%0 Journal Article
%T ¡°That $hit Ain¡¯t Gangsta¡±: Symbolic Boundary Making in an Online Urban Gossip Community
%A Antonia Randolph
%A Holly Swan
%A Kristin Denise Rowe
%J Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
%@ 1552-5414
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/0891241617716744
%X This paper examines how commenters (N= 290 posts) to an urban gossip blog interpret the meaning of ambiguously sexual behavior: a kiss shared by two male gangsta rappers. It shows that fans use the same interpretive repertoire to come to very different conclusions about the meaning of the rappers¡¯ sexual orientation in the wake of the kiss. Other research finds that hegemonic masculinity has expanded to include touch between men as a legitimate expression of heterosexual intimacy, yet that literature ignores or pathologizes marginalized men (Bridges and Pascoe 2014; McCormack and Anderson 2014). Our study makes up for this gap by exploring the frames and concerns native to hip-hop culture that explain how fans label the rappers¡¯ sexuality as a result of the kiss. We find that fans are particularly concerned with policing the boundary around thug masculinity, the most valorized form of masculinity within hip-hop culture
%K masculinity
%K hip-hop
%K sexuality
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0891241617716744