Sociology 2306: Outline--Week Nine
"General classes of Aliens ineligible to receive visas and excluded from admission: (1) Aliens who are feeble-minded... (4) Aliens affliected with psychopathic, or sexual deviation, or mental defect... (13) Aliends coming to the United States to engage in any immoral sexual act." (U.S. Public Law 212(1)4... modified in 1991 to remove the exclusion of homosexuals)
I. Video: "Before Stonewall"
II. Homosexuality: definition, distribution, causation
A. Definition: behavior vs. cognitive/affective measures (including identity)
B. Distribution
1. Kinsey Report on Male Sexuality, 1948
a. 37% of males at least one homosexual experience to orgasm
b. 10% of males more or less exclusively homosexual for at least a three-year period during adulthood
c. 4% of males exclusively homosexual throughout adulthood
d. Strengths and weaknesses of Kinsey
2. Lauman, Gagnon, Michael, and Michaels: The Social Organization of Sexuality--1994
a. Representative national sample of 20,000 were interviewed
b. Interviewers trained extensively, working with NORC--cost per completed interview, $450
c. Completion rate: 80%
d. Overhead, p. 295
e. Much higher rates in urban areas (9.2% identity in 12 largest metrolitan areas vs. 2.8% overall)
C. Causation
1. Essentialism: role of genetics
2. Social constructionism (symbolic interactionism)
Schwartz and Rutter: The Gender of Sexuality(1998)
III. Homosexuality as deviant behavior
A. Criminal justice system
1. Homosexuality = Crime
2. Police
B. Medical system
1. Homosexuality = mental illness
a. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM)
b. Changed in 1973, but many practitioners did not agree
2. AIDS: Shilts, And the Band Played On
C. Religious institutions
1. Homosexuality = Sin
2. "Open and affirming" vs "Love the sinner; hate the sin"
3. Ministers and rabbis
D. Government/military
1. Firings from the state department beginning in the 1950s
2. Military: "Don't ask; don't tell."
E. Public attitudes
1. GSS: overhead
2. Alan Wolfe: One Country After All: What the Middle Class Really Thinks about God, Country, Family, Racism, Welfare, Immigration, Homosexuality, Work, the Right, the Left, and Each Other--1998
a. In-depth interviews in Boston, Atlanta, Tulsa, and San Diego
b. Results: the most controversial issue was homosexuality
c. Key question: "Would people support teaching respect for homosexuality in the public schools." Only a small minority would support this position. On the other hand, a majority supported tolerance of private behaviors.
IV. Homosexuality and symbolic interactionism
A. Secondary deviance and the roles that are available
1. "butch" and "femme" as choices for lesbians in the 1950s
2. Hyper-femininity for gay men
B. Coming out of the closet
V. Labeling/conflict
Adam: The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement
V. Mental Illness: Symbolic Interactionist/labeling perspective
A. Rosenhan: "On Being Sane in Insane Places"
1. Normal people committed voluntarily, after reporting hearing
voices2. Is the length of their stay and their eventual diagnosis such a surprise?
3. How are they treated by psychiatric staff while in the mental hospital?
B. Scheff: "The Role of the Mentally Ill"
Is it possible that diagnosis and treatment in effect create the role of the mentally person, where without diagnosis the problems would have been resolved or gone away without long-term impact?
Recent autobiographical account: Kaysen--Girl Interrupted
Thomas: "What men define as real is real in its consequences."
1. My family's experiences
a. the negative effects of labeling/diagnosis: my brother's suicide
b. the positive effects of labeling/diagnosis: my wife's panic disorder
2. Scheff's hypothesis: Societal reaction (that is, applying the label of mentally ill and then reacting to that label) is the most important factor in producing stable mental illness.
a. Residual deviance = diverse and unlabeled... most residual deviance "denied" and transitory
b. Under what conditions does residual deviance result in a label of mental illness?
1) conventional answer: depends of severity of deviance, degree of person's problems
2)Scheff: "Having an audience which acts toward the individual in a uniform way may lead the actor to play a role..."
3) Stereotyped imagery of mental disorder learned in childhood and available
4) Public labeling takes place in a crisis atmosphere, when the deviant is highly suggestible.
5) Patients who display "insight" and don't resist their diagnosis are "rewarded" (certainly true within wards of the old-style mental hospital)
6) Labeling thus may do more harm than good. E.g., glass study of soldiers who are removed from their units or are not removed... the latter show less subsequent problems
3. What determines the degree of societal reaction
a. Degree, amount, and visibility of residual deviance
b. Power of the deviant and social distance between deviant and labeling authority
c. Tolerance level of community and availability of alternative roles