“What has she actually done??!”: Gay men, diva worship, and the paratextualization of gay-rights support

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article uses diva “worship” as a case study to theorize the relationship between texts, paratexts, and sociohistorical context in gay men’s media reception practices. Drawing on reader comments across two blogs, it argues that many gay men make meaning of divas through the women’s affiliations with gay men and engagement in gay-rights activism. Readers in turn paratextualize this contextual information by continuously invoking it in their discussions, insisting that gay men should interpret divas and their music specifically through their support for gay men—a departure from the longtime explanation that gay men appreciate divas because the women’s struggles resonate with their own experiences in a homophobic society. This argument moves beyond existing scholarship on paratexts and queer readings that asserts the former encourage or discourage negotiated interpretations of texts’ messages about gender and sexuality. Instead, it contends that broader social and political shifts such as increased gay acceptance and gay-rights advances may inform the type of paratexts with which gay men engage in their meaning-making practices, even motivating them to transform context into a paratext. Such paratextualization illuminates how gay men’s investments in media texts can evolve to reflect changing circumstances and structures of feeling.