This cross-sectional study examined relationships among discrimination, mental health (i.e., depression and anxiety), preparation for aging (i.e., familiarity and planning), social support, death attitudes, and aging anxiety among TGNC adults (N = 154). Neither discrimination nor mental health predicted preparation for aging familiarity or planning. Discrimination did, however, predict both anxiety and depression, although only the non-affirmation subscale was a unique predictor of both. As discrimination and mental health were not a significant predictor of preparedness for aging in the previous regressions, the hypothesized mediation model and subsequent moderated mediation models were not conducted. Additional exploratory multiple regressions were run to identify patterns of connections among social support, death attitudes, aging anxiety (the proposed moderators) in relation to age preparation and planning. Social support predicted preparation for aging planning, but not familiarity. Death attitudes and aging anxiety predicted preparation for aging familiarity and planning. The current findings may inform mental health interventions for TGNC individuals around non-affirmation may positively influence mental health. Additionally, addressing aging concerns and increasing social support may promote age preparatory planning among TGNC individuals.

Gay males have higher than average rates of suicidal ideation, which has been attributed in part to the pressure to conform to societal religious norms. Using the theoretical frameworks of Durkheim and of Pescosolido and Georgianna, the purpose of this quantitative study was to explore the role of religiosity as a factor of suicidal ideation in gay males. In this study, 113 gay males completed an online survey regarding their level of religiosity as measured by the Religious Background and Behaviors Questionnaire, past suicidal ideation as measured by the Suicidal Ideation Measure, and certain predictor variables, including being "out" to family members, family being supportive, age, religious affiliation (current and during childhood), ethnicity, and population of town during childhood. Regression analyses found no direct statistical significance between level of religiosity and suicidal ideation. There was a predictive relationship, however, between level of family support, level of religiosity, and suicidal ideation. These findings support the Pescosolido and Georgianna theory that belongingness reduces suicidal ideation. The implications for positive social change include the need for mental health professionals to highlight the importance of positive support for gay males as a potential buffer to suicidal ideation.

In this thesis, I assert that the mikvah, a Jewish purification ritual, can be understood as a queer ritual in that it has the potential to destabilize the knowledges and structures that it has traditionally been understood to uphold. I draw on queer theory in order to establish Victor Turner’s liminality as a productive analytical tool and then utilize this new queer liminality to illuminate the mikvah’s latent potential for producing new meanings and modes of resistance for its participants.

Spanning the period from the early years of the Cold War to the early twenty-first century, Crossing Out argues that medical theories of gender variance which emerge in the middle of the twentieth century are bound by the Cold-War–era discursive limits within which they were articulated, and that the ideological content of those theories persists into late-century research and treatment protocols. I parallel these analyses with interrogations of literary representations of transgendered subjects. What emerges most powerfully from this analysis of literary works is their tendency to signify in excess of the medical foreclosures, even when they seem consistent with medical discourse. By reading these two discursive systems against each other, the dissertation demonstrates the ability of literary discourse to accommodate multifaceted subject positions which medical discourse is unable to articulate. Literature thus complicates the stories that medical culture tells, revealing complex and multivariate possibilities for transgendered identification absent from traditional medical accounts. In tracing these discursive intersections the dissertation draws on and extends Michel Foucault’s theory of subjugated knowledges and Judith Butler’s writings on the formation of gendered subjects. Chapter One establishes the Cold War context, and argues that there are significant continuities between 1950s theories of intersexuality and Cold War ideology. Chapter Two extends this analysis to take in theories of transsexualism that emerged in the same years, and analyzes the discursive excesses of a 1950s pulp novel representation of a transsexual. Chapter Three establishes that the ideological content of the medical theories remained virtually unchanged by the 1990s, and argues that multivalent literary representations of transgenderism from the same decade promise the emergence of unanticipated forms of gender identity that exceed medical norms. Chapter Four is concerned with transgendered children, as they are represented in medical writing and in young adult and children’s literature. Interrogating fiction which negotiates between established medical discourse and an emergent transgender discourse, the chapter argues that these works at once invite and subvert a pathologizing understanding of gender-variant children while simultaneously providing data that demands to be read through the lens of an emergent affirmative notion of trans-childhood.

In the current project, I examined the distinct elicitors and behavioral outcomes of anti-gay anger and anti-gay disgust. The CAD triad hypothesis (Rozin, Lower, Imada, & Haidt, 1999) suggests that anger and disgust are elicited by distinct moral violations and cognitive appraisals. A plethora of research has documented the strong link between disgust and sexual prejudice, but very little attention has been given to the role of anger in sexual prejudice. The biocultural framework of stigmatization (Neuberg, Smith, & Asher, 2000) suggests that people who counter-socialize against prevailing social norms are stigmatized by others. If homosexual sexual behavior does not elicit anti-gay anger (Giner-Sorrolla, Bosson, Caswell & Hettinger, 2012), then anti-gay anger might be elicited by promoting positive views of homosexuality. In Study 1, participants were induced to feel anger, disgust, or no emotion and then rated one of two gay male target groups. I expected that cognitive appraisals of morality violation would increase when the emotional state was congruent with the perceived threat posed by the target, but the emotion induction failed to elicit differences in cognitive appraisals. The results of Study 2, collected from a non-student sample, were also inconsistent with my hypothesis. Sexually explicit behavior did not elicit disgust, and behavior which resulted in more tolerant attitudes toward homosexuality failed to elicit anger and harm appraisals. These results suggest that sexual prejudice research requires stricter experimental control than online data collection methods currently allow.

This thesis discusses the ideological and political composition of the contemporary queer community in India. It is specifically concerned with the ways in which transgender/gender variant identities are represented within Indian queer scholarship and queer organizations in the subcontinent. At present, transgender/gender variant studies of South Asia are primarily confined to research on hijra and other trans feminine gender communities. While this research is important, this thesis seeks to expand the understanding of transgenderism/gender variance in South Asia by examining other transgender identities, including trans masculine identities, as well as analyzing Indian discourses on gender and sexuality more broadly. By examining Indian queer scholarship and the politics of contemporary queer organizations, I find that transgender/gender variant individuals face greater forms of marginalization within the contemporary queer movement in India because of the silence surrounding their gender identities. / text

<p>Bytt namn till Sam Holmqvist</p>

Spanning the period from the early years of the Cold War to the early twenty-first century, Crossing Out argues that medical theories of gender variance which emerge in the middle of the twentieth century are bound by the Cold-War–era discursive limits within which they were articulated, and that the ideological content of those theories persists into late-century research and treatment protocols. I parallel these analyses with interrogations of literary representations of transgendered subjects. What emerges most powerfully from this analysis of literary works is their tendency to signify in excess of the medical foreclosures, even when they seem consistent with medical discourse. By reading these two discursive systems against each other, the dissertation demonstrates the ability of literary discourse to accommodate multifaceted subject positions which medical discourse is unable to articulate. Literature thus complicates the stories that medical culture tells, revealing complex and multivariate possibilities for transgendered identification absent from traditional medical accounts. In tracing these discursive intersections the dissertation draws on and extends Michel Foucault’s theory of subjugated knowledges and Judith Butler’s writings on the formation of gendered subjects. Chapter One establishes the Cold War context, and argues that there are significant continuities between 1950s theories of intersexuality and Cold War ideology. Chapter Two extends this analysis to take in theories of transsexualism that emerged in the same years, and analyzes the discursive excesses of a 1950s pulp novel representation of a transsexual. Chapter Three establishes that the ideological content of the medical theories remained virtually unchanged by the 1990s, and argues that multivalent literary representations of transgenderism from the same decade promise the emergence of unanticipated forms of gender identity that exceed medical norms. Chapter Four is concerned with transgendered children, as they are represented in medical writing and in young adult and children’s literature. Interrogating fiction which negotiates between established medical discourse and an emergent transgender discourse, the chapter argues that these works at once invite and subvert a pathologizing understanding of gender-variant children while simultaneously providing data that demands to be read through the lens of an emergent affirmative notion of trans-childhood.

abstract: "Becoming Travesti: A Partial History of Ontoformation" explores the discursive production of the figure of travesti, defined broadly as male-assigned technologies of feminization, as it circulates within public discourse in Mexico. In other words, through ontoformation this project highlights the historical and sociopolitical associations that congeal, through repetition, to give an identitarian category -travesti- a sense of essence. In order to do so, this project analyzes articles within the mainstream Mexican press, ranging from the colonial period to the present. The first phase of this project involved the compilation and analysis of all twenty-first century articles mentioning travesti in the three newspapers with the widest circulation in Mexico in order to determine the primary constitutive elements of the contemporary figure of travesti. The second phase, in turn, involved a historical exploration of these constitutive elements by way of analyzing mainstream news sources dating back to the colonial period. As such, this project explores the work performed by ontoformative narratives that congeal to give the identitarian category of travesti a sense of essence. Among the narratives explored are the detravestification of homosexuality and continued homosexualization of travesti, the criminality of travesti, the spectacularization of travesti, the disposability of travesti, and the affective registers mobilized by and through travesti. Moreover, this project explores the consolidation of the contemporary figure of travesti in relationship to other identitarian categories of sexual and gendered non-normativity in Mexico, such as the homosexual, the transsexual and the transgénero (transgender), suggesting that travesti has been instrumental in the historical production and sanitization of these categories. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Justice Studies 2017

No ano de 2010, a cartunista paulistana Laerte Coutinho assume publicamente um processo de identificação com o gênero feminino, já abordado em seu trabalho pelo menos desde 2005. A partir de então, uma profusão de conteúdos envolvendo Laerte passa a ser veiculada em diversas mídias, sob a forma de notícias, reportagens, colunas, entrevistas e debates. Inspirada pelos conceitos de hegemonia e contra-hegemonia (Williams, 1977), esta pesquisa tem como objetivo investigar e entender o processo de construção de representações de gênero e sexualidade em jornais de grande circulação brasileiros e em mídias da internet a partir de conteúdos veiculados sobre Laerte, indagando sobre seus efeitos, bem como sobre temas e abordagens que a discussão sobre a trajetória de Laerte suscita. / In 2010, the Brazilian cartoonist Laerte Coutinho publicly revealed a process of identification with the female gender, which could already be seen in her work at least since 2005. From that moment on, several contents involving Laerte have been distributed by the media, in the form of news, special reports, columns, interviews and debates. Inspired by the concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony (Williams, 1977), this research aims to investigate and understand the process of making gender and sexuality representations both in Brazilian major newspapers and online media through the analysis of contents concerning Laerte, assuming as a goal to inquire about its possible effects as well as themes and approaches that the discussion on Laertes personal life has raised.