Standing OUT/Fitting IN: Identity,Appearance, and Authenticity in Gay and Lesbian Communities

Sexuality scholars have noted the historical connection between appearance and gay or lesbian identity. However, as the social landscape for lesbian women and gay men has shifted over the past forty years, little research has documented how such changes influence gay and lesbian individuals' appearance choices as they form, manage, and maintain their identities. To explore the impact of this “post‐closet” ( Seidman 2002 ) era on the identities and appearances of lesbians and gays, in‐depth interviews were conducted with twenty individuals, aged eighteen to thirty. Findings suggest that while most people use appearance to attain a sense of authenticity after “coming out,” achieving a feeling of authenticity in gay and lesbian spaces presents unique challenges as individuals come under scrutiny by the community.     

Lessons from Erikson

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine issues related to autonomy across the life span and to draw comparisons between a young child's search for autonomy and an older adult's efforts to maintain autonomy. The paper includes an introduction of the challenges for young children and older adults as related to autonomy. A definition of autonomy and an explanation of Erik Erikson's stages of psychosocial development are included. Each of Erikson's stages is reviewed with consideration given to traits, characteristics, and needs of the young child and older adult. Similarities and differences between young children and older adults in their search for autonomy are examined. The paper concludes with implications for caregivers regarding their practices with young children and older adults.     

Coming Out as “We 3”

Abstract

Using an academic letter format, I use a blended-method-ological approach of personal ethnography and qualitative case study to assess the three-partner, gay male relationship and the role of parental support. In working to understand better the relational “We 3,” I first provide an account of my relational experience with two other men. I discuss the process of our coming together and then make a methodological turn to provide insights from both e-mail and face-to-face interviews with one set of parents who have supported their gay son in his three-partner relationship. As I, personally, have not had an in-depth conversation with my own parents regarding this issue, I use the parental case study to bridge an academic conversation regarding the negotiation of what might be termed a second or relational coming out process with parents. Finally, I discuss how insights from the first, personal coming out process provided the parents with tools to keep the conversation going and to support their son's relational coming out as a “We 3.”     

Preservation of self in the nursing home: Contradictory practices within two models of care

Researchers have identified several aspects of nursing home care that interfere with residents' preservation of self. This paper examines how different models of care shape residents' opportunities for preserving a sense of self, adult identity, and agency. Using ethnographic data, I analyze staff practices in two facilities that reflect the contrast between the home and hospital models of long-term care. Previous research on long-term care suggests that an informal, “home-like” approach to care creates more opportunities for residents to preserve a sense of self-identity, whereas a formal, “institutional” approach fosters depersonalizing practices that interfere with residents' psychosocial well-being. My research suggests, however, that both approaches can have contradictory effects on residents' preservation of self. I analyzed patterns of objectification and infantilization that emerged in the social interactions between residents and staff members, as well as practices that mitigated these patterns. This study highlights how a larger culture of ageism and stigma surrounding dependency can become embedded in micro-level practices and underscores the challenges of defining and implementing “good” care.     

Skipped Generation Families: Sources of Psychological Distress Among Grandmothers of Grandchildren Who Live in Homes Where Neither Parent Is Present

Abstract

Today, more than at any period in U.S. history, more grandparents are raising their grandchildren. In many instances, the biological parents are absent from these grandparent-headed households for a variety of reasons. Although grandfathers and grandmothers both serve in the role of surrogate parents, grandparent caregiving can be seen as a “women's issue” when examined from the broader sociological context of gender. Using data from the National Survey of America's Families, this study examined factors associated with the frequency of feelings of psychosocial distress among grandmother caregivers of grandchildren in skipped generation families. Multivariate regression models indicate that for these grandmothers, being Black and living in the Midwest, having a family income below the poverty level, having Medicaid or SCHIP coverage, not receiving Welfare payments for childcare, and having a usual place for health care were all associated with more frequent feelings of psychosocial distress. On the other hand, being married, receiving social services help with childcare, grandmother's perception of less parenting burden, and living below poverty in the Midwest were associated with less frequent feelings of psychosocial distress.     

Insider-allies: The precarious politics of men in identity-fluid feminism

Academic and activist conversations about the position of men in feminism often operate under the assumption that women are the movement's key beneficiaries and men are privileged outsiders lending their support. I use 59 interviews from a broader project on feminist and LGBTQ+ activism in the United States to illustrate how men's orientation to feminism is shaped by whether social movement organizations adopt what I call woman-centered or identity-fluid politics. While woman-centered politics treat men as allies whose intentions must be vetted by women, identity-fluid feminism imagines men as insiders with their own independent investment in the movement. I argue that the tension between these two models of identity politics gives men a liminal “insider-ally” position within feminism. Although feminist men are given a tentative authority to speak for the movement, the persistence of woman-centered understandings of feminism means men's insider status is contested, especially when they dominate feminist spaces, compromise women's sense of safety, and seek leadership.     

Being a Gay or Lesbian Professional in a Psychiatric Hospital for Adolescents

Abstract

Differing styles and ranges of self-disclosure are highlighted through interviews with lesbian and gay clinical staff at an in-patient setting in the Midwest. Each staff, three men and one woman aged 44 to 62, is presented through a psychosocial history concerning religious, marital, and coming out issues. Participants are interviewed about their style and degree of disclosure of homosexuality to staff, clients, and family. The author concludes that degree of “coming out” correlates with positive adjustment to sexual orientation for the interviewees more than with fears about job loss or personal reprisal.     

Patriarchal Women: A Case Study of Newly Orthodox Jewish Women

Although it seems obvious why men might turn to a community steeped in patriarchal tradition, it is much more difficult to explain women's attraction. To explain their attraction the author conducted in-depth interviews with 75 newly orthodox Jewish women. Although many of these women began their journeys toward Jewish Orthodoxy partly as a backlash against feminism or any liberation movement they perceived as placing individual freedom above social responsibility, the data also suggest that almost all of them selectively incorporate and adapt some protofeminist values about the family and about men. This article explores the ways in which these women seem to make “feminist” sense out of patriarchal religion and social strucuture.     

Family Life Cycle Stages

Individual life stages happen within the context of family life. This article describes Betty Carter's and Monica McGoldrick's Family Life Cycle stages as a context for Eric Erikson's stages of psychosocial development, Daniel Levinson's Stages of a Man's Life, and Jean Piaget's stages of cognitive development. The author juxtaposes the tasks of each family life stage with the individual life stages that accompany it. Implications for treatment are inferred. Questions to consider and treatment goals regarding a case study are presented.     

When Bourgeois Utopias Meet Gentrification: Community and Diversity in a New Urbanist Neighborhood*

Abstract

Scholars have recently begun to explore how social and politically liberal gentrifiers make sense of the classed and racial inequalities linked to gentrification. In this article I ask how residents of one new urbanist “bourgeois utopia”—the Mueller Development in Austin, Texas—experience and give meaning to their neighborhood in a context of gentrification. Drawing on 31 in-depth interviews I explain how new urbanism has reimagined and marketed “diversity” and “community” to middle-class and wealthy consumers and provides these to affluent people as neighborhood amenities. I show how residents draw on diversity ideology and multicultural capital to neutralize what they see as their neighborhood’s role in gentrification. In doing so this article adds to our theoretical understanding of how contemporary urban development exploits pursuits for the social good as rhetorical tools to assuage privileged guilt while promoting profitable enterprises.     

An Inclusive Model of Lesbian Identity Assumption

Many psychological studies of lesbian identity have described linear stages in a process of achieving an identity or isolating “types” of lesbians. A select few of these models are critiqued. Linear models have clearly defined beginnings and endings, are rarely grounded in the historical and social contexts in which women grow, and focus on sexual identity to the exclusion of other important human traits. The author proposes a cyclical model that attempts to integrate sexuality with other aspects of a woman’s sense of self.     

Should trans people be postmodernist in the streets but positivist in the spreadsheets? A reply to Sullivan

ABSTRACT

Accurate census data is essential for a variety of government planning functions and plays an important methodological role in social science. This article responds to issues raised by Alice Sullivan concerning how the UK 2021 census will ask about sex and gender. The two-centuries-old question about male/female sex is not ideal, even with the new guidance proposed; however, I will argue that the proposed changes are unlikely to cause harm. The new open-ended census question on gender identity is welcome and will yield important data. I also respond to Sullivan‘s worries that “queer postmodernists” are “coming for” questionnaires and threaten the sanctity of scientific fact. Sullivan misrepresents trans-inclusive gender theories and how scientific research explaining sex/gender differences is carried out. Finally, I discuss how questioning the ontological reality of trans gender identities leads to transphobic harassment and worse.     

Mind,Self, and Human-Animal Joint Action

Abstract

Because Herbert Blumer maintained that symbolic interactionism was useful in examining all realms of social behavior, and advocated what Martin Hammersley refers to as “critical commonsensism,” this paper focuses on one of the most common contemporary social relationships—that between people and companion animals. I first examine the basis for Blumer's (like Mead before him and many interactionist scholars today) exclusion of nonhuman animals from consideration as “authentic” social actors. Primarily employing the recent work of interactionists Eugene Myers, Leslie Irvine, Janet and Steven Alger, and Clinton Sanders, this paper advocates the reasonableness of regarding nonhuman animals as “minded,” in that mind, as Gubrium emphasizes, is a social construction that arises out of interaction. Similarly, I maintain that animals possess an admittedly rudimentary “self.” Here I focus special attention on Irvine's discussion of those “self experiences” that are independent of language and arise out of interaction. Finally, I discuss “joint action” as a key element of people's relationships with companion animals as both the animal and human attempt to assume the perspective of the other, devise related plans of action and definitions of object, and fit together their particular (ideally, shared) goals and collective actions. I stress the ways in which analytic attention to human-animal relationships may expand and enrich the understanding of issues of central sociological interest.     

Gay and Bisexual Married Men's Attitudes and Experiences

Abstract

In this study, 20 gay or bisexual men's experiences of coming out to wives were explored. Specifically, their attitudes and behaviors before, during, and after marriage were examined. Findings were provided about upbringing, reasons for entering marriage, and the coming out process. Through semi-structured interviews information was obtained about the factors which led up to the revelation of homosexuality or bisexuality and about how these men experienced their relationships with their wives and family after coming out. The interviews revealed the fears which prevented these men from coming out earlier in their lives. The most common reason for entering marriage was due to social and family pressure and because of the desire to have a normal, healthy life. Attitudes toward gays and lesbians were negative before marriage and worsened following disclosure.     

Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision: Executive Summary

What ages desire? As the body ages do experiences and expressions of desire change in tandem? Or do the dynamics of desire run more freely and communicate unrestricted by the body's temporal location? Clinical and personal vignettes are developed to explore these questions and to consider how, for gay men in particular, erotic desire associates to experiences and memories related to “coming out.”     

Survival and change: Social work with angry men

Abstract

This paper discusses the risk elements in encounters with six angry male clients of a social services neighbourhood team. Their preoccupation with basic survival needs produced an identification of the worker with an elusive “stolen object”; this leads to a discussion of how we also felt we had become identified with an image of persecuting parent, rooted in their childhood experience. The key notion of our “struggle” with them is linked to that of “boundary-setting” and the therapeutic value of the characteristic escalation of client/worker conflict is examined. The worker's survival is seen as a confirmation of the client's personal integrity. The process of disengagement is then analysed with particular attention to the material transactions between client and worker that served to mark the end of the engagement. We acknowledge the minimalist nature of our strategy with these men, and attempt to examine outcomes.     

Linking Housing,Social Services and Family Well-Being

Abstract

Securing adequate housing is a key component in achieving family well-being and a decent quality of life. It is expected that as many as twenty percent of the families currently on welfare, many of whom are disproportionately female and African American, may not be employable by the end of their lifetime benefit. These families, classified as “hard-to-serve” or “hard-to-employ,” are headed by an adult who may be struggling with substance abuse, physical or mental health problems, as well as low literacy and social competency issues that inhibit achieving self-sufficiency. This author will examine existing literature on welfare-dependent households coping with substance abuse and mental health problems, and how the lack of affordable housing impacts their ability to achieve self-sufficiency. This article presents a case study     

Understanding Georg Simmel

Abstract

This paper makes two basic claims. First, Simmel was aware of the Als-Ob (“As-If”) before Vaihinger published his Die Philosophie des Als-Ob (The Philosophy of As-If) (Vaihinger, 1911 [1935]), and he used the As-If in his epistemology of the social sciences. It is difficult to understand Simmel's sociology without recognizing the role of the As-If. However, this essential part of Simmel's epistemology of the social sciences almost has gone unreported in the standard literature. Second, Simmel formulated a concept of relativity. This concept, too, is an important part of his epistemology, yet it is not understood well. Only through an appreciation of his view of relativity can Simmel's concept Wechselwirkung (usually translated as “reciprocal interaction” but more exactly translated as “reciprocal effect”) be interpreted properly. Without an understanding of his concept of relativity Simmel's form-content relation does not convey the sense intended. This paper demonstrates that the form-content relation as used by Simmel is, in current terminology, the theory-model relation. Finally, use is made of my explication of Simmel's epistemology to clarify some relations between Simmel's ideas and Durkheim's position.     

Illusions of Intimacy

Summary

Gay men share the common human need for meaningful intimate contact in which the connection is genuine, open and honest. This need can be frustrated, complicated and undermined by a sexual trauma history. The child's sense of personal boundaries, of sexual integrity and of affectional relationships is deeply impacted by a sexual trauma. The child learns that his needs become secondary to the offender's and as a result the victim learns to barter with his sexuality to get those needs met. The offender may foster a sense of isolation in the child, creating a perspective of the world that is harsh and dangerous, so that the child becomes terrified of abandonment. Homophobia is understood to be a “sexuality abuse” and as a result gay men often come in contact with other survivors. As a result, distinguishing between sex and love and recognizing genuine intimacy become difficult. This creates a spiral of difficulties whereby gay men may take enormous risks to “belong” or to avoid abandonment, often with profound consequences in terms of health and self-esteem.     

Reading social work

Abstract

This paper offers a brief preliminary report on our attempts to apply “close reading” a technique drawn from contemporary literary criticism to social work writing. Reading turns out to be very difficult -something we have had to re-learn but reveals ideological formations deeply embedded in social work texts. Hugh England's “Social Work as Art” is taken as a working example and a case is made saying that it is deeply androcentric. However, it is important to distinguish between text and author and to note that the book shares its androcentricism with many other social work texts and arguably with social work culture in general. (England 1986).