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Eleven self-identified gay and lesbian participants were interviewed about how they felt when they interacted with someone who does not conform to heteronormative gender roles and whether this made them question their own gender identity. Contact and familiarity with the trans community arose as a prevalent theme among participants as they reflected on how frequently they interacted with or had been exposed to gender nonconforming individuals. The difficulties gay and lesbian individuals felt in openly communicating and interacting with gender nonconforming people were also discussed, specifically, how interacting with a non-gender-conforming individual makes individuals question their own gender identity. Respondents also discussed the challenges of being one's own self when that identity deviates from societal norms, with a focus on male dominance and power plays. Findings were interpreted in terms of contact theory, transphobia, and intersectionality.
Key words: gay, gender identity, intersectionality, lesbian, sexual identity, transgender, transphobia
For heteronormative individuals, conformity to prescribed gender roles, gender identity, and sexual orientation is linked to one's assigned biological sex (Green, 2004). Members are socialized to believe in a heteronormative gender system in which gender roles and sexual orientation are socially prescribed and often enforced by societal prejudice and discrimination. For example, Blashill and Powlishta (2009a, 2009b) found that heterosexual college students associated gender role deviations with homosexuality, with male participants rating male targets of violence more negatively on the basis of both the targets' homosexual identity and their feminine characteristics. Blashill and Powlishta also found that targets with unspecified sexual orientation were rated as gay if they displayed feminine characteristics.
Beyond the intersection of sexual and gender identity being enforced on nonheteronormative individuals, the sexual identity of gay and lesbian individuals is often internally associated with gender role inversions or exaggerations (SavinWilliams, 2005; Savin-Williams & Diamond (2000). From the earliest studies of the relationship between homosexuality and gender role inversion, researchers have noted gay subcultures that express extremes of "correct" gender roles (Sandfort, 2005). Consistent with queer theory, such inverted or consistent but exaggerated expressions of gender roles in association with a homosexual identity may be "performances" that legitimize non-heteronormative sexual identity and create a sense of group identity by queering heteronormative gender identity's assumption of heterosexuality.
A few small-sample qualitative studies have examined the intersectionality...