As a cultural practice, male ho mo sex u al ity involves a charac-teristic way of receiving, reinterpreting, and reusing mainstream cul-ture, of decoding and recoding the heterosexual or heteronormative meanings already encoded in that culture, so that they come to func-tion as vehicles of gay or queer meaning.
This quote reminds me of José Esteban Muñoz's term "disidentification". The phrase refers to the negotiation of majority culture in a way that is not necessarily with or against certain works, but rather transforming these works for their own cultural purpose. Later in the passage, it mentions a bunch of people who have become "queer icons" and creating a stereotype of what gayness is. I'm interested in thinking about how this might lead to a greater need to disidentify more often?