Literature Reviews

Orthodox and Inclusive Masculinity: Competing Masculinities among Heterosexuals Men in a Feminized Terrain

Author: Eric Anderson

Source: Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 48, No. 3 (Autumn, 2005), pp. 337-355

Published by: University of California Press

Eric Anderson conducted an interview with sixty-eight male cheerleaders and observed four selected cheerleading teams under 300 hours. The males are of age eighteen to twenty-three, coming from diverse regions throughout United States. However, due to the majority of the informants (80%) are white, middle-class men, the research is generalized. The purpose of this observation is to understand how heterosexual male maintain his orthodox and/ or inclusive masculinity in female terrain and society. The male cheerleaders reported that upon entering cheerleading, they held orthodox notions of masculinity by maintaining sexist views and overt homophobia. Whereas, inclusive masculinity are at ease with homosexual individual, for the male cheerleaders reasoned that they know their own sexual identity. Overall, the heterosexual’s men in this feminized terrain are not subjective to marginalization.

Ambiguous Identity in an Unambiguous Sex/Gender Structure: The Case of Bisexual Women

In this article, Amber Ault examined the influence of binary structures on bisexual women, where Religious Right and lesbian feminist communities denied the existence and/ or acceptance of bisexual women. According to the Christian right wing fundamentalist, one could be born with an inclination toward sex with either men or women; however, it is “ultimate perversion” to continuously switch interest between genders. The lesbian feminist communities carried a similar reason as the Christian right wing where switching different gender partner was concerned. Some lesbian even denied existence of bisexuals, while some placed bisexuals as lesbians who are unaware of their lesbian identities. Due to such denial in both religious and lesbian movement, bisexuals rarely “come out” for fear of danger and isolation from various group. Ault gives an example of a consequence a bi may face in “coming out” or defining her identity as a bi:

“I used to identify as "confused," then I figured out I was bi - internally, it was joyous. I was fairly uncomfortable with "confused" as an identity. Externally, well, someone tried to kill me because I am attracted to women, and all my lesbian friends dumped me when I came out as bi. Seems like, to me, they thought "confused" was better.”

Thus, caused many bisexuals to hidden their identity and hide themselves behind term like "dyke" to describe their identity - dyke is define as anyone who is not heterosexual. With such negative stereotype of bisexual, bi women legitimate the stereotypes by expressing commitments in their relationship and placed those who are there just for sex in a subgroup of bisexuals. According to the author, the move to define and defend the bisexual subject challenge the radical, transformative plausible of its indeterminacy, for the ultimate argument is not amid categories but about them individually.
Source: Ault, Amber. “Ambiguous Identity in an Unambiguous Sex/Gender Structure: The Case of Bisexual Women.” The Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Summer, 1996), pp. 449-463.

Micro Inequities and Everyday Inequalities: "Race," Gender, Sexuality and Class in Medical School

Author: Brenda Beagan

Source: The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Autumn, 2001), pg. 583-610

Published by: Canadian Journal of Sociology

Brenda Beagan did a survey with 123 students, interviews 25 students and 23 faculty members of a medical school in Canada, for the causes of inequalities in medical school. The endorsement of equal opportunities in the institution is at odds with the micro inequalities. In many categories (race, gender, sexuality, and class) most denied the existence of inequalities in any specific category. Although denial was made, the respondent went on to gives example of a specific inequality. In sexuality, two gay clinicians express the isolation of an individual if openly come out. It is evident that the students avoid subject that surround homosexuality.

Social Marking and the Mental Coloring of Identity: Sexual Identity Construction and Maintenance in the United States

Author: Wayne Brekhus

Source: Sociological Forum, Vol. 11, No. 3, Special Issue: Lumping and Splitting (Sep., 1996), pp. 497-522

Published by: Springer

Sexual identities are not only defined as being heterosexual or homosexual, however, other factors are being observed as identities in society. This article examine how individuals and institution assign sexual identities to others through the social marking process in contemporary United States. The author suggests contemporary sexual orientation is formed along six hierarchically arranged dimensions represented as continuums:

Quantity of sex – Morally inferior marked vs. unmarked:

· Morally inferior is the extreme categories for men and women who are sexually active. The unmarked are the men or women with too little or no sex life.

Timing of sex – Too early vs. too late:

· Too early, those at a young age, are marked as deviant where as those who are too late, in their late thirty or older, are marked exceptional

Level of perceived enjoyment – Too little vs. too much:

· Frigid women, coitally, anorgasmic women and impotent men are marked for having sex without an adequate level of enjoyment. Too much are marked as sexual compulsives and premature ejaculators. However, men who are premature ejaculators are mildly stigmatized for enjoying the physical pleasure or sex.

Degree of consent – Perverse (rapist, exhibitionist, and peeping tom) vs. consent:

· Those who consent have no clear labels exist, whereas those who refused permission are regarded as unusual but others do not widely recognize them as a specific “kind of person.”

Orientation:

· Homosexual, guilty of incest, and “kinds of people,” are marked as well as those who have a dominant sexual ideology. Those who have sex with others of different ages, unrelated faiths, and dissimilar species are marked. However those who engage in same-age, same-faith, or same-species are not categories.

Social value of agents:

· Individual reputation, classes, ages, and races are sorted differentially into sexual identities based on their social value.

The author used the concept of social marking as a way to refer to the “social mind” in which a perspective is perceives one-sided while ignoring the other side. The perception of the social marking processes mentally colored the relationship of the marked while the unmarked have no color. With every marked category placed under a single stereotype image, the comparison between marked and unmarked members had deepened the unbending difference.

Knowledge and Power, Body and Self: An Analysis of Knowledge Systems and the Transgendered Self

The authors argued the binary system of knowledge about sex and gender had set a rigid definition to gender identity and the personified self. The authors took in account that two factors play an influential role in defining oneself. The first is science, and the second is subcultural knowledge. According to the author, science is communicated through media which help maintain the hegemonic gender discourse. Through the discourse of contemporary Western society hegemonic and popular wisdom, there are only two sexes. This belief had alienated those who try to define themselves as other than the two acknowledgeable sexes. The ideal of only two sex’s belief had pushed those who are a third gender to deny their “true self” for social acceptance. Sixty-five semi-structured interviews were made with masculine-to-feminine individuals from different points along the transgender spectrum. The respondents describe how the popular understanding of proper relation between sex and gender had clashed with their self-concepts, in their early childhoods. In the event of conforming to popular knowledge, subculture knowledge had emerged to ease way for individuals to explore transgenderism. The individuals were given a choice to resist conformity pressures with subcultural knowledge. The impact of the knowledge system on all social actors had created a discourse in which the resistance to the systems will either conform or adopt a transsexual identity, using both medical and nonmedical methods.

Source: Gagné, Patricia, and Tewksbury, Richard. “Knowledge and Power, Body and Self: An Analysis of Knowledge Systems and the Transgendered Self.” The Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Winter, 1999), pp. 59-83.

"I'm Glad I'm Not Gay!" Heterosexual Students' Emotional Experience in the College Classroom with a "Coming Out" assignment

Author(s): Eleanor A. Hubbard and Kristine De Welde

Source: Teaching Sociology, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Jan., 2003), pp. 73-84

Published by: American Sociological Association

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3211426

A study of college student and instructor response, both emotionally and intellectually, was conducted in a Sex, Gender, and Society college course. The author objectives were to observed and get the students to understand the stand point of homosexual individual emotionally rather than intellectually understanding the danger behind such identity. In this class, six assignments were assigned in which four counts toward the course requirement. Out of the six assignment is an essay about “Coming out.” “Coming out” is utilized in viewing students direct response to coming out, as well as the instructor method of carrying out the assignment. Although given the objective of this assignment, students focused in keeping their relationship with their love one or trying to defend their heterosexual side more than focusing on “coming out”. In maintaining their heterosexual position, a student (Mike) took a dramatic moved by labeling:

NOTE: THIS IS AN ASSIGNMENT FOR A CLASS AND DOES NOT REFLECT MY PERSONAL SITUATION. THE LETTER THAT FOLLOWS IS FICTION (capitals in the original).

Other student put number headers to assure the reader it is an assignment. Student also feels ashamed while writing this letter that they ended the letter with anonymous designation. The author viewed the traditional family values and the majority belief may had affected the students’ ability to emotionally analyze the conceptual framework of diverse sexualities.

Being Gay and Jewish: Negotiating Intersecting Identities

Author: Randal F. Schnoor

Source: Sociology of Religion, Vol. 67, No. 1 (Spring, 2006), pp. 43-60

Published by: Oxford University Press

This article studies how gay men and lesbians are affected by ethnic and religious groups, such as the response of gay Jewish men to their religious belief in Toronto. Thirty gay Jewish men in Toronto were interviews for this study. From the author finding, gay Jewish men are divided into two groups: traditional Jews (placing an emphasis on religious aspect of Jewishness) and secular Jews (placing an emphasis on the ethnic aspect of Jewishness or placing little emphasis on Jadishness altogether. For traditional Jew men, religion is more valuable than their identity as gay. Sual, a traditional Jews, reported:

If I weren't Jewish, I might be out there fighting for gay rights, but my Jewish identity is far more important to me than my gay identity. And that's something I knew right from [the start]. I did not want to allow my same-gender romantic orientation to affect my passion for Judaism and Jewish people. I never wanted that to impinge on it, to steal time from it and to even affect it. Some traditional Jews followed an extreme religiosity to try to stop himself from being gay; which surprisingly secular Jew chose the same path at one point in their life.

However, most secular Jews believe their identity is more important than religion. According to Russel, a scecular Jews, religion can be changed but identity cannot, for identity is much more fundamental than being Jewish. More and more gay Jews men had created a clear expectation that many parts of their identities can and could be evaluated and validated by society.

The Ideology of "Fag": The School Experience of Gay Students

The author studies the treatment and its affect on gay youth in school and how the term “fag” had integrated into the school regime. The author, George W. Smith, visited a community organization in Toronto called Lesbian and Gay Youth Toronto (LGYT), in which he found his informants. The informants are mostly out or currently not in secondary school. Smith also interviews “street kids” from the Street Outreach Services (SOS) who had dropped out of high school. One of the “street kids” faced discrimination upon being “out” in school. Although students hold some responsibility to the usage of the word “fag,” school legislation play an important role in such discrimination. The verbal and physical abuse of gay student surrounding the term “fag” should have alert school official to take action in ending such abuse. Yet, the school official as well as the curriculum had avoided the topic of homosexuality. In doing so, the students continue to follow the mainstream of popular belief and segregated those of unpopular gender identities.

Source: Smith, George W. “The Ideology of "Fag": The School Experience of Gay Students.” The Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Spring, 1998), pp. 309-335.

Sexuality

Source: “Taboo”. Disc 3 of the first season [videorecording] / a National Geographic Television and Film production ; series producer, Lori Butterfield. 2002.

This documentary is about the taboo of being a transgender in Albania, United States, and India. The argument of this documentary is that third gender is less accepted, as the country becomes more modernized.

In Albania, the film introduced Antonia, an author, who is searching for Albanian who practices “Sworn Virgin.” Sworn virgin is a practice in which a female take on the role of a male under a social situation – where there is not enough men in the family. Antonia was able to meet Paska and Lulu, both are sworn virgins due to different circumstances. Paska had no choice but to take on the practice for the lack of male figure in the family, whereas, Lulu enters the practice as a choice. However, as Albania becomes more modernized, there are only a few hundreds who participate in this practice. Antonia quoted, “Sworn virgin practice is slowly dying out.”

In United States, we were introduced to Dawn Kay who is a transgender person. Dawn Kay took a tripped to Thailand for a surgery where he met another transgender who had completed the transition, Jayme. According to an anthropologist in the documentary, “anatomy is not destiny.”

In India, we were introduced to a hidra who is a third gender, Morna. Morna is physically a male but inside Morna felt more female. Hidra is India’s term for hermaphrodite. Hidras are considered as outcast; however, their existence is accepted in India. Hidra are believed to have supernatural power that can be good or bad. Morna along with other Hidras find their incomes in blessing newlywed couples and asking anyone who need blessing. But as India becomes more modernized, these third genders individuals are less accepted.