Heterosexual Orientation Research Articles

Addressing Sexual Issues in Individuals with Chronic Health Conditions

Although literature that addresses the treatment of sexuality for the majority population has been written within the field of social work and other disciplines, little attention has been paid to the sexuality issues of individuals with chronic health conditions in mainstream social work journals. A literature search of Social Work Abstracts from 1977 to 2004 revealed only 44 articles addressing sexual dysfunction. One publication, The Journal of Social Work and Human Sexuality, was dedicated to the area of sexuality from 1982 to 1993, when it discontinued publication. During its 10-year publication history, only two issues were devoted to the sexuality issues of individuals with chronic health conditions. The purpose of this article is to provide social workers with information about the PLISSIT model (Annon, 1974), the state-of-the art intervention used for the treatment of sexuality issues (McCarthy, 2001; Borelli-Kerner & Bernell, 1997), and one that we have used in our professional social work practice with individuals who have chronic health conditions. A DEFINITION OF CHRONIC HEALTH CONDITIONS Chronic medical conditions are defined using Rolland's (1994) psychosocial typology of illness, which includes the following four characteristics: (1) the onset of illness is acute or gradual; (2) the illness is progressive, chronic, or relapsing; (3) the illness may be nonfatal, shorten life span, or cause sudden death; and (4) the levels of incapacitation can vary. Defining chronic health conditions using these four broad patterns allows for the inclusion of traumatic onset disabilities, such as spinal cord injury, and disabilities associated with certain chronic conditions, such as diabetes, as well as chronic conditions that are life threatening, stable, or progressive, such as cancer, low back pain, or multiple sclerosis. SOCIAL WORK INTERVENTION: PLISSIT MODEL Despite a lack of empirical evidence, the PLISSIT model has been consistently identified in the literature as helping people with disabilities or chronic illnesses who have sexuality issues, even though the model was not developed specifically for this population (Sipski & Alexander, 1997; Westgren & Levi, 1999). However, there has not been an explicit rendition of using the PLISSIT model with this population in social work journals. PLISSIT stands for the four levels of intervention: (1) Permission Giving, (2) Limited Information, (3) Specific Suggestions, and (4) Intensive Therapy. Each level of treatment builds on the previous one, and a therapist can move back and forth between the levels of treatment. As treatment moves from level to level, the degree of skill required of the clinician increases as does the intensity of work with the client. The PLISSIT model is applicable to individuals with heterosexual and homosexual orientations because the interventions are specific to the client, the chronic health condition, and the sexual concern of the client and the client's partner. Level 1: Permission Giving The social worker gives the client permission to talk about sexuality through the use of statements that normalize the discussion and invite the client to ask questions. During the usual assessment process, the social worker may probe, We have discussed a number of areas in which your condition has disrupted your life. Many people find that their sexual life has also changed. Have you experienced any changes in your sex life that you would like to discuss? When a client initiates a discussion, the clinician responds with a permission-giving statement that assures the client that these issues are important and gives the client general information always to adapt his or her sex life to the chronic condition. Level 2: Limited Information A greater degree of comfort is necessary on the part of the social worker at level 2 because the client is given information directly related to the sexual concern identified. …

Aboriginal Surfing: Reinstating Culture and Country

Mainstream surfing in Australia is a discursive cultural practice, institutionally sanctioned as integral to national identity. represents the nation through a mode of white heterosexual orientation that is encoded into its practices and its texts. represents an historical transformation in the national psyche from the bush, inaugurated by the nation’s literary canon, to the beach, which has become the modern site of the nation’s identity. Indigenous surfing provides an oppositional view of nation and country that reinscribes the beach with cultural meanings specific to Aboriginal cultures. in this context can be seen as a reclamation of culture and a challenge to the dominance of white conceptions of nation and identity. This paper examines the indigenous surfing film, Surfing the Healing Wave and explores the film's representations of histories that are relevant to Aboriginal people. The film's narrative disruption of the surfing film genre instates a pedagogical practice that functions to reinscribe Aboriginal culture and Aboriginal histories through the contemporary event of the indigenous surfing contest.

The masculine vision of the power relations of heterosexual couples as a subsidy for health education in the prevention of STD/AIDS.

Treated as a study desenvolved with the objective of understanding the power relations in the heterosexual couple from the male perspective including his relation with the prevention of aids. Therefore ten men with heterosexual orientation, that have sexual-afective relations lasting, legally constituited or not- in co – habitation with a companion and whom at least has the same level of instruction, took part in the study. The proposition of Foucault about power relations and the constitution of the subjectivity form the bases of philosophical theory that support the qualitative study, which uses convergent-assistential-research-CAR- as a methodological reference.The datas were collected through group discussions, desenvolved between six meetings , in which diverse theme relacioned with sexuality and STD/aids were treated .The groups meetings initiate the health education that propel the convergence between the research and the preconcide assistant by CAR. Apart from this meetings datas were collected during two individual interviews realized in each one of the men which guide include themes related with living as a couple and the afective-sexual life of the man and the couple. The analysis of the data was done in accordance with the collective speech person-CSP, which profer organisation of speech from greater themes, that emerges group discussions and told individually in which they maintain strong connections with the question and with objectives of the study. This themes include what it is to be a man, the afective-sexual life of the couple, and the use of protection, and in each one of them, a CSP was organized aroud the different central ideas, in wich they complement one another. The discussion of CSP related to this theme facilitate the better understanding of problems in study and shows the evidence of the existence of different dynamics the circulation of power in the relations of the couple, in which has direct implications in the health education work for prevention of the STD/aids. The comprehension of this dynamics subsidize the proposition of a theorical reference in the use of health education – focal of nursing caring – for the prevention of STD/aids. In these reference, articulation of the idea of health promotions, health education, dialogue, heterosexual couple, health and taking care of yourself, the prepast relations thr power that it dissimulate as a social body.

Fluctuating asymmetry, second to fourth finger length ratios and human sexual orientation

Sexual orientation in humans may be influenced by levels of prenatal sex steroids which canalise neurodevelopment along sex-typical (heterosexual) or sex-atypical (homosexual) lines. Some evidence for sexual-orientation-related differences in putative somatic markers of prenatal sex hormones supports this view. A competing theory asserts that human homosexuality is due to developmental instability (DI) because it represents a shift from the species-typical pattern of heterosexual orientation. Evidence for elevated rates of non-right handedness among homosexuals provides limited support for this account. The current study tested both theories by examining nine bilateral somatic traits in 120 healthy heterosexual and homosexual men and women in order to compute second to fourth finger length ratios (2D:4D), a measure ascribed to levels of prenatal sex steroids, and fluctuating asymmetry (FA), a measure of DI. Homosexual men and women had significantly lower right hand 2D:4D ratios (even after controlling for handedness, height and weight differences) in comparison to heterosexuals, but sexual orientation did not relate to composite FA scores. The findings constrain the number of possible neurodevelopmental pathways responsible for sexual orientation in humans.

Sexual orientation and mental health in a birth cohort of young adults

This paper sought to examine the relationship between sexual orientation and mental health in a New Zealand birth cohort studied to age 25 years. The analysis is based on a sample of 967 participants (469 males; 498 females) in the Christchurch Health and Development Study. As part of this study information was gathered on: (a) measures of sexual orientation, same-sex behaviour and sexual attraction obtained at ages 21 and 25 years; (b) measures of mental disorders and suicidal behaviours over the interval 21-25 years; (c) measures of childhood and family background. Latent class analysis was used to combine indicators of sexual orientation, same sex behaviour and attraction to form an empirically based classification of sexual orientation. The best-fitting model classified the sample into three groups: exclusively heterosexual orientation (87.6%); predominantly heterosexual but with same-sex inclinations or experience (9.6%); predominantly homosexual (2.8%). Proportionately more women than men were classified as predominantly heterosexual (14.2% v. 4.8% respectively) or predominantly homosexual (3.9% v. 1.5% respectively). Cohort members with a predominantly homosexual orientation had rates of mental disorder and suicidal behaviours that were between 1.5 and 12 times higher than for those with an exclusively heterosexual orientation. These associations persisted after adjustment for confounding. The associations between sexual orientation and mental health were more marked for males than females. CONCLUSIONS. The findings suggest a continuum of sexual preferences amongst young adults. Variations in sexual orientation were clearly associated with mental health. These associations tended to be stronger for males.

Fragile Scholar: Power and Masculinity in Chinese Culture (review)

Reviewed by: Fragile Scholar: Power and Masculinity in Chinese Culture Jennifer W. Jay Fragile Scholar: Power and Masculinity in Chinese Culture. By Geng Song. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004. Pg. 256. $39.50 (cloth). Despite a sweeping title, Fragile Scholar: Power and Masculinity in Chinese Culture, based on the author's doctoral thesis, is more narrowly focused on the masculinity of the caizi, translated by the author as "fragile scholar" (more accurately, "talented scholar"), who is the male protagonist found in a minor genre of Chinese literature, the "talented scholar meets beautiful girl" romantic fiction and drama. Student Zhang is the archetypal fragile scholar in the early-fourteenth-century drama Western Wing, itself based on an eighth-century short story, The Story of Yingying. His masculinity is characterized by a handsome demeanor, physical weakness, androgynous and effeminate looks, literary talent, heterosexual orientation, and persistence to the point of setting aside the civil service examinations and kneeling before a maid to pursue and consummate his love and yearning for the attractive girl, Yingying. [End Page 345] Song chiefly uses textual analysis to locate the constitution of the fragile scholar in the masculinity of elite men within a broader historical context, from the time of Confucius in 500 bce to the eighteenth century. Supported by a large array of selected literary and classical sources spanning over two thousand years, from The Book of Poetry to the eighteenth-century novel The Dream of the Red Chamber, he constructs two other masculinities driven by the mainstream ideology of Confucian patriarchy, that of the shi, the scholar-officials with education who were bound for a public office, and the junzi, men upholding morality and aspiring to public office, whom Song describes as the "signifier of the official masculinity in traditional China." In these two masculinities he accounts for the similarly submissive, effeminate voice of the fragile scholar by equating it with the "emasculation of the mind" of the official when he assumes the voice of women in addressing or writing poetry to their superiors and the rulers. Song is convincing when he traces this masculinity to the legendary Qu Yuan (ca. 300 bce), a paragon of loyalty and a major poet. But he is on shaky ground when he goes further back and includes The Book of Poetry's eunuchs, who were liminal and marginal individuals throughout the course of Chinese history. Student Zhang, the fragile scholar who temporarily rejects the Confucian prescriptive ideology, is seen as an alternate and ideal masculinity, a male fantasy with male voice and male perspective. After all, characters such as Student Zhang sprang from the imagination and literary production of the shi scholar-official class. But the fragile scholar's life course changes when he adopts Confucian ideology and protocol, passing the examinations and legitimizing his sexual tryst through parental- or ruler-sanctioned marriage. Song asserts that these two steps initiate Student Zhang into the desexualized and emasculated masculinities of the shi scholar-officials and of the junzi, the moral, public men, and he enters their public world and drops the private world of the fragile scholar. On the other hand, Baoyu from The Dream of the Red Chamber remains a fragile scholar and does not go through this initiation process. To explain why this effeminate image of the fragile scholar was accepted without the homophobia characteristic of the West Song includes a chapter on homosexuality as an alternate masculinity in traditional China. He argues that the homosexual discourse, as in the literary representations of the astonishing beauty of legendary figures Song Yu and Pan An, became subsumed in heterosexual discourse. In fact, homosexual practice, known as nanfeng, or male-southern custom, was generally accepted due to the traditional Chinese conceptualization of gender as a yin (female) and yang (male) binary from which all individuals emerge with male and female components. Homosexuality was seen as a shifting masculinity or bisexuality as individuals later assumed the mainstream Confucian path of heterosexual marriage and siring of children. The sexualized fragile scholar stands in sharp contrast to the desexualized macho male warriors in Three Kingdoms and Water Margin, historical novels [End Page 346] written in the fourteenth century. At the...

Counselor Trainees' Assessment and Diagnosis of Lesbian Clients with Dysthymic Disorder

SUMMARY Graduate-level counselor trainees completed an Assessment and Diagnostic Inventory consisting of clinical vignettes and a series of questions pertaining to conceptualization of client problem, diagnosis, and assessment of overall level of psychopathology.We hypothesized that participants would assign different diagnoses to clients with lesbian versus heterosexual sexual orientation. Participants responded to vignettes in which clients were identified as either a lesbian or a heterosexual female, with all other content identical. Participants were significantly more likely to perceive lesbian clients' problems to be related to sexual orientation for the vignette corresponding to dysthymic disorder. However, they were not more likely to assign personality disorder diagnoses, nor did they attribute a greater degree of psychopathology to lesbian clients with dysthymic disorder.

Sexual Orientation, Health Risk Factors, and Physical Functioning in the Nurses' Health Study II

To examine associations between sexual orientation and breast cancer risk factors, cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors, mental health status, and health-related functioning. We compared participants in the Nurses' Health Study II (NHSII) reporting a lesbian or bisexual orientation with those reporting a heterosexual orientation, with heterosexuals serving as the reference group for all comparisons. Prevalence of health behaviors and conditions was adjusted for differences in the distribution of age, ancestry, and region of residence by standardizing to the distribution of the overall cohort. Multivariate prevalence ratios were calculated to compare lesbians and bisexuals with heterosexuals using binomial regression with the log link function. Means of health conditions were measured using continuous scales standardized to the distribution of the overall cohort. Differences in means comparing lesbians and bisexuals with heterosexuals were tested by multivariate linear regression. All comparisons were adjusted for age, ancestry, and region of residence. Based on information from 90,823 women aged 32-51 in 1995, those reporting a sexual orientation of lesbian (n = 694) had a higher prevalence of risk factors for breast cancer, including nulliparity and high daily alcohol intake, compared with heterosexual women. Lesbians also had a higher prevalence of several risk factors for CVD, including higher body mass index (BMI) and elevated prevalence of current smoking. Lesbians were more likely to report depression and the use of antidepressants. Key results for health risk factors were similar for lesbians and bisexual women (n = 317). Lesbian and bisexual women were found to have a higher prevalence of several important risk factors for breast cancer, CVD, and poor mental health and functioning outcomes. Most of these risk factors are modifiable, and appropriate interventions could play an important role in improving the health status of lesbian and bisexual women.

Sexual differentiation of the human brain: relevance for gender identity, transsexualism and sexual orientation

Male sexual differentiation of the brain and behavior are thought, on the basis of experiments in rodents, to be caused by androgens, following conversion to estrogens. However, observations in human subjects with genetic and other disorders show that direct effects of testosterone on the developing fetal brain are of major importance for the development of male gender identity and male heterosexual orientation. Solid evidence for the importance of postnatal social factors is lacking. In the human brain, structural differences have been described that seem to be related to gender identity and sexual orientation.

Cohort Difference in Sexual Orientation: Results from a Large Age-Stratified Population Sample

Background: There is some community survey evidence for a cohort difference in female sexual orientation. Objective: To determine whether there is a cohort difference in sexual orientation in Australia. Methods: A community survey was carried out with a sample of 7,447 adults from the age groups 20–24, 40–44 and 60–64 years. As part of this survey respondents were asked a question on sexual orientation which was answered privately. Results: A strong age cohort difference was found for women, with younger women more frequently reporting a homosexual or bisexual orientation. By contrast, no age cohort difference was found for men. Conclusion: These findings suggest that a heterosexual orientation may have become less common in younger cohorts of Australian women. This finding is consistent with data from other recent studies.

Bisexuality, Quality of Life, Lifestyle, and Health Indicators

This study compared male (M) and female (F) homosexual (HOM) and heterosexual (HET) sexual orientation behavior (SORB) groups to bisexuals (BI) on demographic, social background, quality of life, lifestyle, and health variables in a series of seven national probability samples between the years 1988 and 1996. Sexual orientation was assessed behaviorally for two time periods using by respondents' report of the gender of their sexual partners since they were age 18 and in the last 12 months. Data for 11,536 interviews were collected by the National Opinion Research Center. Differences among SORB groups were minimal.

Studying Sexual Orientation Change: A Methodological Review of the Spitzer Study, “Can Some Gay Men and Lesbians Change Their Sexual Orientation?”

ABSTRACT Robert L. Spitzer, MD, recently published a report, “Can Some Gay Men and Lesbians Change Their Sexual Orientation?: 200 Subjects Reporting a Change from Homosexual to Heterosexual Orientation.” He recruited men and women who reported to once have had a predominantly homosexual orientation–which they felt conflicted about–and who claimed, due to some kind of “therapy,” to have sustained some change to a heterosexual orientation for at least five years. “Therapy” in this study included either seeing a mental health professional, attending an ex-gay or other religious support group, bibliotherapy, repeated meetings with a heterosexual role model, or, without any external support, changing one's relationship to God. Spitzer interviewed his participants by telephone, asking 114 closed-ended and some open-ended questions, which were answered in about 45 minutes. Spitzer acknowledges that this approach has numerous limitations and discusses several of them in the paper. However, a careful methodologica...

Can some gay men and lesbians change their sexual orientation? 200 participants reporting a change from homosexual to heterosexual orientation.

Position statements of the major mental health organizations in the United States state that there is no scientific evidence that a homosexual sexual orientation can be changed by psychotherapy, often referred to as "reparative therapy." This study tested the hypothesis that some individuals whose sexual orientation is predominantly homosexual can, with some form of reparative therapy, become predominantly heterosexual. The participants were 200 self-selected individuals (143 males, 57 females) who reported at least some minimal change from homosexual to heterosexual orientation that lasted at least 5 years. They were interviewed by telephone, using a structured interview that assessed same sex attraction, fantasy, yearning, and overt homosexual behavior. On all measures, the year prior to the therapy was compared to the year before the interview. The majority of participants gave reports of change from a predominantly or exclusively homosexual orientation before therapy to a predominantly or exclusively heterosexual orientation in the past year. Reports of complete change were uncommon. Female participants reported significantly more change than did male participants. Either some gay men and lesbians, following reparative therapy, actually change their predominantly homosexual orientation to a predominantly heterosexual orientation or some gay men and women construct elaborate self-deceptive narratives (or even lie) in which they claim to have changed their sexual orientation, or both. For many reasons, it is concluded that the participants' self-reports were, by-and-large, credible and that few elaborated self-deceptive narratives or lied. Thus, there is evidence that change in sexual orientation following some form of reparative therapy does occur in some gay men and lesbians.

PERCEIVED PARENTAL CONTROL IN CHILDHOOD AND SEXUAL PREFERENCES OF ADULT OFFSPRING

To assess the relation between perceived parental control during childhood and sexual preferences of offspring during adulthood, 80 adult offspring of heterosexual orientation reported significantly lower parental control during childhood than 7 adult offspring with nonheterosexual orientation.

Healing Homosexuals: A Psychologist's Journey Through the Ex-Gay Movement and the Pseudo-Science of Reparative Therapy

SUMMARY Reparative therapy has become a generic term for any process that purports to facilitate a shift from homosexual orientation to heterosexual orientation. The author shares his own process as a survivor and former practitioner of reparative therapy. The religious mind-set and presuppositions that support reparative therapy are explored. The history of the grass roots ex-gay movement and the political ramifications associated with claims of healing are exposed. The author concludes that the pseudo-scientific claims of reparative therapy are suspect and warns of the risks and potential harm associated with these experimental therapies.

Sexual and romantic jealousy in heterosexual and homosexual adults.

Several theorists have claimed that men are innately more upset by a mate's sexual infidelity and women are more upset by a mate's emotional infidelity because the sexes faced different adaptive problems (for men, cuckoldry; for women, losing a mate's resources). The present work examined this theory of jealousy as a specific innate module in 196 adult men and women of homosexual and heterosexual orientations. As in previous work, heterosexuals' responses to a forced-choice question about hypothetical infidelity yielded a gender difference. However no gender differences were found when participants recalled personal experiences with a mate's actual infidelity. Men and women, regardless of sexual orientation, on average focused more on a mate's emotional infidelity than on a mate's sexual infidelity. Responses to hypothetical infidelity were uncorrelated with reactions to actual infidelity. This finding casts doubt on the validity of the hypothetical measures used in previous research.

The Rest is Silence...

This article focuses on questions rarely spoken of openly or written about in Poland. The article investigates what is behind such silence and tells of invisibility. The silence regarding lesbians in Poland is meaningful and reveals a lot about the concept of the Polish nation. This article examines Polish nationalistic discourse, which largely avoids the question of a homosexual orientation. Moreover, the heterosexual orientation is taken for granted as the only possible and natural one. Therefore, invisibility is a major theme of the article. The author illustrates this invisibility by examining two texts: the latest edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the new Polish Constitution. Both discourses are interwoven and deal with a very rigid concept of the Polish nation. The author goes on to look at how these discourses are perceived by Polish lesbians and how this concept of the Polish nation affects their daily lives (e.g. double life, staying in the closet, ‘white marriages’). The article draws largely on the results of the study that the author conducted in 1997 regarding lesbian existence in Poland. She bases her discussion on excerpts from interviews and questionnaires distributed among Polish lesbians. The author argues that the silence and invisibility of lesbians in official discourse influence Polish opinion about them, thus reinforcing homophobia and increasing pressure on lesbians to remain invisible.

Gender Identity and Creativity

Abstract This paper is intended as a modest contribution to conceptualizing the construction of gender and sexual role identity as well as its role in creative activity. Whether we are considering homosexual or heterosexual object orientation, there is no evidence that a psychic representation of core gender identity is inborn. Core gender and sexual role identity are shaped in large part by the experiences of early childhood and the parental discourse on sexuality and sexual role. Many years ago, the author wrote a paper entitled “Homosexuality in Women” which was based on a small number of analysands and the author mistakenly drew conclusions that she believed could apply to female homosexuality in general. As the years went by, her increasing experience, both with her ongoing self-analysis and what she learned from her lesbian analysands, led her to conclude that the generalisations she had proposed earlier were inappropriate and applied only to the analysands quoted in that paper. The criticisms stirr...

Sadomasochistically oriented behavior: diversity in practice and meaning.

One hundred and eighty-four subjects (22 women and 162 men) who were members of two sadomasochistically oriented clubs answered a semistructured questionnaire containing items relating to a variety of sexual behaviors. Using a multivariate statistical analysis that geometrically represents the co-occurrence of individual actions as a visual array (Guttman (1954). In Lazarfeld, P. E. (ed.), Mathematical Thinking in the Social Sciences, Free Press, Glencoe, IL.) four qualitatively different sexual scripts emerged: hypermasculinity; administration and receiving of pain; physical restriction; and psychological humiliation. Although similar themes have been suggested before, this study demonstrated their empirical base. Humiliation was significantly associated more with females and with heterosexual orientation in men, while hypermasculinity was associated with males and with homosexual orientation in men.

Sexual Victimization of Boys by Men

Abstract Sexual abuse of boys by men and older boys has been misunderstood in the professional and lay literatures. Because they confuse same-sex victimization with a homosexual orientation, many abused boys, and the people they talk to about their abuse, understand it as a sign of the victim's or the abuser's homosexuality. These reactions will confuse how a boy processes his victimization, regardless of whether he was previously developing toward a homosexual or heterosexual orientation. Gay boys may see it as a sexual initiation rather than an abusive exploitation; straight boys may understand it as a sign that they are “really” gay. In addition, gay boys may fear that their orientation derives from their sexual abuse history. Both straight and gay boys may consider that the abuse is a sign that they are unmanly and weak.