HEALTH & SEXUAL STATUS IN AN URBAN GAY ENCLAVE:
An Application of the Stress Process Model
The stress process model has been used to explain mental health outcomes in a
wide range of social contexts and circumstances, including stressors accruing within the
family (Aneshensel et al. 1995; Brody et al., 1989), the workplace (Hamilton et al., 1990;
Schieman et al., 2006), as a consequence of discrimination (Broman 2000; Jackson et al.,
1997), low socioeconomic status (Lantz et al., 2005; Turner and Lloyd 1999), and
through life events, including traumatic events in childhood (Kessler et al., 1997;
Wheaton et al., 1997), marriage and divorce (Pearlin and Johnson 1977; Wertlieb 1996)
and the loss of loved ones (Pearlin and LeBlanc 2002; Shrout et al., 1989). Yet, despite
the breadth of this literature, left unexamined is an increasingly complex dimension of
modern social life: sexuality. In fact, changing courtship patterns, delayed marriage,
substantial rates of divorce and liberal sexual norms create the conditions under which,
today, more people seek some form of sexual social life outside the parameters of
marriage than at any other time over the past century (Coontz 2005; Mahay and Laumann
2004). Here, sexuality and social life merge in lifestyles organized, in part, by distinct
sexual subcultures, networks and associated “marketplaces” (Laumann et al., 2004;
Youm and Paik 2004), including bars, nightclubs, Internet dating sites and erotic chat
rooms. While sexual sociality will have varying significance for individuals between
groups and across the life course, the relationship of contemporary sexual life to mental
health has gone largely unexamined.
In this paper I focus on sexual life in an urban gay enclave wherein sexual
sociality is a defining feature of the subculture (Author 2006; Bech 1997; Murray 1996).
Drawing on three years of field work within this enclave (“the Village” herein), and in-
depth interviews with seventy of its gay male participants, I show that race/ethnicity,
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Convention