Sex, death and austerity: resurgent homophobia in the British tabloid press

This article explores how the current context of neoliberal austerity has come to shape representations of gay identity in the British tabloid press. Focusing on the reporting of two news events by the Daily Mail and the Sun between July 2016 and July 2017, the High Court ruling on the provision of the HIV prevention drug PrEP by the National Health Service and the rise of so-called chemsex amongst gay men, I argue that the right-wing tabloids have reformulated traditional homophobic scripts in ways that correspond with the contemporary social and political context of neoliberal austerity. My analysis therefore expands scholarly understandings of how austerity ideologies shape normative understandings of good and bad behavior through the specific context of gay identity. I argue that the right-wing tabloids have come to circulate a negatively coded vision of gay life characterized by drug addiction and promiscuous, risky sex, which is constructed as the antithesis of the idealized, respectable and responsible subject of neoliberal austerity. Amidst the uncertainties of neoliberalism, these representations manufacture and sell a seemingly transcendental, conservative, heteronormative consensus around sexual moralities under austerity.