ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the relationship between media and identity negotiation of gay refugees who fled Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia, and who now reside in the United States. The individual’s use of media was influenced by English and computer literacy. In a pre-asylum context, media were used for asylum seeking, to find information on gay culture, and to build relationships with other queers living in secret. Pejorative categorizations of gay men manifested in their respective countries were juxtaposed with relatively more positive categorizations found in Western media that were in agreement with how the gay men identify, consequently, motivating the arbitration of a gay identity.
