Acceptance by a parental figure is one of the most important protective factors for LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer) youth and young adults (e.g., Ryan, 2009, 2010). Lack of parental acceptance may lead to a disruption in parent-child relationships and may increase risk for maladaptive behaviors and poorer psychosocial outcomes in LGBTQ youth (e.g., Bouris et al., 2010). Researchers have called for more inclusive samples and methods to better understand the experiences of families from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds (e.g., Heatherington & Lavner 2008). Specific to Latinas/os, cultural factors and theoretically informed interventions that facilitate parental acceptance need systematic investigation (e.g., Ryan, 2009, 2010). The purpose of this study was threefold: (a) examine the cultural strengths and challenges that influence Cuban-American and Puerto Rican parental figures’ journey toward accepting their LGBTQ child; (b) explore how these parental figures reach acceptance; and (c) assess for the impact of an expressive writing (EW) exercise on the affect of these parental figures. Interpersonal acceptance-rejection theory (IPART) and family stress theory were used as a frame for the analysis of the process of acceptance toward one’s LGBTQ child in this sample of Cuban-American and Puerto Rican parental figures. Thirty participants completed a writing intervention after the initial prescreening. The writing intervention asked participants to write a letter about their journey toward accepting their LGBTQ child, including the aspects of their heritage, cultural beliefs, and values that facilitated this process. Thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2013) guided the research design and analysis. The following themes helped parental figures accept their child: (a) family (support, maintaining family unity); (b) interactions with LGBTQ people; (c) resisting and embracing Latina/o gender norms (caballerismo, marianismo); (d) cultural dissonance; and (e) immigration and the American dream. In addition, the following themes described the process of how these parental figures navigated acceptance toward their child: (a) noticing and attempting to change gender atypical behaviors and/or presentation; (b) initial reactions (negative reactions, immediate acceptance); (c) adjusting to the child’s LGBTQ identity; (d) seeking out resources about LGBTQ identity; (e) increasing awareness of LGBTQ oppression; (f) reframing religious and/or spiritual values and beliefs and working through religious and/or spiritual conflict; (g) coping and reframing machismo; (h) balancing family dynamics; (i) highlighting the positive identities in one’s child; (j) learning lessons from one’s child; and (k) benefitting from acceptance. Pre and post affect ratings using the writing intervention illustrated that Cuban-American parental figures were significantly happier and less anxious after writing their acceptance narrative. Although not statistically significant, Puerto Rican parental figures reported increased happiness and decreased anxiousness after writing their acceptance narrative. Implications for psychological practice with Latina/o parents who recently learned about their child’s LGBTQ identity will be discussed.

<p>This dissertation examines the political response of gay and lesbian organizations to the HIV/AIDS crisis through the lens of disability. When the National Gay Task Force (NGTF) formed in the 1970s, their early political efforts confronted the stigma and exclusion associated with the American Psychiatric Association’s disabling label. In the 1980s, gay and lesbian organizations faced a deadly epidemic—AIDS. The high cost of medical care left people with AIDS destitute. NGTF pressed the Social Security Administration to modify their disability criteria to recognize AIDS and ARC as qualifying disabilities. Fear and homophobia left people with AIDS vulnerable to employment, housing and medical discrimination as well as social ostracism. Gay Men’s Health Crisis and Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund countered AIDS discrimination in New York through collaborative efforts with city and state agencies. Disability rights codes and laws offered people with AIDS some protection against discrimination. The Task Force, the Gay Rights National Lobby and the Disability Rights Defense & Education Fund joined the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights in 1982. While the Conference did not engage in the campaign for gay and lesbian rights in the 1980s, their extended legislative crusade for the Civil Rights Restoration Act would bring AIDS onto the battlefield. This study finds these various antecedents came into play during the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to the extent that gay and lesbian organizations could describe the ADA as an “AIDS bill” in terms of both their political participation and the text protecting people with contagious diseases who were not a threat.<br></p>

Society’s current focus on the transgender community is complicated, and further heightened by the lack of protections for the transgender community. Current studies only assess the hardships transgender individuals face and the impact they have on their well-being. This study sought to explore what effects the lack of resources and support have on the transgender community in the Inland Empire. This study utilized a qualitative approach incorporating semi-structured interviews of participants. The author also sought to explore how the transgender community in this area are able to mitigate any negative experiences. The qualitative data provided rich grounding in understanding the process by which these two factors are linked. Such that, the lack of resources or access to available resources contributed to distress and delayed transgender identification and transitioning. The contribution of the study is important because of the stigmas associated with being a member of the transgender community. The author contends that this research contributes to providing a better understanding of why these stigmas exist and how social services can alleviate and provide equitable and competent resources for the transgender community in the Inland Empire. The major themes derived from the data were separated by access to resources, finding community, in-group discrimination, lack of competence, risking vulnerability, sense of self, social support, and visibility. Sub-themes included: asserting gender, dysphoria, machismo, and socio-economic climate.

A transgender person develops an identity over time and must overcome several obstacles such as stigma, transphobia, discrimination, and sexism, which can be even more difficult for transgender people who choose to come out and transition in a rural area. Grounded in queer theory, social constructivism, and rural identity development theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore the lived experiences of 4 transgender persons who came out and transitioned in a rural area, and who accessed online communities as a source of information during their identity development. A 4-stage process was used to collect data, including a semistructured interview, artifact analysis, participant observations, and an art project created by the participants. The data were loaded into the NVivo qualitative data analysis software and analyzed using coding, memoing, within-case, and cross-case analysis from the case histories of the participants. The principle findings of the study were that these transgender people living in a rural area used the Internet for both gathering information and connecting to the larger transgender community. Many other significant details provided insight into the lives of these transgender people, such as shopping for clothes, spending time in public, dealing with personal safety, and managing family and friend relationships during their transitions. These findings may inform mental health professionals about the potential identity developmental trajectory of transgender persons living in a rural area; the findings also give a voice to a population that is often hidden in rural areas.

Recent queer scholarship challenges the academy’s longstanding urban and adult oriented trajectory, pointing to the way such studies ignore rural and heartland regions of the country as well as the experiences of youth. In this thesis, I craft a limited ethnographic methodological approach together with a textual analysis of The Oprah Winfrey Show to deliver portraits of gay men living in various rural or heartland areas who use their television sets to encounter and identify with LGBTQ people across the nation. The overarching aim of this project is to explore the ways in which religion, rurality, and Oprah coalesce in the process of identity creation to form rural gay men’s conceptual selves and how they are then informed by that identity formation. I will focus my textual analyses through the frames of six of Oprah Winfrey’s “ultimate viewers” to elucidate how they receive and interact with her star text, how they use television sets in the public rooms of their homes to create boundary public spheres, and how they are impacted by the show’s various uses of the coming out paradigm. In so doing, this thesis seeks to contribute to the scholarship of rural queer studies, television studies, and Oprah studies. / text

This thesis describes the use of feminist performance pedagogy in working toward a Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) practice that engages youth in social justice. Drawing on feminist and pedagogical theories, this document explores the processes of writing, rehearsing, and touring a new social justice play for youth called 'And Then Came Tango.' The qualitative study outlined in this MFA thesis uses feminist research methodologies to analyze the engagement of the playwright, the artistic team working on the production of 'And Then Came Tango,' and the second and third grade audiences that participated in the touring production and post-show workshops. The author weaves personal story throughout the document in order to create new meaning around the research experiences as well as to illustrate the personal dimensions of engaging in the struggle around LGBTQ injustice. The discussion invites future artists, educators, and activists to imagine how theory, aesthetics, artists, and communities collaborate in order to work toward socially just and interactive TYA. / text

Karaktärskapande är en viktig del i RPG/MMORPG-spel då det går ut på att skapa en egen avatar att rollspela som i spelets öppna värld. Det finns dock begränsningar i karaktärskapandet, då alla alternativ är hårt knutna till könsroller och tillåter inte spelaren att göra könsöverskridande val. I arbetet dekonstrueras könskonstruktionen i karaktärskapandet och ställer frågan om hur spelaren kommer att interagera med ett karaktärskapande som inte är låst vid kön och vad för kombinationer som kommer att skapas. En artefakt i form av klippdocklek skapades, där det var möjligt att kombinera olika kroppsdelar, kläder samt tilldela könsidentitet hur spelaren ville. Artefakten speltestades på sex informanter i en fältobservation och triangulerades med en semistrukturerad intervju. Slutresultatet var att både icke-heteronormativa och heteronormativa avatarer skapades beroende på informanternas motivation och relation mellan sin egen könsidentitet och avatarens.

Denna studie söker finna svar på vem, i fråga om vilka könsgrupper, som givits plats på tidningen QX omslag, i första hand gällande textelementet, i andra hand gällande det visuella. Studien skapas i spåren av genusforskaren Yvonne Hirdmans teorier om att den mansdominerande roll som generellt finns i samhället och ger kvinnor en lägre social status inte är någonting som ligger oss i naturen utan skapas och återskapas, samt Embretsén och Palmbergs studie ”En enfärgad regnbåge” som presenterar en underrepresentation av kvinnor i tidningen QX. Materialet består av 36 omslag av tidningen QX hämtade under tre år mellan 2015 och 2017. Detta görs med grunden i den systemisk-funktionell grammatiken, diskursanalys samt en multimodal analys för att få del av både det ideationella betydelserna i texterna samt hur budskap presenteras visuellt. Resultatet visar på en jämn frekvens av könsfördelningen men en ojämlik konstruktion där QX vänder på stereotyper av kvinnligt och manligt, vilket grundar sig i en styrande manlig blick. / This study seeks to find answers to whom, in terms of which gender group, is given space on the QX magazine cover. Primarily with focus on text elements, secondarily the visual aspects. The study is created in the traces of gender researcher Yvonne Hirdman's theories concerning the male dominance that is generally found in society, and which gives women a lower social status. Hirdman points out that this inequality is being created and recreated, as well as Embretsén and Palmberg's study "A Monochrome Rainbow" presents an underrepresentation of women in QX magazine. The research material consists of 36 covers from the QX magazine, published between 2015 and 2017. The study is based on systemic-functional linguistics, discourse analysis and a multimodal analysis to cover both the ideational meanings of the texts as well as how messages are presented visually. The result shows an even frequency of gender distribution, but an uneven design in which QX turns on stereotypes of female and male, which is based on a ruling male point of view.

Bakgrund: Forskning visar att homo- bi- och/eller transsexuella ungdomar inte alltid får relevant sexualundervisning som är kopplad till deras sexuella läggning. Studier visar även på att homo- bi- och/eller transsexuella ungdomar har ett riskbeteende när det kommer till sex, att dessa ungdomar hämtar information från pornografin. Homo- bi- och/eller transsexuella ungdomar är i större utsträckning påverkade av alkohol eller droger när de har sexuellt umgänge. Dessa ungdomar upplever även utanförskap och vågar inte tala om sin sexualitet, vilket kan resultera i att de utsätter sig för risk att skada sig själva. Syfte: Att undersöka det stöd som homo- bi- och/eller transsexuella ungdomar får gällande sexuell hälsa från skola och skolsköterskor. Metod: Studien hade en kvantitativ ansats, den genomfördes som en enkätstudie som skapades via Google Form och kunde nås via en länk. Enkäten hade totalt 17 stycken frågor, 15 stycken med fasta svarsalternativ och 2 stycken öppna. Resultat: Ungdomar var mest negativt inställda till skolsköterskans bemötande kring sexuell hälsa och sexuella frågor vilket berodde på skolsköterskans heteronormativa synsätt. Många av homo- och bisexuella ungdomar ansåg att skolan var en viktig del i att kunna erbjuda rätt information om sexuell hälsa. Vissa ungdomar sökte information på egen hand och visste inte ens att de kunde samtala med skolsköterskan om sexuella hälsa. Slutsats: Skolsköterskan behöver ha mer kunskap för att kunna bemöta ungdomar som identifierar sig som homo- bi- och/eller transsexuella och inte ha ett heteronormativ inställning samt anpassa miljön inne på mottagning som bidrar till öppen klimat för homo- bi- och/eller transsexuella ungdomar. / Background: Research shows that LGBT youth do not always receive relevant sexual education linked to their sexual orientation. Studies also show that LGBT youth have a risk behavior when it comes to sex, that they get their information from alternative sites that also includes pornography. LGBT youth are more likely to be influenced by alcohol or drugs when they have sexual intercourse. LGBT youth experience exclusion and dare not to talk about their sexuality, which may result in the risk of harming themselves. Aim: The purpose is to investigate the support that gay and transgender youth receive regarding sexual health from school and school nurses. Method: The study had a quantitative approach, it was conducted by a survey that was created through Google Forms and could be accessed through a link. The survey had a total of 17 questions, 15 questions with fixed options and 2 were open.   Results: Young people were most disadvantaged to the school nurse's concerns about sexual health and sexual issues, which was due to the heteronormative approach by the school nurse. Many of the LGBT youths considered that school was an important part of being able to offer proper information on sexual health. Some young people searched for information on their own and did not even know that they could talk to the school nurse about sexual health.   Conclusion: The nurse needs more knowledge to be able to approach adolescence who identify as LGBT and not have a heteronormative attitude as well as adapt the environment at the reception that promotes open climate for LGBT youths.

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