Sexuality and gender identity-based cultures

Sexuality and gender identity-based cultures are subcultures and communities composed of persons who have shared experiences, background, or interests due to a common sexual

Sexual identity

Sexual identity is a term that, like sex, has two distinctively different meanings. One describes an identity roughly based on sexual orientation, the other an identity based on sexual characteristics, which is not socially based but based on biology, a concept related to, but different from,...

or gender identity

Gender identity

A gender identity is the way in which an individual self-identifies with a gender category, for example, as being either a man or a woman, or in some cases being neither, which can be distinct from biological sex. Basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to...

. Among the first to argue that members of sexual minorities can constitute cultural minorities as well as being just individuals were Adolf Brand

Adolf Brand

Adolf Brand was a German writer, individualist anarchist and pioneering campaigner for the acceptance of male bisexuality and homosexuality.-Biography:...

, Magnus Hirschfeld

Magnus Hirschfeld

Magnus Hirschfeld was a German physician and sexologist. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which Dustin Goltz called "the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights."-Early life:Hirschfeld was born in Kolberg in a...

and Leontine Sagan

Leontine Sagan

Leontine Sagan was an Austrian actress and theatre director.Born in Budapest, Sagan trained with Max Reinhardt. The first and most widely known of her two films is Mädchen in Uniform...

in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. These pioneers were followed later in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

by the Mattachine Society

Mattachine Society

The Mattachine Society, founded in 1950, was one of the earliest homophile organizations in the United States, probably second only to Chicago’s Society for Human Rights . Harry Hay and a group of Los Angeles male friends formed the group to protect and improve the rights of homosexuals...

and the Daughters of Bilitis

Daughters of Bilitis

The Daughters of Bilitis , was the first lesbian rights organization in the United States. It was formed in San Francisco in 1955, conceived as a social alternative to lesbian bars, which were considered illegal and thus subject to raids and police harassment...

.

Not all persons of various sexual preferences and gender identify by or affiliate with a sexuality or gender subculture. Reasons can include geographic distance, unawareness of the subculture's existence, fear of social stigma

Social stigma

Social stigma is the severe disapproval of or discontent with a person on the grounds of characteristics that distinguish them from other members of a society.Almost all stigma is based on a person differing from social or cultural norms...

, or personal preference to remain unidentified with sexuality or gender based subcultures or communities. Micheal Rubio has suggested that the identities defined by the Western heterosexualised cultures, which are based on sexuality, have serious flaws, and since often no space for mainstream men to discuss these flaws of gender and sexuality exists, they just reject these identity in large numbers, often along with disowning their sexual needs that may subject them to be classified under what they may consider misclassified sexual identities.

LGBT culture

LGBT culture is the common culture shared by lesbian

Lesbian

Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...

, gay

Gay

Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

, bisexual

Bisexuality

Bisexuality is sexual behavior or an orientation involving physical or romantic attraction to both males and females, especially with regard to men and women. It is one of the three main classifications of sexual orientation, along with a heterosexual and a homosexual orientation, all a part of the...

and transgender

Transgender

Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....

people. It is sometimes referred to as "gay culture” or "queer culture", but those terms can also be specific to gay men's culture.

LGBT culture varies widely by geography and the identity of the participants.
Elements often identified as being common to the culture of gay

Gay

Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

s, lesbian

Lesbian

s, bisexuals, and transgender

Transgender

Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....

ed people include:

The work of famous gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. This may include:
- Present-day LGBT artists and political figures;
- Historical figures who have been identified as LGBT. It has often been questioned whether it is appropriate to identify historical figures using modern terms for sexual identity (see History of sexuality). However, many LGBT people feel a kinship towards these people and their work, especially to the extent that it deals with same-sex attraction or gender identity.
An understanding of the history of LGBT political movements
LGBT social movements
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender social movements share inter-related goals of social acceptance of sexual and gender minorities. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their allies have a long history of campaigning for what is generally called LGBT rights, also called gay...

.
An ironic appreciation of things linked by stereotype to LGBT people.
Figures and identities that are present in the LGBT community
Gay community
The gay community, or LGBT community, is a loosely defined grouping of LGBT and LGBT-supportive people, organizations and subcultures, united by a common culture and civil rights movements. These communities generally celebrate pride, diversity, individuality, and sexuality...

and LGBT culture
LGBT culture
LGBT culture, is the common culture shared by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. It is sometimes also referred to as Queer culture. The term gay culture, though not synonymous, is sometimes also used though this may also apply specifically to the culture of homosexual men.LGBT...

, this could include the gay village
Gay village
A gay village is an urban geographic location with generally recognized boundaries where a large number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people live or frequent...

, drag king
Drag king
Drag kings are mostly female performance artists who dress in masculine drag and personify male gender stereotypes as part of their performance. A typical drag king routine may incorporate dancing and singing, live as in the Momma's Boyz of San Francisco's performances or lip-synching...

s and queens
Drag queen
A drag queen is a man who dresses, and usually acts, like a caricature woman often for the purpose of entertaining. There are many kinds of drag artists and they vary greatly, from professionals who have starred in films to people who just try it once. Drag queens also vary by class and culture and...

, Pride
Gay pride
LGBT pride or gay pride is the concept that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people should be proud of their sexual orientation and gender identity...

, and the rainbow flag.

In some cities, especially in North America, gay men and lesbians tend to live in certain neighbourhoods

Gay village

A gay village is an urban geographic location with generally recognized boundaries where a large number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people live or frequent...

.

LGBT communities organize a number of events to celebrate their culture, such as Pride parades, the Gay Games

Gay Games

The Gay Games is the world's largest sporting and cultural event organized by and specifically for LGBT athletes, artists, musicians, and others. It welcomes participants of every sexual orientation and every skill level...

and Southern Decadence

Southern Decadence

Southern Decadence is a week-long, predominantly gay-male event held in New Orleans, Louisiana and its environs by the gay and lesbian community during Labor Day Weekend, climaxing with a parade through the French Quarter on the Sunday before Labor Day...

.

There is some debate among LGBT people about whether an LGBT culture really exists, and whether it is worthwhile.

Polyamory

The polyamorous

Polyamory

Polyamory is the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved....

community is another sexual minority with an associated culture.

Fetish-based cultures

The fetish subculture is a subculture

Subculture

In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...

that comprises people with a broad range of sexual fetishes and other paraphilia

Paraphilia

Paraphilia is a biomedical term used to describe sexual arousal to objects, situations, or individuals that are not part of normative stimulation and that may cause distress or serious problems for the paraphiliac or persons associated with him or her...

s, who tend to be more tolerant of other fetishists than the general community, even if they do not share the other person's specific fetish. Alternative terms for the fetish subculture include fetish scene and fetish community.

The most common paraphilias seen in the fetish subculture are BDSM

BDSM

BDSM is an erotic preference and a form of sexual expression involving the consensual use of restraint, intense sensory stimulation, and fantasy power role-play. The compound acronym BDSM is derived from the terms bondage and discipline , dominance and submission , and sadism and masochism...

, leather fetishism and rubber fetishism

Latex and PVC fetishism

Latex fetishism is the fetishistic attraction to people wearing latex clothing or, in certain cases, to the garments themselves. PVC fetishism and rubber fetishism are closely related to latex fetish, with the former referring to shiny clothes made of the synthetic plastic polyvinyl chloride and...

. The fetish community is also generally more accepting of homosexuality

Homosexuality

Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...

, bisexuality

Bisexuality

, nonmonogamy

Forms of nonmonogamy

Non-monogamy is a blanket term which covers several types of interpersonal relationships in which an individual forms multiple and simultaneous sexual and/or romantic bonds. This can be contrasted with its opposite, monogamy, and yet may arise from the same psychology...

s and cross-dressing

Cross-dressing

Cross-dressing is the wearing of clothing and other accoutrement commonly associated with a gender within a particular society that is seen as different than the one usually presented by the dresser...

than general society.

The fetish subculture supports a strong nightclub

Nightclub

A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...

scene, in the form of fetish club

Fetish club

A fetish club is a nightclub, bar or other entertainment hub which caters to clientele interested in some of fetish fashion, bondage, dominance/submission, and/or sadism and masochism...

Influence on mainstream culture

Sexual minority cultures frequently and consistently influence straight culture. Yale

YALE

RapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...

sociology professor Joshua Gamson argues that the tabloid talk show

Tabloid talk show

Tabloid talk shows are a genre of American television programming talk shows that achieved peak viewership during the late 20th century. Airing mostly during the day and distributed mostly through broadcast syndication, this genre originated with The Phil Donahue Show and was popularized by the...

genre, popularized by Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her self-titled, multi-award-winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011...

in the 1980s provided much needed, high impact media visibility for sexual minorities and did more to make gay culture mainstream than any other development of the 20th century. Slang

Slang

Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...

frequently originates in subcultures, including sexual minority subcultures, which becomes part of the larger vernacular including words associated with descriptions specific to sexual minorities or not.

Madonna

Madonna (entertainer)

Madonna is an American singer-songwriter, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her debut album in 1983...

is one of many artists who have borrowed from sexual minority cultures, including her appropriation of vogueing

Vogue (dance)

Vogue or voguing is a highly stylized, modern house dance that evolved out of the Harlem ballroom scene in the 1960s. It gained mainstream exposure when it was featured in Madonna's song and video "Vogue" , and when showcased in the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning...

. Recently, the television series Queer Eye for the Straight Guy depicts straight men being given fashion make-overs or decorating tips from gay men.

Non-Western cultures

In 2005, Thai film Rainbow Boys, depicting a contemporary gay relationship and produced by Vitaya Saeng-aroon, saw a limited-release screening. Vitaya also produced the comedy-drama Club M2, set in a gay sauna.

Another 2007 film, Bangkok Love Story
Bangkok Love Story
Bangkok Love Story is a 2007 Thai film written and directed by Poj Arnon. A gay romantic crime action drama, it is the story of a man who falls in love with a gunman assigned to kill him.-Plot:...

, directed by Poj Arnon

Poj Arnon

-Career:Poj began his career in the 1980s as an advertising sales manager for Ter-Kab-Chan Magazine, eventually becoming the magazine's chief editor. His work on the magazine enabled him to scout out and groom many of the Thai teen movie stars of the era....

, was critically hailed as a departure from the stereotyped view of homosexuals as transvestites and transsexuals. Gay Thai independent film producer Vitaya Saeng-aroon praised the film: director Poj Arnon

Poj Arnon

was "brave enough to shake society up," he said.

External links

The Androphile Project Extensive resource of gay and bisexual history
The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society
Catch Fire Blog dedicated to queer culture / queer social practice

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

LGBT culture

Polyamory

Fetish-based cultures

Influence on mainstream culture

Non-Western cultures

See also

External links