Sexual Minorities: Discrimination, Challenges and Development in America

by Michael K. Sullivan

Explore the crucial issues facing the GLBT population in their struggle for acceptance in contemporary America!

Sexual Discrimination, Challenges, and Development in America examines the stumbling blocks that prevent gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and trangenders from living wholesome, healthy lives. This book concentrates on the effects of outside influences on the homosexual psyche from adolescence to mid-life and programs and services that need to be developed to improve quality of life. While some outside influences can make positive changessuch as Internet-based outreach to educate men in chat rooms about HIVsexual minority groups face negativity from society in the forms of homophobia and heterosexism.

Sexual Minorities uses statistics, charts, graphs, and surveys to reveal a remarkable trend correlating how contemporary American society treats sexual minorities and how it affects their psychological and psychosocial health. This book also reveals howwhen internalized this hurtful discrimination can cause self-hatred and depression. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of the GLBT population, Sexual Minorities is an important tool for everyone in today’s societyfrom students and practitioners of social work, health care, human sexuality, psychology, and sociology, to legislators, lawyers, activists, and business owners. This book is also vital for every parent, relative, or friend of a man or woman labeled as a sexual minority.

262 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2004

Reviews

[Mikey · Rating 3 out of 5]

It almost seems silly to leave a review on a dated compilation of academic articles that nobody else has rated before, but here we go. What piqued my interest in this primarily was that it was published at a time when I was around 10 years old and going through quite an ordeal attending school in the southwestern United States as a feminine boy. As a child I was not supported by the adults in my life, including teachers and various other professionals, and wanted to look back and get a feel for how this issue was being treated at the time. I found this book to be quite enlightening in this regard, although not in a good way. I was struck by the strident and moralizing tone taken by so many of the contributors to this work. They preachily demanded changes to happen within their various respective fields and society at large in a way that would not be convincing for anyone who does not already support the rights of sexual minorities. Additionally, the changes that were advocated for included things like directing LGBT youth to join LGBT community groups and posting rainbow or "safe space" stickers in conspicuous places - something that has always struck me as trite and ineffectual (especially when confronted with the irony that gay spaces are so often rather judgmental and mean ones) but in 2004 was probably a lot more helpful than today. There were some valuable parts to this book however. It was eye opening that there were policies in place in schools where even talking to a child about being gay, even on a one-to-one basis to a child who is being bullied for being gay, was a fireable offense. This sheds a light on my own experiences and is probably part of the reason why adults didn't seem to "see" me or reach out appropriately. Overall though, this book mostly travelled along radical feminist and queer lines which have unfortunately been increasingly taken on by society since this was published and have resulted in the overcorrection of teaching children at far too young an age about sexuality and bureaucratic inability to distinguish between male and female. It was marginally nice to feel like the 10 year old me struggling so much was seen by these academics, but most of their intended solutions are out of touch and backwards as they were influenced far too strongly by identity politics and feminist as well as queer ideologies. It continues to be difficult to simply find a book about homosexuality that is objective and not made to be political or so thoroughly postmodern that it is trying to erase homosexuality as being a mere cultural construction.