Summary: | <p> This thesis used group and individual interviews to collect and study discourse produced by both self-defined heterosexual and self-defined homosexual males, living in a socially progressive region of the United States, in order to evaluate how the male subjects appease male gender expectations, as is still socially expected today, while also abstaining from expressing homophobia, as is also expected today in such environments. While the analysis suggests that self-defined heterosexual subjects in this research indeed produced hegemonic, discriminatory utterances toward the homosexual and female community, a positive aspect of this discrimination is the fact that the same males who produce utterances in line with homophobia often do so in a way that is indirect and even seemingly unintentional due to a proposed lack of understanding. Implications and suggestions derived from this research thus include a need for more education and awareness in the areas of gender, sexual orientation, and particularly the subtleties of discursive forms of discrimination and dominance that maintain hegemony and victimization even in more progressive locations in space and time.</p>
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