Idas y vueltas al rededor de la Gay Culture Anotaciones desde los márgenes de "la joda"

Abstract

On the basis of my field observations made in the context of the elaboration of my master's thesis, I want to discuss the notion of Gay Culture. This notion is part of the common knowledge of the investigators in the area, but it shows – in some of its meanings – important weaknesses concerning the recognition of the diversity of cultural expressions related to the search for sexual pleasures between men in the urban space.

Speaking merely of Gay Culture to refer the caracteristics of the people converging in the places where we develop our fieldworks, would involve a metonymy. Thus, the status of culture is being conceded to the peculiarities of one sector of the people among we investigate: the one that gets closest to the public image of the gay-consumer to whom the extensive offer of gay or gay-friendly products is directed.

In the field I have observed the coexistence of the conventional gays with a considerable number of individuals who, although they visit the same places, do not group together inside of them, or they do so in a frontal contra position to the values, practices and ways of speaking commonly recognized as gay or "of the milieu". I mean to develop my exposition based on these observations and the analysis of other works made at the margins of the circuits of homosexual socialization.