Male homosexual identities under transformation: Revisiting a Mexican community

Abstract

This article is a restudy of a community of homosexual men with a feminine appearance, entering in relationships with ordinary looking men, in a poor barrio in Mexico where the author conducted fieldwork between 1988 to 1996 (Prieur 1998 a,b) and again in 2024. The informants claimed there were no problems related to social acceptance anymore. They expressed more positive attitudes towards their own male bodies, seeing it less as a source of shame and more as a source of pleasure. The terms used for identifying themselves had also somewhat changed. The first research question is descriptive and seeks to show how identifications, partner relations and sexual practices have changed among self-identified homosexual men in a poor urban area of Mexico City over the last 30 years. The second and more analytical research question asks how these changes relate to changes in gender structures and cultural conditions, and also how the changes have come about.