This project explores the question of gay male identity and community formation in relation to the production of social space designated as "gay." What economic, social, political and symbolic resources are involved in the production of gay space? And how can social space be thought of as creating the conditions of possibility for the formation of specific gay identities and communities? / Using a "production of space" analysis adapted from the work of Henri Lefebvre, I examine the case of Montreal's gay village. I argue that the emergence of this space, in both material and symbolic terms, has led to a particular sense of "spatial identity" among many gay men in Montreal. I analyze the implications of these "space-based" identities for queer community formation and conclude that the Village constitutes a compromise with the dominant culture, rather than a radical form of spatial praxis.

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Leaving Silence: Queer Asian and Pacific Islander Oral History Exhibit (October 1996) is both a community project and an educational campaign, that was conceived and executed in Seattle, Washington. The 12-panel exhibit is composed of 13 narratives and 34 black-and-white photographs, and its theme is "coming out." The narrators and those who appear in the photographs identify as queer and as Asian and Pacific Islander. The project involved the collaboration of four community-based organizations: the Asian Lesbian and Bisexual Alliance, the Asian Pacific AIDS Council, the Asian Pacific Islander Homosexuality/Homophobia Education Project, and Queer & Asian. In this thesis I analyze this exhibit and demonstrate its relevance to critical pedagogy and to all those movements interested in the establishment of social justice.

This is a study of collective identity formation among Montreal gay men before 1970. Using a theoretical framework based on schema theory and discourse analysis, I show that the success of the gay movement after that date was founded on the efforts of men who identified as gay in the decades before gay liberation. In their daily lives, their involvement with gay friendship groups, and their participation in gay social life in the clandestine world of bars and other venues of gay sociability, these men created a complex web of knowledge in gay-specific schemata and discourse forms that provided the basis for a gay rhetoric to counter the social taboo on homosexuality. Using data from thirty life history interviews, I have documented in detail the raw's struggle to come to terms with their difference, the influence on them of family, peer groups and authoritative discourses condemning homosexuality, the ways in which they found and entered the gay world, and the processes of learning its social conventions, I have outlined the continuous growth of the institutional foundations of the gay world, especially bars, focusing on the similarities and differences between Francophones and Anglophones, as well as those between working-class and middle-class gays in Montreal I detail the social control exerted by police over gay men's lives and the growth of symbolic forms, including language and shared discursive themes, which the new gay spaces made possible and through which the collectivity was made manifest. Finally, I show that the increasing unwillingness of ordinary gay men to accept their ostracism led to the growth of a gay culture of resistance based on these shared schemata. The leadership of individual gay men in private and in public opened the way for the social, cultural and political transformations of the social organization of homosexuality after 1970.

Leaving Silence: Queer Asian and Pacific Islander Oral History Exhibit (October 1996) is both a community project and an educational campaign, that was conceived and executed in Seattle, Washington. The 12-panel exhibit is composed of 13 narratives and 34 black-and-white photographs, and its theme is "coming out." The narrators and those who appear in the photographs identify as queer and as Asian and Pacific Islander. The project involved the collaboration of four community-based organizations: the Asian Lesbian and Bisexual Alliance, the Asian Pacific AIDS Council, the Asian Pacific Islander Homosexuality/Homophobia Education Project, and Queer & Asian. In this thesis I analyze this exhibit and demonstrate its relevance to critical pedagogy and to all those movements interested in the establishment of social justice. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

Lee Siu Kwan Linda. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 196-201). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i-ii / A Note of Thanks --- p.iii-iv / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1-17 / Question to Answer --- p.2 / A Preface to the Thesis --- p.4 / Gays in Hong Kong --- p.5 / Chapter 2 --- The Fieldwork Procedure: From Data to Theory --- p.18-46 / Data Collection: Acquire Knowledge and Perspectives of Gays --- p.19 / A Profile of the Key Informants --- p.33 / "Validity, Reliability and Ethical Issues" --- p.42 / Chapter 3 --- "Identity, Space and Power" --- p.47-62 / Develop Concepts From Literature --- p.47 / "Framework: Linking up Identity, Spatiality and Power" --- p.60 / Chapter 4 --- "Segregating Social Settings and the Image of ""Other"" as ""Voyeur""" --- p.63-93 / "Manipulate ""Spatiality"" of Place" --- p.64 / "Manipulate ""Spatiality"" of Time" --- p.74 / Keeping Gay Activities in Hidden Settings --- p.77 / Concluding Segregation of Social Settings in Identity Construction --- p.88 / Chapter 5 --- "Procreating Sex and Love and the Image of ""Other"" as Persecutor""" --- p.94-126 / Centering Sex --- p.94 / Centering Love --- p.117 / Concluding Centering of Love and Sex in Identity Construction --- p.124 / Chapter 6 --- "Redeeming Status and the Image of ""Other"" as ""Stigmatizer""" --- p.127-166 / Using Peripheral Status Symbols --- p.129 / Relocating Stigma to Periphery of Gays Lives --- p.153 / Concluding Redemption of Status in Identity Construction --- p.164 / Chapter 7 --- Identity Construction as Spatial and Power Reconfiguration --- p.166-188 / Identity Construction as Spatial Reconfiguration --- p.168 / Resistance and Subordination in Spatial Reconfiguration --- p.173 / Appendixes / Appendix 1: A Profile of Interviewees --- p.189 / Appendix 2: Gay Activities the Researcher Observed and Participated --- p.190 / Appendix 3: Methods of Data Analysis: Mediating Theories and Data --- p.191 / Bibliography --- p.196 / Tables and Figures / Table 1-1 Active gay organizations in Hong Kong --- p.9 / Table 1-2 Major gay entertainment businesses in Hong Kong --- p.10 / Table 2-1 Interview Schedule --- p.23 / "Table 4-1 Opening Hours of Gay Bars, Discos and Karaokes" --- p.75 / Figure 7-1 A general pattern on the social space of gays before the Decriminalization Act on Homosexuality1991 --- p.175 / Figure 7-2 A general pattern on the social space of gays after the Decriminalization Act on Homosexuality1991 --- p.176 / "Figure A-1 Relationship of raw data, data display and analytic text in data analysis" --- p.193 / Figure A-2 The process of data induction in building a framework for this thesis --- p.195

published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Master / Master of Philosophy

The purpose of this exploratory investigation was to investigate how self-identified gay or bisexual (GB) men with developmental disabilities managed their complex identities. Through various profiling strategies and snowball sampling techniques, seven such GB men volunteered. These key participants resided over a wide geographical area, from the coastal US to the southern part of British Columbia. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with each person, three of whom identified a caregiver as being a particularly important part of his "coming-out" process. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with these supporting participants, as well as a few other relevant professionals. Key participants' life stories were framed within several theories: namely; Goffman's (1963) stigma, Lave and Wengers' (1991) legitimate peripheral participation, disability theory, queer theory and Smith's (1987) institutional ethnography. Similarly, the supporting professionals' responses were analyzed. The results present rich kaleidoscopic narrative descriptions, and provide many implications for special education practice and queer activism.

In this thesis, I will explore the different notions of performance as a political tool and gender/sexuality as a performative act that forms identity, within lesbian and gay academic and activist rhetoric. I posit that the extensive, and often contradictory, use of "performance" within lesbian and gay discourse serves as a useful entry point to explore existing theoretical precepts of identity formation, and the processes of representation and signification. Through this exploration, effective theoretical and practical techniques can be developed to subvert the dominant discourses of normative (hetero)sexuality that continue to create a "reality" which is physically and psychically harmful to those who do not adhere to these discourses. / Lesbian and gay activists have used various performance techniques as political tools to de-stabilize notions of identity and the fixity of the representational process. Some lesbian and gay academics have developed a "queer" theoretical perspective that concurrently binds and privileges fluid concepts of representation, identity formation, and gender/sexuality performativity. In this thesis, I argue that the convergence of performance and performativity within the work of Annie Sprinkle yields an especially clear potential for the disruption of a signification process that consistently demonizes the sexual "Other."