LGBT, We are Living Here Now: Sexual Minorities and Space in Contemporary South Korea

Abstract

This research begins with a critique of the tolerant attitude towards sexual minorities created by the politics of recognition. In the space of media, sexual minorities are represented as possessing distinctive tastes, such as in the stereotype sophisticated gays. Based on these ideas, media often represents sexual minorities as creators of new products, or as people whose individual preferences we must be considerate of. This kind of consideration and tolerance regards sexual minorities as consumers who have chosen a particular lifestyle and who belong to private space. Such images may further isolate sexual minorities. Public space, despite being fixed in heterosexual norms, has been constructed as a value-neutral space. The predominance of heterosexuality along with the exclusion of non-heterosexuality and the power of selection are quietly excused. Further, when the tastes of some gay men come to represent sexual minorities as a whole, the existence of women sexual minorities grows even fainter. That is, the lives of the majority of sexual minorities—lived in everyday spaces and not coinciding with the images produced in media—are excluded from the boundaries of recognition.