(In)visibility in lesbian and gay student organizing: the case of gay student services

Drawing on newspaper, movement correspondence, and interview data, I examine the (in)visibility of a lesbian and gay student group, Gay Student Services (GSS), in a hostile university campus in Texas from the mid-1970s through the 1980s. GSS formed to create a safe space for sexual minorities at Texas A&M University (TAMU) and asked university officials to recognize the group officially. TAMU's resistance to their request forced GSS to file a lawsuit to achieve recognition. Using interviews with past members and archival data, such as newspapers and movement correspondence, I examine how GSS utilized (in)visibility to navigate the hostile environment. By controlling their (in)visibility, GSS members protected the organization from scrutiny and protect members' safety.     

Man/boy love and the American gay movement

The issue of man/boy love has intersected the gay movement since the late nineteenth century, with the rise of the first gay rights movement in Germany. In the United States, as the gay movement has retreated from its vision of sexual freedom for all in favor of integration into existing social and political structures, it has sought to marginalize cross-generational love as a "non-gay" issue. The two movements continue to overlap, amid signs of mutual support as well as tension--a state of affairs that also characterizes their interrelationship in other countries. This article offers an overview and analysis of that interrelationship in the United States since the Stonewall Riots in New York City in June 1969, which marked the beginning of a reinvigorated struggle for gay liberation.     

Sexual orientation and education politics: gay and lesbian representation in American schools

In what has sometimes provoked a "culture war" over America's schools, gays and lesbians have sought an expanded voice in the making of education policy. This paper explores the factors that promote gay representation on school boards, how this variable in turn influences gay representation in both administrative and teaching positions, and how all three forms of gay representation relate to school board policies regarding sexual orientation education. Three of the four models drawn from the social movement literature help to explain gay school board representation. In a manner similar to other minority groups, gay representation on school boards directly or indirectly promotes the appointment of gays to administrative and teaching positions and the adoption of policies that address the problems faced by gay and lesbian students in the public schools.     

In from the outer generational differences in coming out and gay identity formation

This paper explores generational differences among gay men in their experience of, and narratives relating the process of, coming out. The interview data for 32 gay men living in Melbourne, Australia, is drawn from the Community, Attachment, Structures and the epidemic (CASE) Study. Narratives of coming out for three generational groups: pre-AIDS, peri-AIDS, and post-AIDS, are examined in terms of the experiences of disclosure to family and friends. A shift from narratives organised around crisis and disjunction to those organised around consolidation is matched by differences in the degree to which peer networks are maintained post-coming out.     

Deconstructing the silences: gay social memory

Adopting a Foucaultian perceptive, this article deconstructs the silences in the Singaporean gay community. The collective absences in homosexuals' social memory is not simply reflective of a fragmented community, but must be comprehended in relation to the role of the state and media in shaping particular discourses.     

Men together: understanding the gay couple

The present study surveyed male gay couples to determine how their relationships began and were maintained, the types of conflict they experienced, and how the issues of monogamy, sexual behavior and AIDS affected the relationships. Ninety-two couples responded to the survey. The gay bar was the most common initial meeting place and relationships had lasted from less than one to 35 years. Few had had a commitment ceremony, although many reported wanting one if it were available. Most of the close friends of respondents were also gay couples and about two-thirds of family members were supportive of the relationship. The most persistent conflicts centered around finances and relations with family members. Virtually all respondents described their relationships as monogamous, but only about half practiced safe-sex. More attention needs to be given to understanding male couples and to targeting AIDS-prevention messages to them.     

Couples: the hidden segment of the gay world

This study explores the relationships of 15 homosexual couples--5 female and 10 male couples. In duration the relationships ranged from 7 months to 13 years. In age the partners ranged from 19 to 50. Findings indicate that the partners met in social as compared with sexual settings, that relationships are more common for females than for males, that female more than male couples require sexual fidelity between partners, that male more than female couples desire children, and that there was no "butch-femme" role playing in the relationships. Social incompatibility of partners and social pressure are seen as causes for the breakup of relationships.     

Pregnant in prison: An integrative literature review

BackgroundPregnant women in prisons are recognised as a marginalised group. However, there is a limited understanding of the women’s unique maternity needs and how correctional institutions and maternity service providers respond to these needs.AimThe aims of the review are threefold.

• 1.Identify pregnant women’s needs during the antenatal, birthing and postnatal periods in prison.
• 2.Examine how the pregnant incarcerated women’s needs are met by the correctional institutions.
• 3.Explore what maternity services are available and how these services are provided.

MethodAn integrative literature review was undertaken. A comprehensive search strategy using seven electronic databases resulted in the retrieval of 363 articles. Of them, 32 peer-reviewed studies met the final selection criteria and were included in this review which utilised the Critical Appraisal Skills Program tools and adhered to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses flowchart. Thematic analysis identified universal themes.FindingsThree dominant themes emerged related to the experience of pregnant women in prison: (1) risks and vulnerability factors; (2) prison enablers and supports; and (3) prison barriers. Extant research on risks and vulnerability factors is disproportionate to research examining how prisons can enable or obstruct responding to the women’s perinatal needs. Limited research on the midwifery support available to the women in prison is available. Significantly, only two out of 32 reviewed papers include research directly conducted with the pregnant women in prison.ConclusionPregnant women in prisons have complex needs. More research is required to understand how prisons can enhance the pregnancy experience by engaging pregnant women in prisons as research participants.     

Understanding the bear movement in gay male culture: redefining masculinity

The bear movement emerged in the gay male culture of the 1980s, but little research on this group has been conducted. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the meanings and functions of bear identity. Six bear-identified men participated in intensive interviews investigating this question. Results suggest that men who identify as bears consciously adopt a masculine aesthetic that signifies values of self-acceptance and maturity. The participants described the acceptance of diverse body shapes and ages within the bear community as leading to positive self-esteem and body image. Results are discussed in relation to clinical and advocacy work. They broaden the awareness of the diversity of cultures that exist within the gay community.     

Men at sport: gay men's experiences in the sport workplace

Research on sexual identity and sport has revealed a shifting narrative about the experiences of gay men. While some suggest the atmosphere is hostile, others posit that homophobia and sexual prejudice are playing less of a role in gay men's experiences. This research focuses on the experiences of 10 gay men working in professional, collegiate, and club sport, as part of a larger dataset of 37 male and female employees. Five of the men were overtly and publicly out at work, while five were closeted (to varying degrees). This article focuses on three themes for gay men working in sport: 1) the importance of coming out in the workplace; 2) the role of the locker room as a contested terrain, and 3) the disconnect between their experiences at work and their perceptions of the workplace environment as negative or positive. Men in this study were basing their impressions on their total experience in sport (as current and former players, as employees, and as fans). It also suggests that the public "story" of gay men working in sport represents one of two extremes-either the proverbial "horror story," or the extremely positive representation of gay men's experiences. This research suggests that gay men's experiences in sport are more complex and nuanced than the public narrative implies.     

My gay Antonia: the politics of Willa Cather's lesbianism

Although Willa Cather's lesbianism has recently been publicly acknowledged, her personal and artistic political decisions about the revelation of her sexual preference have not been explored. Most critics who acknowledge Cather's homosexuality see no traces in her fiction of what Lillian Faderman calls "same-sex love." Because of the political consequences of writing openly about lesbianism in the time that Cather came of age, according to Faderman, "perhaps she felt the need to be more reticent about love between women than even some of her patently heterosexual contemporaries because she bore a burden of guilt for what came to be labeled perversion." While it would certainly have been possible for Cather to live a discreet lesbian life without showing traces of her sexuality in her writing, it is more likely that her sexual preferences are present in her works, particularly in her most autobiographical book, My Antonia, in the character who represents Cather, Jim Burden. The "emptiness where the strongest emotion might have been expected," the relationship between Antonia and Jim, is more understandable when we realize that both Jim Burden and Antonia Shimerda were imagined by Cather as homosexuals whose deep friendship was based on mutual understanding of their oddness in the heterosexual world of 1918.     

The politics of counter-rejection: gay christians and the church

This paper analyzes the accounts constructed by 60 gay male Christians in managing the stigma imposed on them by the Church. These accounts signify that they, having developed a positive self-image, are involved in the politics of counter-rejection of the Church and its official positions on the issue of homosexuality. Their counter-rejection of the Church as a moral arbiter is predicated on four bases: (1) the Church's ignorance of sex and sexuality, (2) the Church's ignorance of all sexualities as God's creation, (3) the Church's misinterpretation of biblical passages on homosexuality, and (4) the Church's fallibility. Having counter-rejected the Church by challenging its credibility, the counter-rejection of the Church's official positions is a matter of course. Their experiences highlight the ability of stigmatized social actors to invent social biographies not only to defend their moral choices, but also to challenge the credibility of sources that question and stigmatize their choices.     

Making history: the challenge of gay and lesbian studies

This paper addresses a central problem of gay and lesbian studies: how is the subject to be defined? Current essentialist and constructionist positions are ultimately ahistorical and reductionist, reflecting the residual influence of the medical model and its sexual definition. In place of a single-dimensional and a priori sexual category, the author proposes sociosexual specialization as the appropriate focus of gay and lesbian studies and outlines a heuristic, multidimensional model for describing not only contemporary, but historical and cross-cultural evidence. Six dimensions of social and sexual variation are reviewed: sexuality, subjectivity and identity, gender, social roles, economic roles, and spirituality.     

Homecoming: the relevance of radical feminism for gay men

Sexual politics in the gay male world would be enhanced by a serious engagement with radical feminist politics, particularly critiques of pornography and the sex industry. As the domination/subordination dynamic at the heart of patriarchy damages homosexual men, such engagement is crucial to the future of a gay movement.     

Alcoholism and non-acceptance of gay self: the critical link

As part of a larger research project designed to generate grounded theory on the nature of gay sobriety, this study was designed to explore the etiology of alcoholism among gay American men and how etiology is related to gay bars or non-acceptance of gay self or both. In-depth interviews were conducted in Seattle, Iowa City, Chicago, and Oklahoma City with 20 gay recovering alcoholic men, each of whom had at least one year of sobriety. It was found that: (a) Gay bars were totally unrelated to the etiology in any of the informants, yet most thought that this gay bar ethnotheory could explain why there was a high incidence of alcoholism in the gay community; (b) none of the men saw being gay as a positive thing before sobriety, yet many didn't realize their non-acceptance until after sobriety was chosen; (c) accepting being gay as a positive aspect of self occurred only after sobriety was chosen and lived; and (d) not accepting being gay as a positive thing may therefore explain the etiology and thus the high incidence of alcoholism among gay American men.     

Glukus himeros: pederastic influence on the myth of Ganymede

Pederastic influence on the myth of Ganymede enables it to evolve, in a continuous line of development easily traced in the history of Greek literature from Homer to Plato, into a homoerotic emblem of the spiritual union of the human and divine. Continuity in this history is marked by the thematic use of the Homeric phrase gammalambdaupsilonkappaùvarsigma 'ímicroepsilonrhoomicronvarsigma (glukus himeros, sweet longing) to describe sexual desire in association with the Ganymede myth in the Hymn to Aphrodite, Pindar and Plato.     

Assessment of life stress in gay and bisexual men with the gay affect and life events scale

The Gay Affect and Life Events Scale (GALES) was administered to a sample of gay-identified and non-gay-identified behaviourally bisexual married men (n = 186) and a comparative sample of never-married gay-identified men (n = 33). All participants in the study reported moderate levels of life stress in the preceding six months. No significant differences were found between the ever-married and never-married groups on the Overall Stress Value Score (OSV) of the GALES. Among the ever-married, those who identified as gay/homosexual reported significantly higher life stress than those who identified as bisexual. No differences were found within the ever-married between those who remained with their heterosexual partner and those who had separated. Difficulties in the use of the Nott and Vedhara (1995) version of the GALES with both gay men and populations of behaviourally bisexual men are reported.