This report chronicles the development and production of the short film, Just Us Chickens, written, directed, and produced by Erin Randall. The film is based on several true stories told by a Diane Hill James, who grew up in Smithville, Texas during the 1950s. The script weaves together Ms. James’s experiences growing up near the famous Texas brothel, The Chicken Ranch, located in the neighboring town of La Grange. Diane and her friends would frequently spy on the brothel and once a stranger, new to town, mistook her family home as the brothel and her as a prostitute. The film, Just us Chickens, considers how these experiences could inform and influence the sexual identity of a young woman, and aims to clarify the contradictory expectations put upon female sexual development both then and now. / text

Dans ses ouvrages, Gender Trouble et Undoing Gender, Judith Butler soutient que le sexe est une norme politique destinée à promouvoir l'hétérosexualité. Elle réfute l'idée d'un genre social s'appuyant sur un sexe biologique et considère que les deux concepts sont des produits de la performativité des normes. Le cas des intersexués est particulièrement intéressant pour illustrer ces théories. Ces individus présentent en effet une anatomie qui remet en cause le dimorphisme sexuel et soulèvent le problème de la construction d'une identité sexuelle cohérente sur un corps androgyne. Les romans d'apprentissage, Le choeur des femmes de Martin Winckler et Middlesex de Jeffrey Eugenides décrivent le parcours de deux personnages intersexués et mettent en évidence l'action des normes décrites par Judith Butler. Ils révèlent notamment l'action performative du langage ainsi que la collusion entre savoir et pouvoir. Ils nous invitent à imaginer une société où la catégorisation sexuelle serait moins restrictive. In Gender Trouble and Undoing Gender, Judith Butler challenges notions of sex and gender and contests that gender is the social construct of a biological sex. She affirms that both of them are gendered concepts and she develops her theory of gender performativity. Intersexuality is particularly pertinent to illustrate these concepts. Intersex individuals cannot be distinctly identified as male or female and they face the problem of building a coherent gender identity on an ambiguous biological sex. The bildungsromans, Le choeur des femmes by Martin Winckler and Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides introduce intersex main characters who have to overcome many obstacles in their search for identity. They realize the impossibility of describing their condition or their feelings because of the performativity and the paucity of the language and discover that knowledge and power are indissociable. Their struggles call us to re-evaluate sexual identification. / Graduate

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This thesis explores how constructs of gender and sexual identity in both psychoanalytic and fictional writing between the wars affect the fonn and structure of a text. The keen interest Bowen, Lehmann and Townsend Warner show in mental processes and patterns of sexual development, allows us to read across psychoanalytic and fictional discourses and rigid genres. While the psychoanalytic texts utilise elements of the Bildungsroman, the fictional narrative often enacts the pathologies of the story in an erotics of fonn. The intersection of scientific and narrative discourses coincides with a modernist debate about the limitations of conventional modes of representation in Edwardian and realist texts. The shifts between earlier modernist gestures of moving away from realist modes and structures and a later return to a more conciliatory approach of utilising them for modernist agendas, can be interpreted as a specific anxiety of origins. Shifting between modernist and realist modes of writing, and between nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century concepts of sexuality and gender produces peculiarly hybrid texts which negotiate this anxiety in various fonns of ambivalence and in-between-ness. Through the examination of six novels by Rosamond Lehmann, Elizabeth Bowen and Sylvia Townsend Warner, the thesis examines this anxiety in the difficulties psychoanalytic and fictional texts have in talking about the maternal, placing them in the context of socio-cultural ambiguities about femininity and motherhood during the interwar period. The thesis opens with a discussion of the possibilities and limitations of crossing between post-structuralist, psychoanalytic and historicist readings of modernist texts and provides a brief biographical framework for the three women writers in so far as it relates to gender, sexuality and the maternal. The following six chapters are divided into two parts grouping the first novels against the mature work in order to trace changes in the ways of representing sexuality, gender and maternal ambivalences through form, plot and structure. The first part discusses Rosamond Lehmann's Dusty Answer (1927), Elizabeth Bowen's The Hotel (1927) and Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Will owes (1926), while the second part examines The Weather in the Streets (1936), The Death of the Heart (1938) and Summer Will Show (1936) retaining the order of authors. The conclusion summarises the findings, contemplates its implications for the discourse on modernism and broaches the divergencies of Bowen's, Lehmann's and Warner's fictions in the 1940s.

The research carried out looks at the interaction within and between four independent variables: Social Class, Organisation in which the subjects worked, Sex and Unconscious Sexual Identity of husbands and wives of stable families. These variables are related to Work, Spouses and Children. The 12 dependent variables are the dimensions which seem the most relevant to coding the individual's identity or subjective character. They are Affiliation, Aggression, Autonomy, Dominance, Identification, Nurturance, Responsibility, Security, Self-Confidence, Sharing and Succourance. Forty couples are divided into four groups: Male/female; Middle-class/Working-class; entrepreneurial/bureaucratic; masculine/feminine. Data collection includes a projective-semi-structured questionnaire, an unstructured test requiring subjects-to draw and a demographic questionnaire. The results reveal that husbands have significantly higher scores than wives on Achievement, Dominance, Responsibility and Security, and significantly lower scores oil Autonomy, Identification, Nurturance and Self-Confidence. Subjects in the Middle class make significantly more references than those in the working class to Achievement, Autonomy, Dominance, Identification, Self-Confidence and Sharing, and significantly less references to Affiliation, Aggression and Security. Entrepreneurs have significantly higher scores than bureaucrats on Achievement, Autonomy, Dominance, Responsibility and Self-Confidence and significantly lower scores on Affiliation, Security, Nurturance and Succourance. Subjects who come within the masculine range as measured by the Franck Test, make significantly more references than those who come within the feminine range to Aggression and Dominance, and significantly less references to Affiliation, Nurturance, Self-Confidence, Sharing and Succourance. There is a significant inter-action between Social Class and Organisation on Aggression, Autonomy, Dominance, Nurturance, Self-Confidence and Sharing. There is significant interaction between Sex and Unconscious Sexual Identity on Affiliation, Aggression, Autonomy, Identification and Self-Confidence. There is also a significant interaction between Sex and Social Class on Achievement, Aggression and Security.

This thesis is an ethnographic study of an area in Manchester known as the 'Gay Village'. It explores the history and changes in the meaning of this term for the people who live and work in the Village, as well as for those who visit it for leisure. The Village was originally created by gay activists who emphasised being gay as the basis for having a separate gay community. However, since being incorporated into Manchester City Council's culture-led regeneration strategy the area now attracts large numbers of heterosexual male and female users. For many heterosexual Village users being gay attaches as much to 'things' that they feel able to engage with in the making of themselves, as much as what it attaches to persons through the way they define their sexuality. Within the Village previous assumptions about the authenticity of the categories 'gay' and 'straight' have been subjected to much debate. The aim of the thesis is therefore to subject current understandings of contemporary gay and straight sexuality to critical analysis and to explore how ideas about sexual identity may be changing in Britain in the first decade of the 21St century.

As the majority of Americans identify with a religious affiliation, the religious context is an important backdrop upon which identity development occurs. For lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, and allied (LGBTQA) youths, the process of development may be complicated in a religious context due to denominational positions on same-sex sexuality. While recent researchers highlighted the importance of contextual influences on LGBTQA developmental processes, few studies have examined LGBTQA sexual and religious identity development. The goal of the current study was to gain a better understanding and appreciation of LGBTQA adolescent and young adult experiences of religious and sexual identity development. Eight adolescents (15-18 years) and 11 emerging adults (19-24 years) who identified as both LGBTQA and having been raised in an active Christian religious tradition participated in the study. The study included three phases: face-to-face individual interviews, journal writings, and focus groups. In each phase of the study, participants were asked to reflect on their experiences of sexual and religious identity development across childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood (if applicable). Findings from the current study supported three broad themes and several subthemes. Early in their development, participants described a behavioral religious participation and early awareness of their same-sex attractions. The young adult participants also shared a tendency to deny their attractions. During their middle phase of experiences, participants often self-labeled as LGBTQA. Religiously, participants shared they questioned their beliefs yet continued their religious participation. A proportion of the participants indicated experiencing guilt, conflict, and mental health difficulties, which many participants related to their emerging sexual orientation and religious involvement. The late experiences, which often coincided with sharing a same-sex attracted label with friends and/or family members, was marked by a religious disengagement, social consequences, self-acceptance, and personal values clarification. Using the participants’ own words these findings are presented, along with possible implications and suggestions for future research.

Recent researchers have highlighted the need to consider the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individual's experience in various social contexts. Only a few studies have examined LGBTQ adolescent and young adult religious experiences. In the current study, 106 LGBTQ adolescent and young adults (18-24 years) were surveyed to gain a better understanding of LGBTQ religious experience, identity integration and the relationship between LGBTQ religiosity and psychosocial outcomes. A multidimensional understanding of LGBTQ religious experiences is presented; participants exhibited a propensity to disidentify with religion and reported religious and sexual identity conflict. While participants did not report a high degree of religious and sexual identity integration, factors related to successful identity integration are presented. Finally, levels of reported depressive symptoms, self-esteem, and minority stress are discussed with suggestions for future research.

This project examines the experiences of 37 gay, lesbian, and bisexual employees of professional, collegiate, and club sport. Using intensive, non-directive interviews and Grounded Theory Methodology (GTM), I explore how employees negotiate the near-total sport institution, perceive the environment for sexual minorities in sport, manage their sexual identities, and identify potential allies at work. Participants informed their beliefs about the sport workplace by the totality of their direct and indirect experiences, their observation of others, and their accumulated experiences in sport as athletes and employees. While employees’ perceptions of the sport environment were slightly negative, their actual experiences were predominantly neutral or positive. Participants discussed their workplace experiences in terms of coming out, being out, and acting out. They identified levels of “how out” they were, even as their behaviors belied that designation. “Being out,” for these participants, involved relying on various motivations and strategies at work. One group of participants felt coming out was part of a larger moral imperative to create social change, and did so by emphasizing gay identity over sport or work identity. A second group felt it was professional or responsible to stay closeted at work, noting that personal lives and private lives should not intersect. A third group also highlighted their work and sport identities over their gay identity, without attaching any liability to their sexual identity. These employees, who were the youngest members of the sample, did not place significance on sexual identity as a salient feature of their overall identity. “Acting out” involved both active and passive strategies to emphasize or deemphasize sexual identity at work. This project suggests that the processes by which employees negotiate their workplace environments (and, particularly, sport as a workplace) are complex and nuanced. For non-heteronormative employees working in sport, their processes of coming out, acting out, and being out were mediated by many factors, including age, type of sport, workplace hierarchy and identity formation processes.