Gay, Straight, and Who I Am: Interpreting Passing Within the Frames for Everyday Life

Passing, the process whereby individuals conceal stigmatizing attributes, represents an intersection between self-definition, self-presentation, and situational and cultural fluency. Existing research has examined some of these topics separately, but few works have undertaken a cohesive analysis. To address this gap, this study employs frame analysis to examine gay and lesbian individuals' interpretive accounts of passing. Participants framed their self-presentations within a paradigm of being owho I am,o noted a frame of risk that operated across situations, and described common frames for audiences and settings in their livesall central to interpreting passing within everyday, routine interaction.