Historically trans people have been advised that the gender role transitional process will undoubtedly result in the breakdown of their relationships. Research into trans people's sexuality is growing, yet research into the sexuality of cisgender partners, in the context of their partners' transition, is sparse. This project presents an in-depth narrative analysis of six cisgender women who have been partnered with trans identified individuals. The findings are presented through individual overall impressions of the participants and the collective narratives told. The main story plot that emerged was 'the quest to stay together' which is told through sub plots of identity, the body and invisibility. Further sub plots are offered in regards to the support participants accessed to assist in 'the quest to stay together'. The analysis includes the ways in which narrators drew on, and/or challenged, social discourses of gender and sexuality and also performative aspects of identity. Clinical implications, limitations of the study and future research are also discussed.

The study seeks to answer how midlife gay men in Manchester manage growing older. It analyses accounts generated through in-depth interviews with 27 middle-aged gay men living in Greater Manchester (aged 39 - 61) and 20 participant observation sessions conducted in Manchester's 'gay village.' It deploys an interpretivist methodology and a 'pick and mix' analytical framework developed by Thomson (2009) that uses of Foucault's 'technologies of the self' (1987) (that concern capacities for agency) but located within 'fields of existence' (with their own norms) adopted from Bourdieu (1984). Through analysis of participants' accounts of bodily practices (dress, grooming, diet, exercise) and their relationships in various fields, the study examines the constraints on and choices around expression of midlife identity and ways of relating. The study's structuring theme concerns the mechanisms through which midlife gay men in Manchester differentiate themselves from others. Differentiation is achieved largely through moral and epistemic claims-making around an 'authentic' gay male midlife self that is central to the notion of a legitimate, (age-appropriate) form of socio-sexual citizenship. As extant scholarship has identified, there are normative restrictions on expression of a midlife self and the possibilities for interaction (especially with younger gay men) but men can use self-worth and political knowledges gained from life experience ('ageing capital' and age-related technologies of the self) to do other than comply with such restrictions. But, this study also illuminates men's ambivalent responses to age, ageing, gay ageism and homophobia that involve negotiation with discourses that inform understandings of ageing and sexuality. The study also maps a cultural "politics of the minor" (Rose 1999) operating at the micro-level, which is concerned to affect the context of interaction. The power relations of gay male ageism that are crucial to this expression of politics are multidirectional. Midlife gay men are not just the targets of ageism from younger gay men. They distinguish themselves in ways that can express ageism towards younger, (some) peer aged and old gay men. The study also complicates assumptions about midlife gay men and their lives: 1) Dressing for 'comfort' (part of an 'authentic' midlife self) contradicts the idea that midlife gay men obsess about the body, prolonging youth and maintaining sexual marketability. 2) Manchester's gay village is not overwhelmingly a site of exclusion for midlife gay men. They negotiate with the rules of the game and use emotional and cultural political knowledges gained through life experience to resist ageism and carve out a conviviality that involves friendship, affection and care for others in sexualised space. 3) Gay men continue to experience unequal access to public space but gains in self-worth with age and the recent tolerance dividend indicate that this is now more often experienced as safer. Gayness is now being claimed as integral to broader sexual citizenship. 4) Midlife gay men do not live outside of kinship. Subjects creatively reconfigured their kinship circles/friendship families over time. This form of kinship has special political significance for this present generation of middle-aged gay men in Manchester. Paul Simpson, Manchester University, PhD. Sociology. 11 September 2011.

This thesis considers how the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered communities of Plymouth have performed and signified their own culture and identities during the period 1950 to 2012. Its source materials were largely generated by conducting oral history interviews with members of Plymouth’s LGB and T communities. This resulted in the creation of an archive which included thirty-seven interviews conducted with twenty-four individuals. These interviews, in conjunction with other uncovered archival memorabilia, now form a specific LGBT collection with Plymouth and West Devon Record Office. This PhD thesis interrogates this newly created community archive accession, using theories of performance as a tool, to consider how differing narratives and histories have been constructed, reproduced, contested and maintained. Pride, as a political concept in LGBT culture, is linked to the belief that individuals should maintain and display a sense of dignity in relation to their sexual orientation or gender role as a response to the stigmatisation traditionally associated with being LGB or T. This study tests the relevance of the concept of pride for the lived experience of LGBT communities in Plymouth, concluding that it needs to be understood within personal narratives rather than as primarily manifested in outward-facing forms of performance (such as a parade or a public event). Particularly significant in this regard is the “coming out narrative”. The thesis identifies spaces which, for various reasons, came to be accepted as safe places to accommodate sexual and gender differences in Plymouth in the 1950s and 60s. These strongly reflect Plymouth's location as a port, in combination with the fact that it has played host to each of the armed forces. It considers the impact of international public displays of gay pride from the Stonewall riots in the US through to performances as protest employed by groups such as Outrage! and legislation as Section 28 of the Local Government Act in the UK. The thesis concludes by considering the author’s role in, and wider impact of, the “Pride in Our Past” exhibition, which took place at Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery (April-June 2012) as part of this research project.

This study explored how gender expressions were portrayed in the narratives of gay men who view themselves as non-masculine. An adapted life story interview was conducted with seven participants between the ages of 20 and 47 years. Life stories were analysed using content analysis. The study found that non-masculinity was defined in different ways and that social context, including threat, impacted on gender expression. Non-masculinity was strongly associated with male homosexuality. Homophobic verbal and physical abuse was portrayed alongside negative appraisals of non-masculinity. This may be indicative of internalised anti-effeminacy values. Marginalisation in gay communities was also portrayed, including romantic rejection. Intersections of gender-expression and ethnicity or age were important in evaluations of sexual attractiveness. Conversely, masculinity was often eroticised or regarded as aspirational. Positive qualities associated with non-masculinity included expressiveness, humour and flexibility in working with power demonstrations of others. These reinforce the assertion that effeminate and androgynous men bypass facets of gender-role conflict.

This thesis employed Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to explore eight fathers’ perceptions and practices in talking to their ten year old children about puberty, relationships and reproduction. Eight fathers, of four girls and four boys respectively, participated in face to face interviews which were analysed idiographically initially, followed by analysis at the group level. Interpretations were then developed through synthesis of the findings with the wider literature and through critical application of a Foucauldian lens of governmentality and biopower. The results revealed a tension between the fathers’ cognitions, accounts and behaviours. Their practices were largely characterised by silence yet they reported positive attitudes towards children’s sexuality education and perceived themselves as equipped and willing to take on the role of sexuality educator. They also reported enjoying open relationships with their children. Interpretations centred on contradictions and conflict between the majority of the fathers’ aspirations and the compelling nature of the childhood innocence discourse as a technology of governmentality. Whilst all of the fathers felt that it was in their children’s interests to learn about sexuality, all but one adhered to hegemonic protective discourses and unquestioningly integrated their normalising effects into their fathering practices. In keeping with neoliberalist values, the fathers wished to minimise risk which they managed, paradoxically, by suppressing sexuality dialogue. A contradiction between cultural expectations and the conduct of fathering also emerged for seven of the eight fathers which appeared to relate to masculinities, gender ideologies and primary socialisation. This study has surfaced the power of subtle coercions of neoliberalist governmentality and the childhood innocence ideal in influencing fatherhood practices. However, by continuing the silence that largely characterises father-child sexuality communication, fathers are paradoxically potentially rendering their children more vulnerable both now and in the future. It is, therefore, essential that protective discourses are challenged and fathers are supported in talking to their children about sexuality in its broadest sense.

This thesis fills an important research gap in the sociology of ageing and life course, and the sociology of sexualities and intimacies by exploring the understudied experience of singlehood among older gay men. It is a qualitative study based on semi-structured in-depth life story interviews conducted with 25 self-identified gay men over the age of 50 who live in England and have been single for most of their lives. The primary objective of the study is to investigate how older single gay men interpret and assign meanings to their lives in later life. In considering the role of narratives in bridging structure and agency, the thesis suggests that the older gay men’s narratives of singlehood need to be understood with reference to the master narrative in society that privileges couplehood. The master narrative undoubtedly informed and at times overshadowed the ways in which the older gay men understood their lives. But at the same time this thesis finds that the research participants engaged with the master narrative in a variety of creative ways – they did not only adopt, but also adapted and subverted the dominant story line. These counter-stories do not only reproduce, but have the potential to reinvent, the meanings of relationships in contemporary societies. To achieve this, resources were needed in reframing the master narrative. From a life course perspective the thesis suggests that the older gay men’s earlier life experiences and current social locations influenced the narratives they told. Only some of the older single gay men were able to (re-)claim sexual citizenship while others were denied this. In addition, the older gay men’s story-telling was filled with ambivalence and ambiguities. As a whole, the thesis sees the older gay men’s stories as displaying agency within structure.

This thesis is a reassessment of gay male politics in England and Wales during the period between the decriminalisation of homosexual acts in private in 1967 and the HIV epidemic of the early 1980s. It looks beyond the activities of the revolutionary Gay Liberation Front and its offshoots which have dominated previous accounts. Instead it considers a broader range of social and political organisations which developed for gay men in the seventies: including reformist NGOS such as the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, the gay club scene, and publications such as Gay News. Through a detailed consideration of these less formally radical enterprises it argues that the seventies saw the creation of a broadly Habermasian 'public sphere' of gay male life. The gay male public sphere was a set of social spaces, political campaigns, and communications media which were explicitly aligned to a gay male identity and had no direct precedent in previous queer public cultures. However, this was not precisely analogous to gay men 'Coming Out' as the GLF understood the term. Participation in the gay male public did not necessarily involve openly declaring your sexuality to all possible audiences. It was also not necessarily a radical challenge to the state and existing society and, this thesis argues, gay male politics in the seventies was characterised as much by people who wanted to work within existing systems as it was by those who wanted to overturn them. This thesis also considers the limits that were placed on the gay male public sphere, through an account of the operation of the Sexual Offences Act and Mary Whitehouse's prosecution of Gay News for blasphemous Libel. As such it is a contribution to debates about the nature and extent of Britain's postwar 'Permissive Society'.