Pride Parades and Gay Marriage Law as Events of Political Sociability from Argentinean Gay Men?s Biographies

MARENTES, MAXIMILIANO

Barcelona

Congreso; 15th European Sociological Association Conference; 2021

European Sociological Association

The aim of this communication is to reflect on the complexity of political sociability of contemporary Argentinean gay men that emerges from two politicizing events: pride parades and gay marriage law. Based on a biographical approach with 30 Argentinean gay men, the purpose of this work is to analyze how these events are introduced in their personal trajectories. In both activists and nonactivists? narratives, pride parades and 2010 gay marriage law take starring roles that update their original strains. Referring to parades, the tension between the celebratory and the vindicative character allows us to think as a continuum of political sociability that produces different kinds of connections. Because of that, parades could be experienced as a start of a political career or a place where to meet guys and partenaires. The very nature of gay marriage law, passed in 2010, showed how private and public realm were intertwined. In these guys? biographies, this event became as a motive to start or reinforce political activism, a proof of compulsory heterosexuality in workplace, schools and families, and a keystone in love stories. The main goal of the paper is to highlight how studying this kind of political events of sexual diversity from a biographical approach allows us to recognize different modulations and scales of them. In doing so, we can observe how the proper tensions of these events are updated in the biographies of contemporary gay men.