Societal and Institutional Homophobia in Japan through the Displays of Affective Stances of a Married Gay Couple

Abstract This study explores a gay couple’s display of affective stances as they construct what is futsuu (normal/usual/ordinary) and what is not regarding their sexuality and marriage in varying contexts they describe. The couple relocated from Japan to France, where they married in 2023. Compared to France, Japan is a highly heteronormative society, where same-sex marriage is banned (institutional homophobia) and homophobic behaviour (societal homophobia) is not uncommon. Applying multimodal conversation analysis ( CA ) and membership categorisation analysis ( MCA ) to conversational data from the couple, this study demonstrates how societal and institutional homophobia contribute to shaping affective stances by contrasting the speakers’ construction of futsuu in Japan and France. They display a range of affective stances that indicate a continuing orientation to heteronormativity, but also some resistance to homophobia. Theoretically, the study contributes to the conceptualization of the notion of norms by showing the context-dependent variability of what is considered normal.