Negation and validation of self via the media: Israeli gay men s (dis)engagement patterns with their representations

Forty-five Israeli gay men unfolded their life stories in order to delve into their media reception patterns. Overall, they prefer to disengage themselves from a discourse that symbolically annihilates them or negatively constructs their representations. Absence from the mediated reality as well as social invisibility are perceived to reduce ontologically the gay individual. On the other hand, these narrators exhibited intentional consumption of texts that refer to gay issues and figures. The gay individual who regularly senses that his self is being negated attributes great value to images that can validate his existence, and hence allocates resources in their consumption. Both patterns of reception complement each other and shed light on the complex dialectics between marginally situated, muted co-culture members and the public sphere.