Business, Not Politics: The Making of the Gay Market

by Katherine Sender

Overview

In a hard-hitting book that refutes conventional wisdom, Katherine Sender explores the connection between the business of marketing to gay consumers and the politics of gay rights and identity. She disputes some marketers'claims that marketing appeals to gay and lesbian consumers are a matter of "business, not politics" and that the business of gay marketing can be considered independently of the politics of gay rights, identity, and visibility. She contends that the gay community is not a preexisting entity that marketers simply tap into; rather it is a construction, an imagined community formed not only through political activism but also through a commercially supported media. She argues that marketing has not only been formative in the constitution of a GLBT community and identity but also has had significant impact on the visibility of gays and lesbians.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231127349
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	01/05/2005
Series:	Between Men-Between Women: Lesbian and Gay Studies
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Katherine Sender is an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication. She lives in Philadelphia.

What People are Saying About This

Joshua Gamson

In the last two decades, gayness-whose stigma used to chill advertisers and marketers-has become a hot commodity. Grounded in rigorous research, a taste for nuance and contradiction, the words of those she interviewed and her own fierce intelligence, Katherine Sender tells the story of how the gay market emerged, how it works, and with what cultural consequences. Business, Not Politics is the definitive book on the gay market.

— Joshua Gamson, University of San Francisco, author of Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity

Suzanna Danuta Walters

With verve, rigor, and a savvy sense of nuance, Katherine Sender critically evaluates the explosion of gay imagery in mass marketing. While acknowledging the obvious problems of commodification and homogeneity inherent in such niche-marketing, she refuses the easy answers and instead offers up an analysis of depth and complexity that insists on a recognition of gay lives and loves outside the glossy space of Abercrombie pretty-boys and bootylicious lipstick lesbians.

— Suzanna Danuta Walters, author of All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America and Chair of the Department of Gender Studies, Indiana University

Editorial Reviews

The author's extensive knowledge of the subject provides for an excellent, highly engaging volume...Highly recommended.

Choice

Business, Not Politics: The Making of the Gay Market breaks new ground...with humor, elegance and sharp insight.

International Journal of Communicaton - Mary L. Gray

Business, Not Politics: The Making of the Gay Market breaks new ground...with humor, elegance and sharp insight.

— Mary L. Gray

International Journal of Communicaton