The study explored relationships among discrimination experiences, mental health (i.e., anxiety symptoms, depression symptoms), risky behaviors (i.e., suicidal ideation, illicit substance use), religiosity, and social support in LGBT adults residing in Latin America. First, multiple regression analyses were conducted to identify patterns of connections among discrimination, mental health, suicidal ideation, and illicit substance use in sexual and gender minority adults from Latin American. Harassment/Rejection discrimination, but neither Work/School nor Other discrimination predicted suicidal ideation. None of the three discrimination subscales predicted illicit substance use. Work/School discrimination predicted mental health problems (Anxiety and Depression subscales of HSCL-25 combined), while Harassment/Rejection and Other discrimination did not. Depression predicted suicidal ideation, but failed to predict illicit substance use, and anxiety symptoms alone neither uniquely predicted suicidal ideation nor illicit substance use. Subsequently, separate mediational models were conducted to examine whether depression mediated relationships between Work/School discrimination and suicidal ideation, as well as Harassment/Rejection discrimination and suicidal ideation. Depression was a significant mediator of both of these relationships. To assess whether the relationships among discrimination, depression symptoms, and suicidal ideation varied as a function of religiosity and social support, the two mediation models were expanded to six moderated mediations. Depression symptoms mediated the effects of Work/School and Harassment/Rejection discrimination on suicidal ideation when participants had low to moderate levels of social support, but not high social support. Depression symptoms also mediated the effects of Work/School discrimination on suicidal ideation when participants had low to moderate levels of both Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Religiosity, but not when participants had high levels. Finally, Depression symptoms mediated the effect of Harassment/Rejection discrimination on suicidal ideation when participants had low to moderate levels of Intrapersonal Religiosity, but not when participants had high levels; depression symptoms mediated the effect of Harassment/Rejection discrimination on suicidal ideation at all levels of Interpersonal Religiosity. Limitations to the current study included a homogenous sample with respect to country of residence, education level, and socioeconomic status, with participants primarily residing in Mexico, having high levels of education, and being primarily middle class. These drawbacks limit generalizability of study findings to sociodemographically and demographically diverse samples of LGBT adults in Latin America. Nevertheless, results from this study indicate that high, but not low or moderate levels of social support and religiosity seem to buffer LGBT adults in Latin America against discrimination, specifically by weakening links among discrimination, depression symptoms, and suicidal ideation. Clinical intervention research with LGBT adults in Latin America should focus on increasing social support networks for this population and on helping LGBT adults reconcile conflicts between religious identities and sexual or gender minority identities, as religiosity may serve as a protective factor against mental health problems generally, and suicidal ideation specifically.

This thesis explores the current divide in the LGBTI or queer social movement industry in Santiago de Chile. Based on field interviews with Chilean activists in June 2013, it argues that the deployment and maintenance of hegemonic masculinity is ultimately at the root of the fissure. The introduction provides a brief history of the movement in Chile since the 1970's, as well as short introductions to each of the six social movement organizations in the study. Chapter 1 problematizes the recent rapid lexical change in which the term diversidad has come to mean `gay,' as well as it impact on social movement framing tactics, providing evidence of a nascent diversidad frame that has been coopted by hegemonically masculine actors. Chapter 2 explores the politics surrounding the passage of Chile's Ley Antidiscriminación and the murder of Daniel Zamudio, arguing that certain social movement actors deployed hegemonic masculinity to seize and maintain control of both the media frenzy and the passage of the law. Finally, Chapter 3 analyzes the ongoing fight for same-sex partnership recognition in Chile by problematizing the fight for the proposed Acuerdo de Vida en Pareja as well as marriage equality, arguing that these issues represent the interests of hegemonically masculine voices within the movement above all others. / acase@tulane.edu

Research suggests the collaborative role school counselors can have with administrators to bolster school reform and facilitate a safe and positive learning environment for all K-12 students (College Board, 2009a, 2009b) is vital. Unfortunately, research that explores the roles and efforts of school counselors and administrators in their collaborative work for and with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students is scare. Yet, according to Goodrich, Harper, Luke, and Singh (2013), LGBT students “have long struggled in schools with little support” (p. 319). To address this gap, the purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the experiences of school counselors and administrators in their work to support a safe and supportive school climate for LGBT students. The following research questions informed and guided this study: a) What are the lived experiences of school counselors and administrators who make concerted efforts to improve the educational environment for LGBT students? b) How do school counselors and administrators make meaning with their relationships in their work with LGBT students? The methods used to recruit participants for this study were modeled after College Board’s (2009b) study with seven exemplary school counselor-principal teams. In College Board’s (2009b) study, researchers identified school counselors and principals who received recognition for demonstrating exemplary contribution in their respective professional organizations. These exemplary professionals were than paired with their school counselor/administrator counterpart for joint interviews (College Board, 2009b). By paralleling the best practice protocol established by the College Board (2009b), this study consisted of three rounds of interviews with four school counselor-administrator teams. Participants were selected from national and/or state level LGBT educational organizations, where a school counselor and/or administrator were awarded/recognized for creating a safe and inclusive school environment for LGBT youth. Additional participants included school counselors and administrators identified as the school counselor or administrator counterpart to the awarded. The researcher completed an inductive approach to data analysis, utilizing both open coding and horizontalization to reduce the data. Thematic categories emerged from the data and are presented and discussed as they relate to the overarching research questions. The between-case themes include: Learning firsthand, leading by example, intentional partnering, moving beyond turf wars, and pushing the system. Recommendations for school counselors, administrators, and school counselor-administrator teams are provided. Directions for future research are also discussed. Keywords: School counselors, administrators, interdisciplinary collaboration, LGBT youth

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This dissertation analyzes personal and institutional narratives that shape the Canadian phenomenon of anti-LGBT violence as hate crime and locate queers within and without the discursive figure of the responsible, legitimate and undeserving victim of hate crime. These socio-legal narratives were taken from interviews with LGBT community activists involved in anti-violence projects, mainstream and gay print news media reportage of two notable homicides, Parliamentary debates of the enhanced sentencing provision that sought to include ‘sexual orientation’ to the list of biased motivating factors, Senate witness testimony on the amendment to Canada’s hate propaganda statutes which sought to include ‘sexual orientation’ to the list of protected groups, interviews with police officers who had direct experience with anti-hate crime initiatives, and judicial reasons for sentence. Utilizing an interdisciplinary analysis and drawing on hate crime scholarship and victimology, this dissertation asks: how is legitimate and, consequently, illegitimate LGBT hate crime victimization being represented and constituted through Canadian socio-legal narratives? In revealing how socio-legal actors and institutions have positioned LGBT individuals discursively within or without legitimate victimhood, that is, within and without the status of innocent victim deserving of social empathy and socio-legal institutional response, my dissertation illustrates how the spectre of illegitimate victimization is repeatedly invoked in socio-legal narratives of anti-LGBT hate crime. My analysis of these narratives about queer victimization and hate crime suggests that the figure of the responsible, legitimate and undeserving victim of hate crime remains an elusive and unstable identity for the queer victim of hate crime. Insofar as hate crime scholars have argued that the mobilization of hate crime activism has produced a victim whose hate crime status ensures its legitimacy, I contribute to this scholarship by arguing that this status is particularly challenging for the queer victim of hate-motivated violence. I demonstrate that the resiliency of the figure of classic victimology’s self-endangering and risky ‘homosexual’ and the sustained ideological resistence to LGBT individuals as full citizens, despite their notable legal gains, positions LGBT individuals, particularly gay men, ambiguously, situating them conceptually both without and within legitimate victimhood.

This dissertation analyzes personal and institutional narratives that shape the Canadian phenomenon of anti-LGBT violence as hate crime and locate queers within and without the discursive figure of the responsible, legitimate and undeserving victim of hate crime. These socio-legal narratives were taken from interviews with LGBT community activists involved in anti-violence projects, mainstream and gay print news media reportage of two notable homicides, Parliamentary debates of the enhanced sentencing provision that sought to include ‘sexual orientation’ to the list of biased motivating factors, Senate witness testimony on the amendment to Canada’s hate propaganda statutes which sought to include ‘sexual orientation’ to the list of protected groups, interviews with police officers who had direct experience with anti-hate crime initiatives, and judicial reasons for sentence. Utilizing an interdisciplinary analysis and drawing on hate crime scholarship and victimology, this dissertation asks: how is legitimate and, consequently, illegitimate LGBT hate crime victimization being represented and constituted through Canadian socio-legal narratives? In revealing how socio-legal actors and institutions have positioned LGBT individuals discursively within or without legitimate victimhood, that is, within and without the status of innocent victim deserving of social empathy and socio-legal institutional response, my dissertation illustrates how the spectre of illegitimate victimization is repeatedly invoked in socio-legal narratives of anti-LGBT hate crime. My analysis of these narratives about queer victimization and hate crime suggests that the figure of the responsible, legitimate and undeserving victim of hate crime remains an elusive and unstable identity for the queer victim of hate crime. Insofar as hate crime scholars have argued that the mobilization of hate crime activism has produced a victim whose hate crime status ensures its legitimacy, I contribute to this scholarship by arguing that this status is particularly challenging for the queer victim of hate-motivated violence. I demonstrate that the resiliency of the figure of classic victimology’s self-endangering and risky ‘homosexual’ and the sustained ideological resistence to LGBT individuals as full citizens, despite their notable legal gains, positions LGBT individuals, particularly gay men, ambiguously, situating them conceptually both without and within legitimate victimhood.

Sexual minority women have been repeatedly overlooked in violence against women research. As a result, we know little about the experiences and needs of non-heterosexual or gender non-conforming survivors. Given the paucity of information available on this topic, this study was exploratory in nature and used a phenomenological approach. Open-ended, unstructured interviews focused on the lived experience of surviving sexual violence and the impact that this experience has had on the survivors’ same-sex sexuality. While a number of reoccurring themes generated from this project are well represented within the broad and well-developed canon of sexual violence research, participants also introduced features unique to LBQ and same-sex attracted women. Results from this project are intended to begin a long overdue dialogue about the needs of this understudied community of survivors.

Why are men seeking other men online? And how does the Internet influence these men and their sexuality? These are the two underlying questions driving this thesis. To answer these general questions, I conducted a qualitative study, which used in-depth individual interviews with 15 men who have sex with other men who self-identified as gay, queer, or homosexual. Through employing a theoretical framework that is inspired in queer theory, I uncovered three main topics in these men’s lives that are intimately shaped by their use of the Internet: friendship, racial and bodily desire, and HIV. First, I show the creative ways gay men are using the Internet, and specifically a sexualized space, in order to build relations with other gay men, despite the larger obstacles a heteronormative society puts in these men’s way to forge these friendships. In using their gay identity to try to establish relationalities with other gay identified men, the informants in this study challenge the impersonable traits associated with modernity, while seeking to build new alliances that could potentially radically disrupt heteronormative society. Secondly, I highlight how the social exclusionary practices toward people of color and non-normal bodies on Adam4Adam.com reifies whiteness and masculinity, which in turn, reifies heteronormativity. Here, I unmask how the structure of Adam4Adam.com, especially its filtering system, normalizes these discriminatory practices in users’ lives. Thirdly, I examine the role and meaning of HIV and sexual health in the lives of my informants. I incorporate the term “doing sexual responsibility” to show how my gay informants manage their anxiety-ridden lives when navigating their sexuality and sexual health. I also show how the gay men in this study engage in online foreplay as a pleasurable way to manage this anxiety and how trust and hegemonic masculinity are unintended consequences of this danger discourse on sexuality. As these men’s narratives and this thesis illustrate, society is still structured through heteronormative standards, but the Internet provides a new space for gay men to navigate their marginalized status in society. / text

It has long been a tool of the LGBTQ rights movement to loudly proclaim and own one’s sexual orientation label. However, there is a new generation of young sexual minorities who feel a label is no longer necessary. Are these no-labelers headed in the right direction? Or are they hurting the fight for LGBTQ equality? / text

This thesis investigates the interconnections of feminism and nationalism in the context of Palestine, and is based on a Minor Field Study of interviews with Palestinian women working for women’s rights. The study investigates their views and opinions when it comes to issues related to sexual proprietariness; the view that men own women and their reproductive abilities (Taylor & Jasinski, 2011:249f), and demography in relation to the Palestinian national struggle against the Israeli occupation. The women interviewed in this study argue for the importance of struggling for women’s and Palestinian rights in parallel, partly because the Israeli occupation is said to hinder the work for women’s rights in different ways. The ideology of the Palestinian women’s rights activists interviewed in this study can be said to be an example of nationalist feminism (McClintock, 1997:109) since they are trying to combine feminism and nationalism. By basing their rhetoric on the concept freedom from oppression combining feminism and nationalism is made possible, especially within national liberation movements. The thesis concludes with a discussion about why it might not be nationalism per se that is negatively correlated with women’s rights, but rather conservatism, and it argues that finding a way to theoretically connect individual and collective rights is of great importance in order to manage the struggles.