Scientific Racism and the Intervention of the Homosexual Body Essay
Scientific Racism and the Intervention of the Homosexual Body
In Siobhan Somerville’s document on Scientific Racism and the Intervention of the Homosexual Body the discussion; mainly entail the identification of homosexuality through understanding the real relation between gender and race and homosexuality in the context of history. The class reading essentially gendered race while trying to explain the racial differences in Flower and Murie’s experiment.Scientific Racism and the Intervention of the Homosexual Body Essay. The experiments of Flower and Murie entailed the application of numerous medical journals. The objective of applying various journals in the study was the proof of the abnormality of homosexuality based on the racial and gender ideologies of the generation. ‘Comparative anatomies repeatedly located racial differences through the sexual characters of female bodies instead of males.’
Additionally, Flower and Murie summarised their idea on homosexuality based on the anatomy of an African woman and marking them as peculiar. Clear race boundaries were already made through the process of delineating sexual ambiguity and were gendered in the experiment. One of the medical journals in the article declares the result of physical examination of the coloured female gays shows the presence of abnormally prominent clitoris. The result drawn by Flower and Murie is thus outrageous. However, their strong belief in the women as not inferior and perfect to some extent makes sense to some people that lesbianism in women was expected.
ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER NOW
Xavier Mayne who is famous for being among the earlier advocates for homosexual rights in America presents a positive outlook on homosexuality. Mayne’s viewpoint was different in the sense that the basis of his ideology was the idea of racial paradigms as well as the model of gender. Mayne developed a model of the race from a different perspective whereby he viewed gender and sexuality inside continuous spectrum varying significantly. In his attempt to define the concept of homosexuality outside the discourse of pathology or abnormality, Mayne developed the continuum of genders. In the model of genders developed, the common types took their places between the heterosexual males and exclusively heterosexual females. The common species were thus identified as the third sex.
In the class reading on Desiring Arabs, we understood the purpose of treatment of the emergence of civilisation and culture as new objects of concern in the West. The third chapter of the book focused on delineating important issues when intellectuals and activists uncritically deploy essentialist categories of identities across the existing cultural boundaries. The consideration was without an appreciation of the ways through which the essentialists were drawn and how they shaped notions of sexual difference. Scientific Racism and the Intervention of the Homosexual Body Essay.
I found the class readings fascinating especially since they all relate the relation between racism, gender, and homosexuality developed throughout history even though understanding the concept of racism and gender being sexualized was challenging. However, I tried to read the documents repeatedly and thoroughly and was thus able to relate the study topic to other materials known earlier in class. From the class readings, it becomes evident that various organisations strive for equal rights for the homosexuals linked to the Western governments. If they could somehow be detached, would institutions remain stuck within the current discourse, or would they radically change their approach? Currently, I am excited for the additional materials bound to be covered by throughout the semester.
At a time when lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals are an increasingly open, acknowledged, and visible part of society, clinicians and researchers are faced with incomplete information about the health status of this community. Although a modest body of knowledge on LGBT health has been developed over the last two decades, much remains to be explored. What is currently known about LGBT health? Where do gaps in the research in this area exist? What are the priorities for a research agenda to address these gaps? This report aims to answer these questions.
THE LGBT COMMUNITY
The phrase “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community” (or “LGBT community”) refers to a broad coalition of groups that are diverse with respect to gender, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Thus while this report focuses on the community that is encapsulated by the acronym LGBT, the committee wishes to highlight the importance of recognizing that the various populations represented by “L,” “G,” “B,” and “T” are distinct groups, each with its own special health-related concerns and needs. The committee believes it is essential to emphasize these differences at the outset of this report because in some contemporary scientific discourse, and in the popular media, these groups are routinely treated as a single population under umbrella terms such as LGBT. At the same time, as discussed further below, these groups have many experiences in common, key among them being the experience of stigmatization. (Differences within each of these groups related to, for example, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, geographic location, and age also are addressed later in the chapter.)
Lesbians, gay men, and bisexual men and women are defined according to their sexual orientation, which, as discussed in Chapter 2, is typically conceptualized in terms of sexual attraction, behavior, identity, or some combination of these dimensions. They share the fact that their sexual orientation is not exclusively heterosexual. Scientific Racism and the Intervention of the Homosexual Body Essay. Yet this grouping of “nonheterosexuals” includes men and women; homosexual and bisexual individuals; people who label themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, among other terms; and people who do not adopt such labels but nevertheless experience same-sex attraction or engage in same-sex sexual behavior. As explained throughout the report, these differences have important health implications for each group.
In contrast to lesbians, gay men, and bisexual men and women, transgender people are defined according to their gender identity and presentation. This group encompasses individuals whose gender identity differs from the sex originally assigned to them at birth or whose gender expression varies significantly from what is traditionally associated with or typical for that sex (i.e., people identified as male at birth who subsequently identify as female, and people identified as female at birth who later identify as male), as well as other individuals who vary from or reject traditional cultural conceptualizations of gender in terms of the male–female dichotomy. The transgender population is diverse in gender identity, expression, and sexual orientation. Some transgender individuals have undergone medical interventions to alter their sexual anatomy and physiology, others wish to have such procedures in the future, and still others do not. Transgenderpeople can be heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual in their sexual orientation. Some lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals are transgender; most are not. Male-to-female transgender people are known as MtF, transgender females, or transwomen, while female-to-male transgender people are known as FtM, transgender males, or transmen. Some transgender people do not fit into either of these binary categories. As one might expect, there are health differences between transgender and nontransgender people, as well as between transgender females and transgender males. Scientific Racism and the Intervention of the Homosexual Body Essay.
Whereas “LGBT” is appropriate and useful for describing the combined populations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, it also can obscure the many differences that distinguish these sexual- and gender-minority groups. Combining lesbians and gay men under a single rubric, for example, obscures gender differences in the experiences of homosexual people. Likewise, collapsing together the experiences of bisexual women and men tends to obscure gender differences. Further, to the extent that lesbian, gay, and bisexual are understood as identity labels, “LGB” leaves out people whose experience includes same-sex attractions or behaviors but who do not adopt a nonheterosexual identity. And the transgender population, which itself encompasses multiple groups, has needs and concerns that are distinct from those of lesbians, bisexual women and men, and gay men.
As noted above, despite these many differences among the populations that make up the LGBTcommunity, there are important commonalities as well. The remainder of this section first describes these commonalities and then some key differences within these populations.
Commonalities Among LGBT Populations
What do lesbians, gay men, bisexual women and men, and transgender people have in common that makes them, as a combined population, an appropriate focus for this report? In the committee’s view, the main commonality across these diverse groups is their members’ historically marginalized social status relative to society’s cultural norm of the exclusively heterosexual individual who conforms to traditional gender roles and expectations. Put another way, these groups share the common status of “other” because of their members’ departures from heterosexuality and gender norms. Their “otherness” is the basis for stigma and its attendant prejudice, discrimination, and violence, which underlie society’s general lack of attention to their health needs and many of the health disparities discussed in this report. For some, this “otherness” may be complicated by additional dimensions of inequality such as race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, resulting in stigma at multiple levels.
To better understand how sexuality- and gender-linked stigma are related to health, imagine a world in which gender nonconformity, same-sex attraction, and same-sex sexual behavior are universally understood and accepted as part of the normal spectrum of the human condition. In this world, membership in any of the groups encompassed by LGBT would carry no social stigma, engender no disgrace or personal shame, and result in no discrimination.Scientific Racism and the Intervention of the Homosexual Body Essay. In this world, a host of issues would threaten the health of LGBT individuals: major chronic diseases such as cancer and heart disease; communicable diseases; mental disorders; environmental hazards; the threat of violence and terrorism; and the many other factors that jeopardize human “physical, mental and social well-being.”1 By and large, however, these issues would be the same as those confronting the rest of humanity. Only a few factors would stand out for LGBT individuals specifically. There would be little reason for the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to issue a report on LGBT health issues.
We do not live in the idealized world described in this thought experiment, however. Historically, lesbians, gay men, bisexual individuals, and transgender people have not been understood and accepted as part of the normal spectrum of the human condition. Instead, they have been stereotyped as deviants. Although LGBT people share with the rest of society the full range of health risks, they also face a profound and poorly understood set of additional health risks due largely to social stigma.
While the experience of stigma can differ across sexual and gender minorities, stigmatization touches the lives of all these groups in important ways and thereby affects their health. In contrast to members of many other marginalized groups, LGBT individuals frequently are invisible to health care researchers and providers. As explained in later chapters, this invisibility often exacerbates the deleterious effects of stigma. Overcoming this invisibility in health care services and research settings is a critical goal if we hope to eliminate the health disparities discussed throughout this report.
It is important to note that, despite the common experience of stigma among members of sexual- and gender-minority groups, LGBT people have not been passive victims of discrimination and prejudice.Scientific Racism and the Intervention of the Homosexual Body Essay. The achievements of LGBT people over the past few decades in building a community infrastructure that addresses their health needs, as well as obtaining acknowledgment of their health concerns from scientific bodies and government entities, attest to their commitment to resisting stigma and working actively for equal treatment in all aspects of their lives, including having access to appropriate health care services and reducing health care disparities. Indeed, some of the research cited in this report demonstrates the impressive psychological resiliency displayed by members of these populations, often in the face of considerable stress.
As detailed throughout this report, the stigma directed at sexual and gender minorities in the contemporary United States creates a variety of challenges for researchers and health care providers. Fearing discrimination and prejudice, for example, many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people refrain from disclosing their sexual orientation or gender identity to researchers and health care providers. Regardless of their own sexual orientation or gender identity, moreover, researchers risk being marginalized or discredited simply because they have chosen to study LGBT issues (Kempner, 2008), and providers seldom receive training in specific issues related to the care of LGBT patients. In addition, research on LGBT health involves some specific methodological challenges, which are discussed in Chapter 3.
Differences Within LGBT Populations
Not only are lesbians, gay men, bisexual women and men, and transgender people distinct populations, but each of these groups is itself a diverse population whose members vary widely in age, race and ethnicity, geographic location, social background, religiosity, and other demographic characteristics. Since many of these variables are centrally related to health status, health concerns, and access to care, this report explicitly considers a few key subgroupings of the LGBT population in each chapter:
-
Age cohort—One’s age influences one’s experiences and needs. Bisexual adolescents who are wrestling with coming out in a nonsupportive environment have different health needs than gay adult men who lack access to health insurance or older lesbians who are unable to find appropriate grief counseling services. In addition, development does not follow the same course for people of all ages. An older adult who comes out as gay in his 50s may not experience the developmental process in the same fashion as a self-identified “queer” youth who comes out during her teenage years. Similarly, as discussed further below, experiences across the life course differ according to the time period in which individuals are born. For example, an adolescent coming out in 2010 would do so in a different environment than an adolescent coming out in the 1960s. Moreover, some people experience changes in their sexual attractions and relationships over the course of their life. Some transgender people, for example, are visibly gender role nonconforming in childhood and come out at an early age, whereas others are able to conform and may not come out until much later in life. Scientific Racism and the Intervention of the Homosexual Body Essay.
-
Race and ethnicity—Concepts of community, traditional roles, religiosity, and cultural influences associated with race and ethnicity shape an LGBT individual’s experiences. The racial and ethnic communities to which one belongs affect self-identification, the process of coming out, available support, the extent to which one identifies with the LGBT community, affirmation of gender-variant expression, and other factors that ultimately influence health outcomes. Members of racial and ethnic minority groups may have profoundly different experiences than non-Hispanic white LGBT individuals.
-
Educational level and socioeconomic status—An LGBT individual’s experience in society varies depending on his or her educational level and socioeconomic status. As higher educational levels tend to be associated with higher income levels, members of the community who are more educated may live in better neighborhoods with better access to health care and the ability to lead healthier lives because of safe walking spaces and grocery stores that stock fresh fruits and vegetables (although, as discussed in later chapters, evidence indicates that some LGBT people face economic discrimination regardless of their educational level). On the other hand, members of the LGBT community who do not finish school or who live in poorer neighborhoods may experience more barriers in access to care and more negative health outcomes.
-
Geographic location—Geographic location has significant effects on mental and physical health outcomes for LGBT individuals.Scientific Racism and the Intervention of the Homosexual Body Essay. Those in rural areas or areas with fewer LGBT people may feel less comfortable coming out, have less support from families and friends, and lack access to an LGBT community. LGBT individuals in rural areas may have less access to providers who are comfortable with or knowledgeable about the treatment of LGBT patients. In contrast, LGBT people living in areas with larger LGBT populations may find more support services and have more access to health care providers who are experienced in treating LGBT individuals.
Although these areas represent critical dimensions of the experiences of LGBT individuals, the relationships of these variables to health care disparities and health status have not been extensively studied.
STATEMENT OF TASK AND STUDY SCOPE
In the context of the issues outlined above, the IOM was asked by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to convene a Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Health Issues and Research Gaps and Opportunities. The 17-member committee included experts from the fields of mental health, biostatistics, clinical medicine, adolescent health and development, aging, parenting, behavioral sciences, HIV research, demography, racial and ethnic disparities, and health services research. The committee’s statement of task is shown in Box 1-1. The study was supported entirely by NIH. Scientific Racism and the Intervention of the Homosexual Body Essay.