Entry tags:
Entry tags:
To quote Hartmann: Herre, des wundert mich.
I have to admit, this abstract really leaves me wanting more and raises some questions, especially about what the point of this is, really. It may be my headache, but I really feel as though I'm not getting something here.
1. Post-closet era. Post. Closet. Era.
2. How, pray tell, do you "use appearance to attain a sense of authenticity"...? I mean, I'm guessing here that they're aiming at the struggles that femme women face to "look gay enough" in the eyes of some people and the backlash that butch women get for "embodying a negative and harmful stereotype", but I'm still left with the feeling that I need to find myself a pansexual outfit ASAP. Maybe some bisexual pants? Does that mean that Crocky has to cut her hair? I just... yeah.
Also, I am not sure why they went for a qualitative study here, and I'd really appreciate if someone enlightened me. And also, the point of this. So twenty people say that they use their appearance to signify their identity ~authentically~. And now?
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.
David J. Hutson.
1. Post-closet era. Post. Closet. Era.
2. How, pray tell, do you "use appearance to attain a sense of authenticity"...? I mean, I'm guessing here that they're aiming at the struggles that femme women face to "look gay enough" in the eyes of some people and the backlash that butch women get for "embodying a negative and harmful stereotype", but I'm still left with the feeling that I need to find myself a pansexual outfit ASAP. Maybe some bisexual pants? Does that mean that Crocky has to cut her hair? I just... yeah.
Also, I am not sure why they went for a qualitative study here, and I'd really appreciate if someone enlightened me. And also, the point of this. So twenty people say that they use their appearance to signify their identity ~authentically~. And now?
Entry tags:
Ye Olde Science: Parts of my identity in stages
After initial scepticism towards these rather rigid models I have to say that I can really see part of my experience in those stages.
Cass Model of Gay and Lesbian Identity Formation (1979)
"Coming out is a life-long process of exploring one's sexual orientation and Gay/Lesbian identity and sharing it with family, friends, co-workers and the world. Coming out is one of the most significant developmental processes in the lives of Gay and Lesbian people. Coming out is short for the phrase "coming out of the closet." Coming out means recognizing, accepting, expressing and sharing ones' sexual orientation with oneself and others."
( Read more... )
Cass Model of Gay and Lesbian Identity Formation (1979)
"Coming out is a life-long process of exploring one's sexual orientation and Gay/Lesbian identity and sharing it with family, friends, co-workers and the world. Coming out is one of the most significant developmental processes in the lives of Gay and Lesbian people. Coming out is short for the phrase "coming out of the closet." Coming out means recognizing, accepting, expressing and sharing ones' sexual orientation with oneself and others."
( Read more... )
Entry tags:
This'll go nicely with my stress-induced bingefest
Big women like sexy underwear, too? And there are ads for that underwear? Neat, I thought.
How did the network react? "Omg, it's a fat person in underwear, cover your eyes! Take it down!"
This is the ad in question:
Also, this post about going to the OB/GYN while fat made me incredibly angry. It shouldn't have, after all the other nice stuff I've heard about people's GYNs (sexual harassment, violation, humiliation, scare tactics into submitting to a procedure, dismissing concerns and pain as "this doesn't hurt, ever, so pull yourself together" etc., and that's just the people I know offline).
Yes, I get it. Fat people ought to blob along elsewhere and not subject themselves to the innocent eyes of other people (even though, as junkscience claims, this will make perfectly thin women worry about their body image so deep, deep down that even they themselves don't realise). Yeah. I'll go do some homework and let my lifesaving chocolate nuts prepare me for boobquake.
How did the network react? "Omg, it's a fat person in underwear, cover your eyes! Take it down!"
This is the ad in question:
Also, this post about going to the OB/GYN while fat made me incredibly angry. It shouldn't have, after all the other nice stuff I've heard about people's GYNs (sexual harassment, violation, humiliation, scare tactics into submitting to a procedure, dismissing concerns and pain as "this doesn't hurt, ever, so pull yourself together" etc., and that's just the people I know offline).
Yes, I get it. Fat people ought to blob along elsewhere and not subject themselves to the innocent eyes of other people (even though, as junkscience claims, this will make perfectly thin women worry about their body image so deep, deep down that even they themselves don't realise). Yeah. I'll go do some homework and let my lifesaving chocolate nuts prepare me for boobquake.
Entry tags:
Foreigners hate the gays!
You know, if you start your Master thesis by saying that you're only going to consider male homosexuals in your study because they clearly have it worse (oh god I wish this was more of a paraphrase) as well as because there's so little data on female homosexuals (well, fair enough), because there are so many men writing about homosexuals (...?), that doesn't make you look that good to start with, but I was willing to read your paper, anyway.
But then you proceed to make your case, saying that those pesky foreigners, especially muslim foreigners, hate gay people, want to steal from them and beat them up. What the hell. I was looking for a sensitive insight into sex ed aimed at muslim students regarding homosexuality in Germany, not xenophobic garbage.
But then you proceed to make your case, saying that those pesky foreigners, especially muslim foreigners, hate gay people, want to steal from them and beat them up. What the hell. I was looking for a sensitive insight into sex ed aimed at muslim students regarding homosexuality in Germany, not xenophobic garbage.
Entry tags:
I promise I'm not heteronegative.
Although many studies have been conducted on homophobia, little information exists about the attitudes of homosexuals toward heterosexuals. In order to compare the attitudes of both groups, a well-known homophobia questionnaire (Hudson & Ricketts, 1980) was reworded to assess the attitudes of homosexuals toward heterosexuals, forming a “heterophobia” questionnaire.
The less clinical term “heteronegativism” is introduced here to refer to the range of negative feelings that gay individuals could possess regarding heterosexuals. Sixty homosexual students were matched with 60 heterosexual psychology students on sex, age, race, and education. Each group was given its respective “phobia” questionnaire.
Hypotheses that homosexual participants would report less phobia and more negative experience than heterosexuals and that gay women would report more phobia than gay men were supported. Hypotheses that level of abuse in closeted homosexuals would be positively correlated with phobia scores and that being “out of the closet” would be negatively correlated with phobia scores were not supported.
The less clinical term “heteronegativism” is introduced here to refer to the range of negative feelings that gay individuals could possess regarding heterosexuals. Sixty homosexual students were matched with 60 heterosexual psychology students on sex, age, race, and education. Each group was given its respective “phobia” questionnaire.
Hypotheses that homosexual participants would report less phobia and more negative experience than heterosexuals and that gay women would report more phobia than gay men were supported. Hypotheses that level of abuse in closeted homosexuals would be positively correlated with phobia scores and that being “out of the closet” would be negatively correlated with phobia scores were not supported.
Stephen M. White, Louis R. Franzini, '99
Entry tags:
DSM-V. Oh shi-
The first drafts of the DSM-V are out.
I can't say that I wouldn't have expected some of what's in there. Still. WOW.
Let's start with something positive: I'm glad they're including Binge Eating as an eating disorder now. That's a good thing. I'm torn on Non-Suicidal Self Injury and wonder why they didn't also list this under paraphilias.
Other than that... Wow.
Let's begin with the fact that they've chosen to dispense with listing "distress" in their criteria as a measure for whether something is a disorder or a mere deviation from an abstract norm. I am not sure what is going to take its place - the way things are looking now, there is no telling where the boundary between clinical condition and deviation from the norm lies, really.
Zucker suggests that the likelihood of social ostracism is supposed to be the boundary for the norm here for his field, and my impression is that it will be really down to the estimation of the psych rather than the patient whether they have a condition that ought to be cured than the patient's distress with their situation.
Nearly all of the criteria regarding GI in children that aren't related directly to the child's experienced gender still don't make sense and are deeply rooted in sexism, though the change in terminology is a good one. WTF is "typical masculine/feminine clothing" for children? What's wrong with cross-gender roles during fantasy play? WTF are "toys, games, or activities typical of the other gender", and what's wrong with rejecting games considered "appropriate" for your own gender?
Also, the shift in focus when it comes to the basis of this diagnosis from Gender Incongruence in adults does not make any sense to me - if behaviour appropriate to a person's gender is irrelevant in adults, why enforce it in children to this degree?
Zucker's paper... where to start. I am not an expert and I'm probably missing many things that are noteworthy, but there is still enough that is really anoying. He fails gender 101 ("if there was a social reason for girls to want to be boys, the same reason would apply to boys wanting to be girls"), it's creepy how he has as test subjects of one study comprised 500 boys who were referred to his clinic and only 79 girls - which to me seems to speak volumes of the inherent sexism of the entire enterprise and the femmephobia it engenders - his insistence that GID is a condition that ought to be cured by changing the individuals gender expression because that will cause their problems to disappear because they won't be socially ostracised anymore... there is so much that's troublesome in that paper, but his insistence that if you fix yourself, your situation will be better because your peers will react more positively to you is probably one of the least sensible I have ever heard. Would he maintain that that's applicable to other condition that cause children to be ostracised by their peers, I wonder?
Gender policing is creepy and superfluous, and it doesn't get better if people start even earlier with this nonsense. I want more freedom to experiment, especially for boys, not less. Most of my childhood friends presented with at least for of these criteria, in girl's cases five. I want back what I had when I was younger. More androgynous clothes for children, more toys that were coded as androgynous rather than marketed towards a specific gender, more room for experimenting. When I was small, nearly all of the male friends I had in kindergarten played more with their dolls than I did - my best friend, a boy called Sebastian, had a dolly that he used to take along everywhere and that was usually integrated into our games, usually in the role of his baby. Most of the girls I was friends dressed in androgynous clothes that would be perceived as "boy clothes" today because they're not sexualised, they played with androgynous and toys coded as "for boys" today, many had more friends who were boys than friends who were girls, and we all wore trousers with tears on the knees. I haven't seen any of that during my internship in kindergarten, and it's a fucking shame.
Edit: another thing I'm wondering here is what the benefit of having those extra criteria at all. I can't imagine that there many people who say that they don't feel their assigned gender is correct for shits and giggles, so surely, that ought to be enough for the medical gatekeepers...?
I guess I ought to shut up about this. I'm a cis ex-psych minor and really not informed enough to join the discussion of these issues.
So. Paraphilias.
The paraphilia-related changes in many areas actually seemed to make things worse rather than improve them. They apparently want to make a distinction between paraphilias and paraphilaic disorders - one being merely ascertained for study purposes, the other being diagnosed.
Not sure what the benefits of ascertaining something in a medical context are, especially in a Diagnosis Manual for Disorders, but fine, if they must. Still, the change in the wording for this is failtastic: for masochism, for example, according to the revising people, the difference between "real, not simulated" harm and ... well, harm, simulated or not, is pointless enough to just drop it altogether. Which means that a lot more people now ought to go see a therapist, because there is no difference between sexual games and reality any more, if I'm reading that correctly.
Also, we have "autogynephilia" (and the continuing absence of autoandrophilia as well as notes to whether ciswomen experience autogynephilia, which they do) rear its ugly head again under "transvestic fetishism". As far as I can see from Blanchard's paper there is no reason for the inclusion of this "condition" at all, really, apart from Blanchard's ownfucking creepy obsession with studies on the sexual fantasies of trans women.
Also, asexual people need to get their heads checked, and so do people who don't enjoy being penetrated, or those people who just like their vanilla sex too much.
Who else needs chocolate cookies?
EDIT: and I'm still trying to get my head around the necessity to list the symptoms of healthy paraphilias in a diagnosis manual for disorders under the title of the disorder it's supposed to diagnose, and I'm still drawing a blank.
Can anyone help me out? I must be missing something here and I hate that.
I can't say that I wouldn't have expected some of what's in there. Still. WOW.
Let's start with something positive: I'm glad they're including Binge Eating as an eating disorder now. That's a good thing. I'm torn on Non-Suicidal Self Injury and wonder why they didn't also list this under paraphilias.
Other than that... Wow.
Let's begin with the fact that they've chosen to dispense with listing "distress" in their criteria as a measure for whether something is a disorder or a mere deviation from an abstract norm. I am not sure what is going to take its place - the way things are looking now, there is no telling where the boundary between clinical condition and deviation from the norm lies, really.
Zucker suggests that the likelihood of social ostracism is supposed to be the boundary for the norm here for his field, and my impression is that it will be really down to the estimation of the psych rather than the patient whether they have a condition that ought to be cured than the patient's distress with their situation.
Nearly all of the criteria regarding GI in children that aren't related directly to the child's experienced gender still don't make sense and are deeply rooted in sexism, though the change in terminology is a good one. WTF is "typical masculine/feminine clothing" for children? What's wrong with cross-gender roles during fantasy play? WTF are "toys, games, or activities typical of the other gender", and what's wrong with rejecting games considered "appropriate" for your own gender?
Also, the shift in focus when it comes to the basis of this diagnosis from Gender Incongruence in adults does not make any sense to me - if behaviour appropriate to a person's gender is irrelevant in adults, why enforce it in children to this degree?
Zucker's paper... where to start. I am not an expert and I'm probably missing many things that are noteworthy, but there is still enough that is really anoying. He fails gender 101 ("if there was a social reason for girls to want to be boys, the same reason would apply to boys wanting to be girls"), it's creepy how he has as test subjects of one study comprised 500 boys who were referred to his clinic and only 79 girls - which to me seems to speak volumes of the inherent sexism of the entire enterprise and the femmephobia it engenders - his insistence that GID is a condition that ought to be cured by changing the individuals gender expression because that will cause their problems to disappear because they won't be socially ostracised anymore... there is so much that's troublesome in that paper, but his insistence that if you fix yourself, your situation will be better because your peers will react more positively to you is probably one of the least sensible I have ever heard. Would he maintain that that's applicable to other condition that cause children to be ostracised by their peers, I wonder?
Gender policing is creepy and superfluous, and it doesn't get better if people start even earlier with this nonsense. I want more freedom to experiment, especially for boys, not less. Most of my childhood friends presented with at least for of these criteria, in girl's cases five. I want back what I had when I was younger. More androgynous clothes for children, more toys that were coded as androgynous rather than marketed towards a specific gender, more room for experimenting. When I was small, nearly all of the male friends I had in kindergarten played more with their dolls than I did - my best friend, a boy called Sebastian, had a dolly that he used to take along everywhere and that was usually integrated into our games, usually in the role of his baby. Most of the girls I was friends dressed in androgynous clothes that would be perceived as "boy clothes" today because they're not sexualised, they played with androgynous and toys coded as "for boys" today, many had more friends who were boys than friends who were girls, and we all wore trousers with tears on the knees. I haven't seen any of that during my internship in kindergarten, and it's a fucking shame.
Edit: another thing I'm wondering here is what the benefit of having those extra criteria at all. I can't imagine that there many people who say that they don't feel their assigned gender is correct for shits and giggles, so surely, that ought to be enough for the medical gatekeepers...?
I guess I ought to shut up about this. I'm a cis ex-psych minor and really not informed enough to join the discussion of these issues.
So. Paraphilias.
The paraphilia-related changes in many areas actually seemed to make things worse rather than improve them. They apparently want to make a distinction between paraphilias and paraphilaic disorders - one being merely ascertained for study purposes, the other being diagnosed.
Not sure what the benefits of ascertaining something in a medical context are, especially in a Diagnosis Manual for Disorders, but fine, if they must. Still, the change in the wording for this is failtastic: for masochism, for example, according to the revising people, the difference between "real, not simulated" harm and ... well, harm, simulated or not, is pointless enough to just drop it altogether. Which means that a lot more people now ought to go see a therapist, because there is no difference between sexual games and reality any more, if I'm reading that correctly.
Also, we have "autogynephilia" (and the continuing absence of autoandrophilia as well as notes to whether ciswomen experience autogynephilia, which they do) rear its ugly head again under "transvestic fetishism". As far as I can see from Blanchard's paper there is no reason for the inclusion of this "condition" at all, really, apart from Blanchard's own
Also, asexual people need to get their heads checked, and so do people who don't enjoy being penetrated, or those people who just like their vanilla sex too much.
Who else needs chocolate cookies?
EDIT: and I'm still trying to get my head around the necessity to list the symptoms of healthy paraphilias in a diagnosis manual for disorders under the title of the disorder it's supposed to diagnose, and I'm still drawing a blank.
Can anyone help me out? I must be missing something here and I hate that.