“Alcohol Allows You to Not Be Yourself”: Toward a Structured Understanding of Alcohol Use and Gender Difference among Gay,Lesbian,and Heterosexual Youth

Abstract

This paper explores how homosexual and heterosexual women and men exploit situational and behavioral aspects of alcohol consumption using alcohol-related excuses to justify divergent gender displays. Seventy-eight in-depth interviews with a diverse sample of youth are used to examine how alcohol-related excuses counteract the deviance associated with gender norm violation and ease the shame associated with inappropriate gender displays. It is in these contexts that the dynamic approach of structured action theory allows for an examination of the diverse ways in which men and women situationally construct gender. This investigation seeks to understand how situations and alcohol use contexts allow women and men to engage in and/or ignore inappropriate displays of gender. Also examined is how the “alcohol excuse” is experienced when either purposeful or accidental gender difference occurs. Conclusions illustrate the fluidity of gender, the contexts in which gender difference takes place, and the way in which excuses render gender categories unchanged.