For decades, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) + students attending institutions of higher education have been marginalized and have experienced hostility and outright discrimination, causing the need for student support groups for this population on college campuses. Recent laws passed at a national level have brought a greater level of equality to this minority group; however, feelings of marginalization, homophobia, heterosexism, and heteronormative culture persist. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to ask how students participating in an LGBT + support group within a Central Florida public state college perceive their experiences in college. The researcher also asked students participating in an LGBT + support group within a Central Florida public state college what issues or challenges have most significantly impacted them. This qualitative study focused on an LGBT + student support group at a public state college in the Central Florida area. The researcher conducted ethnographic interviews with seven student participants and selected these students through a volunteer sample. A focus group with four of the seven participants was also conducted. Data were collected through recording of the interviews and focus group, observations and other documents. The researcher sought permission from the participants to record the interviews, ensured them access to the written and auditory transcript of their own specific interview, as well as guaranteed that the recordings would be destroyed after the conclusion of the dissertation and publication.

Individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, questioning, and other non-heterosexual orientations (LGBQ+) are significantly more likely to experience a sexual assault. To date, research on barriers to sexual assault disclosure (i.e., telling someone about a sexual assault) has been conducted almost exclusively on heterosexual women. Participants ages 18 to 30 participated in a cross-sectional, online study that assessed unwanted sexual experiences, disclosure of those experiences, perceptions of the police and perceptions of belonging to the LGBQ+ community. Findings demonstrated that survivors who identified as LGBQ+ took longer to initially disclose their sexual assault and had greater negative perceptions of police than survivors who identified as heterosexual. Also, among survivors who identified as LGBQ+, the degree of "outness" of sexual orientation was positively associated with sexual assault disclosure. However, perceptions of the police were not associated with disclosure of sexual assault to the police among people who identified as LGBQ+. Perceptions of belonging to the LGBQ+ community were also not associated with disclosure likelihood. The results of this study help to better understand how the sexual assault disclosure process differs by sexual orientation and suggest that providers who work with survivors who identify as LGBQ+ need to keep in mind the unique concerns faced by survivors who identify as LGBQ+ who may be considering disclosing their trauma. These findings also call attention to the negative perceptions of police that continue to be held by people who identify as LGBQ+. Due to limited research on the topic of sexual assault and the LGBQ+ community, this study may encourage future researchers to examine additional barriers to sexual assault disclosure that may be unique for survivors who identify as LGBQ+ and how disclosure is received by both formal and informal support.

No / This ground-breaking book examines inequalities experienced by LGBT people and considers the role of social work in addressing them. The book is organised in three parts: the first provides a policy context in four countries, the second examines social work practice in tackling health inequalities, and part three considers research and pedagogic developments. The book’s distinctive approach includes international contributions, practice vignettes and key theoretical perspectives in health inequalities, including social determinants of health, minority stress, ecological approaches and human rights. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans health inequalities is relevant to social work educators, practitioners and students, alongside an interdisciplinary audience interested in LGBT health inequalities.

This thesis examines the evolution and adaptive function of female homosexuality. Biological, sociological, evolutionary, socioecological, and sociobiological theories are discussed. To assess the evolution of female homoerotic behavior, primate and human behavior are examined. Because the purpose of this thesis is to investigate the evolution of female same-sex relations, particular emphasis is placed on chimpanzees and bonobos, species in which these relations have been extensively documented. It is proposed that human females form homoerotic relationships to achieve independence from males and maintain alliances. If sufficient resources are present, aggregates of females can control their most significant resource-sex. Sex is utilized to recruit new females, to maintain alliances within the aggregate, and to distribute to males in exchange for strategic resources. This thesis concludes with several suggestions for future research.

São Paulo, Brazil is currently pursuing a project of creative urbanism. Though city rhetoric insists this project is rooted in tolerance of sexual diversity, I suggest that city policy effectively perpetuates normative conceptions of family and respectability. Using data gathered through a series of qualitative interviews with transgender and travesti individuals living in São Paulo, I argue that the straight time of São Paulo’s creative urbanism generates exclusionary temporalities and spatialities in the city that render travestis out of time and out of place. Furthermore, I argue that travestis use their capacity to enact shame through scandals to generate temporalities and spatialities of their own, ones not aligned with the reproductive, progressive futurity of straight time. In doing so, travestis participate in their own kind of creative urbanism and provide an affective challenge to the hetero- and homonormativity of São Paulo’s creative urban project. Building on recent scholarship in queer urbanism and affect, this thesis adds to critical efforts to understand how creative urbanism sexualizes space and time in contexts outside of EuroAmerica and how a queer theoretical approach contributes to critiques of progressive modernity.

This thesis paper gives a brief history of the vampire narrative and its role in representing the collective anxieties of an age as well as serving as a metaphor for oppressed peoples. It uses Bram Stoker’s Dracula and J. Sheridan le Fanu’s Carmilla as historical examples of how the vampire adapts to suit issues of the day such as reverse colonization and female sexuality, respectively. The latter part of this paper speculates on the future role of the vampire in literature and proposes that the vampire could be used to discuss transgender issues as well as challenge the gender binary. It addresses the suitability of the vampire narrative in particular for representing gender as a spectrum using the lenses of Foucault’s heterotopias, Kristeva’s abject, and Freud’s uncanny and pulls examples of early evidence of this trend from Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles.

Navigating the process of coming out led to feelings of isolation, depression, and a loss of self-worth that were compounded by a period filled with negative social media and mainstream messaging. This thesis explores how an understanding of the systems and processes of nature as well as physical exposure to nature offered a place of healing and an avenue for understanding my identity as a Gay man: from identity confusion all the way through to identity synthesis. Using Scholarly Personal Narrative Methodology, I will interweave poetry and counter narrative storytelling to illustrate the significance of nature during my identity development. Sexual orientation is scrutinized and vilified through social media platforms, advertisements, and daily life under the basis of cultural ideology and social construction. This disregards the larger contextual importance of other species that exhibit similar behaviors. I maintain that a connection with nature can provide individuals with a broader and more balanced perspective of sexual orientation--whilst navigating through the coming out process leading to a confluent sense of identity with reduced internalized conflict.

This work operates at the intersection of academics, art, and activism. Within queer studies there is a tension between assimilation and liberation, sometimes situated as between pragmatism and utopia. This work re-examines Frankfurt school Marxist views of utopia through a queer theoretical lens in order to employ the radical imagination and queer futurity to examine new ways of practicing liberation. Drawing from theorists like Judith Butler, Jose Esteban Munoz, and Gloria Anzaldua, this work uses art (film, writing, zine-making, and sound) as a way to envision and enact a better world situated in the present.

Experiencing a turbulence of source and subject in the variable inversions and supports of one source to another--the wreck of the U-352, Carpeaux’s Ugolino and his Sons, a movie poster for J.A. Bayona’s The Impossible, and Cassiopeia mythology--these four sources as sons, in sacrifice to and surviving by way of “daddy” documentation, are here refigured to reenact and critique the patriarchally recreational, monumental, cinematic, and mythological infrastructures supporting the sources of this work and thereby serving to critique the newer patriarchies to which these sources and their subjectifications here seek to cross consumptively dead end. Following three public installations, and in service to a final publication, this text hereby functions as the myth of this work.

Master of Science / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Stephanie Rolley / More than 5% of the 65 and older population utilize nursing homes, congregate care, assisted living, and board-and-care homes, with about 4.2% of these individuals occupying nursing homes at any given time (Administration on Aging, 2008). The rate of nursing home use generally increases with age and studies have shown that by the year 2030, the number of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) adults over the age of 65 is expected to be nearly 3 million (SAGE, 2010). With this overall increase in potential resident populations, those aging adults who identify as LGBT are faced with additional unique challenges commonly not encountered by their heterosexual counterparts. The majority of LGBT elders fear they will experience discrimination in long-term care organizations, with more than half maintaining that staff or even other residents will abuse or neglect them (Knochel, et al., 2010). Unrevised long-term care organizational rules combined with prejudice and hostile treatment from staff members can create unwelcoming environments for LGBT elders who are generally unable to advocate for themselves. Challenges that aging LGBT adults face in long-term care settings will be reviewed and discussed in this report. In addition, this report will provide educational guidelines to assist long-term care organizations in developing an educational model targeted at addressing LGBT elders’ concerns. When staff within a long-term care community lack proper training on and understanding of LGBT concerns, it can negatively affect the quality of care provided to these members. As such, the educational guidelines will encourage an educational model incorporating cultural competency training among the long-term care staff and organizational leadership, and will utilize community development principles to ensure inclusiveness and increase social capital.