This thesis is concerned with lesbian identity and community, with a specific focus on lesbians' own experiences, their accounts of the decision to identify as lesbian to themselves and possibly to other people, and their 'explanations'of their lesbianism. Studies of lesbians by feminist social scientists since the 1970s have provided a major corrective to the earlier medically-orientated literature which pathologised lesbianism. Challenging the demonisation of lesbians, they presented lesbianism as a politicised choice or as one of a range of equally valid sexual identities, and proposed typologies based on women's own accounts of their lives and experiences. However, as these studies were mostly based on a small number of informants,drawn from homogeneous social groups in terms of age, social class and education, their utility as generally applicable models or frameworks for understanding lesbians'experiences was compromised. Informed by feminist theory and methodology, this study seeks to test the validity or limitations of these earlier typologies, Focus groups were conducted with five groups of women in order to establish what lesbians themselves considered to be the key aspects of their identity. These topics were further explored in interviews with 65 self-identified lesbians from a wide range of backgrounds in terms of age, education, occupation and location,to examine the similarities and differences in the life-stories of women who wish to engage in relationships with other women, or who are doing so or have done so. Lesbians' accounts of their decisions about their 'sexual' identity and their own explanations of lesbianism demonstrate how both heterosexual hegemony and (ironically) also lesbian subcultural'norms' may restrict their choices in various aspects of their lives. The intention of this study was not only to provide an academic review of the accuracy and utility of earlier studies of lesbians' lives, but also to give lesbian women a voice, as a political act. It found that lesbians' accounts of their lives can indeed be classified into various categories on the basis of women's differing explanations of their lesbianism, as earlier studies had proposed. However, these studies were overly rigid and simplistic, doing scant justice to both the complexity of lesbians' experiences and their own explanations of their identity.

No description available.

Thesis advisor: Mary Jo Iozzio / Thesis advisor: M. Shawn Copeland / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

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This thesis explores the links between handbag dance music and gay male culture. Handbag (colloquial British slang for ‘uplifting,’ ‘girly’ remixes of Top 40 songs and similar club material) is frequently derided within club culture for being predictable, formulaic, and ‘commercial.’ However, the same music is hugely popular within gay male clubs. Significantly, handbag tends to retain clear song structures, as opposed to the more open-ended instrumental ‘tracks’ which are the norm in electronic dance music. Why would a marginalised group adopt such a low-status music as its own? Why does handbag have such low status in the first place? This thesis argues that the field of ‘electronic dance music’ is rife with distinctions between ‘credible’ dance music and ‘commercial trash,’ and that these distinctions are frequently used to downplay song-based genres. The pleasures of handbag can be better understood if we pay attention to the ways that ‘songs’ (rather than instrumental ‘tracks’) have always played an important role in club music. Love in the First Degree questions an emerging orthodoxy in sociology and popular music studies: that issues of identity can only be approached ethnographically. By interrogating the music itself, the thesis explores the ways in which musical conventions can be deployed to arouse desire on the dance floor—and the reasons that these musical strategies are particularly useful in gay male clubs. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

An individual’s identity is thought to accommodate and reflect his or her changing drives, abilities, beliefs, roles and obligations in an ever-changing environment, and a social or group identity is perceived as a contextually-bound aspect of this. When identity is stigmatised, expressions of identity are constrained by stigma management mechanisms, including group narratives. This study analyses the identity narratives of 64 lesbians as told to another lesbian, in particular referential, structural, interactional and functional aspects as well as a set of quantitative measures. While these lesbians experienced common life events, their narratives comprised a reflection of developmental tasks in one or more of 5 aspects of lesbian identity: lesbian sexual identity, transition to lesbian identity, stigma management, lesbian relationships and lesbian community involvement. The narratives were constrained by group interpretations: common “Lesbian Scripts’ and ‘Thematic Lines’ were identified which were correlated with identity factors. The inclusion of particular scripts and thematic lines in a lesbian’s narrative was associated with her level of identification as a lesbian, her level of commitment to her identity, her attitude to stigma and/or lesbianism, her age, and the number of years she has spent identifying as lesbian. The study concludes that the function of lesbian narrative includes demonstration of group membership, location within the group, demonstration of worthiness and morality, identity repair, and identity affirmation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio State University, 1984. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 71-73). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

The expressive writing (EW) paradigm developed by Pennebaker (1985) has been found to provide health benefits in populations with medical and psychological conditions. Several theories have been proposed to explain the effectiveness of EW such as: the inhibition theory, increased social connections theory, the cognitive adaptation theory, and the exposure/emotional processing theory. Some studies have suggested that the effects of EW on health outcomes are mediated by varying degrees of depth processing (DP). The present study examines differences in emotional expression (EE) and DP in self-identified gay (GM) and straight men (SM), and assesses changes in levels of depression and PTSD symptoms from pre- to post-intervention. It was hypothesized that GM would display higher levels of EE, and consequently DP, in their written essays. This hypothesis was based on the notion that GM are behaviorally and emotionally more similar to women, who typically display higher levels of EE. Lower levels of depression and PTSD symptoms at follow-ups sessions were expected because theories to explain the effectiveness of EW address several common life experiences of GM. Results showed that GM expressed significantly more negative emotion words and were significantly more involved in the writing process than SM. However, when education was controlled for, the findings were no longer significant. The two groups did not differ from each other in their slope of change in levels of depression and PTSD symptoms from pre- to post-intervention, although the SM group displayed a significant within-group reduction in PTSD symptoms. It appears that EW may actually be more beneficial for HIV-positive SM than GM in alleviating PTSD symptoms. Interpretations and implications for future research are also discussed.

Literature has consistently documented that religious involvement and identity have a positive, protective impact on health. Gay and lesbian persons, as members of a stigmatized group, are at particular risk for numerous physical and psychological difficulties and may benefit from competent care by clergy. The purpose of this dissertation is to report the results of a survey of 1,000 Protestant clergy in the United States designed to describe clergy’s training, knowledge, and experience regarding homosexuality and to examine the predictors of clergy’s attitudes toward issues of homosexuality. Evidence indicates that training and contact with homosexual persons can transmit knowledge to clergy, and that such knowledge is associated with more positive attitudes toward gays and lesbians. However, in this sample, males and respondents reporting more conservative religious beliefs scored lower on the knowledge scale than their more liberal counterparts. Additionally, respondents’ formal training about homosexuality overall appears to have been insufficient to meet their professional needs as more information was received through informal training and continuing education. Conservative respondents reported less personal and professional experience with homosexuals and issues of homosexuality. Similarly, conservative respondents, males, persons from the Midwest and South, persons who did not receive clinical pastoral education (CPE) training, and those with less personal experience with homosexual persons reported significantly more conservative attitudes. The one exception to these findings was with conservatives reporting significantly more professional experience providing pastoral care to a homosexual who wanted to become heterosexual. This finding is congruous with conservatives scoring incorrectly more often on knowledge items regarding the changeability/choice of homosexuality. While knowledge was a consistent and significant predictor of attitudes (less knowledge predicted more conservative attitudes/beliefs), religious beliefs provided a stronger contribution to regression models with conservative beliefs significantly predicting more negative attitudes.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Psychology, Committee on Human Development, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.