Self-naming and self-classification of gay men and alternative sexualities in Brazil

Abstract

The aim of this study was to understand the practices of self-naming in social applications of interaction in order to outline a classification of male homosexual-ity, alternative sexualities, and desire in Brazil. This qualitative study, based on a documentary and biblio-graphic research in the form of cartography, worked with a corpus of 1,732 words extracted from 1,005 user profiles on Scruff (a cellphone social interaction application used by men who seek to relate affectively-sexually with other men). We used the data mining Voyant Tools software that allowed the visualization of correlations, co-occurrences, flows, and dispersion of textual themes, as well as the technique of content analysis in order to identify the main subjects in the corpus. We found out that, in their self-classification, some subjects use terms that provoke slight changes of meaning, distancing themselves from a gay identity, and reinforcing their masculinity while relying on ste-reotypes and prejudices.