In Plain Sight Summary

Summary of the Article The article, In Plain Sight: Gay and Lesbian Communication & Culture (2010) discussed the concept of viewpoints within the gay and lesbian community. Viewpoints focused on ways to define, measure and track the development of an entity. The entity discussed in this article was the gay and lesbian identity. This concept was told through concepts such as the outsider, the coming out process, media’s depiction of gay and lesbian and how gay and lesbians achieve intimacy and find community. Eadie (2010) stated that gay and lesbians knew they were outsider from early ages because “children from an early age are made aware of differences between them and others” (pg. 190). The four stereotypes associated with gay men are effeminate, mentally ill, sexual predators and
192). Each era of media projected a specific stereotype of the gay men. During the 1946-1969, gay men were depicted as sexually deviant and sick. In the 1969-1980, the Gay Liberation Movement occurred where gays and lesbians were meet with resentment from religious and quasi-religious groups. Each era broke down different concepts of what it meant to be gay. The coming out process was a six step process theorized by D’Augelli (1994) that included “recognizing one’s attractions and feelings that are not heterosexual, summarizing self-concept, emotions and desire into a personal identity as gay/lesbian/bisexual, developing a non-heterosexual identity, disclosing one’s identity to parents and redefining familial relationships afterward and last, becoming a member of the gay/lesbian/bisexual community” (pg. 193). With intimacy, gay and lesbian couples need to establish “who does not what” in the relationship, a little bit more different than heterosexual couples” (pg. 199). For some gays, intimacy is established or sought after sexual attraction. Lesbians, on the other hand tended to establish an