Masculinity strategies of young queer men as queer capital

A brand new article by Jón Ingvar Kjaran and Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson

Abstract:

This article explores how 11 gay and bisexual young men in Iceland, whom we interviewed, have adopted different strategies to deal with the reality of Icelandic masculinity manifestations in the early 2010s. Bourdieuean views of explaining their ideas as social strategies were utilized to interpret how they had adopted behaviors, looks, and ideas in tact with, or contrary to, the hegemonic, heteromasculine views of how men are supposed to act, look, and think in contemporary Icelandic society. In Bourdieu’s view, social strategies can create cultural or social capital. In this case, we discuss how the behaviors, looks, and ideas of these young men seem to constitute a certain type of such capital, that is, queer capital, which helped them to utilize being gay or bisexual to gain social status within the otherwise heterosexually hegemonic field of masculinity.

NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies, 2016
, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 52–65, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/18902138.2016.1143274