The articles we read solely focused on gay men as opposed to both genders within homosexuality. It is important to realize that men and women are not thought of equally- especially when discussing same sex relationships. In one of CDC’s regular health surveys, it was noted that there was an increased trend in the percent of women who had a homosexual experience in the past 10 years. Why would the sexual encounters of women increase but men stay fairly stagnant?
I believe that it’s the stigma associated with lesbians and gays. The media displays female homosexuality as hot and erotic. These ideas are reciprocated through the impressionable minds of young ones. I don’t think our society would use the same adjectives to describe male homosexuality. So there are negative connotations associated with gay men. This is a case of double standards where one gender is unfairly scrutinized. An example of this is in the 1981 Emory Report, mentioning male nurses are discriminated against their female counterparts. It might not mean much when reading, but it impacts a lot of men.
There was a recent psychological study done that focused on the arousal patterns of males. It was found that although many men might categorize themselves as bisexual although they were only attracted to males. Similarly we read about men on the “down low” who will have encounters with other men while not identifying as bisexual or homosexual. I think there are many reasons why men would not want to identify as gay (an extreme over being bisexual). As seen in the Emory Report from 1985-1987, it is very clear that homosexuality was a trait that was discriminated against. It would have put a faculty member at risk for their position, a student in fear of their grades, and unfair restrictions on a group.
It seems weird to think that in progressive times, we are still discriminating. In a time when we have debates about same-sex marriage, discuss sexuality in schools and households; we still have people fearful of revealing their identity. Even when an entire university tries to prevent discrimination, they fail to mention discrimination towards homosexuals. Steps need to be taken and stereotypes need to be removed before we start seeing a change in the trends.
http://brainblogger.com/2010/12/06/is-the-future-bisexual/
Sumo:
If you are having difficulty posting pictures in your blog entries, please go to ECIT as soon as possible and remedy this. Without access to the articles your comments about male nurses and the discrimination they may have faced and how faculty were fearing for their jobs just don’t make sense. Also remember that part of the blog assignment is to connect what you are finding to the readings we are doing. Your connections are not clear here. Finally, if you absolutely can’t upload an image of the articles, you can describe (even quote from!) the articles you are referring to so that we, the readers can follow your argument.