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With reference to the quotation analysed in section 4, the following is extracted from a conference paper presented at the 'Persons and Sexuality' conference held in Salzburg, November 2008, titled, 'Sexualising sexuality and spiritualising sexuality in postcolonial narratives of becoming'. The theoretical framework is informed by Ahmed (2006) and the thesis of the paper (premised on data analysis) is that becoming straight is paradoxically a rite of passage to becoming gay:

'Sexual orientations,' as Ahmed adds, in developing Butler's notion of gender performativity (1990), 'are also performative: in directing one's desire toward some others, and not other others, bodies in turn acquire their shapes' (Ahmed 2006: 557). One is not born straight but becomes straight through the repetitive acts of sustaining the foreclosure of being attracted to homosexual or same-sex objects. The queer subject inhabiting the heteronormative space of a 'straight culture', sometimes masks his/ her desire for homosexual or same-sex objects to avoid being 'made socially present as a deviant' (Ahmed 2006: 554). The queer subject becomes straight by opting for the 'straight path' (through the discipline of desire) and celibacy (through the repression of desire). To illustrate, Dave, a 20-something Christian gay man says:

I kept telling myself, eventually I would become normal. And go back down the straight path...it was very normal for people to kind of like condemn [smiles] people who act...a bit sissy...girly. And so like I joined the ranks-lah, in a sense like maybe I was trying to hide...closeted gays... but inside of me, I would still like look at this classmate (in an all boys' school) in a certain way... And to kind of like put up that front, I tried to like, date girls, I mean date people...of the opposite sex...To my friends, I'm straight, I'm normal. We would talk about girls. And but um, in private I like hooking up with other guys.

Dave, as a queer subject, becomes straight in '[turning] toward the objects given to [him] by heterosexual culture' (Ahmed 2006: 554) by trying to "like [and] date...people...of the opposite sex". In becoming straight, he makes visible his compliance with the 'straight culture' by "joining the ranks" which includes "[condemning] people who act...a bit sissy...girly" in order to reap the rewards of being "normal". The rite of passage in becoming straight however, is disrupted by his inability to effect the concomitant '[turning] away from objects that take [him] off this line' (Ahmed 2006: 554), by concurrently and "in private...hooking up with other guys". The self-pressure to sustain these repetitive acts of normalcy within the regime of 'compulsory heterosexuality (Rich quoted in Dyer 1997: 267)', leads Dave towards self-deception where he "kept telling [himself that] eventually [he] would become normal [i.e. straight]". The discipline of desire (for homosexual objects) is an effect of his becoming straight. As sexual orientations are 'performative' (Ahmed 2006: 557), Dave in "[putting] up that front" becomes, for some time and with family and friends, a straight man.

The conference paper can be accessed at:

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ptb/persons/pas/pas5/s2.html (homepage of inter-Disciplinary.Net) and will be published (Bong 2009).

An invaluable resource is the online journal, Forum: Qualitative Social Research, available at: http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs.

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