Rethinking the promises of the gay market: Class, space, and consumerism

The early research on homosexuality tended to define and study this subject as something exotic. From this point on, the approach did not incorporate voices of gays into the research; it was heterocentric. Stereotypes, social representation, discrimination, and homophobia were normal research topics. One of the ways in which gays vindicate their own identity and agency is by participating in the marketplace through conspicuous consumption (fashion, name brands, exclusive venues, and ostentation). Most current research in Mexico studies gayness acritically. What is the price gays have to pay for this identity? It seems that researchers intentionally invisibilize “other ways of feeling.” These reflections are a product of a review of the literature on this topic and fieldwork in some gay venues (Zona Rosa). We have observed that there is a masculinist and classist perspective in the studies we analyzed. There is a kind of blind side where the researchers (mostly men) do not question their own biased conceptions about what it means to be gay. We have also learned that gay studies perpetuate an androcentric view because they do not even mention lesbians or very effeminate gays in their reports. In future research, we need to approach, for instance, the fact that we have observed that affluent and masculine homosexuals are gay, and those who are not are otherwise labeled. These other ways of living homosexuality should be studied, as well as the experience of lesbians and their appropriation of these spaces. Another task that needs to be completed is the study of the daily life of all homosexuals, lesbians, and people with non-heterosexual practices in other spaces.