published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Thesis (M. Soc. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1992.

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1992. / Also available in print.

This thesis is a Heuristic Self-Search Inquiry (HSSI) that explores the personal experience of one gay man's participation in a gay male friendship group whose culturally constructed sense of being gay, characterised by specific places, customs and practices the researcher considers 'cultic'. The study is undertaken through the researcher who found himself outside a closed group of emotionally intimate gay friends, which represented an entire world. Using the HSSI model created by Sela-Smith (2002), this profoundly personal qualitative study considers the researcher's internal experiencing as the primary source of knowledge. Material from online images, academic papers and personal writing of the inquirer's lived experience of the research topic provided for periods of contemplative incubation and illumination, typical of HSSI. The output was the depiction of six emergent themes that highlight the qualities and nuances of the topic: pain, frustration, mistrust, joy, disgust and confusion. The other main findings are: this gay male friendship group developed characteristics of a symbolically enclosed cultic institution; that gay men are susceptible to forming cultic relationships; and a depth of distress experienced when intimate friendships between gay men fail. The findings finish by offering a creative synthesis, which captures the resultant integrated understanding of the experience in the form of a short story. Recommendations are made for counselling professionals to trouble their understanding of gay male friendship groups, and for public and third sector organisations working with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) identifying peoples to begin discussing interpersonal issues inside LGBTQ populations.

This thesis examines the representation of sexuality and identity in six novels written by Edmund White. Issues specifically related to gay male sexuality and homosexual/gay identity politics are discussed in Chapter One. These issues are developed in Chapter Two's exploration of sexuality, coming out, outing, and narrative. However, the first two chapters also facilitate the introduction and critical expansion of key contextual and theoretical concerns. On the one hand, White's output is shaped and informed by the cultural, historical and political circumstances which have conditioned how gay male sexuality has been discursively figured and represented over the last forty years. On the other hand, his work has been inflected by theorisations of sexuality which have called into question the very specificity of a homosexual and/or gay identity. Drawing principally on theorisations of sexuality and identity in the work of ludith Butler, Lee Edelman, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, the first two chapters propose that the relations between sexuality and identity are unstable and discontinuous. Chapter Three's examination of narrative strategies contends that White's Forgetting /;;lena (1973), and Nocturnes for the King (if Naples (1978), excite readings of same-sex desire which are unable to specify an essential or natural difference between heterosexual and homosexual identities. Alert, nevertheless, to the political contexts which compel all sexual identity claims, Chapter Four observes how White's deployment of fantasy enables his novel Caracole (1985) to consider why identities and communities are labelled gay or straight in the first instance. Critical essays on White's work rightly note his novels' apparent preoccupation with gay male self-representation. However, discussing A Boy's Own Story (1982), and The Beautiful Room is Empty (1988), Chapter Five aims to expose the limitations of homosexual and gender definition. Indeed, if the relations between sex, gender and identity are neither clear nor continuous, then perhaps White's novels bring out such gender trouble. The examination of gay sex, sexuality and AIDS in Ihe Farewell Symphony (1997) observes why acts of gay self-nomination are politically necessary in homophobic cultures. However, this final chapter discusses why White's work appears reluctant to determine the meaning of sexuality and identity in any resolute way. Such queer irresolution, this thesis contends, enables the fiction to critique the past. Nevertheless, simply to say farewell to this past is to ignore the conditions of a future.

No description available.

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.

No description available.

Considered as the ―...central organizing method‖ (Fuss, 1991:1) in terms of gender and sexual orientation particularly in the Western world, the heterosexual/homosexual binary, emphasises the centrality of ―compulsory heterosexuality‖ (Rich, 1993:227) in the everyday lives of social and sexual actors. In doing this, homosexuality is not only differentiated from heterosexuality, but may rather be ‗banished‘ to a lower and subordinate stratum of so-called sexual ―respectability‖ (Rubin, 1993:13). Using it as a point of departure, this particular sociological inquiry sought to critically explore the influence of a binary logic on the identity construction of gay male academics and students in South African tertiary education. This study provides an in-depth qualitative discussion of the lived experiences of these men on university campuses in order to redress the limited focus on the subject matter in South African sociology. Informed by the metatheoretical principles of phenomenology and central features of a symbolic interactionist methodology, three specific subthemes guided the research. These included the rationalisation of sexual orientation, self-reflexivity and, as my inductive contribution, a consideration of the deprofessionalisation and/or professionalisation of the gay male academic identity in South African higher education. In adopting Jackson and Scott‘s (2010) conceptualisation of the rationalisation of sexuality, the study sought to explore its role in the identity construction of gay men through, amongst others, ―sexual scripting‖ (Gagnon & Simon, 1973), ―doing gender‖ (West & Zimmerman, 2002), ―using gender‖ (Johnson, 2009) as well as ―doing gay‖ (Dowsett et al., 2008), to (de)construct a ―gay sensibility‖ (cf. Seidman, 2002a) within and between their private and professional contexts. Secondly, such negotiation of their homosexual ―performativity‖ (Butler, 1990) presupposed an undeniable degree of ―reflexiveness‖ (cf. Mead, 1962) on the part of the gay male, to adhere to the expectations of other individuals in a specific social context. Given the findings from a thematic analysis of fifteen (15) in-depth interviews with academics and seven (7) with students, as well as two (2) self-administered questionnaires completed by academics and seventeen (17) by students, the influence of heteronormativity, heterosexism and homophobia, was again reiterated. The participants mostly opted to professionalise their gay male identities (thus differentiate between their private and academic gay male identity), regardless of the fact that their narratives reflected an internal diversity, plurality and potentially non-subordinate otherness, akin to Plummer‘s (1998b) reference to ―homosexualities‖ rather than only one homogenised version of ‗homosexuality‘. Their choice to do so was attributed to a conscious effort to either ‗pass‘ as heterosexual, assimilate into the dominant sexual and gendered culture of the campus, or conform to a stereotypical gay performance in homosexually-segregated academic departments because of anxiety, fear or shame. As such, the potential of mastering an uncategorised ‗queer‘ inclination in tertiary education, becomes all the more difficult, if not improbable. / PhD (Sociology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Considered as the ―...central organizing method‖ (Fuss, 1991:1) in terms of gender and sexual orientation particularly in the Western world, the heterosexual/homosexual binary, emphasises the centrality of ―compulsory heterosexuality‖ (Rich, 1993:227) in the everyday lives of social and sexual actors. In doing this, homosexuality is not only differentiated from heterosexuality, but may rather be ‗banished‘ to a lower and subordinate stratum of so-called sexual ―respectability‖ (Rubin, 1993:13). Using it as a point of departure, this particular sociological inquiry sought to critically explore the influence of a binary logic on the identity construction of gay male academics and students in South African tertiary education. This study provides an in-depth qualitative discussion of the lived experiences of these men on university campuses in order to redress the limited focus on the subject matter in South African sociology. Informed by the metatheoretical principles of phenomenology and central features of a symbolic interactionist methodology, three specific subthemes guided the research. These included the rationalisation of sexual orientation, self-reflexivity and, as my inductive contribution, a consideration of the deprofessionalisation and/or professionalisation of the gay male academic identity in South African higher education. In adopting Jackson and Scott‘s (2010) conceptualisation of the rationalisation of sexuality, the study sought to explore its role in the identity construction of gay men through, amongst others, ―sexual scripting‖ (Gagnon & Simon, 1973), ―doing gender‖ (West & Zimmerman, 2002), ―using gender‖ (Johnson, 2009) as well as ―doing gay‖ (Dowsett et al., 2008), to (de)construct a ―gay sensibility‖ (cf. Seidman, 2002a) within and between their private and professional contexts. Secondly, such negotiation of their homosexual ―performativity‖ (Butler, 1990) presupposed an undeniable degree of ―reflexiveness‖ (cf. Mead, 1962) on the part of the gay male, to adhere to the expectations of other individuals in a specific social context. Given the findings from a thematic analysis of fifteen (15) in-depth interviews with academics and seven (7) with students, as well as two (2) self-administered questionnaires completed by academics and seventeen (17) by students, the influence of heteronormativity, heterosexism and homophobia, was again reiterated. The participants mostly opted to professionalise their gay male identities (thus differentiate between their private and academic gay male identity), regardless of the fact that their narratives reflected an internal diversity, plurality and potentially non-subordinate otherness, akin to Plummer‘s (1998b) reference to ―homosexualities‖ rather than only one homogenised version of ‗homosexuality‘. Their choice to do so was attributed to a conscious effort to either ‗pass‘ as heterosexual, assimilate into the dominant sexual and gendered culture of the campus, or conform to a stereotypical gay performance in homosexually-segregated academic departments because of anxiety, fear or shame. As such, the potential of mastering an uncategorised ‗queer‘ inclination in tertiary education, becomes all the more difficult, if not improbable. / PhD (Sociology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014