Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons^™

Markie In Milwaukee, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Markie in Milwaukee (2019) directed by Matt Kliegman.

"In A Perfect World, You Wouldn't Have To Work The System To Get The Things You Need To Survive": A Pilot Study About Trans Health Care Possibilities., Ryan E. Pryor, William Vickroy

Student Papers, Posters & Projects

Purpose: aTHeNA (a Trans Health Needs Assessment) is a pilot study exploring the perspectives and experiences of trans people in western Massachusetts on and with health care. This study examines research strategies and best practices to improve trans health care by prioritizing the knowledge and recommendations of trans and gender nonbinary people.

Methods: aTHeNA is composed of a focus group of eight trans and gender nonbinary individuals held in western Massachusetts in January of 2016 and qualitative analysis of that focus group to synthesize themes. aTHeNA utilized an interdisciplinary approach. Concepts of respect, care, self-definition, and intersectionality informed study …

Lgbtq In The Workforce, Jenna Salvesen, Payton Shilling, Christal Smith

School of Human Sciences Research Showcase

LGBTQ struggles are still a major problem today in both the LGBTQ culture and the work culture. They feel as though they are not accepted and are discriminated against. When employees do not feel safe or accepted, then not only do companies lose great employees, they also lose their reputation as a workplace.

Sex Work And Empowerment: Migrant Women Looking For Love, Breanna A. Harkins

The Corinthian

This paper will address the issues regarding consensual female sex work and whether this is a legitimate form of work or an appropriate lifestyle for women to hold. Research collected from various countries and cultures conclude that sexual labor is a common, but often underappreciated, means of income for women. In China, India, Ethiopia, and Hungary we see an intersection between the women interviewed and how their stories, while different, all lead towards a very similar conclusion and realization: female sex work is empowering.

Maneuvering Past Meaning: Queering Language Through Trans-Poetics, Brooke Ingram

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Queer studies today has seen a rise in analysis of the trans subject. While previous research has focused on the queer body and on the term queer, my interest in trans studies is in the form and function of language. That focus on the structures of language is what underlies this thesis. My claim is that queering language is visible in the authors I cover in the form of what I call trans-poetics. I focus on keri edwards’ succubus in my pocket and Moss Angel’s Sea-Witch Volume 1. In edwards, I locate a displaced “I” and thus a displaced subjectivity …

"We Were Queens": Historical Loss Among Native Hawaiians: Exploring Historical Trauma-Informed Suicide Prevention, Antonia Rose Garriga Alvarez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Native Hawaiian people, and especially lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, māhū and/or queer (LGBTQM) Native Hawaiians, face health and mental health disparities that are disproportionate when compared with other racial/ethnic minorities in Hawai`i, and when compared to the United States as a whole. Native Hawaiians have the highest mortality rates for numerous biomedical diseases, including higher rates of substance abuse, diabetes, and even asthma, of any ethnic group in the state of Hawai`i (Andrade et al., 2006; Liu & Alameda, 2011). Suicide rates, in particular, have been rising since Hawai`i began collecting data in 1908 (Else & Andrade, 2008), and continue …

"Somewhere I'M Allowed To Exist As Myself": A Grounded Theory Exploration Of Queer And Trans Young Adults Navigating Family Rejection And Housing Instability, Jonah P. Dechants

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Queer and transgender young people are overrepresented among youth and young adults experiencing homelessness and housing instability. Families' rejection of their youth's queer and transgender identities is one of the causes of this overrepresentation, as families force young people out of the home or create a home environment that is so hostile that youth chose to leave. While the relationship between family rejection and queer and trans youth homelessness is well-documented quantitatively, there is not a scholarly consensus on what family rejection looks like, how queer and trans youth experiences that rejection, and how they make decisions about where to …

Building And Maintaining Lgbtq+ Picture Book Collections, Alissa Droog, Danielle Bettridge, Alyssa R. Martin, Ashleigh Yates-Mackay

FIMS Publications

The LGBTQ+ community has had to continuously fight for their rights, including their right to be represented in the library. This toolkit provides instruction on how to develop and manage a library collection of LGBTQ+ children’s picture books. It is split into four sections that include a guide to evaluating materials, recommended picture books, a guide to fighting censorship, and a list of recommended resources.

Experiences Of Young Lesbian, Gay, And Bisexual Latinx People In Healthcare, Caleb Hernandez

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Latinx lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) queer community members have unique health needs compared to non-Latinx heterosexual patients, including sexual and mental health issues, and challenges in ability to access healthcare. But research is unclear whether LGB Latinx patients may also face double stigma related to their sexual orientation and race. This study examined this issue in experiences of queer and Latinx adults with healthcare providers. I conducted semistructured in-depth interviews with 13 LGB Latinx adults between November 2018 and February 2019. Interviews were audio-recorded, and transcribed. Transcripts were coded, and data analyzed for themes using the Grounded Theory approach. …

Sex Education Or Self Education? Lgbt+ Experiences With Exclusionary Curricula, Karli Reeves

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Though much research exists on LGBT+ exclusion from school-based sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education, the strategies used by LGBT+ individuals during their search for knowledge regarding the subject are not as widely documented. Using the ethnographic research method of semi-structured interviews, this research explores the experiences of young LGBT+ adults with formal sexual and reproductive health education and examines the self-education methods employed by this population in the context of exclusionary and cisheteronormative curricula. This project also functions to contribute to existing literature in the field of anthropology and other social sciences regarding the subject of SRH education, particularly …

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgender (Lgbt) Healthcare In Rural Settings: An Integrative Review Of The Literature, Caitlin Cox

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community is a unique population that has specific health issues and health care needs associated with lifestyle behaviors that increase risk for certain diseases. Health concerns include mental and behavioral health, issues associated with gender identity and relationships (i.e. intimate partner violence), sexually transmitted infections, and chronic illnesses. The research suggests poorer health outcomes for the LGBT population compared to heterosexual and/or cisgender counterparts. Most research conducted with LGBT populations occurred in more populated urban settings with very few studies focusing on this population in the rural context. Consequently, there is a paucity …

Barriers To Healthcare For The Transgender Population: A Focus On The Trans Persons' Experience Accessing Healthcare Services, Bryce E. Harrison

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Background: Transgender people face several barriers to healthcare when accessing services. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the lived-experience of the transgender person accessing healthcare. Methods: Colaizzi phenomenological method was used to delve into the experience. The guiding question was: What is the lived experience (challenges, barriers, and/or difficulties) that the transgender person experiences when accessing healthcare? Results: Initial themes were collapsed to create relevant meanings. Five themes emerged from the protocols and were validated by participants. Overall, the transgender person is vulnerable in the healthcare system due to the lack of representation of their identity, which …

Trans-Inclusive Design, Erin White

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

The choices web designers make impact the online and offline experiences of real people who are transgender, non-binary, or gender-variant—choices that can affirm or exclude, uplift or annoy, help or harm. This article shines light on the decisions web professionals make every day and offers specific ideas for how to make content, images, forms, databases, IA, privacy, and algorithms trans-inclusive.

Printing Profanity: How The Homophiles Sought To Organize An American Gay Movement, Gina Wiese

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Gay history, as it is currently taught in America, centers the Stonewall Riots of 1969 as a cataclysm of social change for gay rights, and as the beginning of gay resistance. Most histories of gay resistance in America will mention efforts of early homophile organizations, and credit the Stonewall riots as a cumulation of those earlier efforts. But this is an inaccurate interpretation of gay history. The homophile movement deserves vastly more credit for how gay Americans navigate the world today than do the riots at the Stonewall Inn. This paper will identify these individuals and the several early organizations …

“You’Re Not Like Everyone Else”: Sexual Orientation Microaggressions At A Catholic University, Bryce E. Hughes

Journal of Catholic Education

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer students at Catholic colleges and universities face a campus climate rife with sexual orientation microaggressions, subtle or covert expressions of hostility the impact from which can compound over time. In this case study, I draw from interviews with 14 students, 12 faculty, and 6 staff members from one Catholic university their experiences with microaggressions. Participants indicated that sexual orientation microaggressions were common on their campus, like other colleges and universities, and the university did not have a systematic method for addressing this problem. The Catholic affiliation of the university shaped microaggressions uniquely, especially in instances …

Exploring The Lived Experiences Of Afro-Caribbean Marriage And Family Therapists Working With Persons Who Identify As Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender And/Or Questioning: An Interpretive Phenomenological Study, Raquel Yvonne Campbell

Department of Family Therapy Dissertations and Applied Clinical Projects

This study explored and highlighted the experiences of trained Marriage and Family Therapists of Afro-Caribbean descent in working with persons who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender or Questioning (LGBTQ). The researcher utilized collected data to help to advance our understanding on the potential impact of the cultural experiences and how they may or may not contribute to institutionalized homophobia within the Caribbean, by Mental Health professionals, specifically Marriage and Family Therapists. The researcher conducted semi-structured interviews with 3 practicing Marriage and Family Therapists (MFTs) with strong Caribbean upbringing, values, and influences. For the purpose of this study, strong has …

Clark University Lgbtq+ History, Robert D. Tobin, Toni Armstrong, Arai Long, Griffin Minigiello, Students Of "Sexuality And Textuality", Spring 2018, Students Of "Sexuality And Human Rights", Fall 2018, Students Of "Sexuality And Textuality", Spring 2019

Publications

Robert Deam Tobin, editor in chief
Toni Armstrong and Arai Long, co-editors
Additional research provided by Griffin Minigello

and the students of:
"Sexuality and Textuality", Spring 2018
"Sexuality and Human Rights", Fall 2018
"Sexuality and Textuality", Spring 2019

A collaborative research-based catalog by Robert Tobin and his students. This work reports on and narrativizes Clark University's LGBTQ+ history beginning with the Clark Gay Alliance in the mid 1970s, one of the earliest gay student organizations in the country. The vast majority of research for this work comes from materials in Goddard Library's Archives and Special Collections.

Transgender Parent Differentiation: A Heuristic Phenomenological Study, Eva Smidova

Department of Family Therapy Dissertations and Applied Clinical Projects

Transgender individuals go through their intrapersonal differentiation between covert “I” (expressed gender) and overt “I” (assigned gender), often unnoticed by family members before their coming out. Consequently, their coming out rockets anxiety in the family system and the process of differentiation of transgender parents seem to go through its unique path to search for equilibrium. Recent social and clinical studies about transgender parents have paid attention to the experience and challenges of the gender transition process, social pressure, acceptance of transgender individuals in a parenting role, and readiness of families to cope with the transition of a parent (Bischof, Warnaar, …

A Rethinking Of Gray Asexuality: What Do We Learn From An Undefinable Identity?, Jason M. Gurevitch

Honors Theses

Gray-Asexuality offers us a paradox in understanding sexuality, since while it is posed as a middle ground between Asexual and Allosexual, it is also solidly a category of Asexuality. This poses the question of when does someone become Asexual and if they are ever interested in sex why are they not just Allosexual? While understandings of Asexuality that have excluded the Gray-Asexuality can ignore this question, including it requires asking this question, which not only requires defining Asexuality, but also more importantly requires a naming of what normative sexuality is. Within these contexts people who are Gray-Asexual engage in a …

Coming Out Online And On Campus : Queer Perspectives On Identity Work, Ian Callahan

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This research aims to describe the experiences associated with coming out—both on campus and online—for sexually and gender nonconforming college students. In 2014, I conducted a pilot version of this study at a public American university in the Northeast, utilizing data from semi- structured in-depth interviews and a demographic questionnaire. A thematic analysis using open and axial coding techniques found that social media interactions contributed to ‘outing’ students on campus. This finding inspired a second iteration of the study, which replicates the original research design and expands its interview script to include a more expansive series of questions related to …

“Country Faggots” Are Everywhere: Gay And Lesbian Life In Rural America, Katie Taylor

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis will challenge many scholarly works that define being “out” and visibility as the ultimate expression of gay resistance. To define outness as the ultimate expression of resistance is to erase a group of people who did not have the privilege of always being able to be out and any contributions they made towards LGBT resistance. When studying LGBT resistance, it is important to acknowledge the necessity of political resistance, but that does not mean that other forms of resistance should be ignored. To analyze the importance of LGBT resistance outside of the public sphere means to re-examine the …

Anti-Lgbt Backlash And The Shifting Public Opinion On Lgbt Rights In Contemporary Russia: A Case Study, Sean T. Skillings

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The wealth of literature which intends to explain various aspects of LGBT rights, politics, and activism in Eastern Europe has been well established (Swimelar, 2017, p. 912). There are currently two opposing theories on the effect of backlash on LGBT attitudes and activism. One theory, purported by O'Dwyer, suggests that backlash is beneficial to the visibility of LGBT issues and for attracting international attention and support. Rosenberg argues that right-wing backlash is detrimental to attitudes and activism (Rosenberg 2008, p. 344-347). These two arguments for and against the "benefits to backlash" approach are clearly defined and testable. With this paper, …

Photography, Visual Culture, And The (Re)Definition/Queering Of The Male Gaze, David Nicholas Martin

Theses and Dissertations--Art and Visual Studies

The traditional notion of the Male Gaze, first conceptualized by feminist film critic Laura Mulvey in 1975, focused on the objectification of women through depictions structured to gratify a male heterosexual perspective. In this chapter we will revisit this concept and investigate how that gaze may have shifted away from a primarily heterosexual perspective to a socially dominant male perspective (maleness here referring to dominance rather than specific gender, just as “whiteness” might refer to privilege rather than race). With gender roles in an increasingly global and mobile society becoming more fluid and complex, opening up visibility to LGBTQ communities, …

Advancing The Field Of Human Services: Lgbt Competencies, Narketta Sparkman-Key, Nicola Meade, Ne'shaun Bordern

Counseling & Human Services Faculty Publications

Ethical Standards for Human Services Professionals and Generic Human Services Professional Competencies adopted by the National Organization for Human Services do not include language or competencies specific to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities. Without a specific ethical code and/or competency outlined by the field, human services practitioners do not have clear guidelines for their work with these populations. Additionally, researchers lack a way to formally measure professionals’ abilities with these populations. This leaves potential for these historically marginalized populations to continue to be in a vulnerable position. To address these needs, authors reviewed established competencies in other helping …

Love At First Byte: An Economic Analysis Of The Internet Dating Apocalypse, Hamsa Srikanth

CMC Senior Theses

We’re often warned that the internet will hasten the dating apocalypse. The internet (it is posited) is depriving us of the elusive in-person magic, and modern courtship is now little more than love at first byte.

There remains uncertainty, however, about what the independent impact of the internet on the dating market has been. Similar to the internet, the telephone also changed the way we communicate, but its effect on the dating market was mostly complementary to the 'traditional' ways of meeting – i.e. calling your school crush at home. So the question remains: Is the effect of the …

Seropositivo: Queer Solidarity & Survival In Severo Sarduy’S Fiction, Huber Jaramillo Gil

Publications and Research

With the onset of the HIV epidemic, to prevent transmission, the Cuban government aggressively tested its sexually active population, sending infected people to live in quarantined sanitariums. It is in these establishments, in which an HIV-ridden Sarduy sets his last novel, entitled Pájaros de la playa (1993). Even as the reader witnesses the degradation and disintegration of sickened bodies, which the Nation rejected and discarded, Sarduy provides gender and sexual dissidents with a vision of themselves that does not compromise their queerness when confronting institutions of power. Instead, through subversion, appropriation and solidarity, he enacts a creative exploration of existence …

The Equality Toolkit: Practical Skills For Lgbtq And Dsd-Affected Patient Care, Laura Weingartner, Emily Noonan, Amy Holthouser, Jennifer Potter, Stacie Steinbock, Suzanne Kingery, Susan Sawning

Undergraduate Medical Education

The eQuality Toolkit is a training manual that helps healthcare providers build a foundation of inclusive clinical skills to competently care for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer-identified (LGBTQ) patients and individuals born with differences of sex development (DSD). Although this toolkit was designed for medical students, any healthcare provider who wants to learn inclusive clinical skills can benefit from this accessible, brief primer through its actionable steps to improve clinical care.

Uncovering Alice Bag: An Alternative Punk History, Emily Macune

Scripps Senior Theses

The intention of this thesis is to provide an alternative counter-narrative to the mainstream histories of punk that center white men. By focusing on the contributions of fem queer and POC punks, I aim to legitimize punk music as a form of resistance against systems of oppression that are oppositional to the commodified forms of mainstream punk. Using Alice Bag, as my central case study as a fem queer punk that is often left out of punk historical narratives, I contextualize her work through feminist, queer, and media studies lenses to bridge the gap between academia and forgotten personal experience.

"Where Is A Story Before It Becomes Words?": Understanding Queer Composition's Place In Writing Studies Through Lynda Barry's What It Is, James Franklin Mcclure

Online Theses and Dissertations

Queer Theory has maintained an unstable place in Writing Studies because of the ever-changing political and social uses and definitions of the term “queer” in contemporary western society. In this essay, I discuss how composition scholars must reinterpret their understanding of Queer Composition from a writing genre to a writing heuristic in order to stabilize queerness in Writing Studies. I show how the Queer Composition heuristic functions within a text by using Lynda Barry’s creative and pedagogical text What It Is as an example that iterates queerness as an accessible and inclusive practice for all writers.

“The Ground On Which I Stand” Healing Queer Trauma Through Performance: Crafting A Solo Performance Through The Investigation Of Ritual Poetic Drama Within The African Continuum, Ashley W. Grantham

Theses and Dissertations

“The Ground On Which I Stand”

Healing Queer Trauma through Performance:

Crafting a Solo Performance through the investigation of Ritual Poetic Drama within the African Continuum.

By: Ashley W. Grantham

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Performance Pedagogy at Virginia Commonwealth University

Virginia Commonwealth University

April 16^th, 2019

Thesis Adjudicator: Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates

Committee: Dr. Keith Byron Kirk, Director of Graduate Studies and Karen Kopryanski, Head of Voice and Speech

How does this method of Ritual Poetic Drama within the African Continuum, by extension, solo performance, …