ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a series of vignettes that define critical moments in the early development of British Asian gay cultural identities, forms and practices on Birmingham's, predominantly white, commercial gay scene. It unravels a precarious, contradictory and impeding tension between radical possibility and constraint within an emergent British Asian gay culture. The chapter explains the contradictory tension as indicative of, more generally, people's immediate reactions to unequal and oppressive conditions of existence. It also focuses on good sense that is displayed in effective action and which engenders and is engendered by British Asian gay cultural identities, forms and practices to a focus on common sense that is affirmed in words and which stems from an entanglement of signification, racialisation and the threat of racism, and effectively divides and impedes counter-hegemonic potential. It emphasizes the radical possibilities that flow from ethnic and sexual minority cultural identities, forms and practices, which are suggestive of a more promising counter-hegemonic future.
