Supplemental Material for Masculinity Threat and Implicit Associations With Feminine Gay Men: Sexual Orientation, Sexual Stigma, and Traditional Masculinity

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence demographic factors have on the way lesbians and gay men manage their sexual orientation at work. Design/methodology/approach – Based on data taken from a cross-sectional survey of 1,308 gay and lesbian employees working in Germany, four regression models are proposed. The means of handling one’s homosexuality at work was measured by the 31 items containing Workplace Sexual Identity Management Measure from Anderson et al. (2001). Findings – Results indicate that being in a relationship is related to increased openness about one’s homosexuality at work. Furthermore, it appears that the older and the more religious lesbian and gay employees are, the more open (and therefore less hidden) about their sexuality they are. Having a migratory background is related to being more guarded about one’s sexual orientation, whereas personal mobility within the country is not related to the way one manages one’s sexual orientation at work. Lesbians tend to be a little more open and less guarded about their homosexuality compared to gay men. Research limitations/implications – The focus of this research (and the related limitations) offers several starting and connecting points for more intersectional research on workforce diversity and diversity management. Practical implications – The study’s findings indicate the need for an intersectional approach to organizational diversity management strategies. Exemplified by the dimension “sexual orientation”, it can be shown that the impact each dimension has for an employee’s everyday workplace experiences and behavior in terms of a certain manifestation of one dimension of diversity can only be understood in terms of its interplay with other dimensions of diversity. Originality/value – It is shown that manifestations of demographic factors that tend to broaden the individual’s coping resources for stigma-relevant stressors lead to more openness about one’s homosexuality in the workplace.

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Can Some Gay Men and Lesbians Change Their Sexual Orientation? 200 Participants Reporting a Change from Homosexual to Heterosexual Orientation

Ex-Gay Research ◽

10.4324/9780203057414-12 ◽

2013 ◽

pp. 57-86

Keyword(s):

Sexual Orientation ◽

Gay Men

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Emotion and Gender Typicality Cue Sexual Orientation Differently in Women and Men

Archives of Sexual Behavior ◽

10.1007/s10508-020-01700-3 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 49 (7) ◽

pp. 2547-2560

Author(s):

R. Thora Bjornsdottir ◽

Nicholas O. Rule

Keyword(s):

Sexual Orientation ◽

Gay Men ◽

Emotional Expression ◽

Positive Emotion ◽

Role Expectations ◽

Emotional Expressions ◽

Gender Typicality ◽

Gender Role Expectations ◽

Gender Inversion ◽

And Gender

Abstract Heterosexual individuals tend to look and act more typical for their gender compared to gay and lesbian individuals, and people use this information to infer sexual orientation. Consistent with stereotypes associating happy expressions with femininity, previous work found that gay men displayed more happiness than straight men—a difference that perceivers used, independent of gender typicality, to judge sexual orientation. Here, we extended this to judgments of women’s sexual orientation. Like the gender-inversion stereotypes applied to men, participants perceived women’s faces manipulated to look angry as more likely to be lesbians; however, emotional expressions largely did not distinguish the faces of actual lesbian and straight women. Compared to men’s faces, women’s faces varied less in their emotional expression (appearing invariably positive) but varied more in gender typicality. These differences align with gender role expectations requiring the expression of positive emotion by women and prohibiting the expression of femininity by men. More important, greater variance within gender typicality and emotion facilitates their respective utility for distinguishing sexual orientation from facial appearance. These findings thus provide the first evidence for contrasting cues to women’s and men’s sexual orientation and suggest that gender norms may uniquely shape how men and women reveal their sexual orientation.

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Why don’t “real men” learn languages? Masculinity threat and gender ideology suppress men’s language learning motivation

Group Processes & Intergroup Relations ◽

10.1177/1368430219835025 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 23 (2) ◽

pp. 301-318 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Kathryn Everhart Chaffee ◽

Nigel Mantou Lou ◽

Kimberly A. Noels ◽

Joshua W. Katz

Keyword(s):

Foreign Language ◽

Language Learning ◽

Gender Ideology ◽

Foreign Language Learning ◽

Past Research ◽

Foreign Languages ◽

Gender Ideologies ◽

Positive Attitudes ◽

Masculinity Threat ◽

Traditional Masculinity

Large gender disparities in participation still exist across many university subjects and career fields, but few studies have examined factors that account for gender gaps in female-dominated disciplines. We examine one possible cause: threatened masculinity among men who hold traditional gender ideologies. Past research has linked endorsement of traditional gender ideologies to gender-stereotypical occupational choices, and threats to masculinity can lead men to distance themselves from femininity. After confirming that 1,672 undergraduates stereotyped language learning as feminine, we applied a masculinity threat manipulation to investigate 182 men’s disinterest in studying foreign languages, a female-dominated university subject. Men with traditional masculinity ideologies reported less interest in foreign language study and less positive attitudes towards foreign languages following masculinity threat, compared to men whose masculinity was affirmed or who held less traditional masculinity beliefs. Traditional masculine gender roles may lead some men to avoid feminine-typed domains, such as foreign language learning.

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