the context of immigration.
Collectively, these mentions performed three functions. Firstly, in reartic-
ulating the privileged status of marriage, Cameron tied such privilege to
economic reward: married people deserve to be wealthier. Secondly, it
extended this privilege to one specific form of same-sex relationship
(thereby negating others), while promoting the belief that marriage should
be the primary form of support for any individual in society. Finally, in
condemning ‘fake marriages’, the speech outlined what was to be consid-
ered a legitimate marriage (commitment, stability and the production of a
self-sustaining economic unit) and what was to be condemned as illegiti-
mate (poor migrants wanting to live and work in the UK).
Many critics and commentators have positioned same-sex marriage as
homonormative. This is a belief I seek to question and complicate in the
next chapter. Nevertheless, as the quotation above demonstrates, same-sex
marriage has become a way for neoliberal governments (of whatever politi-
cal affiliation) to align themselves with—and offer moral, economic and
legal support for—a particular model of homosexual relationship. This
model neatly fits into the idealised vision of neoliberal society, and in
doing so it is given a privileged status. From this perspective, homonorma-
tivity becomes a tool, not just for gay assimilationists, but also for contem-
porary Western democracies. Given Duggan’s original framing of the
term, it is understandable that it is most commonly deployed in critical
analyses of lesbian and gay cultures, politics, organisations and identities.
However, as I go on to demonstrate in the rest of this book, homonorma-
tivity is no longer solely an outlook adopted by a cadre of centre-right
non-heterosexual people and organisations. It increasingly also serves as
an ideological fulcrum, operating at the centre of a myriad set of relation-
ships between queer people and the heteronormative mainstream. Seen
from this perspective then, homonormativity has come to articulate the
conditions upon which neoliberal societies come to accept (or reject) les-
bian and gay people.
At the same time, we must also acknowledge that ‘big’ politics—the
politics of nation states, transnational companies and the global market—
must also always be translated into the politics of everyday life, and that
within such translation work lie opportunities for resistance, negotiation,
appropriation and adaptation. In other words, while recognising the
 2 CONTEXTUALISING HOMONORMATIVITY 31

power of homonormativity we must remember that (qua Foucault) power

is mobile, fluid and productive. In stating this, and by way of a conclusion,
I want to draw attention to the work of the British cultural geographer,
Gavin Brown. I do so not least because his work on homonormativity
provided the intellectual motivation for this book and has had a lasting
impact on my thinking about this subject. In his 2012 essay in the Journal
of Homosexuality. Brown offers a critique of both Homonormativity—the
concept—and homonormativity—as a lived practice. While acknowledg-
ing the kind of homonormative neoliberalism identified by Duggan, he
takes issue with the theoretical uses of this term, locating critiques of
homonormativity within the cultural milieu of a metropolitan intellectual
elite. As he writes,

‘[m]y problem with Homonormativity (the theory) rests on the fact that
over the last decade, as this analysis has gained popularity, homonormativity
(and, even worse, the homonormative) has increasingly come to be repre-
sented in both academic and activist writings as a homogeneous, global
external entity that exists outside all of us and exerts its terrifying, normative
power on gay lives everywhere.’ (Brown, 2012: 1066)

Always acutely aware of how the issues of race, class and geographical
specificity shape understandings of sexuality, Brown identifies the ten-
dency for critiques of homonormativity to take a reductive approach to
practices, politics and people. At the same time, these discussions tend to
deploy the concept as ‘all-encompassing and unassailable’ (1067). The
adoption of this macro-political view of homonormativity, twinned with a
focus on metropolitan (often middle-class) lives and cultures, occludes
more focused analyses of the everyday lives of LGBTQ people, especially
those who live outside of the large towns and cities from which much criti-
cally queer work draws inspiration.
This oversight means that while we have developed a good understand-
ing of how homonormativity has (for instance) shaped discussions regard-
ing marriage equality, military service or hate crime legislation, we remain
comparatively ignorant of how these macro-political issues intersect with
the lived experiences of ‘regular’ queer people. We are ignorant of how
lesbian and gay men (but also other non-heterosexual folk) accommodate,
resist and otherwise negotiate their lives in relation to the ideas, opinions,
arguments and compromises that can be collected under the term
‘homonormative’.
32 S. MOWLABOCUS

Brown encapsulates the potential of opening up such an avenue of

study when he quotes Jeffrey Weeks (2007:9), reminding us to “‘never
underestimate the importance of being ordinary”’ (Brown, 2012: 1068).
He does not suggest that we reject homonormativity, but rather that we
‘theorize it differently’ (1071) in order to identify its contours, its textures
and its ruptures. In many respects, the research contained in this book
seeks to answer Brown’s call to action, offering a series of insights into
contemporary gay male practice that engage with the concept of homo-
normativity, while respecting the complex set of contradictions that char-
acterise the politics of everyday life. This respect for the everyday, focusing
on the particularities of life lived in twenty-first-century Britain (and to a
lesser extent, the USA), does not require that we sympathise with, support
or otherwise apologise for homonormativity. Rather, it demands that we
acknowledge the gap that exists between a theory of homonormativity
and the realities of life lived within the context of neoliberalism’s sexual
politics. It is with this gap in mind that I turn my attention to the first case
study in this book: the lives of gay men who have entered into same-sex
marriages.

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 CHAPTER 3

Forsaking all others? Same-Sex Marriage

and the Politics of Everyday Life

Gay/lesbian marriage can be perplexing both for the gay or lesbian individual
and for the scholar of gender and sexuality. Does it constitute courageous repu-
diation of the notion that only persons of different sexes may marry, and as such
can it be construed as outright resistance to heterosexism? Or does it represent
instead a simple accommodation to the norms of the straight world, a calcu-
lated effort to win acceptance by somehow fitting in? (Lewin, 2001: 44)

The debate surrounding the pursuit of marriage equality by gay and

lesbian activists is a metonym for the fault line that has run through
LGBTQ politics since the 1980s. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, gay
conservatives interested in assimilation declared marriage equality as the
‘final battle’ to be won for queer people, arguing that this right was key to
securing mainstream society’s acceptance of gay men and lesbians.
Meanwhile, for many queer activists, the pursuit of same-sex marriage sig-
nalled the abandonment of a more radical political project; one that sought
to dismantle hierarchies of gender, sexuality, race and class, rather than
finding a comfortable spot within the established pecking order. While
there have always been queer folk who have wanted to get married, as well
as those who have argued against all forms of marriage, the debate around
same-sex marriage came to the fore in the early 1990s and there it has
remained as an ongoing source of conflict in LGBTQ politics and culture.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 35

Switzerland AG 2021
S. Mowlabocus, Interrogating Homonormativity, Palgrave Studies
in (Re)Presenting Gender,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87070-6_3
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p. 276: forget to forgot
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