Is it Really Just About Being More Like a Fag? Confronting the Gay Male Model Mantra

Although the debate between feminism and queer is by now a fairly old and some might argue, trite and overwrought one, in this paper I direct my attention to a specific feminist assessment of queer that I find to be especially unhelpful and pernicious: the automatic linkage of queer with the exaltation of a gay male subjectivity. This article is informed by my own ethnographic research on lesbian/queer public sexual cultures; specifically, two Canadian lesbian/queer bathhouses, where public sex and sexual exploration are encouraged. I argue that this contention, that lesbians who espouse queer are aping (gay) male sexuality and subjectivity—due to the privileging of non-normative sexual practices found within the gay male community—does two things: (re)essentializes genders and sexualities, and, more importantly, robs non-gay male subjects (e.g., women, lesbians, butches, trans identified individuals) of their own agency. In sum, I believe that this linkage to a supposed gay male imitation, and concomitantly, viewing lesbian/queer sexual cultures, behaviors, configurations, and signifying sexual economies as mere derivatives of gay male culture, reinforces lesbian/queer invisibility and (re)centers the heterosexual matrix. For the sake of lesbian/queer subjects’ own viability, lesbian/queer sexualities must thus be pulled out of this discursive trap.     

Us and them: Memory advantages in perceptually ambiguous groups

Ingroup advantages and outgroup deficits in perception and memory are well-established in research on race, gender, and other ostensibly identifiable social categories. The present study extended this research to a social category that is not as perceptually apparent: male sexual orientation. Consistent with hypotheses, an interaction of participant sexual orientation and image sexual orientation revealed an ingroup enhancement and outgroup deficit for memory of faces that participants perceived—both accurately and inaccurately—as belonging to either their ingroup or outgroup in a subsequent task. Additionally, parallel effects were found for the accurate identification of sexual orientation—a finding consistent with previous literature. The present data highlight the importance of social categorization for subsequent memory and suggest that the underlying cognitive machinery responsible for the recognition of groups may be co-opted for other relevant social applications.     

Sexual Content on Mainstream TV Advertising: A Cross-cultural Comparison

A content analysis of 1,785 American ads and 1,467 Israeli ads maps the representation of sexual content on mainstream TV advertising in the two countries. This content appears in less than 5% of the advertisements. Most of it is mild and portrayed in the conservative context of an established relationship. Explicit material, socially discouraged practices, references to sexual responsibility and complete nudity are extremely rare. Israeli advertisements tend to present a higher share of sexual content than American ads, and male models are more likely to be partially nude than female models—but these differences are minor in extent.     

When Darwin flopped: The rejection of sexual selection

Charles Darwin considered sexual selection as integral to evolution as natural selection, but the theory of sexual selection was rejected by most scientific and lay audiences. This article argues that sexual selection theory clashed with biases prevalent in the 19th-century—about culture and nature, mind and body, male and female—in ways that Darwin’s first sketch of evolution did not. Whereas the 1859 The Origin of Species tracked the development of bodily structures, the 1871 The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex focused not on form but function—on behavior. In Darwin’s view, “mind is function of body,” and the mind was the seat not of reason but of sex. Also, when he postulated that female choice sculpted the male form, he conflicted with the long-standing cultural assumption that men controlled women. And, in discussing female beauty, Darwin showed a fascinating ambivalence about its implications for human gender relations. Finally, he was at odds with his culture in the premium he placed on desire. In short, his theory landed on a cultural fault line, causing upheaval and mayhem, and then it fell into an abyss it had helped to create.     

A developmental perspective on psychotherapy process, psychotherapists' expertise, and “Meaning-Making Conflict” within therapeutic relationships: A two-part series

Part I (in this issue)—A Dialectical-Constructivist View of Human Development, Psychotherapy, and the Dynamics of Meaning-Making Conflict Within Therapeutic Relationships— reviews a dialectical-constructivist model of human development and articulates, in the language of that model, how psychotherapy, in general, works. It describes and illustrates three generic processes, which contribute to the frequent successes of an extremely diverse range of psychotherapy theories and practices. This view of psychotherapy focuses on both the client's meaning-making processes and the therapist's meaning-making processes and how they contribute together to effective psychotherapy. Part I also offers a way of understanding what is going on when therapeutic progress is blocked by conflict between the client's and the therapist's meaning-making processes. Part II—Dialectical Thinking and Psychotherapeutic Expertise: Implications for Training Psychotherapists and Protecting Clients from Theoretical Abuse—explores those experiences in which the therapist's own exercise of his or her meaning-making structures, and maintenance of the integrity of his or her theories, has a limiting or destructive impact on the value of therapy to the client. It considers the concept of “theoretical abuse” by psychotherapists as a way of characterizing the most destructive of these experiences. This serves as a rhetorical device for introducing comparisons between these phenomena and the phenomena of sexual abuse by psychotherapists, in terms of dynamics, prevalence, and appropriate strategies for prevention. Part II uses work on the development of dialectical thinking in adulthood to conceptualize how different understandings of the nature of psychotherapists' expertise increase or decrease the likelihood and severity of “theoretical abuse”. Finally, it derives implications for training psychologists and other psychotherapy professionals.     

A developmental perspective on psychotherapy process, psychotherapists' expertise, and “Meaning-Making Conflict” within therapeutic relationships: Part II

Part I—A Dialectical-Constructivist View of Human Development, Psychotherapy, and the Dynamics of Meaning-Making Conflict Within Therapeutic Relationships-reviewed a dialectical-constructivist model of human development and articulated, in the language of that model, how psychotherapy, in general, works. It described and illustrated three generic processes which contribute to the frequent successes of an extremely diverse range of psychotherapy theories and practices. This view of psychotherapy focused on both the client's meaning-making processes and the therapist's meaning-making processes, and how they contribute together to effective psychotherapy. Part I also offered a way of understanding what is going on when therapeutic progress is blocked by conflict between the client's and the therapist's meaning-making processes. Part II—Dialectical, Thinking and Psychotherapeutic Expertise: Implications for Training Psychotherapists and Protecting Clients from ‘Theoretical Abuse’—explores those experiences in which the therapist's exercise of this or her own meaning-making structures, and maintenance of the integrity of his or her theories, has a limiting or destructive impact on the value of therapy to the client. It considers the concept of “theoretical abuse” by psychotherapists as a way of characterizing the most destructive of these experiences. This serves as a rhetorical device for introducing comparisons between these phenomena and the phenomena of sexual abuse by psychotherapists, in terms of dynamics, prevalence, and appropriate strategies for prevention. Part II uses work on the development of dialectical thinking in adulthood to conceptualize how different understandings of the nature of psychotherapists' theories and expertise increase or decrease the likelihood and severity of ‘theoretical abuse’. Finally, it derives implications for training psychologists and other psychotherapy professionals.     

Social context,sexual practices,and risks for HIV transmission among men who have sex with men: The south beach health survey

In a population-based sample of 193 men who had sex with men in South Beach, Miami-Dade County, Florida, two indicators of social context—choice of sexual relationships and perceived HIV-infection status—were used to analyze residents who engaged in certain sexual practices with their partners. The vast majority (88.6%) of respondents reported engagement in anal sex during the previous 12 months; 20.2% reported unprotected anal intercourse (UAI) with ejaculation with any partner and 12.4% reported UAI with ejaculation with one or more casual partners. Findings supported the hypothesis that primary partner relationships and perceived HIV status are important variables for understanding engagement in UAI with ejaculation. Men who engaged in such behaviors with casual partners were more likely to have negative attitudes towards condoms, report difficulty communicating desires for safer sex, disagree with the belief that AIDS is fatal, and be intoxicated during anal intercourse. Men who reported engaging in anal intercourse, but who never shared unprotected ejaculations, were most likely to be unknowingly infected with HIV, suggesting that many men may become infected while following what they believe to be “safer sex practices.” In designing effective interventions, public health authorities need to take into account socially embedded risk-negotiating practices.     

Intimate Partner Violence Within Gay Male Couples: Dimensionalizing Partner Violence Among Cuban Gay Men

Using a quantitative–qualitative mixed design, the current study investigated relationship violence within 35 gay male couples living in Santiago, Cuba. Informants narrated how violence was enacted within their relationship. Qualitative analyses revealed men’s construction of masculinity and the sequelae of economic hardships—which led to economic emasculinization—were primary contributors to relationship abuse. Gendered interpretations to the display of heightened masculinity contributed to intimate partner violence. Enacted interpersonal violence was not meaningfully associated with alcohol consumption or to personality measures. We suggest the economic constraints that are perceived by couples to precipitate relational stress may be similar across heterosexual and gay/lesbian couples, and that the relational power accorded to economic privilege cannot be aligned fully by gender.     

Hey stud: Race, sex, and sports

This article is an examination of how the intersection of sport and race plays out in the sexualization of the sporting role of African American male athletes. Further, the article is an examination of the multiple roles the media, sport, and race play as these impact the public persona of African American male athletes in high-profile sports. The article concludes with a number of recommendations for ending the negative images of African American male athletes. To the white public, we are athletes, rappers, preachers, singers—and precious little else. We are also robberts, rapists, mentally deficient and sexually well endowed. —Ellis Cose, The Envy of the World: On Being a Black Man in America (2002; New York: Washington Square Press, 3–4) First of all, let me say good after ... good late afternoon. Because of the HIV virus I have attained, I will have to announce my retirement from the Lakers today. I just want to make clear, first of all, that I do not have the AIDS disease, because I know a lot of you want to know that, but the HIV virus. My wife is fine, she’s negative, so no problem with her. I plan on going on, living for a long time, bugging you guys like I always have. So you’ll see me around. I plan on being with the Lakers and the league—hopefully [Commissioner] David [Stern] will have me for a while—and going on with my life. I guess now I get to enjoy some of the other sides of living—that [were missed] because of the season and the long practices and so on. I just want to say that I’m going to miss playing. And I will now become a spokesman for the HIV virus because I want people, young people, to realize they can practice safe sex. And, you know, sometimes you’re a little naive about it and you think it could never happen to you. You only thought it could happen to, you know, other people and so on and on. And it has happened. —Magic Johnson—Press Conference at L.A. Lakers Compound Washington Post, November 9, 1991     

Religious Involvement and Its Association to Risk Behaviors among Older Youth in Foster Care

This study examined religious involvement and its association to risk behaviors (sexual behavior, marijuana use, alcohol use, and cigarette use) among older youth in foster care (N=383). Three dimensions of religious involvement were assessed—church or religious service attendance, religious practices, and religious beliefs. Findings showed that gender, ethnic group membership, sexual abuse history, and placement type were significantly associated with older foster care youth’s religious involvement. Hierarchical logistic regression analyses showed that religious service attendance was associated with reduced odds of youth’s engagement in sexual behavior in the past 2 months and current use of cigarettes. In addition, greater religious beliefs were associated with a reduction in odds of youth’s use of alcohol in the past 6 months and current use of cigarettes. The consideration of religious involvement as a positive influence and resource that may reduce unhealthy risk behaviors among older youth in foster care is discussed.     

Skin Bleaching and the Prestige Complexion of Sexual Attraction

This article focuses on the sexual attraction motive for skin bleaching in Jamaica. Some captive Africans on plantations in Jamaica altered their complexion. These Africans modeled the British in the colony who bleached their skin to protect the “superior,” “sexy,” and ideal white skin from the “impurities” of interracial sex and the tropical climate. The beauty and sexual attraction accorded to light skin was also evident in skin bleaching newspaper ads in the 1950s. The ads told women that acquiring light complexion through skin bleaching would make them sexually attractive to men. The persistence of colorism and its most blatant expression—skin bleaching—is also evident in contemporary Jamaica as expressed in some dancehall songs which praise skin bleachers, and the explanatory narratives of skin bleachers that bleaching makes them pretty and sexually attractive to potential spouses. Similar themes are reflected in the criticism that the browning Dancehall Queen Carlene was deemed sexually attractive and choreographically talented only because of her brown physicality. Some spouses request that their partner acquire the bleached physicality because they find it sexually attractive similar to many male clients in “massage parlors” who only request female sex workers who bleach their skin.     

Visual preferences for sex and status in female rhesus macaques

Most primates are both highly visual and highly social. These qualities predict that visual cues to social variables, such as identity, sex, social status, and reproductive quality, would be intrinsically valuable and systematically attract attention. Supporting this idea, thirsty male rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) will forego fluid reward to view images of the faces of high-ranking males and the sexual skin of females. Whether female rhesus macaques, who experience dramatically different social pressures and reproductive costs than male macaques, also systematically and spontaneously value visual cues to social information remains untested experimentally. We probed the preferences of female rhesus macaques, given the opportunity to display an image from a known class of social stimuli or touch a second target to display a blank screen. We found that females preferred faces of high-status males and also images of the perinea of both males and females, but were not motivated to display images of subordinate males or control stimuli. These findings endorse the view that both male and female rhesus macaques—and presumably other highly social primates—seek information about other individuals in a way that matches the adaptive value of that information for guiding social behavior.     

On the limits of sexual ethics: The phenomenology of autassassinophilia

Contemporary liberal discourse advocates tolerance of a diversity of sexual orientations and behaviors, provided that the principle of informed consent can be shown to have been respected. Borrowing an extreme test case used by the sexologist John Money—the reciprocally chosen lust murder pact—this theoretical article examines the limits of liberal ideology for sexual ethics. Using as its illustrative material the case of Sharon Lopatka, a Maryland woman who instigated her own sexual murder in 1996, it demonstrates that the phenomenon of being murdered for pleasure problematizes commonplace assumptions about the legitimacy to consent. The discussion recalls and refreshes existing debates in feminism and the politics of sadomasochism and reads them alongside the rhetoric surrounding the ethics of medically assisted suicide. Consenting to murder for pleasure is revealed as a formulation that exceeds the terms of informed consent as it is currently understood and thereby constitutes an ethical and logical aporia. In a final section, the phenomenology of consensual murder is explored via a reading of the dynamics of sexual activity and passivity in philosophical accounts by Jean-Paul Sartre and Martha Nussbaum, and a fictional text by Muriel Spark.     

Teaching business ethics to professional engineers

Without question “business ethics” is one of the hot topics of the day. Over the past months we have seen business after business charged with improper practices that violate commonly-accepted ethical norms. This has led to a loss of confidence in corporate management, and has had severe economic consequences. From many quarters business educators have heard the call to put more emphasis on ethical practices in their business courses and curricula. Engineering educators are also heeding this call, since the practice of engineering usually involves working for (or leading) a business and/or engaging in business transactions. In the summer of 2002, Auburn University’s Engineering Professional Development program made the decision to produce—based on the author’s Executive MBA course in Business Ethics—a distance-delivered continuing education program for professional engineers and surveyors. Participants across the USA now may use the course to satisfy continuing education requirements with respect to professional licensing and certification. This paper outlines the purpose and content of the course and describes its production, distribution, application, and evaluation. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the “Ethics and Social Responsibility in Engineering and Technology” meeting, New Orleans, 2003.     

How to get “kissably close”: Examining how advertisers appeal to consumers’ sexual needs and desires

This paper explores the nature of sexual appelas—sex-related promises or benefits—in mainstream advertising by describing types of sex appeals and findings from a sex-benefit content analysis. Overall, our findings reveal that sex is used to appeal to women and men, although a higher proportion of sexual ads appear in men’s (12%) compared to women’s magazines (6%). In addition, a variety of sex appeals are directed toward women (attractiveness, behavior, esteem), whereas most appeals directed toward men emphasize more and better sex. Last, male-only images are relatively absent in sexual ads compared to female-only (45%) and couples (47%) images. These findings, observations, and directions for future research are discussed.     

Horizons of hermeneutics: Intercultural hermeneutics in a globalizing world

Starting from the often-used metaphor of the “horizon of experience” this article discusses three different types of intercultural hermeneutics, which respectively conceive hermeneutic interpretation as a widening of horizons, a fusion of horizons, and a dissemination of horizons. It is argued that these subsequent stages in the history of hermeneutics have their origin in—but are not fully restricted to—respectively premodern, modern and postmodern stages of globalization. Taking some striking moments of the encounter between Western and Chinese language and philosophy as example, the particular merits and flaws of these three types of hermeneutics are being discussed. The claim defended is that although these different types of hermeneutics are mutually exclusive from a theoretical point of view, as interpreting beings in the current era we depend on each of these distinct hermeneutic practices and cannot avoid living them simultaneously.     

Drawing the line: How the workplace shapes the naming of sexual harassment

Although sexual harassment naming – the process by which individuals identify and label experiences as sexual harassment – is key to tackling the problem of workplace sexual harassment, extant research focused on individual differences has explained a limited amount of variance in individuals’ propensity to name. We push this research in a new direction, drawing on institutional theory and strategic human resource management to identify workplace contextual factors that influence individuals’ propensity to name sexual harassment. Surveying 408 employed adults, we find that current employment in an industry with a high prevalence of sexual harassment reduces individuals’ likelihood of identifying scenarios as sexual harassment. Further, prior work experience in highly sexually harassing industries has a lasting negative effect on individuals’ propensity to name. In contrast, we show that individuals’ propensity to identify sexual harassment is greater when they perceive that their organization has implemented more HR practices supporting a climate for naming and that these HR practices can actually reduce the negative effect of current employment in a highly sexually harassing industry. Critically, by demonstrating that changing industry norms or adopting specific HR practices can shift individual naming of sexual harassment, we offer new avenues for sexual harassment prevention.     

Just for Fun: The Playful Image of Nanotechnology

In 1959, Richard Feynman suggested that the most compelling reason to pursue nanoscale research might be ‘just for fun.’ This article traces a history of playful images and ludic practices in nanotechnology. Two case studies—nanocars and nanosoccer—exemplify the ways in which scientific research mobilizes speculative futures, less through engineering design or stepwise protocol than through the recreational dynamics of play. Although such molecular toys might appear frivolous, they index the increasingly widespread conditions of play labor, or ‘playbor’, shaping today’s technoculture. Exploring the processes of transmutation and transvaluation by which technological imaginaries are rendered operative, this article tells a story of how the nanoworld became an everyday reality by becoming a game.