In the company of friends: insights into gay men's friendships at work

Despite a growing number of studies that show how friendship occupies an important place in the lives of many gay men, lesbians and bisexuals, few studies have paid close attention to how these people make and sustain friendships in the workplace. In an effort to animate scholarly discussion that concerns not only the general significance of workplace friendship but also of the particular salience of friendship in the work lives of non-heterosexuals, this chapter assembles various empirical insights into the place and role of friendship in the work lives of a group of gay men. Qualitative materials presented in two case studies below, show that sexual and gender differences, organisational hierarchies, status distinctions, and gendered work cultures influence how gay men and their friends create, develop and maintain close friendships. The resulting observations of these friendships in action are used to support a concluding argument for recognising the normative elements of gay men’s workplace friendship as much as for imagining how gay men, other sexual minorities and heterosexuals might develop new, perhaps queer ways of belonging and relating within organisational friendships.