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Psychology and Sexuality
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Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender psychology: an international
conversation among researchers
Jeffery Adams a; Karen L. Blair b; Néstor I. Borrero-Bracero c; Oliva M. Espín d; Nikki J. Hayfield e; Peter
Hegarty f; Lisa K. Herrmann-Green g; Ming-Hui Daniel Hsu h; Offer Maurer i; Eric Julian Manalastas j;
Daragh T. McDermott k;Dan Shepperd f
a
The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand b Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada c
University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, Puerto Rico d San Diego State University, San Diego,
CA, USA e University of the West of England, Bristol, UK f Department of Psychology, University of
Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, UK g University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany h New York University,
New York, NY, USA i The Israeli Center for Academic Studies, Israel j University of the Philippines,
Diliman, Philippines k National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland
Online publication date: 25 March 2010
To cite this Article Adams, Jeffery , Blair, Karen L. , Borrero-Bracero, Néstor I. , Espín, Oliva M. , Hayfield, Nikki J. ,
Hegarty, Peter , Herrmann-Green, Lisa K. , Daniel Hsu, Ming-Hui , Maurer, Offer , Julian Manalastas, Eric , McDermott,
Daragh T. andShepperd, Dan(2010) 'Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender psychology: an international conversation
among researchers', Psychology and Sexuality, 1: 1, 75 — 90
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/19419891003634612
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19419891003634612
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Psychology & Sexuality
Vol. 1, No. 1, January 2010, 75–90
COMMENTARY
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender psychology: an international
conversation among researchers
Jeffery Adamsa , Karen L. Blairb , Néstor I. Borrero-Braceroc , Oliva M. Espínd ,
Nikki J. Hayfielde , Peter Hegartyf*, Lisa K. Herrmann-Greeng , Ming-Hui Daniel Hsuh ,
Offer Maureri , Eric Julian Manalastasj , Daragh T. McDermottk , and Dan Shepperdf
Downloaded By: [Hegarty, Peter] At: 21:02 25 March 2010
a The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand; b Queen’s University, Kingston, ON,
Canada; c University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, Puerto Rico; d San Diego State
University, San Diego, CA, USA; e University of the West of England, Bristol, UK; f Department
of Psychology, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, UK; g University of Konstanz, Konstanz,
Germany; h New York University, New York, NY, USA; i The Israeli Center for Academic Studies,
Israel; j University of the Philippines, Diliman, Philippines; k National University of Ireland, Galway,
Ireland
(Received 11 September 2009; final version received 16 November 2009)
This article reports on a conversation between 12 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
(LGBT) psychologists at the first international LGBT Psychology Summer Institute at
the University of Michigan in August 2009. Participants discuss how their work in
LGBT psychology is affected by national policy, funding and academic contexts and
the transnational influence of the US-based stigma model of LGBT psychology. The
challenges and possibilities posed by internationalism are discussed with reference to
the dominance of the United States, the cultural limits of terms such as ‘lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender’, intergenerational communication between researchers and
the role of events such as the Summer Institute in creating an international community
of LGBT psychologists.
Keywords: LGBT psychology; international perspectives; culture; research
Introduction
In August 2008, Nicola Curtin, Peter Hegarty and Abigail Stewart co-organised the first
International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Psychology Summer Institute at
the University of Michigan. Fifty attendees were mentored by 10 ‘senior tutors’ in this
unprecedented week of workshops, seminars, tutorials and keynote addresses. Despite of
the event’s title, most of the students were American citizens and most were living and
working in the United States. However, at the end of one busy day, all of the students
who attended the Summer Institute and who were studying LGBT psychology outside
the United States gathered with two tutors: Oliva Espín and Peter Hegarty. We discussed
how LGBT psychology differs by national and transnational context, the strengths and
weaknesses of United States models of LGBT psychology, experiences of the institute and
∗ Corresponding author. Email: p.hegarty@surrey.ac.uk
ISSN 1941-9899 print/ISSN 1941-9902 online
© 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/19419891003634612
http://www.informaworld.com
76
J. Adams et al.
visions for the future of the field. We also laughed a lot. Below is a transcript of that discussion which Nikki Hayfield transcribed, Dan Shepperd and Peter Hegarty edited in a
preliminary way and all contributors read and edited further. Order of authors has been
determined alphabetically.
We are particularly honoured that this article will appear in the first issue of
Psychology & Sexuality, which shares the aspirations of the Summer Institute for an international psychology of sexualities. Information about the Second International Summer
Institute (to be held in August 2010) is available at http://sitemaker.umich.edu/lgbtsummer-institute
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Peter:
Nikki:
Jeff:
Daniel:
Offer:
Karen:
Daragh:
Dan:
Thank you all for being here. This is the University of Michigan’s
International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Psychology Institute
in 2008. I wanted us to have a conversation about the International aspects
of our work. In particular, the Institute has provided a rare opportunity for
people who are doing LGBT psychology – and particularly students who are
doing LGBT psychology – from many different countries to meet at the same
time, in the same place. So maybe we could start by going around the table
with introductions?
My name is Nikki Hayfield, University of the West of England in Bristol, UK.
My PhD is looking at bisexual women’s ‘lack of’ visual identity, and I’ve
also done some research assistant work on Civil Partnerships in the United
Kingdom, which came in during December 2005.
I’m Jeff Adams from the University of Auckland in New Zealand; my
research work is looking at gay men’s health from a critical health psychology perspective. I’ve been looking at sociocultural and sociopolitical aspects
of health. I’ve also been involved in researching why some groups of men
don’t always use condoms for anal sex.
My name is Daniel Hsu and I am from Taiwan originally. I’m at NYU for my
counselling psychology doctoral degree, and my research interest and area is
on homophobia in Taiwan. My dissertation is on this topic, particularly among
college students, so I’m looking at the homophobia – or sexual prejudice – in
Taiwan, from a sociocultural perspective.
My name is Offer Maurer, I come from Israel and I’m a faculty member at the
Israeli branch of Derby University from the United Kingdom. Currently my
research interest involves applications of psychoanalytic ideas to understand
gay and lesbian people’s developmental trajectories in ways that are different
from the traditional homophobic or homonegative ways you might see in the
literature.
I’m Karen Blair from Canada, I’m studying at Queen’s University in Ontario
and I’m looking at social support specifically for relationships, how that’s
impacting relationship well-being, and then, in turn, the mental and physical
health of the individuals involved, as well as other aspects of LGBT mental
and physical health.
My name is Daragh McDermott and I am from the National University
of Ireland in Galway and my research is looking at creating interventions
designed to reduce negative attitudes towards gay men and lesbians at an
explicit and implicit level.
I’m Dan Shepperd from the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. I’m
doing a PhD about friendships between gay men and heterosexual women
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Néstor:
Eric:
Peter:
Oliva:
Peter:
Nikki:
Dan:
Jeff:
77
using a discourse analytic approach. Most of my focus is on the performance
of gender and sexual identity in that context.
I’m Lisa Herrmann-Green. I’m American but have spent my adult and lesbian life in Germany (18 years). My research has to do with the family
building processes of lesbian-headed families created by donor insemination in Germany. I’m looking at the experiences they have in their early
family formation phases, mother identity development of the birth mother
and social mother, and, hopefully, long-term consequences of donor-type
choice.
My name is Néstor Borrero-Bracero. I’m from the University of Puerto
Rico. I’m a fourth year clinical psychology student, and my research interest revolves around gay youth. For my dissertation project, I’m interested in
researching the emotional impact of disclosing a gay identity among Puerto
Rican gay youth and how the cultural factors in Puerto Rico influence that
process of disclosing a gay identity. One of my goals is to later develop
psychosocial interventions for Puerto Rican gay youth.
I’m Eric Manalastas from the Philippines. Right now most of my work looks
at national data sets collected in the Philippines by demographers but I play
around with them a little bit, mostly by looking at sexual health. Right now
I’m sitting on a data set that looks at suicide risk among young LGBT youth
in the Philippines aged 15 to 24.
I’m Peter Hegarty. I’m Irish originally, but located in the United Kingdom
now, via 9 years in the United States. Most of my work is social cognition research on normativity, particularly how normativity affects the way
that people do scientific thinking about social groups. I’m also a historian
of psychology and in that context my work is largely focused on the United
States.
I am Oliva Espín. My reason for being here is that I am one of the coordinators
of the International Network of LGBT Psychology sponsored by the APA and,
in addition, I am very interested in everything international around LGBT
issues as well as other issues in international multicultural psychology. Also,
as I am sure you all can tell from my accent, I was not born in this country.
I am originally from Latin America.
So we have a very large number of countries represented around the table, and
I’m curious about what might be distinctive about doing LGBT psychology
work in your context?
I think one thing I’ve come to realise is that we’re actually quite privileged in
the United Kingdom in terms of the level of acceptation of LGBT research.
Although it’s still stigmatised and marginalised in some ways, there are other
students doing that work, and it has made me aware that there are more
academics at higher levels who are supportive.
Speaking as the other English person here, the thing I’ve noticed are methodological differences. In the United Kingdom, there seems to be a greater
acceptance of qualitative methods. I wouldn’t go so far as to say normative,
but they certainly seem to be tolerated more happily.
I think I go along with the UK experience. Within New Zealand LGBT psychology has taken on a more critical flavour and I think that’s because of the
academics who are supportive of the issues. We don’t really have any LGBT
academics that are working in the field but we’ve got supportive allies that
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Daragh:
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Lisa:
Karen:
Lisa:
Peter:
Lisa:
Karen:
have come from a qualitative and a critical perspective and are willing to
work in fields that are a bit different, are a bit challenging. But there is no
real LGBT leadership in an academic role so it’s there from a theoretical perspective and a methodological perspective, but it’s not there from a content
perspective.
In an Irish context, besides maybe two exceptions, research that has examined LGBT people has been in the context of larger studies of stigmatised or
minority groups. It’s just thrown in as one more variable or one more subgroup so it isn’t as if anyone is actually targeting them specifically. It’s ‘ok so
we’ll take obesity, we’ll take homosexuality and we’ll take immigration. . .’
From the German perspective, I envy the Americans that we’ve met here
because, in order to do the research that I described, I had to actually leave
Germany and go to Switzerland because that’s where the one Professor was
who I could find that was willing to put his name on this kind of research.
Now my PhD is done, I’m trying to bring it back to Germany and integrate it
into the university where I live, which is proving arduous. I think there may
be structural hindrances in terms of obtaining funding and establishing LGBT
research at German universities.
From the Canadian’s perspective – in terms of funding – we’ve been very
lucky. Right from my Masters through to my PhD I’ve never been denied
funding for LGBT research. I’m a member of the Canadian Psychological
Association and we have our own version of Division 44.1 From speaking to
students across the country I think that is generally a representative experience even in some of our very conservative areas. I’ve studied in what
you might consider to be equivalent of ‘small town America’, and been
very, very accepted. I received great support at a Baptist University with my
research. I’m feeling shockingly privileged in comparison to experiences of
other students at this conference.
The irony of the German situation is that in academia there seems to be a resistance to taking up lesbian and gay issues, but from the political side there’s a
lot of interest. They’re really interested and really like ‘please keep going and
do something’. The media is also very interested. There are many requests for
interviews and TV appearances from mainstream media, which I have done a
few times.
Lisa, can you just say a little bit more about what you mean by ‘from the
political side’ in the German context?
The ‘Green’ party (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) is very supportive of LGBT
issues and rights. I have a straight ally in my Psychology Department in the
University of Konstanz who’s helping me try to gain contact with people in
the political arena. One party, the Green party has been very receptive to it,
and I’m hoping they’re going to come up with places that we can apply for
funding for lesbian family research.
Part of what we might go figure out from here is maybe the historical trajectories that those routes took. Germany might actually in some ways be showing
us something that is in between. If the politics are positive you’re waiting for
the universities to catch on, often times though the universities will come first.
In Canada, I think we kind of had the politics and then the funding comes from
the government. The universities have always been very independent and able
to support whatever research their faculty and students wished to pursue.
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Daragh:
Néstor:
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Eric:
Jeff:
Nikki:
Dan:
Karen:
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In the Irish context the funding is slowly starting, but then at the political level
there is huge resistance from our equivalent of Congress to any kind of civil
unions. We have equality in workplaces but that was implemented through
the European Union. So the universities are going one way but the political
system is not quite sure what it’s doing.
From my experience I can say that in Puerto Rico there is not a lot of research
on LGBT issues. I think that’s a limitation, like when you’re trying to do your
literature review, you have this idea and you look for other research and other
researchers who are interested in researching Puerto Rican LGBT. I wonder
how you conceptualise your research if you don’t have enough literature. So
we have to rely on a lot of research carried out in the United States and you can
ask ‘how does that apply here or how it does not apply?’ So, that complicates
the way you do LGBT research in Puerto Rico.
I have studied in this country for about 10 years but I do research on homophobia in Taiwan so I am familiar with the literature in Taiwan and I think
it’s very similar to the Puerto Rican situation. We have students interested in
research in this area but there is not enough support. There is some support in
counselling psychology programs, the professors will support a dissertation
or Master’s thesis but there is not much support – in terms of funding – to do
LGBT research. There are some LGBT studies in Taiwan but they’re done by
queer studies, literature, or gender studies; not psychology.
That’s very similar to the situation in the Philippines. In my university most
of the LGBT work, the very few things that are coming out, are coming out
either of the humanities literature or in other social sciences like medical
anthropology or sociology. One other thing I notice is that there is no systematic research approach so that it’s mostly one-shot studies being done by
the occasional graduate student who’s tickled by the idea but never really
follows up on it afterwards. We don’t have public funding for research, let
alone LGBT research so we’ve sort of had to piggy back on other things,
for example research on sexual health which incidentally looks at MSM and
then you can go in with a little bit of LGBT stuff but there are still a lot of
limitations.
In New Zealand I guess the only sustained kind of program is around HIV and
that really just relates to MSM and again that’s not particularly psychological
in focus.
One thing I’ve been thinking about is that quite often it is only a PhD topic
and it doesn’t necessarily go any further than that, so maybe there needs to
be more ‘career options’ available. Funding is very much around health, and
even when you have funding within your university I get the impression that
it’s very ‘modern’ universities that are funding that; one’s that have maybe
less of a ‘good reputation’. Although I feel really privileged, I just want
to reiterate that I’m not saying that it’s this amazing kind of ‘do whatever
you want’.
To add to that, I sometimes get the impression that some people who do LGBT
work in the United Kingdom have to position themselves as social psychologists who happen to work in that domain rather than as LGBT psychologists
in their own right.
I think that could just be part of where we are right now because it is still a new
field, so it has had to come out of all these different interdisciplinary pockets
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Peter:
Karen:
Peter:
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Offer:
Lisa:
Karen:
Jeff:
Karen:
Karen:
Oliva:
and so I wonder how on earth I fit in with the social psychology department
that I’m in. I don’t fit in with the clinical lab that I’m in, because it is an
interdisciplinary topic.
One way of thinking about LGBT psychology is as being a sub-field, an area.
Like health psychology?
Right. So what are the challenges and possibilities opened up by that sub-field
being international?
I feel that the time is right for some sort of an international institute to be
founded, someplace central where people can come, not for a week but for,
let’s say for a sabbatical, for a whole year, to study, to meet others, to do their
research. Someplace that can have multiple functions in terms of promoting
and enabling research, in terms of funding, and also as a place of education for
other psychologists within our community. Personally I found that I am really
very moved and excited by what’s happening here. There are so many things
I am going to take back to my country, so I think that a week is amazing, but
a year would be really something!
My dream would be a department specifically for the study of lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender issues and then I would want to stay right there
(laughs).
But even at the macro-level, universities send out their job advertisements,
‘we’re looking for a social psychology professor, we’re looking for a health
professor’. You know, ‘we’re looking for our LGBT psychology professor’
would be nice. I don’t care that the rest of my department isn’t studying gay
stuff because we still need to be around our psychology colleagues.
I think it would be important that an LGBT psychology wouldn’t get captured by some other branch of psychology, because what I see at this institute
is that people are saying ‘I’m a social psychologist’ or I’m clinical’. You
hear very few people saying, for example, ‘I’m a critical health psychologist’.
So I wouldn’t want to feel marginalised in an LGBT psychology that was
dominated by one particular way of looking at the world.
What we might want to ask is ‘how did you get all of these researchers coming
at LGBT issues from their own, singular perspectives?’ Maybe it is because
we all had to pick an area to get into our program – we had to say, for example,
‘I am gonna be a social psychologist’.
We end up with that area becoming our perspective. And we come to these
conferences and that’s what we have to offer. But if you as a student got to
just choose to specialise in LGBT psychology then one would hope that you
would be given an interdisciplinary view, and that you would no longer be
forced to pick social psychology, health psychology, cognitive psychology. . .
You would just be looking at gay issues from an interdisciplinary, psychologically informed perspective. That might be idealistic.
I wonder if it’s possible to do interdisciplinary LGBT psychology as such.
If that dream were to happen it would have to be LGBT studies where
that interdisciplinary perspective tells psychologists that they don’t own the
interpretation of the world. For eighteen years I’ve been in a department of
Women’s Studies. I’m a psychologist, I talk from a psychologist’s perspective. But the anthropologist, the sociologist, the historians and whoever else is
there are teaching me things that I would never have learned if I had spent the
second half of my career immersed in a psychology department. During those
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Psychology & Sexuality
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Oliva:
Peter:
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81
18 years in Women’s Studies, I also taught part time at the California School
of Professional Psychology and while there I created a program in LGBT
psychology with the help of other people. So we had students coming in and
we did some research and found clinical settings for students who were planning to work with this population for their internships. The program lasted
until I retired. The other professors who were doing this work were all parttime lecturers. I was part-time also but I was what they call ‘core faculty’, so
I had a more stable position inside the institution. The other adjunct professors
involved in the program were at the institution as long as I was there saying
‘we need a course in this, we need a course in that, the students need a supervisor for the clinical practice’. I was there, pushing, pushing, pushing, and for
a while we got a set of students who were coming to specialise in working
with these populations. And although CSPP is not your prestigious academic
psychology, it’s a professional school, it offers good clinical training and it
was offering something in LGBT studies. I mean that students did research,
and we presented at a number of different professional conferences, including
APA. Right now I am putting together a special issue on lesbian youth with
one of the students who graduated from that specialisation at CSPP. But the
whole program was dependent on one person, because I retired and it disappeared. Those courses and faculty and students were not taken seriously once
I was not there to keep pushing.
Imagine if you had had the backing of an International group.
Well, yeah, of course.
I did my PhD and taught in the US for 3 years afterwards. Now I’ve worked
in the United Kingdom for about 6 years and I’m struck by how LGBT psychology interfaces with politics in different ways in the two countries. The
interface is very much through the legal system in the United States but
not at all through the legal system in the United Kingdom. That difference
has made me wonder how much the political context of the United States
determines the kinds of questions that have become the centre of LGBT psychology? I wonder if there is a task for international people to re-think the
particular kind of LGBT psychology that has been developed in the US. What
aspects of that psychology work, or don’t work, in your context? How does
LGBT psychology relate to different kinds of social and political institutions
in your context that might be different from what’s taken to be the norm in the
United States?
I’m not very familiar with the legal system in Taiwan but I think it’s different from the United States in terms of the presentation by the lawyers from
the ACLU, I’m not sure that kind of model works in Taiwan so this is very
different.
Just from a civil unions and marriage perspective, the system that is ingrained
in Ireland is that we have it written into our constitution that marriage is a
sacred union between a man and a woman. So if we wanted to introduce any
kind of gay marriage there would have to be a full national referendum. While
the equivalent of Gallop polls are showing some positivity towards that idea,
the people in power are just shooting it down by arguing ‘it’s ingrained in the
constitution, you don’t want to mess with the constitution’. So it sickens me
how much apathy there is, even within the gay community of which I’m a
member.
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Nikki:
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Karen:
Peter:
Karen:
Oliva:
Jeff:
Dan:
Karen:
One of my experiences of teaching in the United Kingdom on critical sexualities and gender courses is that one of the risks of ‘equal rights’ – ‘equal’
in quotes – is that actually there is real apathy around the need to do
anything.
There was a huge force when we were fighting for same-sex marriage. The
supreme court brought in same-sex marriage, and the Liberals made it federal
because the court told them they had to, but they were really on board anyways. But when the Conservatives came into power they would have had to
use a special clause of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the 33 clause, in
order to revoke the law, It’s never been used in Canada before for anything,
but they were willing to use it. A good portion of the election ran on same-sex
marriage. It was already legal, and the question was whether or not they were
going to take it away. There was massive apathy among the LGBT community
because they just thought, ‘is it really going to happen?’ Of course, the people
who are willing to go out and make their voices heard are the ones who want
to have it repealed because now they have something to fight for and so that
really is a danger. We made it through. They did a vote in parliament and it
wasn’t passed so, the issue was dropped and same-sex marriage is good to go.
But you have to ride those waves of apathy, and I know one of the things that
I’ve thought about at this conference, that I wrote back to my supervisor about
was that I have been inspired, by the lack of privilege I’ve been seeing among
the American students and their research. I’ve been inspired by hearing that
there still is a lot of battles to be fought.
Right, right.
And there still is a lot to be done. Sometimes I’m sitting there going ‘how
much longer is this actually going to be a field?’ Is it going to continue to be
an issue? As we keep going maybe it’s just going to become redundant, and
people are going to say ‘you’re studying what? Why? Everybody is ‘happy
clappy’.
(Laughter)
Well there’s the equivalent also with cultural psychology. I mean there are
civil rights for people of colour and nobody now would dare say ‘Black people
cannot drink from the same water fountains’, and yet there are lots of things
to study that are not just motivated by stigma and discrimination. I think as
long as we perceive the field as being a fight for equal rights it takes away
from the fact that these are people who have certain lives, like black people
or Latinos, and we need to study how they do things with their lives.
One of the challenges to that, from the New Zealand perspective, came when
I was doing my research. The gay men that I was talking to would say ‘we
don’t see ourselves as anything special that needs to be looked at in any
different way’.
This is perhaps a very unscientific statement to make, but based upon those
people I’ve spoken to there is more research going on in the United States
that is specifically dealing with issues of stigma and prejudice whereas back
in England I’m dealing with friendship!
(Laughter)
If you just read the research interests of participants at this institute, it was
stigma, stigma, prejudice, stigma, homophobia. . . And I’m like ‘homophobia,
we don’t have that any more’. But I’m always after the rest of my colleagues
Psychology & Sexuality
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and saying ‘You’re studying relationships, why, why aren’t same-sex couples
in your study?’
I am a little tired of having to approach lesbian parenthood from a mainstream
perspective, that is, viewing the LGBT as the ‘other’ and comparing them to
the heterosexual world. I’m more interested in gay people’s experience and
using our lens. That may be part of the problem I’m having with funding
because it sounds like you may have to frame it from mainstream perspective
to get the supporting institutions interested.
I wouldn’t say that US LGBT psychology doesn’t work in Puerto Rico, but
I think we must be extra careful when developing our research and when interpreting our results. We have this foreign literature in another context, so it
might be different because of cultural context. From a gay youth perspective
the United States have mostly focused on negative outcomes of disclosing
gay identity, but what I aim is to go beyond that and try to identify positive outcomes of that process. Lisa Diamond told us in the grant writing
workshop that research that’s been funded in the United States is from a risk
perspective,2 and I think we must try to identify what is positive about that
process and stop pathologising our experiences. Another thing we should consider is cultural elements and how they influence gay youth’s experiences in
Puerto Rico.
I agree, especially with your point about the cultural aspects and this is something I often think about, looking at, for example, cultural constructs. Most
of the LGBT work coming out of the Philippines is not being done in psychology. Mostly it’s coming out of anthropology or sociology. I often have
to dialogue with them, and I get accused of being uncritical about using
‘Western’ categories, like ‘LGBT’. ‘How would you use that here, if we only
have one word for both G and T? And one word for L and T? And we don’t
have a word for B?’ I can’t really identify a very tangible LGBT community
back home. We have the Manila Gay Pride March which is basically maybe
three or four cars slowly driving across the road which ends at some house of
one of the activists for a party in the evening.
This is the way it started in Israel as well. I also participated in a march
like that, of several cars going down the street, and today it’s several tens
of thousands. Hang on there. . .
(Laughter).
Keep riding those cars! I’m amazed at how fast things are going, but I also
want to point out that it’s happening unevenly. The Philippines is probably a
very positive case in South East Asia, in that we can do this research at all.
I know that in our neighbouring countries it’s illegal to be gay, they have antisodomy laws. Really to come out – much less do academic work – would be
to really risk your physical life. The disparity, it’s like the disparity between
the poor and the rich, it is becoming much greater. The rich are becoming
richer and the poor people are sort of fantasising about that world.
I feel like there is a difference between Asian and Latino and US and
European countries, in terms of how gay rights develop in different regions.
In Taiwan the gay rights are somewhat supported, but mostly ignored. Gay
Pride started, I think, in the mid-1990s. In the beginning people had to wear a
mask, because they didn’t want their real face to be seen because the culture
emphasises family and bringing honour to the family. There’s a strong stigma
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in Chinese culture about being homosexual or being gay, and it’s really difficult for people to come out to their parents. More and more people come out
to their siblings and friends but still family is very hard. So if they come out
publicly, if they go to the Pride, there’s a possibility of being filmed by the
TV. Their identity can be seen by their parents, that’s why a lot of people are
not showing their faces.
In each different culture you might start thinking ‘oh it looks like there’s some
stages that it goes through’ but it really these stages may be very different in
different cultures. For now we’re right in the middle of it. Right at this table
we have almost the entire spectrum. We don’t have anybody here who is going
to go home and possibly get killed, by their government anyways. But we do
have a very broad spectrum and so to see how that expands over time is very
interesting.
One thing of great concern to me as a bi woman is the empty inclusionary
of the LGBT umbrella and I think that’s something we need to start thinking
about – and how we feel about heterosexual allies. Maybe we’re working
together as a group, but in some ways we could work far better and recognise
that we all have contributions to make because we have different experiences
to heterosexual people.
I think that there’s a really good question about how to work and move things
forward from here. Listening to Karen and Nikki speak, I thought that one
thing that comes very strongly from American LGBT psychology are these
stage models.
(laughs). Yeah.
And they were very linear and all ended in happy gay identities, and bisexuality was just a phase along the way. These models were very heavily
deconstructed at various points over the last few days. But it would be tragic if
we replicated a similar kind of conceptual error in thinking about International
LGBT Psychology, so that eventually we’re all going to go through our little
stages and it’s going to look like it does in the United States at the end.
(Laughter)
It shouldn’t! Why should it?
Well it obviously should not be the ideal.
Go Canada!
(Laughter)
This whole International idea makes me think about globalisation, which
I know is a fuzzy term, but the idea of this movement, not just people like
us like attending a conference in a different country, but also the movement of
ideas across different nations like reading American literature, learning about
things in the Dominican Republic, hearing about the experiences of other people. I think that could also be one way to see how it’s not even international.
It’s transnational.
It reminds me there’s always a risk of group norm and group think and peer
pressure, so if we come together we have to be mindful about this in terms of
who has more power and who has less power.
Maybe the question to ask then is what would you like to see come out of
some sort of international group? One possibility that you’re against is to get
everybody on a trajectory, whether it’s stage model or not, we want you to all
end up at the golden star at the end and. Maybe we could all go round and say
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Karen:
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what the number one thing would be that we’d like to get out of it and to me
it’s really it’s the connections beyond your own university, your own country.
Often you don’t read the articles outside of your own literature, and knowing
what other people are doing.
One of the things that can really come out of that networking is the energy.
I think the energy and the enthusiasm that’s come out of this institute is
fantastic, all of us have been knackered but all of us have been making so
much effort, to talk to each other, to engage, to really respect each other’s
research.
For me it’s the connection because for so many years I’ve been doing this
work in complete and utter isolation with nobody to talk to but myself and
occasionally my partner.
I wouldn’t say that I work in isolation, but I still think it’s incredibly stimulating and intellectually refreshing to come to something like this. Yesterday
I talked to people about LGBT research and discourse analysis from about
7 o’clock in the morning through to about 1 am. About 15 hours, and I’ve
done the same every single day this week.
(Laughter)
Someone said in one of the workshops that ‘when we’re away from this kind
of setting and you’re talking to people, even if they are other psychologists
you “dumb it down”’.
You straight it up!
But everyone here sees the merit, and people understand every word you’re
saying. You don’t have to try and explain it another way.
I have to echo that and the other thing that I thought was so amazing this week
was that it is probably the first time I’ve felt like my research was legitimised
by someone other than myself.
(Laughter)
Putting this event together was a bit of a gamble. We had no idea what was
going to happen, but realised we got a royal flush when everybody mingled
and talked to each other so quickly. Even some of the senior tutors had never
met before. Yet we all got going quickly talked, attesting to their being something common here. Neither of those words ‘intellectual’ and ‘community’.
are empty or vacuous this week. I found that very heartening.
I was honestly very nervous coming over here.
Me too.
Because I was coming across the Atlantic, but I know for certain that there
are people here that I will know in 40 years time and I will have worked with
them and I will-have cited their work and-so many different people and so many different things and these people are
friends for life. It’s not like the cliché ‘oh I’ve made friends’. The connections
I’ve made seem stronger than how instantaneous they were.
I feel quite privileged to be here. I mean, one person from my country. What
about the other researchers you know? They’ve missed an opportunity. No
Takātapui3 or Maori researchers for example. No Australian. . .
Can I add one thing? It would be so sad if this didn’t evolve. There’s even the
beginning of the next generation, people who are just starting their PhDs, and
they have this opportunity. The resources that we end up setting up from this,
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Oliva:
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Oliva:
Oliva:
Karen:
Oliva:
Karen:
Oliva:
Peter:
Oliva:
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Néstor:
if we end up with this social network right, that they’re able to tap into that so
then they realise that there is this.
And there’s so many that you want to bring into it. Everybody here can think
of somebody.
One of the things that I was thinking is that I almost wish that this was a fish
bowl and that everybody else participating in this institute would be hearing
this because it is important to know that there are other things happening in
other parts of the world. Everybody has been very welcoming, but the majority of Americans have their own view on life, and it would be very interesting
for them, as for all of us, to learn about LGBT issues in other places in the
world. I just learnt that word ‘Takātapui’ in Berlin because there was a guy
from New Zealand and I don’t know that I can say it correctly.
Takātapui
Takātapui, exactly. So I heard you say that word and I was like ‘oh I know
that word’ (laughs).
In participation in international context, you meet other people, and you know
what’s happening to them. So it’s not everybody here getting absorbed by the
big group that – of course – has lots of things in common. It’s also important
for that big group to know that there are other perspectives, ways of looking
at things and, and, y’know it. And I’m sure there’s much more we can say in
terms of content about these kinds of things to educate the other large group.
That is a global task
But it’s very important intellectually.
And it’s a very ingrained thing, it’s not an academic thing. It is a cultural
thing.
And all of us by definition have had to learn the hegemonic American models
even if it is to say ‘that doesn’t apply to me’. But, by definition, because those
are the hegemonic models they don’t have to look at it.
Yeah.
The need to learn about others – to find out what are other models in other
places – is not there.
That’s true
Oliva described this conversation as being like a fish bowl, and it could
become one if we write this up. We would then get to speak to United States
researchers, and researchers around the world, including the people who were
not privileged enough to be here today. What should we say, in conclusion,
about the vitality of International LGBT Psychology and the challenges and
the problems? No pressure!
(Laughter)
The thing that I would take away from this is that the enthusiasm here is
overwhelming.
I’m sure the people here are lovely and friendly anyway, but the fact that people have really put demonstrable effort into talking about their research and
engaging with other people suggests to me that this has been an extremely
important and timely event. Not just intellectually and academically, but
I think personally as well and we shouldn’t lose sight of that aspect.
One thing I would say to people who are not here and who are interested
in LGBT Psychology is to ‘not be afraid of, you know, approaching other
persons and talking about your research’. For us who are here, we should
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Offer:
Offer:
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continue to be open and listen to other people’s ideas and, really take that to
your home town. It’s important to expand what you know, and try to talk about
it to other persons. You know they might be interested in LGBT psychology.
Just tell them there’s this group that we fit in so nobody should be afraid to go
beyond safety.
I think we’ve really learned that there is a wonderful intersection between
these two groups the LGBT group and this academic group because of the
way they’ve come together. We have all been to conferences and that isn’t
how it is. You avoid the social atmosphere, you don’t want to go out with
them afterwards.
(Laughter)
Or you stick to your own, you do the obligatory networking for your career.
Yeah
This has been a labour of joy. Genetics are so far from my realm of interest
and I loved Stephanie’s presentation.4 And it’s been like that every single day.
I really think that is in large part due to the intersection of the two qualities
of those two types of groups. That’s why we came together so quickly within
hours, why this was such a success and why it gives us something real with
which to go forward.
I just echo that, I mean I’ve sat in sessions that I would never have gone to
back home. If anybody was talking about genetics and things I would have
just totally avoided the session so having that LGBT focus has made me,
it’s interested, interested me to, go beyond my comfort zones and to try to
understand and see the research interests of other people which I would never
have done. But from an International perspective, I think there are eight or
nine people, or eight or nine countries here. ‘International’ is a bit bigger so
I think it’s a challenge as to how this can remain feasible, and become more
international. That’s what I’d like to see in the future.
I feel that I am taking a risk here but I think that many of us grew up in some
sort of isolation, and this kind of experience is really helpful to heal some of
the scars of the past. I want to share an experience I had coming on the bus
on the first day. There’s an American sex educator called Brian McNaught
and he uses guided imagery with straight audiences in which he tells a story
of a young heterosexual girl growing up in a world where everybody’s gay
and lesbian and she grows up with two mothers.5 Along the way she realises
that she’s not like them, she’s heterosexual. She’s going to school and sitting
in the school bus where everybody’s gay and lesbian and the lesbian driver
is playing gay songs on the radio. And then I was going on the bus, and
I realised – hey!!, I’m actually on the gay bus!
(Laughter)
And it was amazing and I felt that I was connecting with something that
I never had, and it was such an intense moment.
It was a short bus ride.
It was a short ride of joy!
(Laughter)
On the flip side of that I was talking to Eric Swank and what he was saying
was that it’s the first time that he’s realised, because as a heterosexual he
has always lived as the majority. But here, he’s the minority. He’s had to
out himself as a heterosexual in this environment and he said that he now
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Oliva:
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Oliva:
Karen:
Oliva:
Karen:
Oliva:
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Nikki:
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Peter:
Karen:
Peter:
understands the flip side, he now sees how there was unease, even though it’s
on a much smaller scale.
Y’know on the other side of that, I don’t need career development
(Laughter)
And I don’t need support for my dissertation and all those things that other
people are mentioning here. But it has felt so comfortable and so good and so
friendly. In this particular context I am an American. My passport says so, but
I’m not an American. Well you, Néstor, are in the same situation.
Hm mm.
It’s wonderful to see people from other countries with other perspectives and
with other angles on reality even within something where everybody has so
much in common. Of course, hearing the advice being given to students here,
I’ve been thinking a lot about my own career and about the fact that I did all
this stuff against the grain, and I did not follow any other good advice of ‘do
what you have to do so you get out of this institution and then when you get
tenure you can do. . .’ I never did any of those ‘right’ things. I took all the
crazy risks and endangered my career to work on these topics, to work on
women and to work on ethnic minorities. Because I work on everything that
is stigmatised. Now the cultural part is more accepted and the gender part is
more accepted, but when I started it wasn’t at all. At all. So, I took all these
risks and there is a way in which seeing everybody here it’s like ‘oh, those
risks were useful’.
Yes.
Even though these people were not even born when I did this
(Laughter)
You can take so much pride in that
Yeah. There is a sense of fulfilment, of really mothering the next generation.
I don’t know how else to put it.
I have to tell you that I think there’s been just an equal sense of gratitude or
humbleness. So many of us have been able to start out saying ‘I am an LGBT
researcher’, whether there’s a group for it or not. That’s been my interest since
I started graduate school, and it’s researchers like you that have really paved
that way for us and I don’t think that’s been lost on any of us here.
It’s very moving, very moving to see that.
It’s moving both ways.
And I think just to add onto that as well, I think one of the things that has
made this so successful is just the way that the senior scholars have really
interacted with the students in a very equal way. We’re all eating together and
we’re all together all day and there’s hasn’t been a kind of academic hierarchy
of who is more or less educated. In the same way the PhD students and the
people who are post doc and it’s just been very accepting.
Except the people with purple tags, but. . .
There were little hierarchy markers? I hadn’t even noticed! That totally ruined
the group thing.
At first I just thought those were the gay people!
(Laughter)
You see, when you’re high in the hierarchy you don’t notice markers of power.
But I’m glad you feel that way about the relationships between the people
who do and don’t have PhDs. We are intellectuals, and we are LGBT and
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allies in our communities. Neither of those forms of social organisation are
particularly good at nice warm inter-generational exchange, right? We don’t
always get that one right, either as intellectuals, or as LGBT communities.
But we did some of that this week.
And both are very valuable in both communities.
And very missing. And often there is still a lot of killing the father and reinventing the wheel in academia, to be more Freudian for a moment than I really
believe I am.
(Laughter)
Ok, well thank you all very much.
Thank you for putting this meeting together
Yeah, thank you
Thank you for being here.
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Acknowledgements
We particularly thank Abigail Stewart, Nicola Curtin and the other senior tutors and students at
the first International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Psychology Summer Institute at the
University of Michigan for affording the context of this conversation.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Karen is referring here to Division 44 of the American Psychological Association; The Society
for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Issues.
Nestor is referring to Lisa Diamond’s grant writing workshop ‘Successful publishing and grantwriting: Issues for LGBT researchers’ which was offered as part of the Summer Institute.
Takatāpui is a Māori term which refers to intimate companion of the same-sex. It incorporates
sexual and cultural dimensions (Aspin & Hutchings, 2006) and means something more than the
word ‘gay’ (Aspin, 2002).
Karen is referring to Stephanie Saunders’ seminar ‘Prenatal hormonal influences on sexual
orientation: Revisiting dominant models’ which was offered as part of the Summer Institute
See McNaught (1993).
Notes on contributors
Jeff Adams is a social science researcher from Auckland, New Zealand. He is currently completing his PhD in critical health psychology at the University of Auckland and is also working as
a researcher at the Centre for Social and Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation at Massey
University. His PhD project explores gay men’s health through examining interrelations between
health, masculinities and marginalisation. Other related research has investigated why some gay men
do not consistently use condoms for anal sex.
Karen Blair is a PhD student in the Psychology Department at Queen’s University in Kingston,
Ontario, Canada. She received her MSc in Psychology from Acadia University in 2007 and her BA
(Hon) in Psychology and Criminal Justice & Public Policy from the University of Guelph in 2003.
Karen primarily studies intimate relationships with a focus on same-sex relationships and health.
Néstor I. Borrero-Bracero is a clinical psychology graduate student at the University of Puerto Rico,
Río Piedras Campus. Néstor has conducted research about the social construction of masculinity in
men who have sex with men in Puerto Rico and about eating disorders in gay men. Currently, Néstor
is completing his dissertation project that focuses on identifying and understanding vulnerabilities
and strengths that are related to the process of disclosing a gay identity in Puerto Rican male youth.
Oliva M. Espín is Professor Emerita, Department of Women’s Studies, San Diego State University.
A native of Cuba, she received her BA in Psychology from the University of Costa Rica and her
PhD from the University of Florida. She is the author of several books and many articles. Her
work focuses on issues of internationality of gender, ethnicity, migration and sexuality. She is a
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past President of Division 44 of the American Psychological Association and presently represents
APA in the International Network of LBGTQ Issues in Psychology.
Nikki Hayfield is a PhD Student in the Centre for Appearance Research within the Department of
Psychology at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. Her research lies at the intersection
of critical feminist psychology and LGBTQ studies. Her current research is on bisexual women’s
dress, appearance and visual identities.
Peter Hegarty is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology, University of Surrey, UK. A
native of the Republic of Ireland, he is the author of 75 publications on gender, sexuality, social
psychology and the history of psychology. Peter is currently completing his first book; Matters
between men: Alfred C. Kinsey, Lewis M. Terman and the debate that made sex unsmart (University
of Chicago Press).
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Lisa Herrman-Green is currently an employee at the University of Konstanz, Department of
Economics & Statistics and at the Nachsorgeklinik Tannheim GmbH, Germany. Lisa is a member
of the Board of the Society for Lesbian and Gay Psychologists in Germany.
Ming-Hui Daniel Hsu received his PhD in Counselling Psychology from New York University in
2009. His dissertation was on sociocultural predictors of attitudes toward lesbians and gay men
among college students in Taiwan. Ming-Hui is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Applied
Psychology Department at New York University and in the Graduate Counselling Program at
Manhattan College.
Offer Maurer, PhD, is a Clinical Psychologist, a faculty member at the Israeli Centre for Academic
Studies, director of Gay-Friendly Therapists’ Team, director of ‘Shlabim’ Centre of Integrative
Psychotherapy and Counselling, and a member of PsycholoGay, the Israeli organisation of LGBT
psychotherapists.
Eric Julian Manalastas is a junior faculty member at the Department of Psychology at the University
of the Philippines Diliman where he teaches undergraduate courses in psychology and sexuality.
Eric has an MSc in sexuality studies from the Universiteit van Amsterdam where he did his thesis
on friendships between gay and heterosexual men. Eric has published research on Filipino men’s
condom use during heterosexual and gay sex, Filipino anti-gay prejudice and sexuality education in
the Philippines.
Daragh McDermott is a doctoral research scholar and PhD candidate at the National University of
Ireland, Galway. His research focuses on implicit and explicit attitudes towards gay men and lesbian
women and the efficacy of interventions designed to reduce prejudice. Daragh’s doctoral research
is supported by a fellowship from the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences
(IRCHSS).
Dan Shepperd is a social psychologist and doctoral candidate at the University of Surrey, UK. He uses
discourse analysis to investigate the social construction of friendships between heterosexual women
and gay men. His research interests include post-structuralism, the relationship between queer theory
and feminism, commodification of identity and critiques of liberalism.
References
Aspin, C. (2002). I didn’t have to go to a finishing school to learn how to be gay: Maori gay men’s
understandings of cultural and sexual identity. In H. Worth, A. Paris, & L. Allen (Eds.), The life of
brian: Masculinities, sexualities and health in New Zealand (pp. 91–103). Dunedin: University
of Otago Press.
Aspin, C. & Hutchings, J. (2006). Maori sexuality. In M. Mulholland (Ed.), State of the Maori nation:
Twenty-first-century issues in Aotearoa (pp. 227–235). Auckland: Reed.
McNaught, B. (1993). Growing up gay and lesbian. Los Angeles, CA: Front Range Educational
Media Corporation.