Money and support tend to flow in the direction of economics, science, and other academic departments that demonstrate measurable "progress." The humanities, on the other hand, offer more abstract and uncertain outcomes. A humanist's objects of study are more obscure in certain ways than pathogens and cells. Consequently, it seems as if the humanities never truly progress. Is this a fair assessment? By comparing objects of science, such as the brain, the galaxy, the amoeba, and the quark, with objects of (...) humanistic inquiry, such as the poem, the photograph, the belief, and the philosophical concept, Volney Gay reestablishes a fundamental distinction between science and the humanities. He frees the latter from its pursuit of material-based progress and restores its disciplines to a place of privilege and respect. Using the metaphor of magnification, Gay shows that, while we can investigate natural objects to the limits of imaging capacity, magnifying cultural objects dissolves them into noise. In other words, cultural objects can be studied only within their contexts and through the prism of metaphor and narrative. Gathering examples from literature, art, film, philosophy, religion, science, and psychoanalysis, Gay builds a new justification for the humanities. By revealing the unseen and making abstract ideas tangible, the arts create meaningful wholes, which itself is a form of progress. (shrink)

This study investigated the relationship between cultural value orientations and country-specific changes in mobility during the Covid-19 pandemic. The aim was to understand how cultural values relate to mobility behavior during the initial stages of the pandemic. The aggregated data include Schwartz's cultural orientations, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, number of Covid-19 cases per million, and mobility change during the Covid-19 pandemic (Google Mobility Reports; percentage decrease in retail and recreation mobility, transit station mobility, workplace mobility and percentage mobility (...) increase in residential areas). Regression analyses showed that, after controlling for economy and severity of disease, hierarchy was the primary factor reducing mobility, such as staying at home, and mobility in public spaces, such as avoiding retail and recreation sites (marginally significant). The results are discussed in the light of previous literature and the implications for social distancing measures. (shrink)

Often the target of uninformed or hostile criticism, the Enlightenment has been characterized as "shallow and pretentious intellectualism" and "unreasonable contempt for authority and tradition." In this provocative book--at once a scholarly study and a vigorous polemic--Peter Gay sets out to shatter old myths, to sort out illusion from reality, and to restore the men of the Enlightenment--Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot--to the esteem they deserve.The nine related essays in The Party of Humanity fall into three divisions: three are on Voltaire, presenting (...) the great philosophe as a tough-minded, realistic man of letters who tried to reshape his world, rather than as a merely brittle and shallow wit. Then, three essays discuss the French Enlightenment as a whole and seek for the unity underlying the diversity of tempers and attitudes among its leaders. The last three, which include Mr. Gay's well-known critique of Carl Becker's The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers, challenge some widely accepted views of the Enlightenment. The longest chapter here is a detailed examination of Rousseau and his reputation among his interpreters.What all nine essays have in common, apart from their portrayal of the philosophes as serious and engaged partisans of humanity, is that they are essays in the social history of ideas; they all treat ideas as inseparable from the specific social and cultural setting from which they emerge, and which they affect. (shrink)

Todd May seeks to provide a philosophical introduction to nonviolence, particularly to campaigns of nonviolent resistance. He claims his book is the first with such a focus. Regardless, if one looks beyond the mainstream literature, a lot of work, including on this topic, has been done over the last several decades by philosophers who are seeking to advance nonviolence and social justice. Nevertheless, as a contribution to more traditional philosophical discussions, May’s book is noteworthy in its themes and arguments. This (...) book could work well in a class on nonviolence or social justice. The text is accessible, is well reasoned logically, and is informed both historically and philosophically. (shrink)

In this study, we discuss the role of senior nurses who sit on clinical commissioning groups that now plan and procure most health services in England. These nurses are expected to bring a nursing view to all aspects of clinical commissioning group business. The role is a senior level appointment and requires experience of strategic commissioning. However, little is known about how nurses function in these roles. Following Barrientos' methodology, published policy and literature were analysed to investigate these roles and (...) National Health Service England's claim that nursing can influence and advance a nursing perspective in clinical commissioning groups. Drawing on work by Berg, Barry and Chandler on ‘new public management’, we discuss how nurses on clinical commissioning groups work at the alignment of the interests of biomedicine and managerialism. We propose that the way this nursing role is being implemented might paradoxically offer further evidence of the devaluing of nursing rather than the emergence of a strong professional nursing voice at the level of strategic commissioning. (shrink)

Non-heterosexual men have long existed on the social and cultural margins. Gay and bisexual male characters in literature, too, have done so for many generations. This essay explores the construction of gay masculinity in the short story “Brokeback Mountain” in relation to the “imaginative leap” that its author, Annie Proulx, undertook in order to conceptualize and represent this noteworthy form of marginalized otherness. It demonstrates that, despite the story’s various refreshing elements, “Brokeback Mountain” ultimately relies far too extensively on the (...) logic of melodrama when telling the tale of Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, who fall in love in 1963 and continue their sexual relationship over the course of two decades. As a result, this story ends up positioning its two queer protagonists as enemies of the patriarchal social order and the larger society within which it so comfortably exists, implicitly perpetuating both heterosexism and homophobia as it does its cultural work. (shrink)

The data analyzed in this paper are part of the results described in Bueno et al. (2000). Three cytogenetics endpoints were analyzed in three populations of a species of wild rodent – Akodon montensis – living in an industrial, an agricultural, and a preservation area at the Itajaí Valley, State of Santa Catarina, Brazil. The polychromatic/normochromatic ratio, the mitotic index, and the frequency of micronucleated polychromatic erythrocites were used in an attempt to establish a genotoxic profile of each area. It (...) was assumed that the three populations were in the same conditions with respect to the influence of confounding factors such as animal age, health, nutrition status, presence of pathogens, and intra- and inter-populational genetic variability. Therefore, any differences found in the endpoints analyzed could be attributed to the external agents present in each area. The statistical models used in this paper are mixtures of negative-binomials and Poisson variables. The Poisson variables are used as approximations of binomials for rare events. The mixing distributions are beta densities. The statistical analyzes are under the bayesian perspective, as opposed to the frequentist ones often considered in the literature, as for instance in Bueno et al. (2000). (shrink)

In written and spoken communications, figures of speech (e.g., metaphors and synecdoche) are often used as an aid to help convey abstract or less tangible concepts. However, the benefits of using rhetorical illustrations or embellishments in visualization have so far been inconclusive. In this work, we report an empirical study to evaluate hypotheses that visual embellishments may aid memorization, visual search and concept comprehension. One major departure from related experiments in the literature is that we make use of a dual-task (...) methodology in our experiment. This design offers an abstraction of typical situations where viewers do not have their full attention focused on visualization (e.g., in meetings and lectures). The secondary task introduces “divided attention”, and makes the effects of visual embellishments more observable. In addition, it also serves as additional masking in memory-based trials. The results of this study show that visual embellishments can help participants better remember the information depicted in visualization. On the other hand, visual embellishments can have a negative impact on the speed of visual search. The results show a complex pattern as to the benefits of visual embellishments in helping participants grasp key concepts from visualization. (shrink)

Fags, Hags and Queer Sisters is a provocative account of the importance of women and cross-gender identification in "gay" male culture. It offers a range of cultural readings from Tennessee William's classic A Streetcar Named Desire and Forster's 'gay' novel Maurice through Pulp Fiction, queer lifestyle magazines, Roseanne, slash fan fiction, and Jarman's Edward II to Almodovar's camp classic Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Theoretically sophisticated, yet passionate, accessible and opinionated, Fags, Hags and Queer Sisters takes issue (...) with many of the sacred cows of contemporary gay politics, and offers a number of new concepts in lesbian and gay theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Gender in The Gay ScienceKathleen Marie HigginsIn his recent novel, When Nietzsche Wept, Irwin Yalom reiterates a common portrait of Nietzsche: a sexist über alles. Much as the quip “Isn’t business ethics a contradiction in terms?” ubiquitously accosts philosophers involved in that subdiscipline, “What’s a nice girl like you doing studying a misogynist like that?” has haunted my career in Nietzsche scholarship. I have never been entirely certain as (...) to whether this ad hominem is more directed at me or at Nietzsche.A sympathetic but jovial colleague played on this ambiguity by remarking, when he heard my topic for this essay, “Yes, that must be an interesting topic for someone who isn’t even shallow.” Yes, Nietzsche did say that women, far from deep, were not even shallow. But does this remark prove him a sexist? Are we even certain what it means?I will attempt to complicate our appraisal of Nietzsche’s alleged sexism by focusing on Book Two of The Gay Science. Considering his passages on women in that book, I will suggest along the way reasons why at least some readings of these as sexist should be rejected. More positively, I will show that these passages urge a reassessment of the relationship between men and women that can be seen as a contribution toward feminist theory (if an unwitting one), and that one of Nietzsche’s intended impacts on his male readers is to initiate a radical revolution in their thinking about women.IThe term “gender” is used advisedly in this context, for Nietzsche made the distinction, common in feminist discussion, between sex (the biological potential to play one role rather than another in [End Page 227] reproduction) and gender (the contingently assigned roles that a society attaches to those who are biologically male or female). Nietzsche urged his readers to recognize the contingency of gender roles and to consider the desirability of changing them.We can hardly begin to consider Nietzsche’s suggestions in these regards, however, without confronting the allegation that Nietzsche was a paradigmatic sexist. Although many of the most important names in Western philosophy have been singled out for feminist censure, Nietzsche is often held up as an exemplar of all that is misogynistic, both in the philosophical tradition and within patriarchy generally. Nietzsche is identified as a misogynist for a variety of reasons. He is seen as an essentialist, an opponent of women’s rights, an enthusiast of masculine virtue, and an advocate of male domination. While none of these attributions may be entirely apt, I agree with Nietzsche’s feminist critics that he was, at least sometimes, too willing to rest content with truisms about women and to vent personal rage in the guise of philosophy.That said, some of the attacks on Nietzsche are both unfair and unfortunate. I am not the only feminist to think so. Maudemarie Clark, Sarah Kofman, Maryanne Bertram, and Deborah Bergoffen have all suggested that certain of Nietzsche’s views offer starting points for feminist theorizing. I will describe some attacks made on Nietzsche by certain other feminists, however, because they represent the popular perspective on Nietzsche (if not that most typical of Nietzsche scholars) and because they indicate certain pitfalls that feminists would do best to avoid.Carol Diethe’s article “Nietzsche and the Woman Question,” for example, criticizes Nietzsche in a number of unwarranted ways. Consider, for example, her complaint that Nietzsche’s conception of the will to power entails an affirmation of the domination of women.If we take his key concept, the will to power, we find that it is so gender based that it practically comes to represent the archetypal phallic symbol. Bernstein describes it as a phenomenon which includes the “will to violate” so that the “feeling of power” (Machtgefühl) is generated, yet when he goes on to mention “Nietzsche’s desire to avoid reducing the will to power to sexuality,” he fails to realize that his own critique has relied heavily on the language of rape and the whole area of male dominance of women which stretches behind words such as “violation.” 1Diethe simply accepts Bernstein’s characterization of Nietzsche’s... (shrink)

Companies increasingly seek to use gay protagonists in audio-visual commercials to attract a new affluent target group. There is also growing demand for the diversity present in society to be reflected in media formats such as advertising. Studies have shown, however, that heterosexual consumers, who may be part of the company's loyal consumer base, tend to react negatively to gay-themed advertising campaigns. Searching for an instrument to mitigate this unwanted effect, the present study investigated whether carefully selected background music can (...) shape the perceived gender of gay male advertising protagonists. In a 2 × 2 between-subjects online experiment, 218 heterosexual participants watched a commercial promoting engagement rings that featured gay male protagonists, scored with feminine- or masculine-connoted background music. As expected, women generally reacted more positively than men to the advertising. Men exposed to the masculine-connoted background music rated the promoted brand more positively, and masculine music also enhanced these men's acceptance of gay men in general more than was the case for feminine background music. Carefully selected background music affecting the perceived gender of gay male advertising protagonists may prevent negative reactions from heterosexual audiences and, therefore, motivate companies to use gay protagonists in television commercials on a more regular basis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 45, no. 1. © 2019 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 13 Stephanie Yingyi Wang When Tongzhi Marry: Experiments of Cooperative Marriage between Lalas and Gay Men in Urban China Ang Lee’s film The Wedding Banquet could be classic introductory material for tongzhi studies and, particularly, for research on cooperative marriage.1 In the film, Wai-Tung, a Taiwanese landlord who lives happily with his American boyfriend Simon in New York, (...) is troubled by his parents’ constant efforts to try and find him a bride. His partner Simon suggests he could arrange a marriage of convenience with WaiTung ’s tenant Wei Wei who is from mainland China and is also in need of a green card to stay in the United States. However, their plan backfires when Wai-Tung’s enthusiastic parents arrive in the United States and plan a big wedding banquet. As the film critic and scholar Chris 1. Tongzhi, literally “same purpose,” is the Chinese term for “comrade.” Since the 1990s, it has been appropriated to replace the more formal tóngxìnglìan (same-sex love) to refer to gay men and lalas (same-sex desiring women) in the Chinese-speaking world. The translation of xinghun as “cooperative marriage” is debatable, as xinghun literally means “pro-forma marriage.” In other works, “contract marriage,” “fake marriage,” or “pro-forma marriage” are used to refer to gay-lala marriage. Informed by Lucetta Kam’s work, I use “cooperative marriage ” to highlight that such marriage is not merely functional without sustenance, but is contingent on the cooperation and negotiation between multiple parties in the relationship, as my findings suggest. See Lucetta Yip Lo Kam, Shanghai Lalas: Female Tongzhi Communities and Politics in Urban China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013), 85. winner of the 2018 Feminist Studies Graduate Student award 14 Stephanie Yingyi Wang Berry points out, analysis of the film rests not on any individual, but on the Confucian family as “it negotiates the interface with globally hegemonic American culture,” suggesting that there exists an understanding of gayness in the context of the family that is distinct in Chinese culture.2 Berry continues to argue that the moral ambivalence produced by the film is structured by different sets of values: the gay person is not merely concerned about individual identity fulfillment, but he also adjusts his actions to satisfy the family expectation; the parents, especially the father figure, is not merely a patriarch with strict moral provisions and standards, but someone who can allow for implicit negotiation to keep the surface harmony as long as he gets a grandson; the woman is not merely an independent agent freed from social constraints, but a bride who is also attached to emotional comfort and conjugal ideals. Just as The Wedding Banquet tactfully reveals one type of cooperative marriage with its mutual benefits and examines the multilayered complexity of each individual player in the marriage game, this research takes as its subject cooperative marriage between gay men and lalas as an exciting departure to understand queer subjectivities and queer kinship intersected with gender, sexuality, class, and tongzhi politics in urban China.3 Though seemingly monolithic, marriage and family have become contested terrains for tongzhi to negotiate their gender performance, queer desires, and aspirations for better lives. The transnational makings of gayness and rights-based identity politics have contributed to the increasing awareness of a cosmopolitan gay identity and the desiring of alternative life choices of Chinese tongzhi, which lays the very foundation of their motivation to seek ways to cope with the heteronormative family model. Coming out and gay marriage are upheld as primary tropes of identity politics, facilitated by the self-identified tongzhi grassroots groups that emerged during the initiation of AIDS work in 1994 for gay men and at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, which gathered hundreds of lesbians from around the world in Beijing.4 How2. Chris Berry, “Wedding Banquet: A Family (Melodrama) Affair,” in his Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes (London: British Film Institute, 2003), 183. 3. Lala is a slang term in China for same-sex desiring women and includes lesbian, bisexual, and trans women. 4. Katie King, “‘There Are No... (shrink)

This article examines gay men’s efforts to break into the exclusive traditional fraternity institution by adopting the hegemonic model on their own terms. The authors examined to what extent members of a national gay fraternity, Delta Lambda Phi challenged or modified the entrenched fraternity culture that was hostile to homosexuals and whether they resisted or reproduced hegemonic masculinity in their efforts to redefine the meaning of college fraternities. This research examines gay fraternities in relation to two dimensions of hegemonic masculinity. (...) The authors explore how members of gay fraternities negotiated their stigmatized status among other men—that is, within the internal dimension of hegemonic masculinity. They explore the external dimension of hegemonic masculinity by analyzing how gay brothers, as men, related to all women. The authors further examine the connection between these two hegemonic dimensions and provide evidence showing how these two dimensions are coupled or disjointed. (shrink)

Drawing from the gender wage gap literature, we explore four possible causes of sexual minority earnings gaps: variation in human capital and labor force participation, occupational and industrial sorting, differences in the institutional organization of the public and private sector, and different returns to marriage and parenthood. Using the 2006 Census of Canada, we find that heterosexual men earn more than gay men, followed by lesbians and heterosexual women. Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions show that industry of employment, rather than occupation, disadvantages gay (...) men, lesbians, and heterosexual women. High levels of educational attainment lead to employment in lucrative occupations, but sexual minorities earn significantly less than heterosexual men within these occupations. Wage gaps are reduced in the public sector for heterosexual women, gay men, and lesbians. Finally, we find that heterosexual women experience a motherhood penalty, heterosexual men experience a fatherhood premium, and both receive a premium for marriage; however, the presence of children and marriage have no effect on the earnings of either gay men or lesbians in conjugal relationships. (shrink)

Many older gay men experience diminished psychological well‐being (PWB) due to unique circumstances including discrimination, living with HIV, and aging through the HIV/AIDS crisis. However, there remains ambiguity as to how older gay men define and understand PWB. Our team interviewed and analyzed the accounts of 26 older (50+) self‐identifying English‐speaking men living in southwestern British Columbia, Canada. We drew on tenets of constructivist grounded theory and intersectionality to account for unique contextual considerations and power relations. Semi‐structured Zoom interviews were (...) conducted from August‐October 2022. Interview transcripts were compared to generate high‐order conceptual findings underpinned by processes understood as central to PWB. Three PWB temporal processes highlighted interlocking social and contextual circumstances intersecting with power and maturation: (1) being emotionally balanced, (2) living gratitude (3) and fully embracing self‐acceptance. Being emotionally balanced supported the affective and sustainable state of contentment, living gratitude drew from the wisdom of accrued experiences to cultivate a positive affective state inclusive to recognising social location privileges, whilst fully embracing self‐acceptance redressed the harms of anti‐gay discourses that men endured throughout their lives. The knowledge is relevant to service and resource development to deliver tailored PWB supports to older gay men. (shrink)

Research has uncovered consistent gender differences in attitudes toward gay men, with women expressing less prejudice than men (Herek, 2003). Attitudes toward lesbians generally show a similar pattern, but to a weaker extent. The present work demonstrated that motivation to respond without prejudice importantly contributes to these divergent attitudes. Study 1 revealed that women evince higher internal motivation to respond without prejudice (IMS, Plant & Devine, 1998) than do men and that this difference partially mediates the relationship between gender and (...) attitudes toward gay men. The second study replicated this finding and demonstrated that IMS mediates the relationship between gender and attitudes toward lesbians. Study 2 further revealed that gender-role variables contribute to the observed gender differences in motivation to respond without prejudice. These findings provide new insights into the nature of sexual prejudice and for the first time point to possible antecedents of variation in motivation to respond without prejudice. (shrink)

It is rare to find honest accounts of the difficulties and dilemmas encountered when conducting sensitive research with vulnerable research populations. This account explores some of the ethical issues raised by a qualitative interview study with lesbians and gay men about their experiences of nursing care. There is tension between the moral duty to conduct research with vulnerable and stigmatized groups in order to improve care, and the inevitable lack of resources that go with such a venture. This increases the (...) risk of harm during the process of research. The risk of harm to both the researchers and the researched is explored and the need for a support structure for both groups is raised. There is a pressing need to develop further understanding about the ways in which the dissemination of research can potentially harm already vulnerable research populations. (shrink)

This is the third volume of a three-volume set on The Innate Mind. The extent to which cognitive structures, processes, and contents are innate is one of the central questions concerning the nature of the mind, with important implications for debates throughout the human sciences. By bringing together the top nativist scholars in philosophy, psychology, and allied disciplines these volumes provide a comprehensive assessment of nativist thought and a definitive reference point for future nativist inquiry. The Innate Mind: Volume 3: (...) Foundations and the Future, concerns a variety of foundational issues, as well as questions about the direction of future nativist research. It addresses such questions as: What is innateness? Is it a confused notion? What is at stake in debates between nativists and empiricists? What is the relationship between genes and innateness? How do innate structures and learned information interact to produce adult forms of cognition, e.g. about number, and how does such learning take place? What innate abilities underlie the creative aspect of language use, and of creative cognition generally? What are the innate foundations of human motivation, and of human moral cognition? In the course of their discussions, many of the contributors pose the question : Where next for nativist research? Together, these three volumes provide the most intensive and richly cross-disciplinary investigation of nativism ever undertaken. They point the way toward a synthesis of nativist work that promises to provide a powerful picture of our minds and their place in the natural order. (shrink)

This article is an offshoot of a research project on lesbian and gay self-organization in the UK's public sector union UNISON. The site upon which lesbians and gay men ‘work together’ is a complex and contradictory one, located at the juncture of several pathways – women's and men's movements, gendered politics and sexual politics, purist ghettos and queer rainbows. The UNISON group furnishes an ideal site for a case-study of sexual and gendered dynamics in lesbian-and-gay politics by dint of institutional (...) arrangements whereby separate spaces for lesbians and gay men respectively encourage reflexivity in working through these hyphens. While reflections from the lesbian feminist mirror have been active ingredients in the ongoing resocialization of gay men, it is argued that reflections from a gay male mirror will also be necessary if we are to nurture greater wisdom and justice in gender relations. Since the lesbian and gay group co-exists with other self-organized groups for women, black people and disabled people within a broader pro-socialist movement, the potential for working across other sets of differences is also noteworthy. Nevertheless, it can be demonstrated that a sustained coalition between lesbians and gay men is not sufficient in bringing about coalitions with other oppressed minorities or majorities, and may even be at loggerheads with them. (shrink)

The lack of a standardized reliable and valid instrument makes it difficult to measure attitudes toward lesbian women and gay men consistently and thus poses a challenge to compare and contrast intervention measures. This study aimed to validate Herek’s ATLG scale among undergraduates in mainland China and identify factors associated with negative attitudes toward LG. A total of 6,036 eligible undergraduates conveniently drawn from 30 provinces across mainland China were randomly split in half. Item analysis was first used to select (...) unrelated or redundant items for deletion. Exploratory factor analysis were then conducted on the first half of the sample, followed by confirmatory factor analysis and reliability analysis in the second half. Logistic regression analyses were finally carried out to identify their determinants. Six items were removed from the item analysis. EFA supported the existence of two factors. CFA results indicated that the two-factor model fit the data better than the one-factor model. Logistic regression analyses indicated that being female, majoring in non-health-related disciplines, attributing homosexuality to uncontrollable causes, non-adherence to traditional gender norms and exposure to homosexual content were significantly associated with less negative attitudes toward both L and G. Urban students were marginally less likely to express negative attitudes toward L but not G, while non-heterosexuals and those who had prior personal contact with homosexuals exhibited less negative attitudes toward G but not L. However, grade showed no significant associations with either ATL or ATG. The retained 14-item version of Herek’s ATLG scale has been proven to be a reliable and valid tool. Furthermore, ATL and ATG were determined by different factors and thus would be treated separately. In order to reduce negative attitudes toward LG among undergraduates in mainland China, a comprehensive intervention plan such as conducting comprehensive sex education and pushing the process of legalizing same-sex marriage should be designed, implemented and evaluated. (shrink)

This article complicates the idea that lesbian and gay kinship is based primarily on friendship, voluntarism and being free from duty and obligation. It also offers a more nuanced understanding of wills as a rich source of evidence for making claims about kinship, family and relationships. It analyses conversations about will-writing with fifteen older lesbians and gay men, taken from interviews which formed part of a wider socio-legal study on the intersection of ageing, gender and sexuality. The analysis identifies a (...) wide range of kinship formations and composition going beyond “family of choice” narratives, and also both connections and disconnections between ties of love and affection and disposal of assets in wills. Participants’ will-writing reflected four types of prioritisation: prioritising children; prioritising friends; prioritising siblings; mixed priorities. In contrast with accounts of “families of choice” as being duty-free, a sense of duty, especially towards biological family members, was evident in a number of interviews. I suggest that wills can sometimes be a rich source of evidence about kinship, but only when analysis takes into account the complexities and contingencies which can be involved. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Imperfect Men in Perfect Societies:Human Nature in UtopiaGorman BeauchampIUtopists view man as a product of his social environment. Nothing innate in the psychic make-up of man—no inherent flaw in his nature, no inheritance of original sin—prevents his being perfected, or at least radically ameliorated, once the social structure that shapes character can be properly reordered. Utopists, in short, deny that there is such a thing as "human nature"—if, as (...) John Plamenatz suggests, to say that something is human nature is just another way of saying that it cannot be changed.1 To accept the psychic constitution of man as fixed, immutable, is anathema to utopists, who agree rather with Ortega y Gasset: "Man has no nature. What he has is history."2 The social conditions that have obtained historically, that is to say, have made man what he has been—anything but utopian; but if man's history could be changed, so could his "nature." The idea of Progress, so pervasive in the West from the seventeenth century on, lends some credence to this contention. W. D. Howells's Altrurians, their creator notes, "get some sad amusement out of the fact that the capitalist world believes human nature cannot be changed, though cannibalism and slavery and polygamy have all been extirpated in the so-called Christian countries, and these things were once human nature, which is always changing...."3 Utopia is merely a means, then, of imaginatively expediting, directing, culminating the historically progressive creation of a morally exemplary race of men.The environmentalist psychology espoused by utopists springs from one of two anterior assumptions (although in the creation of many fictional idola the distinction between them is often blurred). The first [End Page 280] assumption is formulated most famously by Rousseau in the Discourse on Inequality: that "man is naturally good, and only by his institutions is he made bad."4 The second assumption is formulated most famously by Locke in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding: that the mind—and by extension the character—is a tabula rasa that takes impression from the stimuli exerted by the external world and thus is neither innately good or bad, but plastic, malleable.5 An intriguing conflation of these two theories operates, for instance, in the psyche of the monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In the long middle section of the book, where the monster's side of the story is presented sympathetically, his character develops in a text-book demonstration of Lockean psychology; yet, at the same time, this lumbering tabula rasa quivers with enough benevolence (the implausible provenance of which mystifies) to put most saints to shame. He becomes evil and destructive only after being persecuted unmercifully for his misshapen appearance.6 Indeed, the criminal career of Mary Shelley's monster rehearses the common utopian argument that society's injustice to man (or monster) is the source of his crimes. "With our present state of society," writes James Casey in A New Moral World (1885), "we manufacture criminals and then punish them for being so."7 H. G. Wells, in A Modern Utopia (1905), concurs: "Crime and bad lives are the measure of the State's failure, all crime in the end is the crime of the community."8 And both are but restating the charge of Sir Thomas More's Raphael Hytholoday, leveled several centuries earlier in the original Utopia (1519): "If you allow people to be badly brought up and their habits to be corrupted little by little from childhood and if you then punish them for crimes to which their early training has disposed them, what else is this, I ask, but first making them thieves and then punishing them for it?"9 Evil deeds, then, to reiterate the utopist's point, result not from some vicious mole in human nature, but from the malfunctioning of society itself. Utopia, by contrast, is—or theoretically ought to be—a world without crime.Rousseau's concept of the innate goodness of man and the evil of his institutions most often informs primitivist models of utopia, exotic worlds inhabited by noble savages uncorrupted by civilization. The idealized Indians of Montaigne's essay... (shrink)

This paper provides critical insights into the inclusion of sexual minorities in Flemish fictional TV shows aimed at children. Narratives including LGBT+ characters and non-normative gender performances have gained presence, and especially Nordic and Dutch productions have been acknowledged for their inclusive storytelling. Following up on this premise, our study analyzes five Flemish programs aimed at children aged six to twelve, which all include at least one character who identifies as LGBT+. Our analysis concludes that Flemish children’s productions show a (...) visible willingness to include diversified and inclusive storytelling. However, the assimilationist venture of minimizing the ‘otherness’ of non-heterosexual characters has led to a rather homogenous and normative portrayal of these characters. More stereotypical representations like frivolous singing hairdressers have now been replaced by rather heteronormative and gender-conforming characters. Not confining representations to either end of the spectrum are a necessity if Flemish children’s television wants its audience to understand the diversified range of sexual and gender identities. (shrink)

Analyzing two harm reduction comics campaigns—one early in the AIDS crisis and one more recent, I explore tensions between queer safer sexual erotics and national discourses of sexual norms/deviation raised by Cindy Patton and William Haver at the height of AIDS discourse theory in 1996, approximately halfway between the comics. Using these theorists’ reflections on the history of AIDS activism/representation as a hinge, I explore the manifestation/transformation a decade later of the ethical, educational, and erotic issues they raise. Both foreground (...) the ways that HIV, safer sex, and/or eroticism pose difficulties for systems of linguistic and visual representation. Combining text and image, comics—a common harm reduction medium—epitomize this representational issue. While the GMHC addresses an immediate need for information about safer sex, Alex attempts to tackle the unrepresentability/unthinkability of safer and/or seropositive sex. Safer Sex Comix, while largely prioritizing directness above formal experimentation, employ strategies of transgressing the borders of the comics panel to emphasize a plethora of lower-risk sexual acts. The most visually inventive moments in Alex represent Alex’s feelings of unintelligbility post-diagnosis, but the comic restricts its representation of sex only to anal intercourse, and it proves unable to visualize alternative formulations of the erotic, turning to more normative narratives and images as earlier, visually explicit unsafe sexual encounters are replaced with more a/illusive representations post-conversion, literalizing the unrepresentability of seropositive erotic life. (shrink)

The book analyses the Indian Supreme Court's jurisprudence on homosexuality, its current approach and how its position has evolved in the past ten years. It critically analyses the Court's landmark judgments and its perception of equality, family, marriage and human rights from an international perspective. With the help of European Court of Human Rights' judgments and international conventions, it compares the legal and social discrimination meted out to the Indian LGBTI community with that in the international arena. From a social (...) anthropological perspective, it demonstrates how gay masculinity, although marginalized, serves as a challenge to patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity. This unique book addresses the lack of in-depth literature on gay masculinity, elaborately narrating and analysing contemporary gay masculinity and emerging gay lifestyles in India and highlighting the latest research on the subject of homosexuality in general and in particular with respect to India. It also discusses several new issues concerning the gay men in India supported by the living law approach put forth by Eugen Ehrlich. (shrink)

This article investigates the embodied identities of Hong Kong gay men in two different `sites of desire', namely London and Hong Kong. In London, Hong Kong gay men have constantly encountered the intertwining relationships between race and sexuality in the constellation of the Western construction of body/desire/masculinity. By contrast, Hong Kong gay men in Hong Kong tend to place more emphasis on issues of family and culture. The main site of struggle for Hong Kong gay men in Hong Kong is (...) the family-oriented and community-based environment. They adopt not a confrontational politics in a constitutional sense but rather derive tactics of microscopic resistance against societal and familial domination. By comparing 34 Hong Kong gay men living in London and Hong Kong, I argue the divergent constructions of being gay in these two contexts. Through the `voices' of these gay men, I criticize the `Western' construction of identity/the body and offer new insights into the discussion of gay identities. (shrink)

On 30 June 2005, the Spanish Parliament approved Law 13/2005, which amends the Civil Code to permit same-sex marriage. This formal equality measure put Spain in the spotlight of the international media. It is the culmination of a series of developments spanning from the last years of the Franco regime (which ended in 1975), through the enactment of anti-discrimination measures in 1995, to the recent fight for kinship recognition. It also follows a recent shift, from 1998 to 2005, towards the (...) enactment of same-sex partnership laws at regional level, the approval of same-sex marriage and finally, the approval of a ‹gender identity law’ (2007). This legislative note assesses the context in which the new law on same-sex marriage has been enacted. I argue that although same-sex marriage has been represented by many activists and politicians in Spain as a gender neutral contract, it has the potential for differential impacts on lesbians and gay men, and further research and debates are needed in this area. (shrink)

In this first full-length study of male homosexuality in Cather's short stories and novels, John P. Anders examines patterns of male friendship ranging on a continuum from the social to the sexual. He reveals how Cather's work assumes an unexpected depth and complexity by drawing on both the familiar tradition of friendship literature inspired by classical and Christian texts and a homosexual legacy that is part of, yet distinct from, established literary traditions. Anders argues that Cather's artistic achievement is distinguished (...) by her sexual aesthetics, an elusive literary style inextricably associated with homosexuality. His analysis demonstrates how a homosexual ethos and eros helped Cather develop a sensitivity to human variation and a style to accommodate it and thus became the objective correlative of her art, dramatizing the diversity of human nature as it deepens the mystery of her work. (shrink)

In the face of what has been referred to as a crystal methamphetamine ‘‘epidemic’’ among gay men in North America, a number of health promotion efforts have been developed. While these efforts vary in approach, a core feature is the assumption that a user’s health depends on distinguishing accurate truths about CMA from inaccurate beliefs about CMA. Drawing on insights developed by Bruno Latour, this article unravels how this distinction plays out in the context of one expression of CMA health (...) promotion. I suggest that CMA health promotion may be more usefully understood as form of collective work in which various players throw up different knowledge practices for debate rather than an effort to mark the difference between truth and belief. In doing so, I suggest that of Latour, and science studies more generally, offers an opportunity for rethinking the nature of health promotion writ large. (shrink)

Despite the demonstrated utility of intersectionality, research on men allied with women’s rights movements has largely focused on white, heterosexual, middle-class, young men. This study illustrates the importance of attending to men’s intersecting identities by evaluating the applicability of existing knowledge about men’s engagement pathways to the predominantly African American members of a Muslim men’s anti–domestic violence group and a gay/queer men’s gender justice group. Findings from a year-long qualitative study highlight how these men’s experiences differ from those in the (...) literature. While the Muslim men’s experiences add dimension to the existing knowledge—especially regarding age and parenthood, online interactions, and formal learning opportunities—the gay/queer men’s experiences are not accurately represented within it. Their pathways begin earlier, do not rely on women’s input, do not create a shift in gendered worldview, and lack a pathway narrative because they connect to gender justice through their own intersecting identities and experiences. This suggests that a marginalized identity is not in itself sufficient to alter engagement pathways; the particular type of marginalization matters. (shrink)

ObjectivesTo examine implicit and explicit attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women among heterosexual undergraduate and graduate psychology and nursing students.MethodsImplicit attitudes were measured via the Implicit Association Test and explicit attitudes via the Attitudes Toward Lesbian Women and Gay questionnaire.Main resultsAll groups held negative implicit attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women. Among undergraduates, nursing students reported holding more negative explicit attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women than psychology students.ConclusionThe curricula in both nursing and psychology studies need to (...) address the medical and paramedical needs and issues of sexual minorities. (shrink)

This study presents a contrastive corpus linguistic analysis of language use before and after Stonewall. It uses theoretical insights on normativity from the field of language and sexuality to investigate how the shifting normativities associated with the Stonewall Riots – widely considered the central event of gay liberation in the Western world – have shaped our conceptualization of sexuality as it surfaces in language use. Drawing on two corpora of gay men’s pre-Stonewall narratives dating from two time periods, the analysis (...) combines quantitative and qualitative corpus linguistic methods to examine discursive shifts as evident from narrators’ language use. The study identifies the terms homosexual and normal as central contrastive labels in PRE, and gay and straight as corresponding terms in POST. Other discursive shifts detected are from sexual desire/practices to identity, from an individualistic to a community-based conceptualization of sexuality, and from unquestioned heteronormativity and gender binarism to a weakening of such dominant discourses. The findings are discussed in relation to the desire-identity shift, which is traditionally assumed to have taken place at the end of the 19th century, and shed new light on Stonewall as a central event for the development of an identity-based conceptualization of sexuality as we know it today. (shrink)

Gornick on V. S. Naipaul, James Baldwin, George Gissing, Randall Jarrell, H. G. Wells, Loren Eiseley, Allen Ginsberg, Hayden Carruth, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth and the intimate relationship between emotional damage and great literature.

This article closely reads “Chelsea Girls,” an autobiographical short story by Eileen Myles that depicts her experience caring for the diabetic, bipolar poet James Schuyler when she was a young writer getting started in East Village in the late 1970s. Their dependency relationship is a form of queer kinship, an early version of the caring relations between lesbians and gay men that HIV/aids would demand over the next two decades as chosen families emerged to nurture gay men and lesbians rejected (...) by their families of origin. The representation of queer kinship offers an alternative to more traditional portrayals of care in literature that focus on the heteronormative family, a site of care that feminist dependency theory also paradoxically privileges. This article synthesizes insights from queer theory and critical disability studies in order to expand our understanding of the roles participants in care can play, the ways they can feel, and the outcomes they can achieve. Myles and Schuyler’s dependency relationship was sustaining for both of them and also critical for her development as a pioneering lesbian poet in an art world still dominated by men. (shrink)