A Review of “The Story of Sexual Identity: Narrative Perspectives on the Gay and Lesbian Life Course”

The Story of Sexual Identity: Narrative Perspectives on the Gay and Lesbian Life Course. Phillip Hammack and Bertram Cohler (Eds.). New York: Oxford University Press. 2009. 474 pp. ISBN 9780195326789. $49.95 (Cloth). The Story of Sexual Identity: Narrative Perspectives on the Gay and Lesbian Life Course, by editors Phillip Hammack and Bertram Cohler, explores the role of sociocultural and political contexts embedded in various historical periods and how these affect the life trajectories of gay and lesbian individuals and families. Further, the volume offers several chapters that examine how context informs the ways in which gays and lesbians have and are creating, shaping, and reshaping the stories of their sexual identities, illuminating the meaning behind them in an eloquent and in many instances emotionally intimate way. The editors open the volume with their conceptualization of the co-constructional processes of sexual identity development, drawing from multiple disciplines including history, psychology, sociology, and queer studies. To further conceptually ground the volume they are among the first (cf. Savin-Williams, 2005) to move away from more static early models of sexual identity development (e.g., Cass, 1979) by merging narrative and life-course perspectives. The resulting theoretical framework highlights the fluid and dynamic sexual identities of gays and lesbians and the influential role of context in their development over the life course. The editors, and many of the chapter authors, assert that the meaning of one's sexual identity is more than simply being gay or lesbian, alternative to the idea of a master narrative. The meaning of gay or lesbian varies by person and context, although some elements can be shared, especially within a generation that shares an experience, thereby creating a narrative generation. For example, those gay men of dating age during the emergence of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s are a recognized generation defined by a specific historical event. As a result of this shared experience, they share a similar discourse about dating in the age of AIDS. However, this is not to suggest that everyone shares the same discourse. Another example includes an individual's coming out story that is situated in the era of the emergence of AIDS. In fact, several chapters examine new or existing data and literature by contextualizing the life stories of gays and lesbians using a generation narrative in a way that could not be more timely. The current sociocultural and political context affecting the lives of gay and lesbian individuals, couples, and families in the United States and abroad differs vastly between and within countries and is highlighted in several chapters throughout the volume. In the United States alone, some basic rights (e.g., protections from discrimination in housing and the work place) are afforded to gay and lesbian individuals in some states, whereas in others it remains legal to deny housing to someone because of their perceived sexual identity. Similarly, in some states gay and lesbian couples who wish to marry are allowed the same state-level rights and privileges of marriage as heterosexual couples, whereas in other states they can register to receive some marital-like rights via domestic partnerships statutes. Still, in most states no rights or privileges are afforded these couples. Further, in most states and to a small extent at the federal level, the rights, privileges, and constraints for these individuals and families are contested and changing rapidly (for better or worse; e.g., the repeal of Proposition 8 in California). In fact, it has become commonplace to encounter some form of media (e.g., Internet) that discusses the latest developments in gay and lesbian rights, and it is widely accepted that discrimination continues to pervade the fabric of the American tapestry. Certainly, each decade or historical period in American history has differentially influenced the constraints and access to myriad rights, privileges, and safe communities for gay and lesbians. …

PART 1. Time, Place, Story: Introductory Perspectives on Narrative and the Life Course 1. Narrative Engagement and Sexual Identity: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Study of Sexual Lives. Phillip L. Hammack & Bertram J. Cohler 2. History, Narrative, and Sexual Identity: Gay Liberation and Post-War Movements for Sexual Freedom in the United States. Benjamin Shepard Culture, Identity, Narrative: Context and Multiplicity in Sexual Lives 3. Stories from the Second World: Narratives of Sexual Identity in the Czech Republic across Three Generations of Men who have Sex with Men. Timothy McCajor Hall 4. Unity and Purpose at the Intersections of Racial/ethnic and Sexual Identities. Ilan H. Meyer & Suzanne C. Ouellette 5. Bisexuality in a House of Mirrors: Multiple Reflections, Multiple Identities. Paula C. Rodriguez Rust 6. Narrative Identity Construction of Black Youth for Social Change. Mollie V. Blackburn PART 3. Identities in Process: Stories of Risk and Relationships 7. Between Kansas and Oz: Drugs, Sex, and the Search for Gay Identity in the Fast Lane. Steven P. Kurtz 8. (My) Stories of Lesbian Friendship. Jacqueline S. Weinstock 9. Emergence of a Poz Sexual Culture: Accounting for Barebacking among Gay Men. Barry D. Adam 10. Connectedness, Communication, and Reciprocity in Lesbian Relationships: Implications for Women's Construction and Experience of PMS. Janette Perz & Jane M. Ussher 11. Postcards from the Edge: Narratives of Sex and Relationship Breakdown among Gay Men. Damien Ridge & Rebecca Wright Making Gay and Lesbian Identities: Development, Generativity, and the Life Course 12. In the Beginning: American Boyhood and the Life Stories of Gay Men. Bertram J. Cohler 13. The Role of the Internet in the Sexual Identity Development of Gay and Bisexual Male Adolescents. Gary W. Harper, Douglas Bruce, Pedro Serrano, & Omar B. Jamil 14. Focus on the Family: The Psychosocial Context of Gay Men Choosing Fatherhood. David deBoer 15. Midlife Lesbian Lifeworlds: Narrative Theory and Sexual Identity. Mary Read 16. The Good (Gay) Life: The Search for Signs of Maturity in the Narratives of Gay Adults. Laura A. King, Chad M. Burton, & Aaron C. Geise 17. Generativity and Time in Gay Men's Life Stories. Andrew J. Hostetler 18. From Same-Sex Desire to Homosexual Identity: History, Biography, and the Production of the Sexual Self in Lesbian and Gay Elders' Narratives. Dana Rosenfeld Concluding Perspective 19. Lives,Times, and Narrative Engagement. Bertram J. Cohler & Phillip L. Hammack

Book review: The Story of Sexual Identity: Narrative Perspectives on the Gay and Lesbian Life Course

The story of sexual identity: narrative perspectives on the gay and lesbian life course

Introduction To describe the attitude of a human towards the world, a subject uses various language forms which reveal inner reasons of his or her behavior. This is the unique character of relationships between a human and the world according to philosophical tradition today. Personal being includes social and individual practices in which human arguments about his or her actions, beliefs and desires are reflected. Narrative (in English and French narrative--a story-telling; in Latin narrare--to tell) refers to the concept characteristic for the postmodern philosophy, establishing a self-sentiment as a text being. The term is borrowed from the historiography where it emerged within the context of conception which explains the sense of a historical event not as a naturally determined story but as a sense arising in the context of narration about the event and immanently connected with its interpretation. Narrative approach in modern social sciences narrative turn in social sciences took place in the 80-s of the 20th century. From the point of view of a turn, it is possible to understand the functioning of different forms of knowledge if to view them from a narrative perspective and with realization of significance of narrative in the life of a human [5]. In 1905 a philosopher L. Shestov wrote: If a human found the words to express his attitude to the world, he has a right to speak and he can be listened to, and his attitude is unique which we never met before and it will never occur again. L. Shestov criticized natural-science methodology and stated: Only alternating events are worth the attention of science, these events may be created artificially, if desired, missing a huge amount of single facts. Referring to narrative, we realize that 'single events tell us a lot more than constantly recurring ones' [9]. Narrative in philosophy is interpreted as a way for a human to acquire his identity. In a narrative a story-teller objectifies his own subjectivity. Narrative is not only a means of self-identification but also a way to reach certain social aims. Today narrative is in the spotlight of narratology, social and humanitarian and natural sciences. Specialists in the narratology (J.M. Adam, G. Genette, Th. Pavel, Sh. RimmonKenan, G. Prince etc.) explain the number of studies by the fact that narration in the life of people is becoming more important. Disregarding material and symbolic ways, people are communication verbally. A linguistic product, or discourse is the result of this communication. The results of the study include not only literary texts and everyday language but a scientific discourse as well: musicology (E. Nuke), literary texts (W. Steiner) and film studies (K. Metz) analyze composition and representation; cultural studies study the ways for obtaining legitimation by the authorities through narrative (F. Jameson); in psychology, narratology explanatory schemes are used for studying the memory and cognition (N. Sten, K. Glenn); philosophy and sociology study conventions of narrative to define a rhetorical nature of scientific texts (R. Rorty, E. Gross). Narrative approach in social sciences today implies the presence of in all the areas of human relationships despite certain functional differences:--in psychology narrative helps to understand the identity; in history narratives give a sense to the past; in psychological analysis this is the material for analyzing things; in philosophy narratives are the base for forming a new vision pf the world and organizing communities [13]; in sociology narratives combine all the characteristics of a good methodology--narrative approach in modern social sciences implies a universal character for telling the stories [12]. It means that narrative serves as a form of a human behavior or other social actions which occur under certain conditions and are oriented towards the others. …

Editorial:<scp>Narrative‐Based</scp>Approaches in Psychological Research and Practice

Australia remains a heteronormative society, with many of our social, legal, and moral structures still assuming and reinforcing heterosexuality as the default norm. The impacts of heteronormativity on the family lives of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) Australians can be profound. In this chapter, we draw from the lifecourse principles of linked lives, trajectories and turning points to examine how family dynamics produce disadvantage in the lives of LGB Australians. We begin by documenting trajectories of satisfaction, closeness, and support in relationships between LGB children and their parents. We then test associations between the quality of the parent-child relationship and LGB people’s mental health and emotional wellbeing across the life course. Next, we turn our attention to LGB people’s desires and expectations to have children of their own, and test whether relationships with parents play a role in shaping these. Overall, we find evidence that family dynamics continue to be a source of disadvantage in the lives of some LGB Australians. On average, LGB people are less likely to report a positive relationship with their parents than heterosexual people, and negative relationships with parents appear to suppress desires for having children of one’s own. Further, gay men who desire to have children are significantly less likely to expect to fulfill those desires the more dissatisfied they are with their relationships with their parents. Our findings demonstrate how social structures have the power to shape our most important, personal relationships and, through these, our mental health and wellbeing.

A life course perspective of gay and lesbian adulthood enriches our understanding of clinical presentations and modifies our conception of psychotherapy. The author describes shifts in his psychotherapeutic orientation characterized by an increasing recognition of the importance of social, cultural, and historical forces that shape gay and lesbian mental health. Given the uncharted nature of many gay and lesbian lives across adulthood, existential questions about the meaning of life choices are often present in the consulting room. Therapists working with gay and lesbian clients embark on an empathic journey informed by treatment skills as well as our joint participation in a world of significant social change.

Over the last four decades the life course perspective has become an important and fruitful approach in the social sciences. Some of its proponents even claim that the life course approach today is the pre-eminent theoretical orientation and new core research paradigm in social science (Elder et al. 2003; Heinz et al. 2009). Although not everyone will agree with this far reaching claim, few will dispute that the life course approach constitutes a promising conceptual starting point for overcoming the crucial micro-macro problem in social research by analysing the dynamic interrelation of structure and agency. The life course perspective has been successfully applied to empirical research in a wide range of sociological as well as demographic studies. In line with the development of the life course approach also migration and integration issues have become core topics of debate in society and are subject of a growing number of studies over the past years. Despite this similar development in time, exchanges between the life course approach and migration research are still rather limited. Reviewing the booming migration literature in Europe it is striking that the large majority of studies do not or only partially use the sociological life course approach. Even though a study already carried out in the early twentieth century became a classical study in migration research as well as in the life course literature. In the “The Polish Peasant in Europe and America” (1918–1920), the authors Thomas and Znaniecki basically apply a life course approach to the study of Polish migrants coming to the US. They aimed to explain social changes and changes in, for example family relations, by focusing on the interaction between individual migrants and the host society. This line of research has however not been fully taken further in research since then. Even though migration has become one of the major factors in population change in Europe today (Coleman 2008; Taran 2009) and the resulting significant amount of research in social sciences, the main focus of recent studies has been on the position of migrants in education and the labour market as well as on issues of identity and belonging (Heath et al. 2008; Van Tubergen 2005; Verkuyten 2001). Studies mainly aim to explain the specific position of migrants after migration. In demography, studies have looked at specific transitions like timing of the first child or intermarriage with native partners (Coleman 1994; Gonzalez-Ferrer 2006; Kalmijn and van Tubergen 2006; Milewski 2008). In the study of international migration moves different, often economic explanations of migration decisions are taken. Only recently more emphasis has been put on the linked lives and the role of family and other networks for facilitating the migration move (Castles and Miller 2009). That the life course approach is only limitedly used in migration studies is at least puzzling: Understanding migrants’ behaviour and explaining the cumulative effects resulting from their actions which, in turn, are embedded in societal structures and framed by institutions, requires just the kind of dynamic research approach the sociological life course perspective suggests. This is even more so the case for studies on integration issues, as integration processes actually directly refer to life course processes, be it inter-generational (cohort differences) or intra-generational (individual careers). At the same time most studies in this domain focus on the position of migrants in society by studying the process of settlement in the host society only.

Geographers and social scientists more generally have studied and located the lives of gay men and lesbians for well over 20 years now. However, the particular visibilities and invisibilities of gay life that geographers have mapped have only been possible if scholars created their own data, either by way of interviews or manipulating census data so as to create surrogates for gay and lesbian households. The move throughout the United States and several Western countries to solemnize gay and lesbian relationships through civil union, marriages, or domestic partnerships has also created a new source of data by which to track and map particular kinds of gay and lesbian lives. By way of an example, this article seeks to map the lives of gay men and lesbian women who undertook Vermont civil unions in 2000. The results show that very little geographical difference exists between the lives of homosexual and heterosexual coupled households throughout the United States.

This chapter discusses a narrative gerontological approach to learn more about subjective views of aging. A scoping review in the Psycinfo database resulted in seven empirical narrative studies on subjective views of aging. The studies are summarized in some detail to do justice to their specific context and methods. Next, the studies are compared from critical, structural, and functionalist narrative perspectives. From a critical narrative perspective, the studies show the diversity of subjective views of aging from the intersection of age and other social identities like gender, sexual orientation, and migration. From a structural narrative perspective, the stories show complexity across multidirectional (decline, maintenance, and growth) and multidimensional (physical, social, and psychological) views of aging. From a functionalist narrative perspective, the stories illustrate how aging persons dynamically identify with and distance themselves from views of aging: My aging as (a) declining, (b) not declining, (c) avoiding decline, (d) adapting, and (e) offering possibilities. A narrative approach, thus, brings more diversity, complexity, and dynamics to studies of subjective views of aging. Besides criticisms of the dominant narrative of aging as uncontrollable physical decline, this chapter also points to the potential of stories of the lived experience of aging to contribute to multiple new narratives of aging.KeywordsSubjective views of agingNarrativesDiversityLived experienceGrowing old

The social and political context of sexual identity development in the United States has changed dramatically since the mid twentieth century. Same-sex attracted individuals have long needed to reconcile their desire with policies of exclusion, ranging from explicit outlaws on same-sex activity to exclusion from major social institutions such as marriage. This paper focuses on the implications of political exclusion for the life course of individuals with same-sex desire through the analytic lens of narrative. Using illustrative evidence from a study of autobiographies of gay men spanning a 60-year period and a study of the life stories of contemporary same-sex attracted youth, we detail the implications of historic silence, exclusion, and subordination for the life course.

Despite considerable evidence suggesting that relational status is an important dimension of lesbian and gay experience over time, there has been little systematic research on the topic. This paper proposes an agenda for the future study of coupled and single lifestyles among lesbians and gay men. To date, gay and lesbian singles have been neglected altogether, and developmental research on same-sex couples has focused primarily on intrinsic, presumably invariant developmental processes, frequently overlooking the important contributions of historical change and cohort-specific social pressures to the formation of life-course pathways. Moreover, we lack good, basic descriptive data on the rates of gay singlehood versus participation in partnership, and on the myriad ways in which gay couples and singles construct their lives. Future research on relational status among lesbians and gay men must characterize and conceptualize this diversity, and place it within the larger context of a life-course approach that emphasizes both the material and symbolic implications of single or partnered lifestyles across time.

Psychologists are increasingly interested in the life cycle as the unit for study and in such questions as whether adult development, like child development, is to be perceived as a succession of stages. A stage theory of adult life seems oversimplified for several reasons. First, the timing of life events is becoming less regular, age is losing its customary social meanings, and the trends are toward the fluid life cycle and an age-irrelevant society. Second, the psychological themes and preoccupations reported by young, middle-aged, and older persons are recurrent ones that appear and reappear in new forms and do not follow in a single fixed order. Third, intrapsychic changes occur slowly with age and not in stepwise fashion. These factors may have implications for the psychiatrist who, in helping the patient make a meaningful life story from a life history, deals always with issues of time, timing, and aging.

A life course epidemiology approach to climate extremes and human health