A Mixed-Methods Inquiry Into Trans* Environmental Microaggressions on College Campuses: Experiences and Outcomes

ABSTRACT

The experiences, including with environmental microaggressions, and well-being of trans* collegians remain an under-researched topic. In this mixed-methods study of a survey sample of 152 trans* collegians, multivariable regression findings suggest that the frequency of experiencing select trans* environmental microaggressions (e.g., not having access to comfortable bathrooms as a trans* person) are associated with increased risk for poorer academic outcomes (e.g., developmental challenges) but are not associated with mental health outcomes. Furthermore, interviews with 18 trans* collegians suggest that students face several systemic microaggressions, including difficulties advancing trans* inclusion. Various reactions, including paths of resistance, were identified. Implications are discussed.     

Characteristics of Couples Who Attend Family Services Counselor Visits in Relationship Education

Case management services for low-income couples receiving relationship education have been required by federal funding agencies. Studies examining relationship education outcomes for low-income couples have yet to address participant characteristics of those who attend case management services (e.g., distressed vs. nondistressed). Thus, this study examined the influence of baseline relationship satisfaction and demographics on attendance at case management visits for 2,628 low-income, partnered participants who attended relationship education. Findings indicated that participants who reported higher baseline relationship distress attended more family services counselor (FSC) visits. However, when we added demographics to the model, relationship distress no longer predicted FSC visits, whereas income served as a predictor for men and women, with those reporting greater monthly income attending more FSC visits.     

Intersectionality in the Lives of LGBTQ Youth: Identifying as LGBTQ and Finding Community in Small Cities and Rural Towns

This article presents an analysis of the views of younger bisexual and lesbian women and transgender youth living in a western Canadian small city on their sexual and gender identities. Data were collected through focus groups and interviews and analyzed thematically through an intersectional lens. The purposive sample was composed of 13 youth who identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ) and whose average age was 19.8 years. The analytical themes of (1) living in a small town, (2) identifying and being identified, and (3) talking intersectionality indicate that the sexual identities and gender identities and expressions of LGBTQ youth change across time and context and are impacted by often overlooked factors including faith, Indigenous ancestry, disability, and class. Further, the size and character of the community significantly impacts LGBTQ youth identity development and expression. This research demonstrates the uniqueness of individual youth’s experiences—opposing notions of milestone events as singularly important in queer youth identity development.     

Sex/love skirmishes: “swinging,” “polyamory,” and the politics of naming

The contested definitions of “swinging” and “polyamory” reveal profound inconsistencies in the logics of sex, love, commitment, and coupledom. In this article, I use a number of non-monogamy blogs and online glossaries as examples of the way these two words are often deployed against each other in an effort to position the speaker in relation to mononormative practices of sex and love. Leaving aside questions of the accuracy of particular definitions, I map a range of definitions against two existing scholarly/activist tools for describing relationship styles, specifically Gayle Rubin’s “Charmed Circle” and Meg-John Barker’s sex/love continuums. This exercise is doubly fruitful: first, the tools reveal the political stakes of the definitional debates; second, the definitions demonstrate that the distinctions we commonly use to distinguish between types of relationships—including types of non-monogamous relationships—in fact rely on mononormative assumptions about sex, love, and friendship. If “mononormativity” is defined as the system of ideas, institutions, and practical orientations that provide the backdrop against which the idea of monogamy as coherent, common, natural, and right congeals, the sex/love skirmishes of “swinging” and “polyamory” remind us that its logics are both pervasive and deeply fractured.     

Social Mobility via academic mobility: reconfigurations in class and gender identities among Asian scholars in the global north

ABSTRACT

Geographic mobility is increasingly perceived worldwide as a key to academic excellence, career advancement and upward social mobility. Drawing on long-term qualitative fieldwork data, this paper interrogates the impact of academic mobility in reconfiguring class and gender identities among students, early professionals and their families from Hong Kong and Indonesia who have studied or received further training in Germany, the Netherlands and the USA. This analysis problematises the crude ‘academic mobility?→?upward social mobility’ formula and considers international academic mobility as a contextual, dynamic and multi-directional process. Through this process social positions and identities of the moving individuals and families are negotiated in an on-going manner as migrants insert into, depart from and re-insert into the various social milieus where their mobility trajectories touch ground. Narratives of interviewees illustrate the complexity and contradictions in class and gender configurations as students move across borders. They show how these individuals are inserted in contrasting social positionings, and experience how a particular social class or gender position carries different connotations. The paper concludes with a few conceptual and methodological reflections.     

Underestimating Protection and Overestimating Risk: Examining Descriptive Normative Perceptions and Their Association with Drinking and Sexual Behaviors

Individuals who engage in risky sexual behavior face the possibility of experiencing negative consequences. One tenet of social learning theory is that individuals engage in behaviors partly based on observations or perceptions of others’ engagement in those behaviors. The present study aimed to document these norms–behavior relationships for both risky and protective sexual behaviors, including alcohol-related sexual behavior. Gender was also examined as a possible moderator of the norms–behavior relationship. Undergraduate students (n = 759; 58.0% female) completed a Web-based survey, including various measures of drinking and sexual behavior. Results indicated that students underestimate sexual health-protective behaviors (e.g., condom use and birth control use) and overestimate the risky behaviors (e.g., frequency of drinking prior to sex, typical number of drinks prior to sex, and frequency of casual sex) of their same-sex peers. All norms were positively associated with behavior, with the exception of condom use. Furthermore, no gender differences were found when examining the relationship between normative perceptions and behavior. The present study adds to the existing literature on normative misperceptions as it indicates that college students overestimate risky sexual behavior while underestimating sexual health-protective behaviors. Implications for interventions using the social norm approach and future directions are discussed.     

Ambivalence in Older Parent–Adult Child Relationships: Mixed Feelings,Mixed Measures

This research compared direct and indirect measures of ambivalence, 2 commonly used strategies for measuring intergenerational ambivalence between older parents and their adult children. Directly and indirectly measured ambivalence, corresponding to felt and potential manifestations of the construct, were contrasted with each other and across generations. Data were derived from 253 older parent–adult child dyads participating in the Longitudinal Study of Generations in 2005. Direct and indirect measures of ambivalence were moderately correlated with each other within each generation. Children expressed greater indirect ambivalence than their parents but were no different than their mothers or fathers in their levels of direct ambivalence. Multivariate regression analyses examining the relationship between each type of ambivalence with individual and relationship characteristics found differences in associations across equations. The results suggest that direct and indirect measures are related but represent 2 distinct conceptions of ambivalence. This research highlights the challenges in understanding the full complexity of intergenerational relations and suggests that both generational perspectives be considered in future research.