Sexual Orientation Flashcards
Gender Identity
Knowledge of being a male, female or both or even none
Gender Role
- Knowledge, behaviors and beliefs that we associate with each sex
- Each cultural identity gender roles such as what roles they should take, what things they should be interested in
Sexual Orientation
- Who you see romantically and who you are physically attracted to
- Some people think they are independent
- It’s a very complex thing; it involves behaviors, attraction, etc.
Allies
Often straight people, advocate and engage in activism
Homophobia
Irrational fear or hatred of LGBTQ+ people
Kinsey’s Work
- Continuum idea (that is spectrum)
- Studied sexual behavior in human white male and women
- It was a direct face to face interview with both men and women
- Became an observational work
Found:
- 37% of men and 13% of women has some degree of homosexual experience
- 10% if men were exclusively homosexual and 2 to 6% for women
- Age 16 to 20, some men that was interviewed was homosexual for a little while
Kinsey Scale
- Continuum
- He asked boxed checked questions which he shouldn’t have, but the reason he didi was because the box check questions understates people who do not have heterosexual orientation
Found:
- 4 to 16% of males had same sex contact
- 1 to 3% males and 2 to 5% of female were bisexual
- 4% of females had same sex contact (now 11 to 12%)
Storms Eroticism Scale
- Sexuality represented
- Consists of 4 orientation categories: Homosexual, Asexual, Heterosexual, Bisexual
- It like generates a 2D model (box with 4 squares); It’s like options people can go into
- Conforming sexual orientation in a box and just allowing the 4 categories
- Not the best measuring sexual orientation
- Recognized that not many fit in those boxes
Fritz Klein Sexual Orientation Grid
- A whole bunch of continuum
- Looked at the past, present and future
- It got a rich sense of complexity of sexuality and sexual behavior
- It was a matrix instead of a continuum and the reason behind that is that Kinsey scale failed behind and it wasn’t very representative for sexual orientation. So, matrix, you can find many aspects of sexual orientation and it Lismore complex
- Concluded: That sexual orientation is more complex than checking one box
Psychoanalytic Theory of Sexual Orientation
- Done by Freud
- Believed everyone is burned with bisexual potential
- Believed that sexual orientation develops during the phallic period
- Believed that it was strongly with parents interactions that influence sexual orientation (not really true)
- Theory was not supported
Social Learning Theory of Sexual Orientation
- Bell Weinberg & Hammersmith (1918)
- Investigated a social learning perspective
- Used a path analysis model to try to identify possible influences in childhood and adolescence
- It contained almost 15000 participants
Findings:
- Sexual orientation determined by adolescence, although people may not be sexually active yet
- Romantic feelings appeared to be more critical than activities
- People in the study sound heterosexual experiences ungratifying
- Linked to gender non-conformity
- Identification with parents who had little to no significant impact
- Final conclusion hinted at the possibility of a biological basis for sexual orientation
- Went along with the idea that sexual orientation is fully biological
** Social learning is when someone is determined by adolescence **
Social Construction of Sexual Orientation
- Active process of sexual orientation
- Use the guideline guidelines of our culture
- More of an emphasis on environment
- Rejects all biological beliefs about sexual orientation
- It is based on shared assumptions
- Belief that the environment os going to influence your sexual orientation
Biological Determinants of Sexual Orientation
Basically, asked what about biological is influenced sexual orientation
- Brain
- Genetics
- Hormones
Brain (LeVay)
- Looked at brains, specifically, hypothalamus
- Looked at men and women
- Men have self identify as gay and straight men
- Women have self identify as straight but did not include women who identified as lesbian
- Looked at MRIs and PET scans
Found:
- A small sample of gay men and straight women have same size and that it was smaller than heterosexual men
- Giving the idea that there is something going on in the brain that influence sexual orientation (these findings have been replciated)
Genetics
- There’s a comparison between men and women
Some unexpected studies: Handedness rates (Blanchard et al 2006)
- Found gay male lefties 34% more likely than straight men
- Lesbian 91% more likely than straight women
Hormones - Index vs Ring Finger
Finding:
- Men tend to have a longer ring finger than index fingers. Due to exposure of androgens
- Women who identify as lesbian as a more masculine finger proportionality
- Also, found no difference between gay and heterosexual men
Hormones - Biology Fraternal Birth Order Effect
- Study conducted by Blanchard in 2001
- Wanted to find if sexual orientation related to older brothers?
- Looked at number of older, biological brothers
Found:
- 33% each conditional older increase their chances of being gay
- Add to 33% of each older brother (increase the chance)
- Older sister has no effect
- He believed that HY antigens, has some effect on the biological fraternal birth order effect, but is it anything on the sisters, which there isn’t any effect on older sisters
- Internal Immune hypothesis: Not the same for older sister, but female relative of gay men tend to have more offspring
Hormones - Hair Whorks
- Looked at which the hair is swirling - our head is the shape of the world
- Research done by Lepa
Found:
- 23% of gay men have a clockwise hair swirl compare than straight men and 8.4% of straight men had a counter clock hair swirl
- Belief that it influenced on sexual orientation (hormones), specially on the gay men
EBE Theory
(Stand for exotic becomes erotic)
- States that genetics and environment is going to affect how active children are. Also, social pressure
- See biological differences associated with sexual orientation
- Social gender is not for everyone. It all depends on the child and who they hanging out
- The kids you are not hanging with starts to become interesting to the kids such as playing with a girl - girl but grows to get interested in playing with a boy
Cass Model of Coming out
- Identity Confusion
- Identity Comparison
- Identity Tolerance
- Identity Acceptance
- Identity Pride
- Identity Synthesis
Identity Confusion
- Confuse about the identity
- Don’t know who they are as a person
- Don’t understand others identity
- Get along with someone they are not
Identity Comparison
- Start thinking about what they are? Probably gay, bisexual, maybe just one crush
- Sense of isolation
Identity Tolerance
- Feeling of not along
- Focus on straight people
- Role model starts to become important
- Start to feel positive
- Greater commitment
- Figure what type of people you can tolerate with or align with
- Positive context tend to help with this stage such as role models
Example: Trevor Project - He loses friends and makes fun of it, tries to end his life. But, he sees good in his life. Especially, with the role model, someone he aligned with.This is the foundation to help people come out
Identity Acceptance
- Becomes stronger
- Strong contact with others (LGBTQ+)
- Not confuse
- Sense of belong in the community
- Starts to come out
- Selective people they can trust and act positive
- It’s new to them
