Identity Negotiation across Contexts for LGBTQ+ People

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people negotiate their identities while navigating within different cultural contexts. Fourteen LGBTQ+ emerging adults (20-25 years) located within the United States participated in semi-structured individual interviews and focus groups aimed at exploring sexual identity negotiation within various contexts. Findings yielded three major themes regarding negotiating sexual identity within context: 1) Awareness of Context, 2) Negotiation behaviors (i.e., “Having a Foot in Both”; “Move it to the Back-burner”; Negotiating Identities within a Saliency Hierarchy; Cis-Heteronormative Scripts and Straight-Passing; Disclosure Methods), and 3) Acculturative Stress During Identity Negotiation. LGBTQ+ emerging adults found that unaffirming and oppressive contexts and a lack of resources to explore identity resulted in identity conflict. Our study yielded the concept of contextual navigation to help explain the on-going adaptive process of negotiating one’s sexual identity across various U.S. sociocultural contexts. Visit the following link to see the full articles.