Notes

• Whether born or made, homosexuals generally are not born into gay families, nor are they socialized to be gay by their peers or schools. How then do people become aware of homosexuality and, in some cases, integrate into gay communities? The making of homosexual identity is the result of a communicative process that entails searching, listening, looking, reading, and finding. This book proposes that this communicative process has a history. Meeker argues that over the course of the twentieth century, a series of important innovations occurred in the networks that linked individuals to a larger social knowledge of homosexuality. In the process, he reveals how homosexuals played a crucial role in transforming the very structure of communications and urban communities since the postwar era.–From publisher description