Sexuality development is a lifelong process, and a critical component within this is one’s sexual self-concept. Such development is particularly challenging and prolonged for LGBTQ+ individuals who frequently experience social repercussions for their non-heterosexual identities. Yet, prior research finds that, broadly, fandom engagement and communities are promising avenues for LGBTQ+ fans’ healthy development. Using a sample of LGBTQ+ Harry Potter/ Marauders fans, we examined the associations between subversive fan behaviours and motivations (i.e., eudaimonic motivations for reading slash fanfiction, queer readings to find a community and character identification) on two components of the sexual self-concept. For sexual anxiety, there was not a significant association with eudaimonic motivations, queer readings and character identification, nor were there significant moderation effects. For sexual self-esteem, there were significant direct associations with queer readings and character identification, but not eudaimonic motivations. There was also a significant moderation for eudaimonic motivations and character identification on sexual self-esteem, but the interaction was only significant at the lowest level of the moderator. Findings are discussed in light of the media effects and human development literatures.
Dajches et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
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