Entre maricones machos, y gays: Globalization and the construction of sexual identities among queer Mexicanos

"Entre Maricones, Machos, y Gays: Globalization and the Construction of Sexual Identities among Queer Mexicanos" focuses on the everyday lives of self-identified gay men in Mexico City and Cuernavaca and self-identified gay Mexican immigrant men in Los Angeles in an attempt to more fully understand the global dimensions of queer sexual identity formation. This is a multi-sited ethnography which employs semi-structured formal interviews, informal interviews and participant observation. In addition to hundreds of hours of participant observation, a total of forty-one formal interviews with self identified gay Mexican men were conducted in Mexico City, Cuernavaca and Los Angeles. The central argument of this dissertation is that sexual identity formation processes produce hybrid sexual identities and cultures among gay Mexican men that reveal a negotiation of two major models of male homosexuality, the so called "traditional" gender stratified activo/pasivo model and the so called "modern" object choice gay model. The negotiation of these two models is an ongoing process that begins in childhood and continues throughout adulthood and is shaped significantly by social class and regional variations. While the gendered model loomed large during youth and adolescence, during adulthood, the gay model became increasingly salient for the sexual identities of the men in this study. Globalization shapes the process of sexual hybridization through national and international queer migration, queer tourism and the Internet. The transnational social networks that are initiated, sustained and expanded through migration, tourism and the Internet provide both the material conditions and the social spaces for the construction of hybrid gay identities. By bringing together people from divergent backgrounds, queer migration, queer tourism and the Internet facilitate the blending of identities, ideas, desires and behaviors that characterize hybridity