ABSTRACT

This chapter reports a study of adult homosexuals and focuses on two aspects of change: role learning and the experience of ‘liminality’. The transit of these young men and women from the ‘straight’ world to homosexual society was a status passage without institutionalized guidelines and rituals or socially defined and unambiguous roles. Role-taking is the central process in interactionist interpretations of adult socialization, resocialization and change. It is often predictable and accounts for conformity, continuity, and personal and social stability. The chapter discusses ole-taking is the central process in interactionist interpretations of adult socialization, resocialization and change. It is often predictable and accounts for conformity, continuity, and personal and social stability. ‘New selves’ needed the support of new plausibility structures in the homosexual world. Timetables and temporality were problems for homosexuals as they were for other groups that inhabited marginal worlds. For male homosexuals identity was based on a foreshortened timetable of sexual attractiveness.