Historicising outsiders on campus: The re/production of lesbian and gay insiders

Abstract

This is a study of the process of lesbian and gay identity assumption among university students at one American university campus—the State University of New York, Oneonta. It is argued that participation in this gay and lesbian student group produces a particular construction of identity, one that privileges an essentialist understanding of sexual difference in which a coherent, unified identity is achieved by suppressing more complex, overlapping identities of ethnicity, gender, race and sexuality. Through particular discursive practices—public repetitions of coming out—and particular political practices—conventional student political activities—students assume a gay or lesbian identity by ‘performing’ as lesbians and gays. One result is the reproduction of politically active, community identified gay and lesbian youth, schooled in the methods of insider politics who go on to become volunteer and salaried workers in gay and lesbian community institutions.