Gender Binary Thêmata in Social Representations of Sexual Minorities: A Ten Year Scoping Review

Within the frame of Social Representations Theory, gender binarism and heteronormativity can be considered as thêmata that make sexual minorities emerge as a norm-challenging social object. Recent social change in the acceptance and regulation of LGBT identities and relationships suggests some kind of transformation in the representations of sexual minorities in order to make these social objects more familiar and acceptable. This scoping review analyzes research articles on social representations of sexual minorities and of gender-related phenomena in sexual minority populations from the last 10 years. The aim of the review is investigating the social representations of gender in sexual minorities in order to understand to what extent these representations might be normalized within the gender binary thêma, and to what extent they might be rather transforming the gender frame in order to reduce its binary and heteronormative frame. After searching for scientific contributions in the 5 major social science data bases, 97 articles were screened and 28 were included in the review. Results suggest mostly that social representations of sexual minorities are still being familiarized within a gender-binary frame. Three different semantic processes of familiarization are discussed: gender-compartmentalization, dehumanization, and subjectification. The latter one seems to be the most relevant in the process of social acceptance of the LGBT population.