Sexual Identity Readings

Our readings for this week were on Cass’ and D’Augelli’s homosexual identity development models. When I first read through the models, I thought they were both somewhat similar in process, however, the differences lie in their framework. Cass’ model presents homosexual identity as a relationship between psychological and social factors where the individual is seeking congruence as a means to achieve their identity. D’Augelli’s model itself is incredibly succinct, but the framework in which he places his model is extensive. His model is rooted in a lifetime developmental process framework where identity is a social construct that evolves throughout the lifetime where at some points one’s sexual identity may be salient/crystallized than at other points. His model takes into account personal aspects, interactive intimacies, and sociohistorical context. I think D’Augelli did a better job at placing his model within a framework, while Cass explained her model in extensive detail just kind of throwing in an, “oh, by the way, this is subject to change depending on society.”

I’m currently reading a book called “The New Gay Teenager” by Ritch C. Savin-Williams that offers an interesting perspective on gay adolescents. From his perspective, homosexuality is an invention that today’s teenagers don’t necessarily see as relevant to them. He foresees a “postgay” future where (perhaps) sexuality is irrelevant. Some of the more interesting points the book has brought out for me thus far are the following:
1)Gay culture (and hetero culture) is the result of society.
2)Gay adolescent research has (for a long time) focused on those that were available to study – troubled teens – and how to help them. Research often completely ignored bisexual students or students that were “other” not to mention students that were not out, thus only studying one facet of the gay youth. (Not to mention that the grant money was for research to support these youth and not anything otherwise.)
3)The outcome of gay research depends on the operational definition of “homosexuality” to which we should really question “What does it mean to be gay?” Is it an inner orientation? Is it sexual behavior? Is it someone saying they are gay? What about a virgin that thinks they are gay? Or someone who labels themselves as heterosexual but sleeps with their gender? What if no sex is involved but there is an intense relationship otherwise?

As someone that identifies as a lesbian, I think this research is fascinating and it made me look at my life not just from a personal perspective, but from a historical perspective. Maybe the only reason I consider myself to be a lesbian is because society has made me a lesbian. When I was little, I saw a show on TV (maybe on Oprah or 60 Minutes) where there were gay people on TV and it seemed to me to be something that was not desirable. What if I had seen a different show – one where there were lesbian couples with children and families – maybe things would have been different. I was experiencing my most intense inner incongruence during the time of Ellen’s original sitcom. When she came out and her show was cancelled and there was media backlash, I took it personally. What if, instead, I had seen Ellen on TV with her current talk show – knowing that she’s a lesbian, but seeing its irrelevance to the show?

It took a long time for me to “come out” and it took me a long time because I was scared and I wasn’t sure. How do you know? I hadn’t even dated anyone at the time – how could I come out if I didn’t have “proof”? What if none of that mattered? What if you just had feelings for who you had feelings for? Maybe it isn’t truly a big deal – it’s all in society’s perception and in our perception. For me, it took a long time to say I was a lesbian. I started out saying I was queer. Then I stuck with “gay” for awhile. As I got older, I kind of settled into “lesbian.” When I finally said, “I am a lesbian” it was more than a declaration of who I am, but an identity with a minority group. It was acceptance of my gay history, a gay “family” of people out there that I don’t know. People that fought for my rights that have made my life easier, I see them as my “ancestors.” Here is an excerpt from an old blog of mine:

Anyhow, this pride was RI’s 30th Pride celebration. At one point, a man came up on the stage to talk about the first pride back in 1976 (the original pride folk from back then are referred to as "76ers"). His speech was brief, but it was extremely moving. He stood onstage and looked at the vast expanse of people who showed up for pride noting how many people there had children and how many people in the audience weren’t even ALIVE in 1976. I don’t remember exactly how he phrased it, but he spoke of how different it was back then, what it meant to be gay back then, as well as the rise of AIDS. He closed his speech with a message to all the younger folks in the audience saying "If we have in any way made your lives easier, than all the difficult times, and all the struggles have been worth it." -What a wonderful message, and what a great legacy. He referred to himself and the 76ers as our "ancestors" and that is truly what they are. That, for me, was what pride was all about. I felt the "Pride" - that I am a "child" of an ongoing gay revolution with ancestors who have paved the way and have responsibility to give back to this community who has made my life easier.

I don't think my lesbian identity was ever the most salient identity for me, but as I've gotten older, it has become less salient. Maybe Savin-Williams is right - maybe someday there will be no differentiation between "heterosexuals" and "homosexuals." Then something comes up like this whole civil-union ordeal and I feel like maybe that time will never come.

It doesn't matter what your opinion is. A civil-union is not "equal" to marriage - and there are people that don't even want to let people be recognized in civil-unions. This is not equality, all we want is equality. This isn't a "gay" issue or a "religious" issue. It's a human rights issue, and by not allowing some people to marry, by allowing or even not allowing civil-unions, the rights of gays are taken away.

Thoughts on My Paper

So, we've got a paper due on Wednesday and I'm still not 100% sure which paper I'm going to write (I know some of you are in the same boat as well). I like all the "self reflection" options but can't seem to decide which one. At first I thought I'd do a vector paper, then I thought maybe a racial identity analysis.

Then I got a great idea - how about using the theory interaction option to write a reflection on socioeconomic status identity or (as I've seen it elsewhere) "perceived socioeconomic status." We do have a couple readings on this topic but not a "theory" that I can reflect on. (Note to self: look this up in the future.) I believe that SES is the major influence in not only my identity, but on my education and my "vocation" - my inner calling. Right now, I will table this for the future since I really should be writing a paper, or at least making a decision on which paper to write.

You know, I had this professor at MHC (my favorite prof, actually) who would (for midterms) write 2 questions on the board and and give us 45 minutes and a bluebook to write an essay. Not only was writing an essay cold-turkey in 45 minutes a difficult task, but it's even more daunting because the clock ticks away as you decide which question you will answer! But I digress.....

So now I'm leaning more towards the sexual identity analysis paper, but I'm having a difficult time choosing whether to to use Vivienne Cass' theory or Anthony D'Augelli's. *sigh*

I feel that my personal experience is along the more essentialist line of theory (though perhaps more from a psychological perspective than a biological one) while my philosophical beliefs about sexual identity align better with a more constructivist perspective. I see myself as a lesbian and see my sexual identity development as a journey of discovery to find out who I was inside (well...to accept it, really) - my lesbian "essence," if you will. At the same time, I know others differ and I think that's fine - everyone IS different. I had friends in college that identified as lesbians that no longer do as well as friends that identified as lesbians and now identify as bisexual. I even have a friend that identified as straight in college and now identifies as a lesbian. We're all different and we all have our own inner truths - and you know...it's okay if your inner truth is more fluid than mine. Who am I to judge your inner truth?

All this reminds me an episode of Grey's Anatomy (I'm not an avid watcher but I'm glad I caught this episode). Callie (played by Sara Ramirez) and Erica (played by Brooke Smith) have just hooked up and Erica has a big gay realization while Callie doesn't feel the same way that Erica does. Here's the clip:



I'd say that my experience was more like Erica's. I looked back to the blog I kept in college and found this:

Friday, January 17, 2003
Frustration. I was supposed to have it all figured out by now. At least some part of it. I'm a junior. I'm 21. I'm supposed to know SOMETHING.

Sunday, February 16, 2003
I am officially "queer."

Tuesday, March 4, 2003
Dude. I am such a dyke. Hahahahahaha!

There was, of course, much more that went on before the 2/17/03 blog (a good 5 years of questioning) but the above basically represents the thought process I went through (in a short period of time) at the beginning of my "coming out" process (which, by the way, never ends as the closet follows you everywhere...).

---And now that I've spent a sufficient amount of time procrastinating (but at least it was productive procrastination!), I'm going to go and *actually* work on my paper.

PS. DrM, I found one of your citations in the text!

Reflection: Inauguration and Evans Ch 1-2 Reading

Okay, so this might be a stretch from student development theory, but Obama’s inauguration speech got me thinking about the parallels between creating engaged college students and creating responsible citizens of our nation. Perhaps questions such as “How do you motivate a country?” are not so different from questions like “How do you increase student involvement?” Perhaps their answers can be found using similar means.

When talking with friends and hearing interviews on the radio (regarding Obama’s election and inauguration), I consistently hear people saying things like, “I feel proud to be an American” - that they feel a part of something. How did so many people come to feel part of something they hadn’t been part of for years? How did you come to this sense of pride? Before I discuss some reasons why I think many people now feel this way, I want to pose these questions: Why did we not feel this way before? Why were we not proud to be Americans?

I think there may be several answers to this question, but I will point to the administration at the time. Our nation’s leaders were making decisions and turning those decisions into actions that we found to be not only disgraceful, but at times, embarrassing. Whether we point to our absence at U.N. meetings, our role in the war abroad, the grammatically incorrect sentences uttered by our president, or the spoon-fed “terror,” we were embarrassed. It took time for all of this to sink in because it was fun to mock our president, and the scare tactics worked for awhile - but we did wake up. Unfortunately, as a nation, we were helpless. What could we do? On a national level, we were unchallenged after years of being herded – like sheep – by our nation’s leaders.

So how exactly did we rediscover this lost pride in our country? When I listened to Obama’s inauguration speech, I think what struck me most was that he challenged us and charged us with the notion that we, too, are responsible for this country. We were given a role, we were told that we were needed, that we matter. My friends have talked about actually feeling “the world’s eyes upon us.” We are beginning to take back our nation again as we feel a sense of hope in our nation world-wide. Other countries believe in us – now we can once again believe in ourselves.

Here, I am comparing and contrasting the style of our previous administration to Obama’s style (as seen thus far through the election and inauguration) in the terms of the student developmental theories put forth by Nevitt Sanford and Nancy Schlossberg. Sanford theorized that college students needed to have a combination of support and challenge to assist them in their growth and development. As a nation, I don’t think we’ve felt any type of support or challenge over the past 8 years, mainly because we didn’t feel that we were part of anything. Our voices weren’t heard, and when they were heard, they did not matter. This left us feeling powerless, lacking any type of power, and perhaps led to our apathy on a national level. Obama has given us a challenge of responsibility. Do we know yet how to fully engage in this responsibility? Does the new administration have ideas on how they will support us yet? I do not know the answers to these questions, but I think there is a difference because a seed of mattering and challenge has been planted – that we do have a role to play.

We are a nation in transition: from one president to another, from one administration to another, from one set of ideals to another. Schlossberg’s theory of marginality and mattering posits that marginality is a feeling of uneasiness that we do not fit in (usually at the point of transition) and mattering, a sense of belonging, helps us move out of marginality and helps us transition in a healthy way. Schlossberg’s aspects of mattering include: attention, importance, dependence, appreciation, and ego extension. While I am neither saying that our marginality is entirely the fault of the previous administration, nor am I saying that Obama has or will provide for us all these aspects of mattering, I argue that many people did feel marginalized under our previous administration. I also think that the message Obama is sending out is one that is inclusive, telling us that we are part of something, that we are indeed a “we,” and may be helping to return our collective identity as a nation and perhaps even our individual identities as American citizens.

I don’t know if the student developmental theories put forth by Sanford and Schlossberg can necessarily be prescribed as a national panacea to citizens full of mixed emotions – hope for change coupled with the vulnerability of fear that we cannot make this happen, skepticism, cynicism, and doubt – but I think it’s a good place to start. It is easy to be a skeptical citizen. It is easy to play the role of the sheep and point the blame at the shepherd when we aren’t where we should be. It is more difficult to take on the challenge and be willing to face a collective failure. It is my hope that this new administration will enable us to become more engaged through a combination of support and challenge and with a constant and consistent inspirational message that we matter and we have a responsibility to our society.

-Perhaps the steps towards engaging a nation aren't so different from the steps toward engaging a student body.