This paper describes the attempt to use the Internet to study a particular student culture. The goal is to highlight the ethical and procedural issues encountered in the Internet study of an online student culture. The primary purpose of the study was to examine how closeted gay students experience their identity on campus and in an online…

This paper presents an analysis of the past decade (1997-2007) of research conducted in the areas of bullying and harassment in secondary schools. The author presents trends in the research as well as addresses the significant gaps left in a field that is heavily influenced by one school thought. By applying a critical feminist lens to this body…

The lesbian's perspective, shaped by her experience as an outcast, enables her to shed dichotomies and discriminations learned in the classroom and to seek new ways of interpreting and expressing her perceptions of the world. This paper discusses the "lesbian perspective" from three angles: the unique attributes of the lesbian and her…

This study explored why college athletes and coaches accept some forms of diversity but are less willing to accept homosexuality. To explore how athletic teams respond to diversity, researchers visited five college campuses, interviewing athletes in higher profile sports with racial and ethnic diversity. Twelve to fifteen formal interviews or…

This paper is a part of a larger study involving the way gay youth experience American public high schools. The study is focused on gay males, not lesbian or bisexual youths. The paper is divided into three sections: (1) public high schools as an organization in terms of structure and beliefs; (2) sexualized context of the high school in terms of…

In this culture a person's sexual identity falls into one of four groups: heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, and asexual. Essentialism assumes that one is fixed with a core identity of either heterosexual or homosexual. Constructionism posits that categories of sexuality are constructed to meet the needs of a particular culture, society, and/or…

Two studies were conducted to examine how attitudes toward homosexual men might affect reactions to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) education efforts, or how those attitudes might be changed by those efforts. The first study involved 69 male and 75 female subjects, randomly assigned to four conditions receiving different information…

The increased visibility of lesbian and gay texts can be considered analogous to and preparatory to the increasing visibility of lesbian and gay people. Students who read about and discuss homosexuality may produce writings which reflect resistance to subject matter but also sensitivity to the relationships which the works studied described. Both…

Past research on adults' fear of, and hostile reactions toward, individuals with Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and homosexuals has tended to treat these reactions as being unidimensional. The primary purpose of this study was to examine the underlying dimensions of attitudes toward individuals with AIDS and homosexuals. A second…

While it has been asserted that rape has increased in frequency over the past generation, part of this increase may be due to a greater willingness to report rape to the authorities. A study was conducted to examine the frequency of rape and to describe the characteristics of rape victims. A random questionnaire survey of 4,340 adults in five…

The goal of this study was to examine the complex interplay among family, neuropsychological, psychosocial, psychiatric, and immunological variables with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected homosexual/bisexual men and their families. The subjects were a broad spectrum of 29 outpatient HIV-infected homosexual/bisexual men between the ages…

If lesbian and gay students are to be moved into the classroom writing communities consciously and aggressively, in the same way other "minorities" are included, then first-person narratives are an effective starting place for their own work and as material for reading and discussion. Half of the reading selections in one composition…

The ability to function independently as a reader and writer in the society is defined here as "functional literacy" and includes, for gay or lesbian students, access to their own cultural literature and the recognition of a multi-cultural literacy that includes gay and lesbian culture. Two central beliefs are at the heart of the…

Both research and the gay community opinion have relied primarily on stereotypes in their ignorance of the older lesbian. A preliminary study of the close friendship patterns of older lesbians is underway in San Francisco, where gay community life is more visible than in other cities. Even there, lesbians are more underground than gay men. Most…

This paper discusses the importance of teaching issues related to sexual identity in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) classrooms, highlighting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) individuals. Though the paper focuses on postsecondary students, much of the material can apply to other settings with modification. The paper looks at the…