The Homophobia Course in the Life of Older Gay Men in Brazil: Their Social Representations

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study aims at understanding the social representations of homophobia among older gay men. A number of 20 older gay men aged between 60 and 75 years old participated of the study; the average age was 63.25 years old (SD = 3.58). In the data collection, a semi-structured interview about homophobia was used; they were analyzed on IRAMUTEQ, which compiles the descendant hierarchical classification. The corpus was divided into three classes of social representations. The first representation comprises images of prejudice within society. The second one presents social representations involving reports of internalized homophobia and the experiencing of prejudice. The third one shows social representations about physical and identity violations. The social representations of homophobia show how the participants lead their actions in society, being based upon risk and protection issues to face the objective and subjective difficulties present in their social representations.