Homophobic-bullying is reported to negatively impact on the psychological, social, educational and cultural lives of sexual-minority youth, denigrating their identity, and emphasising their marginalised status. The long-term implications of victimisation on their 'journey' into adulthood remain a poorly misunderstood area of psychology. The present study aimed to explore how sexual-minority young adults construct meaning in the light of their childhood homophobic-victimisation; what coping processes they recall using to survive; and in what ways their childhood victimisation experiences impacted on their self and sexual-identity development, over their life-course. Four female lesbian and bisexual undergraduate university students provided accounts of their childhood homophobic-victimisation and subsequent journey into emerging-adulthood. Data was gathered via semi-structured interviews and analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, Flowers & Larkin, 2009). Four superordinate themes were identified. Firstly, ' Constructing the self, the evolving journey' explores how participants' sense of being 'different' and undesirable (acquired through bullying) transformed into becoming 'wrong' and unacceptable. This transformation coincided with participants' experiences of homophobic-bullying and sexual-identity awareness. Participants' transitions from 'victim to warrior' and 'helplessness to saviour' over the course of their life-span were also explored. Secondly, ' Distancing the intolerable' outlines participants' cognitive and social processes of distancing themselves from the position of the victim, the behavioural and psychological consequences of victimhood and their sexuality. Such processes continued into emerging-adulthood, despite most participants ' no longer being bullied. Thirdly, 'My bully-the developing interpretation' explores the changing role of the ' blameworthy self, the' ignorant bullies' to the biggest bully of all- society, in participants' understanding of victimisation. Homophobia as an ' infectious disease' and identification of the positive benefits of their childhood-victimisation were identified. Fourthly, 'Trapped bird breaking free from its shackles' highlights participants’ sense of confinement to the dominating heterosexual norms and life as a repetitive victim. Participants' ' turning points' marked their embarked journey of escape, yet their lingering struggles from A qualitative exploration into the experiences of childhood homophobic victimisation for sexual minority young adults. their victimised past continue on. The clinical implications and need for further research are discussed.

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This thesis is the outcome of a practice-based research project into contemporary formations of gender and sexuality through the study of drag performance. It is composed of two elements, the film Dragging the Past (presented on a DVD) and this written text. The film offers a multi-layered view of the drag performances in Koukles Club, Athens, Greece. The written thesis offers sociological analysis of articulations of self, from both performers and audiences. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate productions of the self through the process of viewing, engaging, and performing in a drag show, and also to examine the ways in which subjects negotiate their gender during this process. Moreover, this study illuminates the deployment of drag narratives, by both drag performers and members of the audience, as tools to create a desired self, always in relation to the other. A visual ethnography, that uses participant observation and video elicitation as key methods to gather empirical data, provides the foundation for this study. The ethnographic ‘I’ of the researcher combines with participants in the field and ‘together’ they produce ethnographic knowledge. Video elicitation interviews capture narratives of embodiment and competition; both film and text reflect that visual methods offer new perspectives on the way subjects form their gender and sexuality. This study reveals productions of particular kinds of subjects, specifically those that perform gender in relation to the other, while engaged in the process of competition and embodiment (incarnation), while also interrupting and disrupting the other. These themes proved to be central to the narratives participants deployed to perform the self. Furthermore, this thesis demonstrates that photographs and the act of mirroring are important to the forming of gender and sexuality, as they become tools for the production of the self.

Situated at the intersection of postcolonial, queer, and citizenship theory, this thesis examines how the act of reading can be understood as a civic act of queer citizenship. The thesis focuses specifically on the writing, reading, and performance strategies of three writers: Canadian Metis and two-spirited poet Gregory Scofield, Mexican-American/Chicano Guillermo G6mez-Pena, lesbian Canadian Erin Moure. Each of these writers can be considered 'marginal' in the North American context. Chapter 1 offers that the act of reading can be a transgressive civic act that constitutes reading subjects as empowered citizens within a framework of queer citizenship. Combining citizenship theOlY, queer studies, and readerresponse criticism, including a practical example using the work of Gloria Anzaldua, the chapter provides the theoretical frame for the case studies to come. Chapter 2 reads the work of GregOly Scofield, identifying what I call his Metis two-spirit vernaculars. After a brief historical survey of the Metis in Canada the chapter turns to close analysis of how synecdoche is used in his poetry to position the reader as occupying the space of the 'other.' Chapter 3 considers the performance art and texts of Guillermo G6mezPena, whose work blurs the boundary between "us" and "them." G6mez-Pena's use of what I call a queered rasquache aesthetic situates him in a decidedly Chicano context, and his performances bring the US-Mexico border to the performance space, allowing his audiences and readers to cross and recross one of the most famous borders in the world. In chapter 4, I suggest that Erin Moure's poetry is able to critique, question, and unsettle citizenship through a practice called writing in the feminine. Her work focuses on experimentation with language and poetic form while simultaneously and inversely destabilizing language through its exploration and critique of citizenship. Each of these case studies illustrates my argument that the civic act of reading can acts on the relationship between the status and performance of citizenship, with the aim of transforming its exclusionary parameters. 11

This thesis examines Oscar Wilde's relationship to three aspects of the freighted and divisive critical debate about sexual history and sexual identity, which I describe as the gay/queer impasse. Chapter One examines the operation of this debate and the reasons for the abiding stalemate between its two sides, and it contextualises the three main subjects that I will be discussing in the succeeding chapters. The second chapter analyses Wilde's relationship to the two sets of concepts that cluster around the 'gay' and 'queer' sides of the divide, and the third explores the ways in which Wilde's conception of these concepts informs his view of how we read the history of male-male passion, desire, and relationships. The fourth and fifth chapters examine Wilde's engagement with the 'modem' and 'premodern' sexual models that were available in his lifetime: the fourth considers his perception of the emergence of the modem model and its impact on the premodern one; end the fifth explores the imposition, limitations, and possibilities of the modern model: The words 'gay' and 'queer' serve as umbrella terms to capture (1.) two different fields of concepts, (2.) two different historiographical lenses and the two forms of history that they produce, and (3.) two different types of sexual model: 'gay' refers to something more familiar, stable, modern, and locatable, and 'queer' refers to something more unfamiliar, unruly, premodern, and elusive. The thesis argues that 'gayness' and 'queerness' are equally present in Wilde's oeuvre in the three aforementioned contexts, and this argument goes against the recent critical trend of underplaying, problematising, or even effacing the' gay' components of Wilde and his texts. A key part of my argument is that the 'gay' and 'queer' elements in Wilde's oeuvre are best understood in relation to a complex dynamic of interplay and interchange between them.

Queer Giving is the material realisation of a practice-led research project into contemporary radical queer ways of being. It is one thesis composed of the film Mirror Mirror and the paper One Queer Gift. They are derivatives of my ethnographic investigation into the radical queer vision of London's Club Wotever (2003-). Working within the potentials of their respective forms, both film and paper argue that radical queer identities, as found in the major urban centres of the metropolitan West, derive their multiple-meanings, integrity and raison d'etre within and through dialogue. Characterised by audio-visual provocation and cautious disclosure. Mirror Mirror reflects this formative feedback through its text and narrative drive.

This research explores the notion of visual justice in relation to questions of gay identity and gay visibility. It looks at the relationship between gay identity and visual justice because the homosexual experience of social exclusion and discrimination is often described as a form of social invisibility and gay identity politics can be seen as a struggle to obtain public visibility. Moreover, it argues that in late-capitalist or spectacular societies, social dynamics connected to visual matters and regimes of visuality have increasing salience, and the lack of visual representations and/or misrepresentation of gays in mainstream culture and society is a form of injustice that needs to be seriously addressed. This thesis analyses and critically questions the relationship between gay identity and forms of visibility. To study these issues the thesis considers the media event produced by the broadcast of the first entirely gay TV drama Queer as Folk. The programme's explicit visions of gayness triggered a heated public debate on questions of gay visibility. Some viewers saw it as an obscene programme which was rendering public matters that were better kept 'private', whilst some others welcomed it as an example of a more democratic widening of the representational arena, and as a symptom of greater social inclusion and acceptance of gays in mainstream culture and society. By examining and evaluating the public discourses around Queer as Folk this research articulates a wider sociological investigation into the relationship between gay identity and the representational field. It aims to gain an understanding of social inclusion and social justice in visually mass mediated societies. It interrogates current visions of social justice based on the opposition of symbolic and material social processes and challenges the separation of recognitive and redistributive claims for justice. It assesses risks and potentials of representational visibility, imagining new visions of democracy.

This dissertation explores one family's experience of a son's disclosure of homosexuality, through the use of a second-order cybernetic epistemology, and social constructionist theory. Second-order cybernetics enables a description of patterns and themes that recursively connect the family's ideas and behaviour. Social constructionism enables the family's reaction to disclosure to be recursively linked to their fit with wider society. By using semantic and political frames of reference to describe the family's narratives around disclosure, this study indicates that disclosure is a relational metaphor, dependent on the family's locally co-constructed and transgenerational meanings. It also shows that although the family change with disclosure, stability is regained in a way consistent with the family's rules and norms. This study therefore demystifies viewing disclosure in one way only and creates alternative ways of conceptualising it. / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)

This dissertation explores one family's experience of a son's disclosure of homosexuality, through the use of a second-order cybernetic epistemology, and social constructionist theory. Second-order cybernetics enables a description of patterns and themes that recursively connect the family's ideas and behaviour. Social constructionism enables the family's reaction to disclosure to be recursively linked to their fit with wider society. By using semantic and political frames of reference to describe the family's narratives around disclosure, this study indicates that disclosure is a relational metaphor, dependent on the family's locally co-constructed and transgenerational meanings. It also shows that although the family change with disclosure, stability is regained in a way consistent with the family's rules and norms. This study therefore demystifies viewing disclosure in one way only and creates alternative ways of conceptualising it. / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)

Depuis 1976 le concours de beauté « Miss Brésil Gay » a lieu chaque année à Juiz de Fora (Brésil) et ses 36 éditions ont attiré régulièrement des milliers de touristes. La compétition se déroule entre les 27 États brésiliens représentés par des concurrentes qui ne sont pas des travestis, mais des garçons qui s’habillent en femme. Tenu comme l’un des premiers de ce genre au Brésil, il est devenu l’une des manifestations culturelles les plus représentatives de la ville et l’un des événements gays les plus connus du pays. Cette thèse discutera de l’homosexualité et des « tribus gays » pour valider l’hypothèse que le concours se rapproche d’une « effervescence postmoderne ». La première partie est basée sur la sociologie classique, la sociologie compréhensive, l’imaginaire et la sociologie du quotidien. Il y a ensuite une révision théorique des points les plus pertinents de l’ouvrage de Michel Maffesoli en relation à ce travail : tribalisme, identités, altérité, effervescences et Dionysos. Les rites et rituels de passage reçoivent une attention spéciale, en fonction de leur importance dans cette étude. La deuxième partie est une approche transdisciplinaire sur l’homosexualité à travers la reconstruction sociohistorique, les identités, les effervescences touristiques, les utilisations du corps et l’homophobie. La troisième partie est consacrée au travail sur le terrain, composé par les « histoires de vie » de cinq misses gays brésiliennes. Il s’agit d’une recherche qualitative qui utilise les méthodes de l’Observation Participante et de la Participation Observante pour arriver aux analyses de données, à la validation des hypothèses et à la vérification des résultats, répertoriées dans la cinquième partie. À travers le microcosme du Miss Brésil Gay, l’objectif est de contribuer à l’élaboration de nouvelles catégories de la pensée sociologique sur l’homosexualité et sur les fêtes « tribales », à partir d’un regard postmoderne. / Since 1976 the beauty pageant contest Miss Gay Brazil is held annually in Juiz de Fora (Brazil) and its 36 editions regularly attract thousands of tourists. The competition takes place between the 27 Brazilian states represented by competitors who are not transvestites, but men who dress as women. Held as one of the first of its kind in Brazil, it has become one of the most representative cultural events in the city and one of the country’s best known gay events. This thesis will discuss homosexuality and « gay tribes » to validate the hypothesis that the contest is approaching a « postmodern effervescence ». The first part is based on traditional sociology, « comprehensive sociology », the imaginary and « everyday life sociology ». There is also a theoretical review of the most relevant points of works by Michel Maffesoli in relation to this study: tribalism, identity, alterity, effervescence and Dionysus. The rituals and rites of passage are given special attention, according to their importance in this research. The second part is a transdisciplinary approach to homosexuality, through a socio-historical reconstruction, identities, « gay tourism », utilisations of the body and homophobia. The third part is devoted to the « field », composed by the « life stories method » of five Brazilian Gay Misses. This is a qualitative research that uses « observing participation » and « participating observation » to arrive at data analysis, validation and verification of results, exposed in the fifth part. Through the microcosm of Miss Gay Brazil, the aim is to contribute to the development of new categories of sociological thought on homosexuality and fêtes « tribales » from a postmodern point of view.