Outline of “Brain Surgery” talk

Here’s the outline for “Brain Surgery: What’s in the minds of homophobes?”

How the term “homophobia” came about:
In 1972, at the onset of the stonewall rebellion [July 1969], George Weinberg coined “homophobia”. He defined it as “the dread of being at close quarters with homosexuals.. The revulsion toward homosexuals and often the desire to inflict punishment as retribution”. Mark Freedman later described it as “an extreme rage and fear reaction to homosexuals”. Poet Audre Lorde’s definition in 1978 was, “fear of feelings of love for members of one’s own sex and therefore hatred of those feelings in others”.

The definition of “homophobia”:
Homophobia has little in common with other types of phobia. It should be seen in the framework of prejudice (attitudes) and discrimination (behaviors). Researchers who published papers in recent years generally define it along the lines of prejudice, hatred or contempt towards lesbian and gay people [with extension to other sexual minorities].

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“Common types” of homophobes:
In these few slides, i put down examples that i have read of, seen, heard of or experienced e.g. gay bashers.

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Stupid Analogy

I was reading about Madeleine Lim, a Singaporean lesbian film-maker here when i spotted this nettlesome analogy among the comments that followed:

“… Should we mix the man and the woman’s role?
What is the man’s role?
What is the woman’s role?

Should we mix the sun and the moon’s role?
What is the sun’s role?
What is the moon’s role?
Can the two roles be interchanged?”

First of all:
Lesbians and gays don’t necessarily adopt “opposite” roles from that of their gender [with reference to traditional roles and gender]. This person probably has never seen the wide gamut of lesbians and gays. Just this assumption alone shows ignorance about sexual orientation and sexuality. But this assumption is still forgivable, given that the most salient among us are usually masculine lesbians and effeminate gays.

But then comes the deplorable analogy:

Gaydar- we are highly skilled!

This article got me laughing at various points. It gives a scientific edge to a phenomenon that was previously confined largely to pop culture.

For starters, the term “gaydar” is generally defined as the ability to identify members of the gay community. It is perceived as innate, not learned. Sentences like “my gaydar sucks” or “she has a fantastic gaydar; she can identify straight-acting gay men!” are often heard. The more normative a correctly identified gay person looks and dresses, the more skilled you are perceived to be. Now to the article…

Woolery (2007) wrote of gaydar as a cognitive high skill. Because sexual orientation is not something you know by simply looking at someone. And lesbians were found to be best at identifying gay folks when presented with only a photograph [compared to straight women and men, as well as gay men] according to Ambady, Hallahan and Conner (1999) and Berger, Hank, Rauzi and Simkins (1987).

Evaluating a paper

It’s time for Anj to be a hardworking bee-cat!

I never knew how much editing needs to be done just for submission. [Down to spacing, font etc!] Okay, so it’s my first time. And i am investing in a comprehensive APA book from Borders just for this purpose. Thankfully, things get better with practice. [Unfortunately i ain't one of those who 'get it' at first few attempts, but i am a learner over time... proven with many other activities i took up. Sadly, sometimes it's a long time. *sobs*]Anyway, a few take-aways from a book i picked up from the library:

8 Standards for Evaluating a Psychology Paper

Lesile Lung

Kai’s cousin passed her a poster during Chinese New Year, asking her to attend a talk by Lesile Lung, a man about 40 years of age. [This gesture was made after Kai came out to this Christian fundamentalist cousin months ago.] This time round, Lesile Lung’s talk is at NTU, our local university in the far West, in a March afternoon. Where he will be sharing about his near-experience of sex change.

What do i think about Lesile Lung’s experiences: Can his experience with God be real?

Yes, it’s possible that it’s real.
BUT…

Words from God are personal- unless specified otherwise.

FTMs

Found this website by a Female-to-Male transsexual through Rhien Wren’s blog and thought it was quite informative on how transsexuals feel and think. It’s especially interesting because he had undergone life as a woman for decades and given birth. Just goes to show [yet again!] that forcing your body into a course of actions that clashes with your inner self wouldn’t change your natural preferences.

I rarely see FTMs in Singapore [and thus have little opportunity to chit-chat with them]. Maybe because there are few of them in SgButterfly, a Singaporean portal for transsexuals. There are amazingly resilient sistas there though.

And this site on how to date a trans-boy is hilarious!

Why fight for gay marriage?

Sista Nicole passed me a link on MSN, as is her usual style of dropping interesting reads onto me. The news: some researchers found that gay folks not in unions were more likely to end their relationships, compared to gay folks in civil unions and married straight folks. You can read about it here.

A recent article by Dave Muskera asks why we bother jumping into marriage… given the high divorce rates and how marriage is not a guarantee of relationship satisfaction. [I have also previously argued that divorce is not a bad thing.]

“Wouldn’t gay marriage result in gay couples staying together because of legal encumbrances? Don’t we want to promote real love?”

Real love and marriage are not incompatible.

Yogyakarta Principles

Application of international human rights law in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity.

Their principles are here.

<<How did the Principles come about?
The Principles were developed and unanimously adopted by a distinguished group of human rights experts, from diverse regions and backgrounds, including judges, academics, a former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN Special Procedures, members of treaty bodies, NGOs and others. The Rapporteur of the process, Professor Michael O�Flaherty, has made immense contributions to the drafting and revision of the Yogyakarta Principles.

A key event in the development of the Principles was an international seminar of many of these legal experts that took place in Yogyakarta, Indonesia at Gadjah Mada University from 6 to 9 November 2006. That seminar clarified the nature, scope and implementation of States� human rights obligations in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity under existing human rights treaties and law.>> Taken from their website.

This is their main webbie.

*Courtesy of onekell.

Women’s sexuality- is it really fluid for most?

Engine search:

“Can you change your sexual identity?”

Sure.

… if you are schizophrenic…

… self-delusional …

… or you don’t know what sexual orientation is.

Sexual orientation is something inherent for many people. That’s not something you change; that’s something you come to be aware of when you experience physical attractions. So if you want to change your sexuality identity with integrity, your sexual orientation has to be re-wired. And that, i believe, is 99.99% impossible for the person who has derived her sexual identity through thorough consideration of all her physical preferences.

Talking about psychology

Past midnight yesterday, just before watching sliding doors, ww suddenly brought up the IndigNation talk in August.

She asked… aren’t there always multiple perspectives?

Yes… and No.

It depends on what you are talking about.
Some things are established.
For example: gay people are capable of sustaining long-lasting relationships. Or that homosexuality is not a mental illness.

Some things have multiple perspectives/theories.
For example: In counseling, different counselors are trained in different perspectives. The increasing popular way is the eclectic approach, where several therapies are combined.

How do people establish certain details and move on?

What hope is there- Marital immunity

Why marital immunity is an uphill task…

Reference:
Humphreys, T. (2007). Perceptions of sexual consent: the impact of relationship history and gender. Journal of sex research, 44(4), 307-315.

In this article, results congruent with past findings were obtained:
For any given situation, men as compared to women, found sex to be more consensual, acceptable and clear (not ambiguous).
In the traditional role, as outlined by society, women are supposed to be defenders (setting the limits for sexual activity) and men are pursuers (initiating sexual activity). Therefore, for men, it’s a “it’s yes till you say no”. [That's why it's important for women to communicate a verbal "NO" firmly if they do not wish to be more intimate.] On the other hand, women prefer men to seek verbal consent even before initiating sexual activity.

He also found that the level of intimacy (kissing vs. sex) and familiarity of intimacy (penile-vaginal intercourse vs. anal sex) play a part in whether consent would likely be formally obtained or not. Obviously, the more intimate and the more unfamiliar would be more likely to require formal negotiations.

But these are not the interesting bits of the article.
Humphreys found the length of sexual involvement to be a factor in sexual consent perception.

Leona Lo

I like this Singaporean postoperative transsexual woman already.
Read her blog and check out her book.
She was thrown out of “The Pump Room”, a local pub at Clarke Quay. Read this.
And now she wants to educate the management and their employees! Wow~

Sistas are standing up for their basic rights.
Two thumbs up!

Singapore Gay-Ready!

Again, i am referring to the article by Detenber et al (2007). The famous article used to support the retention of 377A. [Just a quick note: this article was submitted in September 2005.]
Reference:
Detenber, B. H., Genite, M., Ku, M. K. Y., Ong, C. P. L., Tong, H. Y., & Yeow, M. L. H. (2007). Singaporeans’ attitudes towards lesbians and gay men and their tolerance of media portrayals of homosexuality. Internal journal of public opinion, 19(3), 367-379.

The anti-repeal camp jumped upon this statement made in opening statement of the conclusion segment: “Overall, this study found that most Singaporeans hold negative attitudes toward lesbians and gay men, and are rather intolerant towards media portrayals of homosexuality.” (Page 373).

What the researchers did: they called up Singaporean citizens over a period of 5 days and conducted interviews. They found that 68.6% of the participants expressed negative attitudes.

Here’s the break-down of predictors for negative attitudes:

Snapshot in time

Singaporeans’ attitudes toward lesbians and gay men and their tolerance of media portrayal of homosexuality. [International Journal of Public Opinion Research Vol. 19 No.3.]

This article was used to support the camp who went against the appeal of 377A.

There really isn’t anything wrong with the article. All it’s saying is… Christians and Muslims are less tolerant; people who are older are less tolerant; people who are less educated are also less tolerant. And that’s based on the demographics of Singapore (proportion of Christians blah blah, proportions of older people and proportions of less educated people), more than half of the folks are not tolerant.

You know what that tells me?
That tells me that Singapore is currently made up of more Christians, Muslims, older folks and less educated folks combined.
It certainly doesn’t tell me that Singapore is therefore unsuitable for policy change, which has lasting effects down the time-line.

Looks, Mannerism, Bed role

Been reading a few research articles on lesbian dating preferences. The most salient point they offered is…

Looks ≠ Mannerism ≠ Bed role

I wonder:
Do people agree on definitions feminine, masculine and androgynous? What makes a face feminine- in plain description? Looking at photographs. How far does mannerism change a person’s judgment of a person’s essence of femininity or masculinity? And does it affect one’s guess on target’s bed role? *muses muses*

Any researcher out there who has an interest in the local community? [Can we work on something together?]

81 words

The inside story of psychiatry and homosexuality.
[If you wanna know how homosexuality was removed from DSM.]

Part 1

Part 2

-Posted by Jean under Sayoni forum

Gender Performativity

Reading a couple of articles on gender performativity (the repeated acts of gender stereotypical events/activities) piqued my interest. Researchers of 2 separate studies did interviews with women (Australia) and transgender folks (UK)… and came up with this theory: that people perform their gender.

The study with women examined smoking as an external portrayal of gender identity- cigarettes as a fashion item and the style of smoking as an expression of femininity. Cigarettes for women are designed to look “feminine”… long, slim and white, in contrast to more masculine-looking cigarettes, which are bigger. The packs are usually in light colours. Of course this has a lot to do with advertising, the portrayal of smoking in the media has tremendous impact on meaning that women associated with smoking. We get words like weaker physique (therefore slimmer with filter), supposedly clean and mild (therefore white). The style of smoking amused me the most: women prefer to hold their cigarettes between their index and middle finger, prefer to make their act of smoking visible; men often wrap their thumb and index finger around the very tip of the cigarette. [Note: participants are straight.] Smoking becomes a display of femininity.

Degrees of Coerced Sex

I was reading this article and it plugged some of the gaps i contemplated years ago. In the past, i always thought that rape means unwanted sex i.e. as long as i don’t want it to happen, regardless of whether my body wants it, it’s rape.

But what about ambiguous situations, when you are doing it out of obligation/responsibility as a partner. “Oh, i have to fulfill the sexual desires of my partner or else i am a bad girlfriend.” Or when there are subtle undercurrents going on… such that certain material or emotional privileges are witheld if you don’t “perform” so to speak. And all the half-way consensual and then second half turns unpleasant sort of experiences. What can we make of all these?

You want it… but you don’t want it.

These instances are far cries from your dark stranger in the alley but ubiquitous in the sexual lives of many women. Peterson’s article explored this phenomenon at a depth that i have not seen in previous articles. The proposed model is pretty impressive.

In this article, they distinguished between “consent to sex” and “want for sex”.

Transgender talk

IndigNation event: Walking out from the shadow

Four transsexuals of valor sat on the panel on Friday (August 03) at threateworks. They emerged from the sex trade successfully into fulfilling occupations. Executives, managers etc. Some have furthered their studies to degrees. Their candid stories touched my soul.

They shared about the circumstances that forced them into the trade. Survival in dire situations. Religion… where money deemed as filthy lucre cannot be used by the Muslim family. Fights. Running from the authorities. The discrimination of policemen against sisters versus born-women hookers.

Jealousy is rife among the sisters in the trade.

Break-ups and You

I happened to be reading on attachment styles (which are formed in childhood and remains fairly constant throughout adulthood) when i chanced upon this:

Attachment styles & break-ups responses

There are 3 kinds of attachment styles mentioned.
1. Secure
2. Anxious
3. Avoidant

Quickly…
Children who felt that their caretakers empathize with them become secure in their attachment; children who felt neglected and ignored become avoidant; children who found their parents unpredictable (changing from tenderness to wrath) become anxious and insecure.