Background: An increasing number of couples turn to treatment with oocyte or sperm donation, but there is limited knowledge regarding the consequences of these treatments in a program using identifiable donors. Aim: The overall aim was to study information-sharing among heterosexual couples following identity-release gamete donation. A further aim was to study donors’ attitudes towards future contact with donation offspring. Methods: The four studies were part of The Swedish Study on Gamete Donation; a prospective, longitudinal study of donors and recipients of donated oocytes and sperm. Study I and II had a quantitative approach with recipients of donated oocytes or sperm participating through questionnaires at start of treatment, two months after the first treatment and when their child was 1-4 years old. Study III was a qualitative interview study with 30 parents following sperm donation with school-aged children. Study IV had a quantitative approach with oocyte and sperm donors participating through questionnaires 5-8 years post-donation. Results: Study I revealed that the recipients of donated gametes in general were open about their treatment with the people around them and supported disclosure to offspring regarding his/her genetic origin. Study II reported that most of those who became parents following donor conception intended to share information about the donation with their offspring and some had already started the information-sharing process with their young child. Study III described information sharing with the offspring to be a process of several levels, revealing various amounts of information about the way of conception. The parent was seen to be the owner of the process and moving the process forward with different aspects and the reactions of the offspring serving as driving or impeding forces of the process. Study IV reported that a majority of the gamete donors seem to have a positive or neutral attitude towards a future meeting with a donation offspring. Conclusion: The present thesis suggests that there is a trend towards more openness among recipients of donated gametes in Sweden. It also points out that most recipients and donors within the Swedish gamete donation programme acknowledge the child’s right to his/her genetic origin and have the best interest of the child in mind.

The sexual identity development process in gay men was the focus of this study. It was theorized that, as a result of negative experiences with the dominant heterosexual culture, gay men might feel mistrustful of heterosexuals in various settings. A new theoretical construct, that of heterosexual mistrust, was identified and explored. A new scale, the Heterosexual Mistrust Inventory (HMI), was created to measure this construct. Gay male subjects' stage of homosexual identity formation (HIF) was also determined. Results indicated that heterosexual mistrust existed to a significantly stronger degree among gay men than among heterosexual men. Heterosexual mistrust was strongly related to stage of HIF. The various settings in which heterosexual mistrust was found to occur were discussed. Implications for current knowledge about HIF and about cultural belief systems unique to gay men were identified and explored.

Three-hundred eight students from the Introductory Psychology participant pool at Ball State University took part in a preliminary investigation of heterosexuals' attitudes toward bisexuality. The study found that heterosexual men and women expressed more positive responses toward heterosexuals than toward lesbian, gay male, and bisexual individuals, but did not distinguish between homosexual and bisexual persons. Sex differences were found for acceptance of lesbians, gay men, and bisexual men and women but not for affective responses to these individuals. More specifically, male and female participants' affective responses to homosexual and bisexual target individuals were similar; however, on questions pertaining to acceptance, female participants rated all persons similarly whereas male participants rated heterosexual men more favorably than homosexual or bisexual men. It was also found that beliefs about bisexuality as a real orientation or as homosexual denial were in fact related to participants' responses to the bisexual target individual, whereas beliefs that bisexuality is a transitional or transitory orientation were not. / Department of Psychological Science

The present study examined the viability of a model of biased language use (e.g., Maass et al., 1989; Maass et al., 1996) as a measure of anti-lesbian prejudice among heterosexual women. As a matter of methodological and psychometric exploration, four alternative methods of scoring linguistic abstraction were employed.One hundred eighty-one female university undergraduates provided abstraction ratings for a series of seven fictitious news clippings, adapted from von Hippel et al. (1997), four of which depicted either heterosexual or lesbian women engaging in behaviors that were either socially favorable or unfavorable and lesbian stereotypic or counterstereotypic. Participants also completed a "Memory Test" devised for this study, a demographic questionnaire, and the ATL Subscale of the ATLG (Herek, 1988, 1994).The prediction that the linguistic expectancy bias (LEB; e.g., Maass, 1999) would be observed in the present intergroup context was not supported. The overall pattern of results suggested some stability across scoring methods. A number of implications of the findings are considered, with a focus on methodological concerns and applications to practice. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services

Detta är en kvalitativ studie om över- och underordning i heterosexuella pars vardag. Carin Holmbergs (1993) avhandling " Det kallas kärlek" är min största hjälp och det är från den jag hämtat större delen av de teorier jag använt. Holmbergs (1993) teorier om könsmakt är min utgångspunkt. Det var hennes avhandling som lade grunden och väckte mitt intresse för att göra en liknande studie. Jag gjorde fyra gruppintervjuer med en mindre observation. De slutsatser jag kan dra utifrån det empiriska materialet är att kvinnorna i regel är underordnade männen ifråga om att det är kvinnorna som tar på sig det största ansvaret för hemmet sysslor och befriar männen från att ta ansvar. Männen är de som valt bort vissa sysslor hemma och kan då göra de saker de själva tycker är roligast. Jag kan inte se något tydlig över- och underordning i mina informanters sätt att agera under intervjuerna.

This dissertation seeks to incrementally explain the impact of individual, interpersonal, and environmental levels of risk upon HIV/STI incidents among heterosexual African American serodiscordant couples residing in four metropolitan cities. Using archival data from a cluster-RCT (Project EBAN) and governmental surveillance reports, analytic methods that can model heterogeneous pathways within and across each level of risk were used. Findings from this dissertation revealed unique patterns and pathways via which African American females in serodiscordant relationships contracted HIV/STI.

Thesis (M. A. (Social Work)) -- University of Limpopo, 2021 / Intimate partner violence among heterosexual couples seem to be on the rise with men as victims of female perpetrated violence. Recent research on this phenomenon indicates that partner violence against men is a social and health problem that is hidden and unspoken of in most societies. The current study was aimed at exploring men’s non-disclosure of intimate partner violence at Ga-Masemola, Sekhukhune District in Limpopo Province. Qualitative research methodology and exploratory research design were applied to successfully explore men’s non-disclosure of IPV. The target population of this study was heterosexual male victims of ages 18 and above. Non-probability sampling of blended convenience sampling and snowball sampling were employed. Data was collected using a semi-structured interview guide with open-ended questions and was analysed through thematic analysis of qualitative data. The results of the study have revealed that male victims of partner violence hide their situations. Determinants of non-disclosure were found to include men’s own personal feelings of fear to disclose, masculinity factors, societal expectations and cultural norms, which negatively affect men’s decisions to disclose. Help-seeking behaviour of male victims remains a huge challenge for most male victims. Due to fear of ridicule, disbelief and false accusations, abused men seem to lack courage to seek help. The shocking outcome is that most victims appear to lack knowledge of services available for them. The study recommends that public education, advocacy and appropriate gender-sensitive intervention programmes be implemented to overcome the effects of violence and to prevent further victimisation.

The present study examined 100 gay and lesbian (LG) college students and 100 heterosexual students to determine whether group differences existed in frequency of and anxiety related to non-erotic cognitive distractions during sexual activity. Non-erotic cognitive distractions is a descriptive term to include both self-evaluative behaviors related to physical performance and body image concerns, as well as additional cognitive distractions (e.g., contracting an STI or emotional concerns) during sexual activity. Participants, matched on gender (96 males and 104 females), age, and ethnicity, completed questionnaires assessing frequency and associated anxiety related to non-erotic cognitive distractions during sexual activity, as well as measures of additional variables (e.g., religiosity and self-esteem). Results indicated that LG participants experience significantly more cognitive distractions and concomitant anxiety related to body image, physical performance, and contracting a disease or illness during sexual activity. With regard to gender differences, men reported more distractions related to contracting a disease or illness than women. An interaction effect was observed between sexual orientation and gender for body image-, disease-, and external/emotional-based distractions. It also was found that gay men, lesbians, and heterosexual women reported significantly more body image concerns than straight men. Implications of these findings are discussed

Geographies of sexualities started to develop within the Anglo-American academic context during the late 1980s. In the 1990s, propelled by the cultural turn, the swelling of post-structuralist and postmodern critiques, and a growing recognition of the limitations to scientific knowledge production and representation, geographers of sexualities introduced queer theory into human geography. Queer theory provided human geography with powerful tools for approaching not only straightforward spatialities of sexualities, but this new lens contributed to the development of human geographies as such. Currently, at least in the Anglo-Saxon geographical context, the field of geographies of sexualities is considered part of mainstream human geography. Therefore, the main goal of this thesis is to provide a few lines of reasoning for the development of geographies of sexualities in Czechia and Central Eastern Europe (CEE) and introduction of post-structuralist understandings, specifically queer theory. In contrast to other phenomena that may be locally exclusive or particular, human sexualities are everyplace, albeit quite variable and dependent on the context in which they "enter into language," become institutionalized, and are regulated. Geographers have been specifically insightful about the ways in which...