Sticking It to the Man by Standing by Your Man: Social Support as an Act of Resistance

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize literatures on stress, social support, symbolic interaction, and de Certeau as they pertain to the recovery of a homosexually‐identified individual from a homophobic interaction. A model of the initial stressful interaction as well as the interaction between a homosexually‐identified individual and his socially‐supportive network is posited with the consumption of culturally‐disseminated roles and the salience of role‐identities as the mechanisms by which it works. The model is then considered as a form of resistance in the light of broader gay liberation social movements. The study focuses on white, middle‐class, American, homosexually‐ identified males in order to control for variations that might occur from variables of race, class, nationality, and gender. Queer theoretical, essentialist, and postpositivist realist perspectives on identity are considered. The thesis concludes with possible future directions for an empirical study using the model outlined above. Key Terms: Homosexual, Role‐identity, Salience, Stress, Coping, Symbolic Interactionism, Social Support, De Certeau, Social Movement, Queer Theory, Essentialism, Postpositivist Realism.