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IDEOLOGY OF GAY RACIALIST SKINHEADS AND STIGMA MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES*
Journal of Political and Military Sociology, Summer 2006 by Waldner, Lisa K, Martin, Heather, Capeder, Lyndsay
Healy (1996) noted that gay racialist skinheads were not very good at explaining why they were involved with right wing groups, but many expressed the hope that fascist organizations would eventually drop their anti-gay stance. This same hopeful theme is apparent on the website. If straight racialists would only look past the less salient category of sexuality, gays and straight racialists can unite to save the white race. We believe that thematic content from static websites does provide some insight into the rhetorical strategies used at an organizational level, but the lack of interaction does not allow an assessment of whether or not the views of rank and file members are represented. Furthermore, there is no opportunity to gather additional information. For example, ARC contends that all whites have the right to "freely engage in sexual and reproductive activities exclusively with members of our own race" but there is no discussion on what role gay racialists might play in promoting white fertility. Additionally, although gender is considered a less salient category than whiteness, there is no discussion of what role lesbians might have in achieving the ARC vision. To examine issues of gender and to assess the role that gay racialist message boards might play in the articulation and negotiation of gay racial ideology, we examined postings from two online message boards.
GAY NEO-NAZI SKINHEADS MESSAGE BOARDS
In 2000 the SPLC reported gay racialist message boards with names like "Gay Nazi Sex," "Gay Nazi WP (White Power) Fetishists," and "Diapered skinheads" (SPLC 2000). Several quotes from the message boards are offered as evidence that individuals posting to these sites are committed racists. What we found however, is that similar to the names of these groups reported by SPLC, the majority of discussion is about sexual domination or networking rather than hotbeds of racial politicking. This is consistent with Berlet and Vysotsky (2006:this volume) who contend that the gay neo-Nazi subculture "may be more intimately linked to a sadomasochist or fetish sexual underground than an organized White supremacist movement."
Of the 32 messages posted between the founding of "Gay Neo Nazi Skinheads" in September of 2005 until its disappearance in December 2005, 25% (8) expressed interest in sexual domination. Networking was the next most popular category with 19% (6) posting messages looking for skinhead camaraderie. Questions about where to buy skinhead merchandise (4), the meaning of Aryan (2), attacks on the National Socialist Movement (4), role of lesbians (5) and member greeting messages (3) comprised the rest of the message archives.
Despite being classified as a "race relations" group, only two messages (What does Aryan mean?) were race related. Five messages were the result of a posting by the primary author of this paper asking whether or not lesbians could also be skinheads. Unlike heterosexual skinhead groups who have more rigid ideas about gender and the role of women in the movement (Anahita 2006), both the ARC website and the gay racialist message board suggest that gay skinheads are more open to the idea of lesbian skins. The ARC site reminds readers that there are lesbian skinheads. The list moderator, with the moniker "sub human faggot," offered to start a lesbian skinhead list in response to the primary author's query. The offer was politely declined. "Devilsexyboi" complimented the primary author for being a "spunky, proud to be white lass."
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