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This dissertation addresses how the philosophy, subculture, and sexuality of aestheticism interact with the form of the nineteenth-century novel. One primary result of this exploration is a nuanced delineation of the aesthetic novel in its formal characteristics, its content, and most notably, in the sexually charged silences that both this form and content reveal--silences made audible to invested aesthetic readers through coded doubleness. Through thus defining the aesthetic novel and seeking to articulate the unspoken sexual transgressions that are, as is argued, requisite therein, this project sheds new light both on the partially submerged sexuality of aestheticism as a movement, and on why novels account for so small a portion of the aesthetic movement's output--topics first raised in part by Linda Dowling, Dennis Denisoff, and Talia Schaffer. By engaging Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Vernon Lee's Miss Brown (1884), Walter Pater's Marius the Epicurean (1885), Robert Hichens' The Green Carnation (1894), John Meade Falkner's The Lost Stradivarius (1895), and Aubrey Beardsley's Venus and Tannhäuser (1895), this dissertation demonstrates that, whether politically engaged as affirmation or using sexuality as a way to communicate rejection of middle-class morality and its own fascination with the unusual, aestheticism defines itself by its inclusion of unusual sexual situations. This argument is in part guided by and grapples with theoretical writings by Victorian sources including Walter Pater, Matthew Arnold, and Walter Hamilton and contemporary sources including Alistair Fowler, Nancy Armstrong, and D. A. Miller. Central to the dissertation are the suggestive silences in aesthetic novels that function not merely as the unsaid, but appear at points that beg explanation or exploration, indicating the presence of the forbidden with the frisson between interest and absence. Such moments form a pattern of mysterious sexual omissions in the novels of aestheticism, titillating audiences with their implied perversity, but never explicitly exploring it on account of legal, economic, and social censorship. Finally, this project shows that the unspeakable gaps in legal above-ground literature can easily be articulated within the already illegal world of pornography, which this dissertation accesses through the aesthetic and pornographic Teleny (1893). / English

While most researchers agree that there is nothing inherently pathological about a sexual minority orientation (Savin-Willimas, 2005), sexual minority youth often face additional mental health challenges. Among the specific challenges experienced by sexual minority youth are increased rates of depression (D'Augelli, 2002; Galiher, Rostosky, & Hughes, 2004; Russell & Joyner, 2001), suicidal ideation (Balsam, Beauchaine, Mickey, & Rothblum, 2005; Russell & Joyner, 2001), substance abuse (Garofalo, Wolf, Kessel, Palfrey, & DuRant, 1998), and victimization (D'Augelli, Pilkington, & Hershberger, 2002; Elze, 2003; Russell, Franz, & Driscoll, 2001). Although research is beginning to address protective factors, we do not yet have a complete understanding of specific protective factors, particularly within the school, that promote resiliency within this group. The current study utilized a correlational design to evaluate the experiences of 377 sexual minority youth and examine the link between social support and specific mental health indicators (depression, suicidal ideation, substance use, and victimization). The youth in this study were drawn from community drop-in centers for sexual minority youth. Participants completed questionnaires and participated in a face-to-face interview to provide information regarding depression, suicidal ideation, substance use, victimization. Additionally, participants provided information regarding their feelings of being supported by their friends, whether or not their school had a support/discussion group for sexual minority youth, and if so, whether they attended the group. No significant relationships were found between the social support factors (social support from friends, presence of support group in school) and decreased substance use or suicidal ideation. Contrary to research indicating positive outcomes for students who attend schools with a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA; GLSEN, 2011), youth in the current study whose school had a support group reported increased depression when compared to youth whose school did not have a support group. However, a significant relationship was found between increased perceived social support from friends and decreased depression scores. These findings suggest the need for advocacy within schools to create supportive environments that are accessible to all sexual minority youth and that provide the opportunity to increase social networks and access to supportive peers. / School Psychology

Fifteen feet tall and clad in a three-piece suit, a giant image of Ellen DeGeneres keeps watch over a major highway that skirts Philadelphia. She smiles off in the distance, looking past lines of commuting cars, seated with her knees wide and one arm casually resting on her leg. Advertising her 3 PM talk show, this image is part of a complicated past of lesbians embodying masculinity (Kennedy and Davis 1993; Faderman 1991). At the same time this image is clearly part of this specific historical moment in which gender is increasingly recognized as a malleable project of the body (Butler 1993; Halberstam 1998). This dissertation works to understand the ways that bodies become gendered bodies and conversely to understand the sense-making activities that individuals use to explain their bodies and bodywork. Because lesbian women already sit outside of traditional feminine norms, their femininity is already excised from their bodies. As such, the ways that lesbian women experience gender can be one path of inquiry to the ways that gender and other identities get mapped onto bodies. While academic scholarship has been increasingly addressing issues of sexual identity at a macro level, with particular attention paid to the same-sex marriage debates, there is a lack of consideration of the ways that individual gay bodies, identities, and embodied experiences are affected by the recent social and political attention to "gay issues." This billboard of America's most beloved lesbian is also symbolic of the ever-increasing visibility of the gay body. In this climate of unprecedented gay visibility and social action relying on that visibility, how are individuals assigning meaning to their own bodies and identities? Whose bodies and what identities are able to reap the benefits of this new climate of visibility, and which are still excluded? Drawing from 45 open-ended interviews with lesbians of color and white lesbians, my dissertation examines the ways that non-straight women enact, imagine, re-imagine, and narrate their experiences of gender. I have found two distinct rhetorical strategies used to talk about gendered performances of the body: essentialism and play. Whether women are describing their embodiment of femininity or masculinity, both, or neither, they overwhelmingly draw from one of these two narratives to make sense of their experience. However, I will argue that the choice of narrative is not a neutral or made in the absence of power relations. Instead, my research suggests that women are making these choices within larger webs of racialized political discourses that make available or constrain corporeal possibilities. This becomes most clear when examining the racial differences in the adoption of these narratives. While white lesbians comfortably used both rhetorical strategies, none of the women of color I interviewed invoked narratives that described their gender work as "play." Mainstream LGBT activism has been based on the civil rights model of single-axis politics that relies on subsuming other identities for the dominant strategies and goals (Cohen 1999). This single focus has become crystallized in the past two years as same-sex marriage has become virtually the only issue that gay activism has addressed. Queer politics in theory was a great alternative to these sexual identity politics. For folks experiencing marginality from multiple axes, this shift seemed promising. Unfortunately, queer theory and activism has not been the liberating force it promised to be for many queers of color and non-middle class queers (Cohen 1999; Ferguson 2003). As a result, the libratory promise of identity deconstruction and destabilization that postmodernism has promised appears to be a liberation reserved for white bodies. / Sociology

This research builds upon recent scholarship on pathways into social movement activism and the role of altruism and self-interest in activists' motivations for political action. The social movement literature has often focused across movements, looking at opponents on different sides of a social movement cause. Training its lens within-movement, this study sought to discover factors that first led gay and lesbian movement constituents to become activists. It also sought to determine their cohesion around, and their motivation for, their present activism. Using a qualitative methodology, I interviewed a convenience sample of 66 lesbian and gay activists at different levels of involvement (leaders and rank-and-file) across a range of social movement organizations (both working-for and not-working-for marriage). I also monitored news reports on changes in laws affecting gays and lesbians, the public communications of a range of LGBT organizations, and engaged in participant observation in a variety of social movement sites. Distinct patterns emerged with activists who did not work-for-marriage (general activists) being more likely than marriage activists to have grown up in politically-active homes or to have had early exposure to active social movements. Leaders (both marriage and general) were more likely than rank-and-file activists to locate their activism in a disposition that resists injustice. And general activists were more likely to situate their activism in a concern for the welfare of others (altruism), while marriage activists were more likely to locate their present activism in their desire to legally protect their partners and/or co-parented children (self-interest). / Sociology

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / Dana M. Britton / Feminists and anti-violence activists are increasingly concerned about street harassment. Several scholars, journalists and activists have documented street harassment during the last two centuries, and the recent development of organizations such as Hollaback! and Stop Street Harassment, as well increased attention from mainstream and feminist press, suggests street harassment is a serious social problem worthy of empirical investigation. In this dissertation, I focus on street harassment, fear of violence, and processes of doing gender. I take an intersectional approach to understand the relationships between gender, race, and sexuality, street harassment, fear, and social control. Furthermore, I investigate how accountability to being recognizably female is linked to street harassment and fear of crime for lesbians and other queer women. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with thirty white and women of color lesbians and bisexuals, I explore street harassment experiences, perceptions of fear and risk, and strategies for staying safe from the perspectives of queer women in rural, suburban, and urban locations in the Midwest. I discuss several key findings. First, there are distinct links between “doing gender” and the types of harassment these women experience, as well as links between “doing gender “and the types of assault they fear. Second, race matters - institutional violence shapes the fears and safety strategies of the queer women of color in my sample, and white privilege affects women’s willingness to consider self-defense in response to their fears. Finally, responses to fear and street harassment are shaped by the incite/invite dilemma. The incite/invite dilemma describes the predicament women face during street harassment encounters when they try to avoid responses that might incite escalated violence while also avoiding responses that might be viewed as an invitation for more aggressive harassment. This study extends research on accountability and doing gender, street harassment, fear of rape, and the gender differential in fear of crime. There are several practical implications of these findings. Chief among them is the need for activists and scholars to be attentive to the ways in which racism and racial inequality shape street harassment for women of color. In addition, feminists who work to end street harassment should broaden their focus to include a host of other pressing issues that influence the severity of and risks connected to street harassment for members of queer communities and communities of color. There are also theoretical implications for the theory of doing gender. Knowledge about accountability to sex category remains incomplete. Findings suggest the need to further investigate processes of accountability to sex category, with particular attention to diverse arrangements of orientations to sex category, presumptions about sex category, race, and queer gender identities.

vii, 124 p. / Despite the rise in participation and economic importance of online games as a media phenomenon, ever-growing virtual worlds that seemingly exist as "third places" for social interaction and relationship formation, there is little research on the experiences of gamers with harassment, discrimination, and hate speech. Though changes in the industry serve as evidence of shifting attitudes about female, GLBTQ, and non-white gamers, harassment and use of hate speech based on sex and sexual orientation continue to flourish unchecked in online games. This study explores the prevalence of homophobia and sexism in online games as expressed through "griefing" behavior used to police competitive spaces traditionally dominated by white, heterosexual men. This thesis employs qualitative research methods to illuminate the persisting homophobia, sexism, and racism as experienced by gamers in online console and PC games. / Committee in charge: Carol Stabile, Chair; Pat Curtin, Member; Gabriella Martinez, Member

Results of the three studies on the speech production of female-to-male transgender individuals (transmen) present phonetic evidence that speech produces the transmen by what I termed triple decoupling. Transmen successfully decouple gender from biological sex. The results of the longitudinal studies exemplified that speakers born and raised female do not necessarily need to have a female voicing source or filter function. Both qualitative changes can he achieved (to different degree) by bringing exogenous testosterone into the system that virilizes both source and filter over time. Moreover, the cross-sectional study showed that articulatory gestures can be modified to move the acoustic targets towards a gendered target one is striving to present. The acoustic manifestations of transmen with different partner attraction offers the next type of decoupling, that between sexual orientation and gender identity. The results of the cross-sectional study imply that female-born individuals attracted to men do not necessarily have to identify as women. They can opt out of this self-identification by selectively adopting features associated with the gay cismale speaking style. This is suggested by the fact that sexual orientation was found to have a significant effect on the durational and spectral quality of fricatives /s/ and /s/, formant values and sentential pitch range. Finally, the longitudinal studies provide evidence for the third type of decoupling, which comes in the form of gender breaking free from physiology. The recurring "reverse J-pattern" of both the transitioning source and filter, as well as the mean fundamental frequency raising above the pitch floor illustrate the fact that transmen do not feel obliged to sound as masculine (as low-pitched and "low-formanted") as testosterone enables them to. This final type of decoupling also serves to demonstrate that many transmen decidedly do not opt in to the binary system of sex / gender even though they are physiologically able to do so. Although LGB speaking styles have been investigated before, this dissertation is the first to discuss a number of acoustic descriptors specifically in transmen's speech and place them into the context of hormone treatment, sexual orientation and disclosure status.

The purpose of this study was to examine group perpetrated antigay violence. Specifically, the effects of MGRS, peer dynamics, and increases in negative affect on antigay aggression were examined. The differential utility of aggression toward gay and heterosexual targets in relieving a state of negative affect (e.g., anger, fear) was also evaluated. Participants completed questionnaires that included a measure of MGRS, and then were assigned to one of three group conditions(individual, stranger, and friend). Participants then viewed a video depicting male-male intimacy and competed in the TAP against either a fictitious gay or heterosexual opponent. Results showed a main effect for condition, such that higher levels of aggression were observed in the group, relative to the individual, conditions. Analyses also revealed a significant positive relation between MGRS and aggression among participants competing with a stranger against a heterosexual opponent. Neither condition nor opponent differentially predicted changes in negative affect.

The purpose of this study was to examine group perpetrated antigay violence. Specifically, the effects of MGRS, peer dynamics, and increases in negative affect on antigay aggression were examined. The differential utility of aggression toward gay and heterosexual targets in relieving a state of negative affect (e.g., anger, fear) was also evaluated. Participants completed questionnaires that included a measure of MGRS, and then were assigned to one of three group conditions(individual, stranger, and friend). Participants then viewed a video depicting male-male intimacy and competed in the TAP against either a fictitious gay or heterosexual opponent. Results showed a main effect for condition, such that higher levels of aggression were observed in the group, relative to the individual, conditions. Analyses also revealed a significant positive relation between MGRS and aggression among participants competing with a stranger against a heterosexual opponent. Neither condition nor opponent differentially predicted changes in negative affect.