Homosexuality in Male Prisons: Demonstrating the Need for a Social Constructionist Approach

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Abstract
This paper analyses homosexuality in male prisons and argues that the essentialist approach has dominated research in this area. Essentialists define homosexuality as a static trait and dichotomize sexuality into two categories, homosexuals and heterosexuals. A review of the literature on male homosexuality suggests that an essentialist approach resulted in a paradoxical situation in which researchers were forced to account for "normal" heterosexuals who engaged in situational homosexual behavior while in prison; because the very existence of "situational homosexuality" was inconsistent with essentialist definitions of homosexuality, researchers instead shifted the focus to sexual deprivation and then proceeded to include rape in typologies that purported to address homosexuality. Thus, distinctions between consensual homosexual behavior and rape were blurred. As a result of this conceptual ambiguity and because of paradigmatic changes in the study of homosexuality, there is a tremendous void in the literature on homosexuality in prison. This paper argues that a social constructionist approach would add to our understanding of homosexuality in male prisons.

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