This week we had an excellent “contemporary issue” presentation by a student on whether being a sexual minority is easier on youth now compared to 20 years ago. He drew a fair bit on Savin-Williams’ book The new gay teenager. In support of the “Being easier” side he talked about changes in acceptance, role models, LGBT rights, and school organizations (e.g., Poteat et al., 2012). But he also talked about challenges, including mental health, physical health, safety, and homelessness. Finally, he discussed how the experience of being LGBT in the U.S. currently depends on a number of individual and contextual factors, including type of sexual identity (e.g., lesbian, gay, bi, trans); intersectionality of multiple identities (e.g., ethnicity/race, religion), measurement, family, and school. The presentation spurred really interesting discussion.
The paper that we had the most discussion about this week was by Yost and McCarthy (2012). We discussed the prevalence of young heterosexual women kissing other women, the extent to which it is exploration versus sexual self-objectification, and what the increased prevalence of same-sex kissing between heterosexual women means for lesbian women’s sexual identity development.
I received an email alert about the special section of Child Development on ethnic/racial identity development in adolescence and young adulthood about 36 hours before class met. It was an interesting challenge to try to cram 4 new conceptual/review/meta-analysis articles into my usual prep time, but made me feel very up-to-date. We spent a fair bit of class time discussing the difference between ethnic identity and racial identity, and also discussing group specific measures vs. general measures like Phinney’s MEIM.
“The post This week in Adolescent Development: Ethnic/Racial and Sexual Identity first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on February 12, 2014.”
The paper that we had the most discussion about this week was by Yost and McCarthy (2012). We discussed the prevalence of young heterosexual women kissing other women, the extent to which it is exploration versus sexual self-objectification, and what the increased prevalence of same-sex kissing between heterosexual women means for lesbian women’s sexual identity development.
I received an email alert about the special section of Child Development on ethnic/racial identity development in adolescence and young adulthood about 36 hours before class met. It was an interesting challenge to try to cram 4 new conceptual/review/meta-analysis articles into my usual prep time, but made me feel very up-to-date. We spent a fair bit of class time discussing the difference between ethnic identity and racial identity, and also discussing group specific measures vs. general measures like Phinney’s MEIM.
“The post This week in Adolescent Development: Ethnic/Racial and Sexual Identity first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on February 12, 2014.”
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