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APPROVAL SHEET Title of Thesis: “You Can Tolerate a Bee But You Can’t Tolerate a Swarm of Bees”: How Gay Latinos Experience Stigma, Chronic Othering, and Strangeness in Baltimore Name of Candidate: Trevor Warren Rose Master of Arts, 2018 Thesis and Abstract Approved: (*Signature of Supervising Professor) Sarah Chard Associate Professor Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Health Administration and Policy Date Approved: ________________ NOTE: *The Approval Sheet with the original signature must accompany the thesis or dissertation. No terminal punctuation is to be used. ABSTRACT Title of Document: “You Can Tolerate a Bee But You Can’t Tolerate a Swarm of Bees”: How Gay Latinos Experience Stigma, Chronic Othering, and Strangeness in Baltimore Trevor Warren Rose, Master of Arts, 2018 Directed By: Associate Professor, Sarah Chard, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Health Administration and Policy. Gay Latino men are at risk of being stigmatized for dual marginalized identities. The present study is based on interviews with nine gay Latino men in the Baltimore region about their experiences with sexual, cultural, and ethnic-based stigma, and how these multiple forms of stigma intersect in their lived experiences. Participants indicated they are frequently discriminated against in gay spaces because of their ethnicity. Participants perceived Latino spaces to be homophobic and unwelcoming. Participants encountered racism and xenophobia in dominant culture spaces. A central theme is Latino, gay, and dominant culture space discrimination created a foreigner identity in participants in accordance with the stranger (Simmel 1908/2010). An intersectional framework is necessary to modernize the concept of the stranger and how it may be extended to dually marginalized individuals. Intersectionality can aid stigma researchers in creating a more nuanced stigma model. “You Can Tolerate a Bee But You Can’t Tolerate a Swarm of Bees”: How Gay Latinos Experience Stigma, Chronic Othering, and Strangeness in Baltimore By Trevor Warren Rose Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Applied Sociology 2018 © Copyright by Trevor Warren Rose 2018 Acknowledgements Thank you to Dr. Sarah Chard for agreeing to be my thesis chair without reservation and for giving me the confidence to pursue a career in anthropology. Thank you to Dr. Dena Smith for taking the time to serve on my committee while working on your own numerous projects. Thank you to Dr. Loren Henderson for agreeing to serve at the last minute and for showing me how to be an effective and compassionate educator. Also thank you to Dr. Kate Drabinski for initially being on my committee and providing feedback throughout the proposal stage of this project and during my independent study. Without several individuals at Towson I would not have made it to this point in my life. Thanks to Dr. Elizabeth Clifford for making me passionate about immigration and immigrant voices. Thanks to Dr. Douglas Pryor for sparking an interest in deviancy and stigma research. A very special thank you to Dr. Paul Munroe. Your mentorship at Towson and encouragement of my talents changed my life. Thanks for seeing something in me when few people would have. Thanks to individuals who have helped at specific points in my life. To Keir, Nathaniel, and Perkins, thanks for getting me through rough patches and being there even when I was not always a great person to be around. To Carlos, thanks for pushing me to do better and expect more from myself, listening to me vent, knocking some sense into me when necessary, and encouraging me to reach for greater dreams than I originally had upon entering grad school. Thanks to Mom for simply everything. Most of all, thanks to the nine individuals who participated in this study. May you all, each in your own way, make America great again. ii Table of Contents Table of Contents Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………..i List of Tables……………………………………………………………………..v List of Abbreviations..............................................................................................vi Chapter 1: Introduction and Background Information……………………………1 Background Review……………………………………………………….5 Latino Cultural Beliefs…………………………………………………….6 Machismo………………………………………………………………….6 Responses by Gay Latino Men to Machismo……………………………...9 Religion…………………………………………………………………….11 Familismo…………………………………………………………………..13 Gay Latinos Within the Larger Dominant U.S. Gay Culture………………17 Discrimination against Latinos in the United States………………………..21 Simmel, The Stranger (1908/2010) and Gay Latinos……………………….26 Theoretical Gaps…………………………………………………………….34 Chapter 2: Methodology……………………………………………………………..37 Recruitment of Participants………………………………………………….38 Inclusion Criteria……………………………………………………………..38 Human Subject Research Protections…………………………………………38 Interview Strategy…….....................................................................................39 iii Participant Demographics…………………………………………………….40 Data Management and Analysis……………………………………………….41 Chapter 3: Discrimination of Gay Latinos in Ethnic-Majority Spaces………………...42 “Am I Too Latino at This Job Interview”: Stigmatization of Latino Identities in Dominant Culture Spaces……………………………………………………42 “But I Know When I Walk You See a Gay Latino”: Physical Confrontations Between Gay Latinos and Dominant Culture Members………………………..46 Discrimination for Being Gay in Dominant Culture Spaces……………………50 Chapter 4: Discrimination of Gay Latinos in Latino Spaces…………………………...52 “It’s a Burden On Your Soul”: Religious Discrimination Within The Latino Household……………………………………………………………………….52 “So That The Gay Part Doesn’t Interact With The Family Part”: Managing Dual Identities Within the Family Unit…………………………………………59 Latin American Culture and Its Relationship with Homophobia……………….62 Latino Neighborhoods and Ethnic Enclaves…………………………………….66 Chapter 5: Discrimination of Gay Latinos in Gay Spaces……………………………...69 “Lets Have Taco Night”: Discrimination Prior to Entering the Club…………..69 “I Don’t Wanna be Your Fucking Rosetta Stone”: Experiences of Discrimination Within Gay Clubs……………………………………………….74 “I Once Had a Boyfriend That Was From Mexico”: Fetishization of Gay Latinos’ Brown Bodies Within Gay Spaces…………………………………….78 “You’re Like Super Attractive, Not Because You’re You, But Because You’re Latino”: Ethnoracialization and Fetishization on Gay Dating Apps……82 iv Chapter 6: Effects of and Responses to Stigma…………………………………………85 Foreigner Status………………………………………………………………….85 Resistance to Stigma……………………………………………………………..91 Humor……………………………………………………………………………92 Education………………………………………………………………………...94 Participants’ Political Economic Status………………………………………….95 Stigma’s Relationship with Psychological Distress…………………………….100 Chapter 7: Conclusion, Limitations, and Directions for Future Research……………...105 Gay Latinos as the Stranger (Simmel 1908/2010)……………………………..105 Intersectionality, Identity, and Stigma…………………………………………122 Applied Implications for Policy and Advocacy………………………………..123 Limitations……………………………………………………………………..125 Future Research………………………………………………………………..127 Appendices……………………………………………………………………………..131 Appendix I. Table I: Sample Demographics…………………………………..131 Appendix II. Code List………………………………………………………...132 References………………………………………………………………………………135 v List of Tables Table 1: Sample Demographics (located under Appendix I). vi List of abbreviations TWR: Trevor Warren Rose SES: Socio-economic status IRIS: Individuality, Respect, Integrity and Sexuality; the name of the LGBT Latino support and advocacy group operating in Baltimore, which also is taken from the Spanish word for rainbow, arcoiris (Baltimore City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant and Multicultural Affairs 2016). vii Chapter 1: Introduction and Background Information Gay Latinos 1 manage multiple minority identities as both sexual-minorities and ethnic-minorities (Manohar and Ryan 2007: 2-3). Gay Latinos are socialized into Latino culture and sometimes encounter discrimination because of their sexual orientation (see Garcia, Gray-Stanley, and Ramirez-Valles 2008; Ocampo 2012; Pena-Talamantes 2013). Gay Latinos also experience the racism and discrimination that is directed towards U.S. Latinos in general (Branton et al. 2011; Johnson and Ingram 2013), along with facing additional discrimination and objectification within the gay community (see Diaz et al. 2001; Han 2007; Ocampo 2012; Teunis 2007). Although there is a substantial body of research on the stigma experiences of gay men, as well as discrimination of Latinos in the United States, few studies have explored the ways multiple cultural values can impact felt stigma among gay Latino men (Akerlund and Cheung 2000: 279-280; Manohar and Ryan 2007: 2-3). Few studies have also addressed how intersectionality, or the process by which “multiple grounds of identity” such as ethnicity and sexuality converge and lead to discrimination in individual’s lives (Crenshaw 1991: 1245), can contribute to the 1 While recent literature has found Latinos to eschew a Latino Identity with each passing generation (Lopez, Gonzalez-Barrera and Rohal 2017: 2) and Latinos who possess lighter skin tones identify as white (Waterston 2006: 141-144), Latinos who are exposed to ethnic discrimination are less likely to adopt a white identity (Golash-Boza 2006: 45-51). Darker-skinned Latinos who possess more indigenous physical features are