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Sexuality and consumption are interlinked in powerful and significant ways, perhaps even more so in contemporary, even postmodern,” times, shaping various material and subjective possibilities and impossibilities, as sexuality is displayed and regulated via consumption. Consumption refers to a wide variety of spending patterns and behaviors and is typically equated with choice”; what we choose to buy, where and when, and how we choose to use purchasable commodities, ranging from mundane everyday goods and services to extravagant one-off specials, which seemingly reinforce the uniqueness of our own individual consumer choice.
Yet to consume also implies a potential restriction in terms of what is being offered and to whom. Other market activities, such as employment, leisure activities, and citizenship, are related to consumption insofar as these afford possibilities for participating in certain markets, create and foreground certain choices,” while restricting and regulating individuals within multiple social domains. Heterosexuality is privileged, even expected, within many consumer spheres, but lesbian, gay, and bisexual sexualities are also increasingly affecting, and indeed affected by, marketization, as the notion of a ready, waiting, and willing pink pound” implies (Chasin 2000; Hennessy 2000).
Chasin (2000) uncovers the linkage between the development of the lesbian and gay movement” in the USA and the growth of lesbian and gay niche markets” that promise inclusion into the marketplace and the nation itself – but at a price. Within her account, social recognition is dependent on ability to consume as identity becomes branded, commodified, and consumed. Lesbians and gays are integrated, even assimilated, as consumers rather than as citizens. Money then represents the prerequisite for participation as well as the boundary. Chasin’s catchy (and cutting) title Selling Out conveys notions of failure and possible fraudulence, hinting at the ways in which sexual identities have been depoliticized, as they become only another consumer possibility.
Bibliography:
- Chasin, A. (2000) Selling Out: The Gay and Lesbian Movement Goes to Market. Palgrave, Basingstoke.
- Hennessy, R. (2000) Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism. Taylor & Francis, London.
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