Illness and Autobiographical Work: Dialogue as Narrative Destabilization

Illness is an occasion for autobiography, and memoirs of illness present openings to ethical ways of living. This work describes illness memoirs as performative, creating the self they claim as their origin. The self that is claimed is dialogical, and the tension of this dialogue is to include the voices of others without assimilating these voices to one's own. Physician memoirs, a spiritual autobiography, and a web site are presented as examples of dialogical autobiographical work occasioned by illness.     

LGBQ-Specific Elderly Housing as a “Sparkling Sanctuary”: Boundary Work on LGBQ Identity and Community in Relationship to Potential LGBQ-Specific Elderly Housing in Sweden

This study explored how boundaries in relationship to community and identity were created and negotiated among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) people within the framework of picturing LGBQ-specific elderly housing as a housing alternative in older age, by applying focus group methodology. “An island as a sparkling sanctuary” was identified as a metaphor for how symbolic resources defining the LGBQ community can be manifested in LGBQ-specific qualities of elderly housing. The boundary work underlying this manifestation included elaborations on the dilemma between exclusiveness and normality. The findings illustrate further how symbolic resources and collective identities were developed through dialectic interplay between internal and external definitions. Further, the findings show how boundary work generated shared feelings of similarity and group membership. The associated symbolic and social resources not only served to deal with difficult situations but also to manifest LGBQ identity and sense of community as a “gold medal.”     

Is It Facebook Official? Coming Out and Passing Strategies of Young Adult Gay Men on Social Media

The rapid proliferation of social media, mobile applications, and Internet technologies has shifted a wide variety of social interaction from physical spaces to an online environment. Drawing from 42 semistructured, in-depth interviews with gay college-aged men between the ages of 18 and 27, this article explores these changing patterns of social interaction among gay men. I discuss three strategies of identity management college-aged gay men use to disclose or conceal their sexual identity to others. The first group of men, “Out and Proud,” uses Facebook as a way to celebrate and reaffirm their sexual identity, in addition to actively coming out to others on the social media Web site. The second group, “Out and Discreet,” uses Facebook to indirectly come out to some of their friends while hiding this information from others. The men in the last group I identify, “Facebook Closeted,” actively manage their online profiles to ensure their sexual identity is not exposed. Facebook is both transformative and risky for college-aged gay men, as it represents a new platform for them to come out as gay to friends and family, as well as other areas of their lives where they must actively manage the presentation of their sexual identity.     

“And Now I’m Just Different,but There’s Nothing Actually Wrong With Me”: Asexual Marginalization and Resistance

This article explores the relationship between contemporary asexual lives and compulsory sexuality, or the privileging of sexuality and the marginalizing of nonsexuality. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews, I identify four ways the asexually identified individuals in this study saw themselves as affected by compulsory sexuality: pathologization, isolation, unwanted sex and relationship conflict, and the denial of epistemic authority. I also identify five ways these asexually identified individuals disrupted compulsory sexuality: adopting a language of difference and a capacity to describe asexuality; deemphasizing the importance of sexuality in human life; developing new types of nonsexual relationships; constituting asexuality as a sexual orientation or identity; and engaging in community building and outreach. I argue that some of these practices offer only a limited disruption of compulsory sexuality, but some of these practices pose a radical challenge to sexual norms by calling into question the widespread assumption that sexuality is a necessary part of human flourishing.     

An Examination of the Heterosexism Scale

Researchers explored the factor structure of Park’s Heterosexism Scale (2001) with heterosexual parents of lesbian, gay, or bisexual sons or daughters. Results suggested a two-factor solution, but results varied from Park’s two-factor model. Additionally, relations between the Heterosexism Scale subscales and measures of cognitive flexibility, religious commitment, and general family functioning were examined. Implications for clinical practice and future research are discussed.     

Aging and Gender:

Social science literature on aging has assumed without empirical basis that women experience greater continuity in their lives than men and that this is beneficial to women in the process of aging. This research explores the issue of continuity in values over the life course and the relationship of values to a sense of meaning attributed to one's life over the life course. Thirty life history interviews of men and women over the age of sixty-nine were conducted. Differences in values were found between men and women. Men experienced less continuity of values, less continuity in sources of meaning in Life, and more dissatisfaction in the process of life review, but for most men the lack of continuity was not a source of dissatisfaction in old age.     

Varieties of Transgender/Transsexual Lives and Their Relationship with Transphobia

The conceptualization of gender variant populations within studies have consisted of imposed labels and a diversity of individual identities that preclude any attempt at examining the variations found among gender variant populations, while at the same time creating artificial distinctions between groups that may not actually exist. Data were collected from 90 transgender/transsexual people using confidential, self-administered questionnaires. Factors like age of transition, being out to others, and participant's race and class were associated with experiences of transphobic life events. Discrimination can have profound impact on transgender/transsexual people's lives, but different factors can influence one's experience of transphobia. Further studies are needed to examine how transphobia manifests, and how gender characteristics impact people's lives.     

Male Sexuality and Alfred Kinsey's 0–6 Scale: Toward “A Sound Understanding of the Realities of Sex”

Using a 0–6 scale, Alfred Kinsey demonstrated that the complexity of human sexuality could best be represented on a continuum rather than as a binary. Kinsey developed the scale from models created by his predecessors in human sex research. A primary intention of the scale was to eradicate sexual identity categories altogether in order to eliminate sexual identity-based persecutions and to promote equal rights. As proponents and opponents of homosexual rights both depended on constructions of sexual identity to advance their agendas, Kinsey's ideal was never realized. The scale nonetheless continues to challenge postmodern associations of identity and sexuality.     

Effects of Gay Identity,Gender and Explicitness of Advertising Imagery on Gay Responses to Advertising

Abstract

The present research draws from literature relating to gay identity in psychology and sociology and feminist theory to consider the effect of gay identity and gender on gays' and lesbians' attitudes toward various types of advertising content that are most commonly used to target gay consumers. As such, this study empirically tests whether gay males' and lesbians' responses to gay-oriented advertising content are moderated by individual characteristics: (1) the degree to which they identify as gay, and (2) their gender, and by the explicitness and gender of the gay-oriented advertising imagery.     

Autogynephilia in Women

Autogynephilia, an erotic interest in the thought or image of oneself as a woman, has been described as a sexual interest of some male-to-female transsexuals (MTFs); the term has not been applied to natal women. To test the possibility that natal women also experience autogynephilia, an Autogynephilia Scale for Women (ASW) was created from items used to categorize MTFs as autogynephilic in other studies. A questionnaire that included the ASW was distributed to a sample of 51 professional women employed at an urban hospital; 29 completed questionnaires were returned for analysis. By the common definition of ever having erotic arousal to the thought or image of oneself as a woman, 93% of the respondents would be classified as autogynephilic. Using a more rigorous definition of “frequent” arousal to multiple items, 28% would be classified as autogynephilic. The implications of these findings are discussed concerning the sexuality of women and the meaning of autogynephilia for MTFs.