Objective To investigate symptoms of anxiety and depression in lesbian couples undergoing assisted reproductive treatment (ART), and to study the relationship of demographic data, pregnancy outcome and future reproductive plans with symptoms of anxiety and depression. Design Descriptive, a part of the prospective longitudinal ‘Swedish study on gamete donation’. Setting All university clinics in Sweden performing gamete donation. Population A consecutive sample of 214 lesbian couples requesting assisted reproduction, 165 of whom participated. Methods Participants individually completed three study-specific questionnaires and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS): time point 1 (T1), at commencement of ART; time point 2 (T2), approximately 2 months after treatment; and time point 3 (T3), 2–5 years after first treatment. Main outcome measures Anxiety and depression (HADS), pregnancy outcome and future reproductive plans. Results The vast majority of lesbian women undergoing assisted reproduction reported no symptoms of anxiety and depression at the three assessment points. A higher percentage of the treated women, compared with the partners, reported symptoms of anxiety at T2 (14% versus 5%, P = 0.011) and T3 (10% versus 4%, P = 0.018), as well as symptoms of depression at T2 (4% versus 0%, P = 0.03) and T3 (3% versus 0%, P = 0.035). The overall pregnancy outcome was high; almost three-quarters of lesbian couples gave birth 2–5 years after sperm donation treatments. Open-ended comments illustrated joy and satisfaction about family building. Conclusion Lesbian women in Sweden reported good psychological health before and after treatment with donated sperm. / <p>Funding Agencies|Merck Serono||Uppsala/Orebro Regional Research Council||Medical Research Council of Southeast Sweden||Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation||</p>

In this research, our participants were asked five questions: Do gay and lesbian people fit into Chinese society? Are Chinese university students open and tolerant on gay and lesbian issues? How do these students perceive their gay and lesbian peers? How do their beliefs affect their attitudes toward their gay and lesbian peers? Is their university a safe and welcoming place for gay and lesbian students? To answer these questions, a qualitative methodology was employed involving six one-on-one interviews and two focus group interviews. <p>The participants did not believe that gay and lesbian people fit into Chinese society; however, the students themselves are becoming more open and tolerant on gay and lesbian issues in recent years because of the influence of technological innovation, media, and Western culture. <p>The findings suggest a degree of acceptance of gays and lesbians though the participants simultaneously distanced themselves from their homosexual peers. They perceived the university to be a safe place for gay and lesbian students in the sense that nobody would hurt them, but they did not see the university as a welcoming place. <p>To better understand the students perspectives, the transcripts were analyzed within a Chinese cultural and social context. Offering a realistic picture of heterosexual students perspectives might encourage them to reduce discrimination against their gay and lesbian peers, and to create a better learning environment for both heterosexual and homosexual students.

This thesis investigates the methods used by one group of women to increase the social spaces available to Edmonton lesbians. Ultimately, this paper analyzes the contributions of social space to community identity. In this case, Edmonton's longest running lesbian organization "Womonspace" serves as a unique testament to the importance of social methods for strengthening a sense of community identity. In 1981, the founders of "Womonspace" set out to provide lesbians with a safe place in which to socialize and to foster a positive lesbian identity. <p> The impetus for a growing lesbian organization came in part from a shared sense of oppression from both straight feminist groups and sexist gay male organizations. The mandate of the group stressed safeguarding the privacy of its members. Womonspace organizers believed that overt political involvement discouraged closeted lesbians from joining the group. Thus, organizers did not adopt a political agenda. Not every member agreed with this policy. However, the goal of building a community and increasing social networks for lesbians called for a reasonable alternative to the more public face of activism. Ultimately, the efforts of Womonspace strengthened the visibility of Edmonton's once scattered and indiscernible lesbian population.<p> Dances provided the central social event followed by a number of other leisure activities. Word of mouth, along with a monthly newsletter, kept lesbians abreast of social happenings in and around Edmonton. Before long, the organization attracted women from both the city and from nearby rural areas. Thus, Womonspace expanded and transformed the cultural development of lesbian networks.<p> This study of the phenomenon of building a lesbian community argues that historians neglect the significance of social space upon gay and lesbian organizing. Much historical attentiveness towards the more outstanding issues and outcomes of political reform, activism, and the struggle for gay rights, exceeds the issue of building a viable, visible gay/lesbian community through the appropriation of social space. In addition, historical inquiry into gay history tends to examines gay community history from the male perspective. In Canada, lesbian history lags far behind gay male history. <p> The work of such predominant and influential Canadian historians as Gary Kinsman and Steven Maynard has substantially increased understanding of the politics of same-sex gender relations particularly gay male history. A thorough historical inquiry of lesbian culture in Canada is lacking, even more so in terms of Western Canada. By investigating Alberta's largest and most successful autonomous lesbian organization, this thesis will encourage other scholars to do similar studies.

Although scholars have been studying domestic violence for four decades now, it is only recently that domestic violence occurring in non-heterosexual relationships has received attention. The purpose of this study is to explore the interconnections between the experiences of survivors of lesbian intimate partner violence (IPV), the lesbian communities' beliefs regarding IPV, and available shelter services. The ultimate goal of this project is to describe how the experiences and practices of all three ultimately affect survivors of lesbian IPV. To accomplish this, members of the lesbian community were asked to complete an on-line survey, and qualitative interviews were conducted with both shelter employees and lesbian IPV survivors. While more than 50% of lesbians completing the online survey reported experiencing IPV in a lesbian relationship, most agreed that lesbian IPV was ignored in lesbian communities. Lesbians also agreed that survivors would not seek help from local DV shelters or police, but did believe there were appropriate services available in their area. DV shelters reported allowing lesbian survivors to access their heterosexually focused services, but offered no services specifically addressing the unique needs of lesbian survivors. Lesbian survivors reported feeling isolated, trapped and helpless due to the lack of acknowledgement and support in their communities and scarcity of available services. The findings of this study suggest that IPV is common in lesbian relationships. Despite this finding, denial in the lesbian community and the lack of appropriate shelter services continue the isolation and marginalization of lesbian survivors.

Continuity tends to characterize political attitudes with parents tending to transmit their opinions to their offspring. Given these orthodox conceptions, why have attitudes towards lesbians and gays liberalized in recent years? I show that attitudes involving lesbians and gays have shifted because of the spread of a collective lesbian and gay identity that began in the late 1960s and 1970s. In conjunction with experts adopting a more positive view of the group, the spread of this identity created a constituency that politicians could use in order to target appeals for votes in the countrys urban centers. In response, liberal Democrats who represented these areas shifted to the left on lesbian and gay issues. Interest groups based around lesbian and gay issues then developed in the late 1980s and provided resources to Democrats on a national level, as the Republican shifted rightward to appeal to the Religious Right. Using Survey data that asks respondents if they know gays or lesbians and their opinions on the innateness of homosexuality over two decades, I show that the polarization of the major parties on lesbian and gay rights during the 1992 presidential campaign and prior and the rise of lesbian and gay television characters in the mid-1990s explain why opinion liberalization occurred during the 1990s and not in the years prior. Period effects created by systematic changes in the media and filtered by partisanship dominate all other potential causes of the shift in public opinion. Furthermore, I show using an experimental design that individuals exposed to lesbian and gay individuals through the media liberalize their attitudes towards lesbians and gays. Finally, I demonstrate that attitudes toward lesbians and gays have had a profound effect on recent presidential elections. My dissertation shows that the images that stream over the airwaves in the form of news and fictional television can bridge the divide between groups and increase the level of tolerance in the mass public.

In this research, our participants were asked five questions: Do gay and lesbian people fit into Chinese society? Are Chinese university students open and tolerant on gay and lesbian issues? How do these students perceive their gay and lesbian peers? How do their beliefs affect their attitudes toward their gay and lesbian peers? Is their university a safe and welcoming place for gay and lesbian students? To answer these questions, a qualitative methodology was employed involving six one-on-one interviews and two focus group interviews. <p>The participants did not believe that gay and lesbian people fit into Chinese society; however, the students themselves are becoming more open and tolerant on gay and lesbian issues in recent years because of the influence of technological innovation, media, and Western culture. <p>The findings suggest a degree of acceptance of gays and lesbians though the participants simultaneously distanced themselves from their homosexual peers. They perceived the university to be a safe place for gay and lesbian students in the sense that nobody would hurt them, but they did not see the university as a welcoming place. <p>To better understand the students perspectives, the transcripts were analyzed within a Chinese cultural and social context. Offering a realistic picture of heterosexual students perspectives might encourage them to reduce discrimination against their gay and lesbian peers, and to create a better learning environment for both heterosexual and homosexual students.

This thesis investigates the methods used by one group of women to increase the social spaces available to Edmonton lesbians. Ultimately, this paper analyzes the contributions of social space to community identity. In this case, Edmonton's longest running lesbian organization "Womonspace" serves as a unique testament to the importance of social methods for strengthening a sense of community identity. In 1981, the founders of "Womonspace" set out to provide lesbians with a safe place in which to socialize and to foster a positive lesbian identity. <p> The impetus for a growing lesbian organization came in part from a shared sense of oppression from both straight feminist groups and sexist gay male organizations. The mandate of the group stressed safeguarding the privacy of its members. Womonspace organizers believed that overt political involvement discouraged closeted lesbians from joining the group. Thus, organizers did not adopt a political agenda. Not every member agreed with this policy. However, the goal of building a community and increasing social networks for lesbians called for a reasonable alternative to the more public face of activism. Ultimately, the efforts of Womonspace strengthened the visibility of Edmonton's once scattered and indiscernible lesbian population.<p> Dances provided the central social event followed by a number of other leisure activities. Word of mouth, along with a monthly newsletter, kept lesbians abreast of social happenings in and around Edmonton. Before long, the organization attracted women from both the city and from nearby rural areas. Thus, Womonspace expanded and transformed the cultural development of lesbian networks.<p> This study of the phenomenon of building a lesbian community argues that historians neglect the significance of social space upon gay and lesbian organizing. Much historical attentiveness towards the more outstanding issues and outcomes of political reform, activism, and the struggle for gay rights, exceeds the issue of building a viable, visible gay/lesbian community through the appropriation of social space. In addition, historical inquiry into gay history tends to examines gay community history from the male perspective. In Canada, lesbian history lags far behind gay male history. <p> The work of such predominant and influential Canadian historians as Gary Kinsman and Steven Maynard has substantially increased understanding of the politics of same-sex gender relations particularly gay male history. A thorough historical inquiry of lesbian culture in Canada is lacking, even more so in terms of Western Canada. By investigating Alberta's largest and most successful autonomous lesbian organization, this thesis will encourage other scholars to do similar studies.

This thesis utilizes a regression model and three different occupational status scores, namely, Duncan‘s SEI, Nam-Powers-Boyd Occupational Status Score and Prestige Score of Nakao and Treas, to examine the impact of sexual orientation. Previous studies have found that lesbian women have an advantageous wage effect, compared to their heterosexual counterparts irrespective of marital status. A special focus of comparing the occupational status of cohabiting lesbians with married women and cohabiting heterosexual women has not been studied in the past. Using 2006 ACS sample data from IPUMS-USA, the results of this analysis suggested that compared to married women, lesbians obtain a significant advantage in occupational status only with the Nam-Powers-Boyd metric. Compared to cohabiting heterosexual women, lesbians were shown to have an occupational status advantage with regard to each of the three occupational status metrics. In conclusion, using the most appropriate occupational status score such as the Nam-Powers-Boyd Score, lesbians have more occupational status points compared to their heterosexual peers and human capital theory provides a powerful explanation for the lesbians‘ advantageous occupational status.

The majority of research investigations into the meaning and implications of the lesbian label within the sport context have primarily focused on coaches, athletes, and physical education teachers. Generally overlooked, however, has been the area of college and university health and kinesiology academia (i.e., sport-related curricula). The purpose of this study was to extend this line of inquiry to this setting within the context of sport. By doing so, investigating the lesbian label, as well as seeking to identify its presence, impact, and potential consequences as they relate to health and kinesiology department members, may contribute to the understanding of why a lesbian stigma persists within the multifaceted context of sport. Further, an additional purpose of this inquiry was to identify whether the use of identity management strategies, and their potential negative consequences, were used in relation to the lesbian label. The lesbian label was investigated through the voices of health and kinesiology department academicians. Through their words it was communicated that not only was the lesbian label and an associated stigma present within their respective departments, but the meaning of lesbianism within sport-related curricula was somewhat reminiscent of the meaning in other sport contexts. Thus, to some extent, the lesbian stigma can be extrapolated from sport to sport-related curricula. While complex, the meaning of lesbianism was intertwined with gender norms, religious beliefs, politics, personal beliefs, interpersonal relationships, societal assumptions, perceptions of powerlessness, and a necessity for self-protection. This was predominantly the case related to a female faculty members’ possession of certain physical characteristics, her physical presentation and attire, relationship status, and proximity to departmental physical activity courses that are regarded as more masculine (e.g., weight training, racquetball, basketball, etc.), in particular. Finally, whether merely acknowledged as being present or advocating for change with regard to perceptions of inequality and injustice, cognitive and emotional resources were allocated to this issue in a variety of ways. Implications of this exploration and its findings are presented and further inquiry encouraged.

Drawing on newspaper, movement correspondence, and interview data, I examine the tactical selection and (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 was formed to create a safe space for sexual minorities at Texas A & M University (TAMU) and asked university officials to recognize the group officially after physical threats of violence became real. After long delays, when TAMU administrators declined GSS's request, GSS filed a lawsuit against TAMU with the goal of achieving formal recognition. In the first chapter, I offer a brief history of GSS and introduce my thesis structure. In the second chapter, I show how early access to legal aid bolstered GSS members' understanding of their rights and encouraged their use of legal tactics. A sense of legal entitlement also encouraged GSS to pursue legal tactics in the face of administrative antagonism. The hostile campus environment also motivated GSS to utilize legal tactics instead of engaging in more traditional forms of contention, such as protest, to pursue their goal of gaining official status on campus.