Commentary on: Sexual and Gender Minority Health Disparities as a Social issue: How Stigma and Intergroup Relations Can Explain and Reduce Health Disparities

Abstract

AbstractThe broadly defined field of stigma research has made enormous advances since the watershed moment created by the publication of Goffman's (1963) influential essay. Advances have been made in the conceptualization of what stigma is, how stigmatizing circumstances differ one from another and what the origins of stigma are thought to be. Beyond this useful expansion of concepts has been a robust development of methods aimed at operationalizing important stigma dimensions. In this commentary I point out how several of the papers in this special issue further elaborate and deepen the concepts and measures that have developed since Goffman. But this special issue goes further by bringing an intergroup relations orientation to bear in a focused way. Like other major advances such as concepts and theories associated with “minority stress” and “structural stigma” the current project portends a new set of lenses for further understanding the origins and consequences of stigma.