Abstract EN:

The socio-historical construction of effeminate and camp male homosexuality has given birth to the figure of the "Queen". In the post second World War period, the "Queen" was designated as a deviant figure. In this thesis, the homophile movement, the "gay revolution" and the social normalization of (male) homosexuality are analyzed as factors contributing to the progressive transformation of the prescriptive model of the "Queen". The contemporary analogy between (male) homosexuality and AIDS is seen as a revival of the historical confusion between the "Queen" figure and different forms of psychic and /or physical abnormality. Empirical field work is used to define the contemporary figure of the "Queen", where the multiple identity components of the historical construction of this figure of (male) homosexuality can be identified along a continuum that stretches from the "artistic" to the "militant" poles. The "Queen" is analyzed as a figure of resistance to the hetero-normal assimilation of gays, in opposition to convergence on the levels of masculine gender norms, stable conjugal relationships and parenthood. Finally, the figure of the "Queen" is used to construct a sociological analysis of bare-back practices, taken as a deviant and transgressive response to the dominant norm of safer sex.