Gay the right way? Roles and routines of Irish media production among gay and lesbian workers

Abstract

This article explores how gay and lesbian identities are incorporated, or not, into the roles and routines of Irish film and television production. Data were gathered in 2018–2019 through semi-structured interviews with a purposive, snowball sample of 10 people who work in the Irish industries. The key findings are that for gay and lesbian workers their minority sexual identity impacts on the roles that they are likely to be included and excluded from. Sexuality also affects their promotion prospects and their career progression. Similarly, in terms of routines of production, gay and lesbian workers are associated with certain genres, based on stereotypical assumptions about their sexual identities by their hetero-managers and colleagues. In short, Irish gay and lesbian media workers articulated an overarching tension between the heteronormativity of the industry and the queerness of the gay and lesbian media worker. Some workers respond to that tension by adopting a homonormative approach to work while others attempt to forge a queer way of producing.