Queer Networked Comments on Reddit: Collaborative and Antagonistic Production of Sexual Meaning on r/SuddenlyGay.

Résumé

After more than a half century of political struggle, queer people in 2025 have unprecedented visibility, strong communities, and are part of powerful political movements. At the same time, we face growing vulnerability and threat. This contrast reflects the distance between understandings of sexuality within and beyond queer communities, a distance that is equally present online as in the physical world. We turn to the social media platform Reddit, because its platform affordances, especially its 'subreddit' communities, up/down voting, and peer-moderation lead to not only queer supportive communities but also spaces filled with virulent hate speech. We identify the subreddit with the most interaction between queer and mainstream users by using social network analysis on billions of Reddit posts. We examine how users on make meaning around sexual conduct using qualitative content analysis. We find that meaning making is often collaborative, especially when focused on bodies and shared pleasure. In contrast, when posts reference ideological political divides, users fall back on inherited meanings of sexuality and sexual conduct. The findings contribute to understandings of how meanings around sexuality develop and what contexts lead toward collaborative meaning-making.