In addition, all participants discussed a process of sexual self-schema transition over time. A seven-category model emerged depicting the behaviors and values participants described as the gay male sexual schema (e.g., Avoidance of Emotional Expression Pornography and Sexual Orientation Identity Physically Attractive Men Managing Sex and Social Perception Competition for Men Sex, Emotion, and Intimacy and Commitment and Work in Relationships). Using this concept, this study addressed the following question: How do gay men understand their own sexual self-schemas? Perspectives of 20 gay men were drawn together using a grounded theory methodology and member checking. Self-schemas derive from past experience, influence current experiences, and facilitate the processing of sexual information. This subject position offered a more nuanced view of masculinity that departs from masculinities proposed in discourses of conventional (heteronormative) or even so-called ‘new’ or alternative masculinities (transgender, homosexual and the like). I argue that the use of media with a conventional feminine character together with themes associated with both masculine and feminine aspects assisted towards expressing the experience of masculine vulnerability and injury in such a manner that an unusual masculine subject position was suggested. Schutte’s Boom van my lewe and Strydom and Burger’s Ad hominem were investigated. The selected artists specifically address the notion of masculine vulnerability and injury, and in the process, they utilise a number of signifying strategies conventionally associated with masculine as well as feminine gender divisions. This article presents a reading of two artist’s books by male artists who participated in the practice-based research project Transgressions and boundaries of the page.
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Statistical analysis suggests that therapists should not assume that their therapies will create undue suicidality, but they should nonetheless maintain normal vigilance. Recent literature also finds that particular emotion/avoidant-based coping mechanisms used by people reporting SSA almost entirely account for the effects of this perceived discrimination. Surveys in recent literature suggest that perceived discrimination rather than objective discrimination is to blame for suicidality. The reversed gender pattern of these conditions suggests some link with SSA itself. People reporting SSA have a more widespread and intense psychopathological burden than probably any other group of comparable size in society, though college-age people may have more substance abuse problems. All need particular attention from therapists.
These conditions include bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and schizophrenia, but more predominantly consist of mood disorders, depression, substance abuse, and suicidality. Reliable surveys in a survey of the literature show that a score of mental health conditions in almost every DSM category are present in the general SSA population at rates three or more times greater than in the opposite-sex attraction (OSA) population. Invariably, liminality ends, and the men who do well approach themselves, the rituals and the performances with insight.Ĭlients who present to therapists with unwanted same-sex attraction (SSA) often have co-occurring problems. The emotional dangers to selfhood lurking in performance and ritual are explored, as well as the ways that men find to prevail. Internalized homophobia influences rituals on the scene, and men reported feeling like perpetual outsiders, regardless of the success of their performances. While successful performances of masculinity can promote social acceptance, those who express less valued forms of masculinity can struggle harder. New ways of performing the self can be tried on through ritualized behaviours, including performing various masculinities. On the scene, notions of selfhood are challenged and men enter various states of liminality as they (re)construct themselves. The analysis recasts 'coming out' into the gay scene as a passage into a 'new world' and a 'new self'. The findings are derived from two qualitative studies involving individual samples of 24 and 12 younger (aged 19 to 36) same-sex attracted men living in Melbourne, Australia. This paper investigates social transitions, constructions of masculinity and coping among men in commercialized gay spaces, such as nightclubs and dance parties ('the gay scene').