Coming out and coming back: Rural gay migration and the city

This research focuses on the complex meaning and role of the city in American and French rural gay men’s imaginary and life experience. It explores how gay men who grew up in the country build their sense of self through back-and-forth movement from rural to urban spaces. Therefore, it questions traditional gay migration studies, which have often equated gay migration and rural–urban migration, positing a unidirectional pattern. After contextualizing rural male homosexuality, this paper presents four life itineraries which highlight the central role the city has for rural gay men when exploring their same-sex desires and attractions. Based on the analysis of their life narratives, we show that for most of them, their coming out, their first same-sex experience, and coming to terms with their sexuality happens “far from home” in a city or a college town. However, this research suggests that the city has a more ambivalent role for rural gay men. While the city exists as a space of social practices where alternative sexualities can be experienced and explored, at the same time for many rural gay men the city remains substantially unattractive. In their view, the perceived “effeminizing power” of the city questions and challenges their attraction for this space. Therefore, the experience of the city becomes both liberating and disciplinary – liberating because it allows the exploration of their same-sex desires and attractions, disciplinary because it (re)presents a gay identity in which they find no resonance. Thus this research indicates that rural gay migration to the urban spaces, which is key to identity formation, includes not only departure to the city but also a necessary return to the country to maintain rural gay men’s understanding of themselves.     

Psychological Adaptation and Adjustment to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome

Early reports of the psychological ramifications of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) emerged shortly after the first incidence of the isease was officially reported in this country in 1981. These preliminary reports were based on clinical observations and anecdotal information which showed that the psychological reactions of AIDS patients were similar to those stages of death and dying described by Kubler-Ross (1969) although they appeared to be intensified and compounded by other issues related to the stigmatized status of most carriers of this disease. Two specific models of the staging of these psychological reactions are outlined. The psychological problems most commonly requiring therapeutic intervention are discussed with attention paid to the importance of distinguishing between those whose etiology is functional versus organic. The suspected pathogenesis, symptomatology and progression of the most common form of organic neurological disorder associated with AIDS, AIDS dementia complex, is summarized. Finally, a model of integrated treatment for the psychological aspects of adaptation to AIDS is described.     

Getting Out in the “Real World”: Young Men,Queer and Theories of Gay Community

ABSTRACT

A recent opinion piece published in the Sydney Morning Herald expresses a widely held perception that, among young same-sex attracted men in Australia, “queer” has well and truly supplanted “gay” as the language and lens through which self and practice is generated. In this article, I discuss findings from a qualitative research project that studied notions of community among young gay men, and argue that this assumption should not be taken for granted. The article explores participants' understandings of the concept of “gay community,” arguing that the young men studied share a common definition of community: one based on a conventional liberal model which prioritizes sameness and the cooperation of individuals to achieve common goals. This is of particular importance in that problems around “fitting in” with these understandings are also raised. In examining the potential place for queer alternatives to these formulations, however, the article finds that queer attracts little support among participants, raising questions about the bind young men may find themselves in if they prioritize sameness as fundamental to community, yet feel themselves to be excluded from community by their own or others' perceived difference.     

How to Be a Healthy Homosexual: HIV Health Promotion and the Social Regulation of Gay Men in the United Kingdom

ABSTRACT

Primary Objective: Health promotion has arisen as the main response to the problem of HIV prevention among gay men. Using the linked concepts of governmentality and health promotion as a neoliberal disciplinary technology, this article argues that health promotion in the time of AIDS has contributed to new forms of social regulation and governance for gay men. Methods and Procedures: This article presents an analysis of data from a study of U.K. HIV health promotion for gay men (interviews with health promoters and analyses of health promotion materials). Conclusions: This analysis of health promotion is helpful in describing an emerging form of governance dependent on incentive rather than censure (censure, pathology and “cure” are how we traditionally describe the use of medical knowledge in the regulation of homosexuality).     

Romantic Relationships and Their Social Context Among Gay/Bisexual Male Youth in the Castro District of San Francisco

Abstract

This article examines the culture of romantic relationships among gay/bisexual male youth in the Castro District of San Francisco.

The article seeks to specify the cultural ideology that informs these relationships, drawing upon ethnographic observation, autobiographical accounts, and informant cultural exegesis. The article also seeks to link thinking and experience inside romantic relationships (e.g., bonding, jealousy) to patterns of social behavior associated with romantic relationships (e.g., relationship sequestering, cheating), showing how both are informed by shared assumptions which make these emotions and gestures intelligible to the group. Beliefs about love, compatibility, and monogamy are explored. Reciprocity, including its degradation into negative forms, is examined with focus on the units of value that are exchanged in romantic relationships, in particular sentimental gifts. Gestures of commitment that mark commencement of a romantic relationship as well as extension of the dynamics of a relationship after “breakup” (as in “revenge sex” and “rebound relationships”) are examined. Cultural systems that challenge adherence to a romantic ideology, such as a prestige economy associated with sex linked to an ethos of sexual exploration/recreation, are weighed against the pull of romance. “Drama,” a hallmark of gay youth, is viewed in the context of romantic culture.     

Queer Nuclear Families? Reproducing and Transgressing Heteronormativity

ABSTRACT

During the past decade the public debate on gay and lesbian adoptive rights has been extensive in the Norwegian media. The debate illustrates how women and men planning to raise children in homosexual family constellations challenge prevailing cultural norms and existing concepts of kinship and family. The article discusses how lesbian mothers and gay fathers understand and redefine their own family practices. An essential point in this article is the fundamental ambiguity in these families' accounts of themselves–how they simultaneously transgress and reproduce heteronormative assumptions about childhood, fatherhood, motherhood, family and kinship.     

《苏东坡传》汉译本中“把”字句应用及动因分析

通过创建小型人物传记翻译语料库,从定量研究的角度分析《苏东坡传》中“把”字句在张振玉译本和宋碧云译本中的分布特征。研究发现:“把”字句在两译本中的使用频率显著高于在语料库中大多数汉语原创人物传记中的使用频率;张译本和宋译本中“把”字句使用频率分别为1.619/千字和1.306/千字,张译本中“把”字句使用频率显著高于宋译本（p=0.017*）。从图式理论和翻译策略两个方面分析上述差异,以期为“把”字句的理解和在英汉翻译中的应用提供借鉴。     

Sexual Orientation and Labor Market Discrimination

We develop empirical estimates of the return to sexual orientation in the labor market and utilize the 2004 Current Population Survey to determine if lesbians and gay men are treated differently from their heterosexual counterparts. We find strong evidence consistent with the hypothesis of discriminatory treatment against gay men, and this evidence differs substantially by occupation. On the other hand, we find no evidence of discrimination against lesbians. These findings are consistent with priors based on economic theory of the standard taste for discrimination and statistical discrimination models. The results for both men and women are consistent across wage and total compensation regressions.

Sexual orientation and self-reported lying

This paper examines empirical links between sexual orientation and self-reported lying using data collected in several waves of Georgia Institute of Technology’s World Wide Web Users Survey. The data include questions about sexual orientation, lying in cyberspace, and a broad range of demographic information. According to the theoretical framework of Gneezy (Am Econ Rev 95: 384–395, 2005) on the economics of deception, individuals conceal or falsify information when the expected benefit of lying exceeds its costs in terms of psychic disutility. If non-heterosexuals expect to benefit more by falsifying information, then this theory predicts higher rates of lying among non-heterosexuals. The data show that gays and lesbians do indeed report lying more often than heterosexuals, both unconditionally in bivariate correlations and after controlling for demographic and geographic differences. These empirical results are consistent with the conclusion that non-heterosexuals expect higher benefits from concealing personal information because of anti-homosexual discrimination.

Same-sex parenting and children’s outcomes: A closer examination of the American psychological association’s brief on lesbian and gay parenting

In 2005, the American Psychological Association (APA) issued an official brief on lesbian and gay parenting. This brief included the assertion: “Not a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents” (p. 15). The present article closely examines this assertion and the 59 published studies cited by the APA to support it. Seven central questions address: (1) homogeneous sampling, (2) absence of comparison groups, (3) comparison group characteristics, (4) contradictory data, (5) the limited scope of children’s outcomes studied, (6) paucity of long-term outcome data, and (7) lack of APA-urged statistical power. The conclusion is that strong assertions, including those made by the APA, were not empirically warranted. Recommendations for future research are offered.