IDEOLOGY OF GAY RACIALIST SKINHEADS AND STIGMA MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES*

Many gay individuals claim that they are bom gay and cannot change. While WP adherents reject this essentialist explanation for homosexuality, they do adopt essentialist views on gender, race suicide, and the WPM. WP adherents believe there are fixed and fundamental differences between men and women, biological differences between the races, and that the WPM is an instinctual response to preserve the genetic heritage of whites (Dobratz and Shanks-Meile 1997, 2004) rather than a social movement.8 Others extend this biological analogy. Ashley Brown, a young skinhead interviewed on a video documentary compares skinheads to disease fighting organisms.

I always looked at us as kind of being like the white blood cells of the white race. I mean when the body has a sickness the white blood cells come out and attack it. ... We're a natural, instinctual reaction of the white race. (The New Skinheads 1995)

Dobratz and Shanks-Meile (2004) note this selective use of biological explanations when they suggest that white separatists use essentialism in "uneven ways". While the vast majority of individuals, gay and heterosexual, reject WPM ideologies, and beliefs around homosexuality would make it "challenging" to be a gay racialist, it is clear that some individuals do not find these categories inherently contradictory and find ways to identify as both.

In the case of the oppositional identity, gay Christian,9 these individuals join churches anyway, both as closeted and openly gay members, and use a variety of strategies to both deny the stigma attached to being gay and to challenge religious ideologies that classify sexual minorities as less worthy than their heterosexual counterparts (Yip 1997). Members of stigmatized groups develop alternative ideologies to challenge institutional hegemony. We are interested in the alternative ideologies of gay racialists as they challenge more traditional WPM groups but there are several barriers that make investigation of these groups difficult.

METHODOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES

Some academic researchers have managed to gain access to both WPM leaders and followers (Balch 2006; Blee 2002; Dobratz and Shanks-Meile 1997; Futrell and Simi 2004) but it is challenging due to high levels of mistrust (Berlet and Vysotsky 2006; Simi and Futrell 2006). In the case of gay racialists, researchers have managed to collect a limited amount of interview data while conducting a more general study. For example, Blee (2002) interviewed lesbian skinheads as part of her analysis on female participation in organized racism. Healy's (1996) interviews with a few gay racialist skins were part of a larger study on gay skinheads. The stigma of homosexuality means that gay racialists need to be in the closet in order to participate in organized WP activities. Therefore, it is not an efficient research strategy to attend WP events or to depend on other movement members to locate potential gay respondents. Likewise, attending gay pride events or organizations is also not an effective strategy for locating gay racialists. Healy (1996) noted that many gay skinheads rejected the notion of a gay community. Even if these individuals are involved, they are probably in the closet about any WPM sympathies or involvement. Futrell and Simi contend that WPM members "face difficult choices about their willingness to communicate their beliefs publicly and engage in activism" (2004:19) and that the majority of those interviewed believe that they have lost a job because of WPM involvement. These risks are even more apparent for gay racialists who face double stigmatization. While we imagine that gay racialists have friendships networks and probably engage in private face-to-face interaction, or what Futrell and Simi (2004) term prefigurative cultural spaces, there is no physical location for larger gatherings equivalent to Aryan Nations or other organized WPM events. This is possibly due to the small number of individuals who identify as gay racialists but also the very real danger existing for those who openly identify as such.10