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Sexual orientation in culture
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I set out to immerse myself in the lives and culture of the LGBT community. I spent a great deal of time talking with not only LGBT identified individuals, but with organizations dedicated to aiding this cultural group. The follow are my observations from the last 5 weeks spent getting to know my friends and neighbors. The Bar Scene My night at a local gay bar. The location of the bar is best described as sketchy. Outside the bar I found vomit, broken glass and trash littered along the fence that surrounded the property. The bar was illuminated with traditional florescent red lights advertising the bar and its specials. People standing outside the entrance in smoke circles, talking about their day sharing cigarettes and joints. This is not …show more content…
If I were to try to find a common ground for this crowd outside of their alternative orientation, it would appear the majority are middle-high income. I grew up in a low-income family so that part of this culture is also a bit different for me to identify with. From my conversations and observations, those within this group feel compelled to dress themselves with expensive brand name clothing, designer shoes, and flashy jewelry. A great deal of time is spent on appearance -make-up, hair, nails etc. (I can’t say, with any certainty, whether it is a SES issue or a LGBT …show more content…
I have always struggled around people who are drinking. Perhaps, it is my own past making me feel uncomfortable. There were a few people that did make me feel uncomfortable, and I found myself avoiding them. (They were the type of people who like to get real close to your face when they talk to you.) I simply found someone else to talk with. However, it wasn’t always easy. I was even rescued at one point by a young man who saw I was struggling with an angry fellow who felt I had violated his “safe place” with my questions. My rescuer jumped up, grabbed me by the arm and walked me over to his table. We talked for about an hour. When it was time for me to leave, he insisted on giving me his phone number, “just in case” he
As a student, practice is crucial to learn group therapy techniques. In order to achieve these practices, I attended 2 support groups of the same topic. Observation and attendance constructs an idea of how group therapy works. Attending this group was important because of the profoundness of its meaning and experiences I have witnessed.
In sociology, the LGBT community is viewed as a subculture to the dominant world culture. The community is generally accepted by the dominant culture and although the group has some of its own beliefs and rituals/traditions, it still adheres to the fundamental beliefs and cultural expectations of the dominant culture. Before being considered a subculture, homosexual relationships and variations of sexual orientation were classified as devian behaviort. Even before that, someone who experienced homosexual thoughts or tendencies was labeled as mentally ill. The idea of homosexuality being a mental illness appeared in the DSM until 1987. There are still remnants of homophobia today but the consensus (at
As Fritsch et al. states, “even as ‘queer’ became an established identity in the LGBTQ rainbow acronym, it also worked against the normalization of gender and sexuality by challenging the presumption of a two-gender system” (336). A majority of the queer community had/have conflicting thoughts about whether the term queer must be used as a way to distinguish or rather alienate oneself with from binary system. Many of the people within the community don’t like to separate themselves, believing that by doing so will push them further away from society when in reality this will result in losing their loved ones and friends. Others argued that by doing so they break apart the binary structure and in order everyone in a sense is queer; there is no set standard for what normal is. Moreover, people believe that with trying to embrace and embody the term queer, there will be negative emotions and actions made towards them which puts them at an even higher risk of being victimized. Being in the center staged of the whole movement not only brings conflict but it can in the long run off put people from overall trying to identify with the queer movement or the term queer
The mental health of individuals in the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered) community is something that is a serious problem. For most of the history of the United States and many different parts of the world LGBT people faced much persecution and in some cases even death. This constant fear of discovery and the pressure that one feels on oneself when “in the closet” can lead to major mental distress. Research has shown that people who identify as LGBT are twice as likely to develop lifetime mood and anxiety disorders (Bostwick 468). This is extremely noticeable the past couple years in the suicides of bullied teens on the basis of sexual identity and expression. The stigma on simply being perceived as LGBT is strong enough to cause a person enough mental stress that they would take their own life. This is always unfortunate, but in the case of young individuals it borders on unthinkable. Older LGBT individuals do not tend to fair much better either seeing as they were raised in generations who were stricter on what was considered proper and morally right. All this being said, even as the culture of the world shifts to more accepting LGBT individuals their mental health is something that is only now being looked at thoroughly.
This is a support group for Verrado members who are fighting breast cancer, or for those who are breast cancer survivors. Everyone in this group has been through this on some level, whether she/he was/is going through Chemo, radiation, mastectomy, reconstructive surgery, or lumpectomy.
To start off, I would like to say that I am completely okay with my paper being shared with the panel members. Panels are a very good way to inform listeners about a certain topic. They allow for the listeners to learn the basics of a subject as well as be able to participate and ask questions throughout the process. I found the LGBT Panel to be very informative as well interesting. In this paper, I will be speaking about what I learned from the panel, one question that I had that was not addressed, and how the panel has changed my views on the LGBT Community.
Although the LGBT community is accepting of all types of people, many people in the world today still disagree with LGBT beliefs. According to Catherine Latterell, the author of Remix, Assumption 1 is that communities provide stability. It is evident that the LGBT community undoubtedly supports this statement. Organizations like the Trevor Project and GLAAD work to “amplify the voice of the LGBT community by empowering real people to share their stories.”
The last question discussed in this phase was about how diversity and social justice may affect participant’s sexuality. Elise feels she is more passionate about diversity and social justice now that she is questioning her sexuality. Elise believes she has a greater role and voice in advocating for members of the LGBTQ+ comm...
Being an African American woman, raised in the Black church, religious and biblical teaching have shaped my identity as a woman and my sexuality. While my peers and media played a role in my sexuality, my perspective towards sexual identity, intimacy, sensuality, sexual behaviors, and sexual health are primarily based on my personal spirituality, Christian beliefs, and familial principles that were passed down to me as a child.
Society has shaped the thoughts and minds of many individuals and because of this personal beliefs towards LGBT people came into play. Society was constantly telling people that there was something wrong with them if they were LGBT and that they would go to hell for it because God did not approve of it and it was a sin. I would like to say that because society was judging people and denying them, that they were committing a sin. It is not their place to decide the fate of certain people, the only person that can make those decisions is God. God is the one that decides whether we are deemed worthy to go to Heaven or not. With that being said, I grew up in a family that is very religious on one side and the other side had their person beliefs
The course of Gender and Sexuality was one that I thought was going to be excruciatingly boring. However, this course was extremely eye-opening and I am glad that I took it. I was introduced to the horror and pure suffering women and people of “queer” gender had to endure. Each and every culture had their different way methods of torture, but all were unnecessary and should not have ever happened. During the last three weeks, we learned about feminism, gender and sexuality in multiple religions and countries, witches, the third gender and a few other subtopics. Many of which were new to me and caused me to branch out in my understanding of past and present conflicts. I learned a lot, noticed reoccurring patterns, and grew a new interest for the people who differ from the “norm”.
The treatment of the LGBT community in American Society is a social injustice. What most people think is that they just want to be able to marry one another and be happy but that’s not it. They want to be treated like humans and not some weird creatures that no one has ever seen before. They want to be accepted for who them are and not what people want them to be and they deserve the right to be who they are just the same as any other human being. After all the discrimination they have endured they should be allowed to be who they are and be accepted as equals just like people of different skin color did in the times of segregation. We have a long way to go as a country but being the greatest country in the world in the eyes of many great America will make big steps to make things fair.
If you were to ask me what exactly sparked my passion for LGBT rights, I wouldn’t be able to give a straight answer (pun not intended). I did (and still do) not identify personally to any of the terms LGBT stands for, nor did any of my close family members or friends at the time identify as such. Now a few do, but that’s hardly the only reason I’m still passionate about it. Regardless of what spurred my interest, I think one of the reasons I became invested was that, being raised by a fairly liberal family, I never entertained the thought that being LGBT could ever be considered “wrong” in any way. It simply became a natural fact of life. So by the time I discovered that not everybody though it was natural, my opinion could no
When one hears the words “LGBT” and “Homosexuality” it often conjures up a mental picture of people fighting for their rights, which were unjustly taken away or even the social emergence of gay culture in the world in the1980s and the discovery of AIDS. However, many people do not know that the history of LGBT people stretches as far back in humanity’s history, and continues in this day and age. Nevertheless, the LGBT community today faces much discrimination and adversity. Many think the problem lies within society itself, and often enough that may be the case. Society holds preconceptions and prejudice of the LGBT community, though not always due to actual hatred of the LGBT community, but rather through lack of knowledge and poor media portrayal.
As a child we are told that we can be anything we want. We are told that if we wanted to be a fireman, policeman or astronaut, we can become it. We are told that if we have the passion and desire for something, we will achieve it. But what if I wanted the freedom to express myself to the utmost? We are told we have the right to be anything we want, but ourselves. When I was a child I wanted to take guitar classes, but my mother put me in figure skating classes because it was the girly thing to do and I had no say because I was merely a child. When I realized I liked the same sex in middle school I had no voice because I was a child who was exploring her sexuality. Age eighteen and I still have no say because I’m still a child who is confused. I knew that my voice would be silenced and I was going against the norm of society. The church says gays are an abomination. The government says gays aren't allowed to marry. Every day on the news there another image of a gay student who committed suicide due to bullying. I wasn't allowed to be myself because I knew being gay was not looked upon lightly by others. I hid myself from my friends and most importantly my parents due to the fear of society constriction against me. I was strong enough not to end up on the news but the right to be myself was taken away.