Internal Representations of the Gay Community in France and in the US: The Impact of Legal Recognition

The idea that gays and lesbians form a community based on common political goals and shared experiences of exclusion has been a feature of gay activist accounts since the 1960s. By uncritically speaking in terms of a “gay community,” social movement organizers, the media, and scholars take for granted that gays and lesbians have a sense of belonging in an “imagined community” whose contours are well defined. But do individual gays and lesbians see themselves as members of a group and what does “gay community” mean to them? To answer this question, I conducted in-depth interviews with 25 French and 28 American gays and lesbians to see whether and how they speak of “gay community.” I expected that Americans would express a sense of belonging but that anti-communautarisme and a commitment to universalism in France would pose a barrier to the discourse of community for French respondents. I find that American respondents often define “gay community” in terms of imagined links to others while French gays and lesbians – who were less likely say they belong to the “gay community” – define it in terms of neighborhoods and participation in specific activities. I discuss how these divergences in meaning can be understood through differences in legal recognition for gays and lesbians in each country and the discourse deployed by social movement organizations fighting for equality.