scholarly journals The psychodynamics of lynch mobs: grouping, ganging or lynching

2021 ◽  
pp. 053331642199223
Author(s):  
Stuart Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Gay Men ◽  
Group Dynamics ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Work Teams ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Psychotherapy Groups ◽  
Conceptual Skills

This article engages with human groupings when they are operating at their very worst. These are human groupings enacting a particularly insidious, enduring and specific set of ‘othering’ dynamics that occur within and between in-groups and out-groups. This is known as lynching and these vicious and destructive human groupings are known as ‘lynch mobs’. I attempt to bring a psychodynamic lens to explore the complex issues that constitute the particular group dynamics enacted by ‘lynch mobs’ that usually target members of marginalized communities. I consider the meaning of the assault in the context of white supremacy and, whilst foregrounding race in the discussion, recognizing that members of other marginalized groups such as gay men and women are often lynched. The article shows how psychodynamic ideas can contribute to our understanding of this most horrific and inhumane phenomena, and can provide clinicians with some conceptual tools to manage the myriad of complex issues related to lynching and how it presents currently. Can lynching dynamics be compared and contrasted with bullying and scapegoating dynamics and, if so, can they be paralleled and operate more subtly and interpersonally in our psychotherapy groups and within our organizations and work teams? If so, do we have the theoretical and conceptual skills to work with them? I argue that there is now more than ever a need to remain relevant to the diverse and often-marginalized communities we serve and that we must develop our theories and practices to address such phenomena. To do this requires group analysts and, indeed, all clinicians to urgently scrutinize and develop theories and techniques in working with these very dangerous othering dynamics in our practices and clinics. A lack of intervention equates to by-standing or turning a blind eye, which is a significant factor in lynching dynamics, and a complicit collusion with the traumatization of marginalized communities.

Working with the trauma of racism in groups in a time of white supremacy — erasure, psychic ghettoization or bearing witness

2021 ◽  
pp. 053331642110186
Author(s):  
Stuart Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Clinical Work ◽  
Bearing Witness ◽  
Complex Issue ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
Racial Trauma ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Psychotherapy Groups

This article addresses the complex issues when working with group members who have been traumatized by institutional and inter-generational racism in the context of white supremacy. The article engages with how a group analytic understanding can assist clinicians to engage with group members who have experienced racial trauma and structural oppression when these dynamics are inevitably generated in psychotherapy groups. I discuss the concepts of ‘erasure’, ‘bearing witness’ and also introduce the concept of ‘psychic ghettoization’, which can provide the conductor with some conceptual tools to manage the complex issue of racial trauma. I argue that there is now more than ever a need to remain relevant to the diverse and often marginalized communities we serve. To do this requires group analysts and indeed all clinicians to urgently scrutinize and develop theories and techniques for working with racism in our practices and clinics. A lack of intervention equates to a by-standing and a complicit collusion with racism which risks a re-traumatizing dynamic being paralleled in our clinical work with group members from marginalized communities.

Democratic Decentralizaton and Socio-Political Inclusion of Marginalized Communities: A Study of Musahar Community in Madhubani District of Bihar, India

2021 ◽  
pp. 2455328X2110424
Author(s):  
Ashish Jha
Keyword(s):  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Constitutional Amendment ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
The Social ◽  
Democratic Decentralization ◽  
Political Inclusion ◽  
Bihar State ◽  
Panchayati Raj

Democratic decentralization is the process of devolving the state’s roles and resources from the centre to the lower-level elected officials to encourage greater direct participation of people in governance. The 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act (1993), which gave the constitutional mandate to the Panchayati Raj Institutions in India, is considered as an opportunity for historically marginalized groups like women, Dalits (Scheduled Caste) and others to actively engage in the grassroot governance as members of local government institutions. Further, gram panchayats have been mandated for formulating their own annual development plan for economic development and social justice in their area. Although in these 25 years, since the enactment of the Act, various measures have been introduced through Panchayati Raj Institutions for increasing people’s participation and effective implementation of developmental programmes, but there is a little or no evidences—either the theoretical or the empirical, which can give a hint on its performance on social and political inclusion of marginalized communities. Against this backdrop, this empirical research paper attempts to explore the linkages between the democratic decentralization and socio-political inclusion of marginalized, by focussing on the Musahar community in Bihar state of India, using primary data collected from the field. The researchers argue that decentralization has ameliorated the social inclusion to some extent but shows very dismal rate of political inclusion of the Musahar Community.

Life-History Interviews of Aging Gay Men

1980 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 239-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas C. Kimmel
Keyword(s):  
Life Satisfaction ◽  
Life History ◽  
Gay Men ◽  
Homosexual Men ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
High Life Satisfaction ◽  
Gay Aging ◽  
Patterns Of Aging

Homosexual men and women have seldom been studied by gerontologists and almost nothing is known about the lifestyles, pattern of development through the adult years, and the effect of homosexuality on aging. Fourteen gay men, ranging in age from fifty-five to eighty-one, were interviewed about their life history and experiences of aging as gay men. Three of the respondents had long-term relationships that lasted up to forty years; two had experienced the death of a lover and had begun a new long-term relationship; four had been married to women and two had children (one unmarried man adopted a son and is now a grandfather). The wide diversity of their patterns of aging, the presence of positive aspects of gay aging, and the high life satisfaction of many of the respondents contradict the stereotype of the lonely, isolated old gay man.

Public Hostility

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keesha M. Middlemass
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Social System ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Negative Externalities ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Felony Conviction ◽  
Education And Employment ◽  
Historical Practices

The concluding chapter makes clear that despite the negative outcomes for felons reentering society, a felony conviction has many “useful” purposes rooted in historical practices and politics. A felony conviction is a powerful tool that is integral to maintaining a discourse about “us” versus “them” that fuses distinct social-economic institutions, such as housing, education, and employment, to the criminal justice system. This chapter describes how the term “felon” defines an individual’s worth in such a way as to become a simple short-cut that widens the net of policies, maintains the broader social system of white supremacy, supports legal and political structures and tough-on-crime initiatives, and extends the original punishment to socially disable men and women convicted of a felony. This chapter argues that the negative externalities that restrict felons from accessing critical public assistance engender failure in the returning population, resulting in recidivism, and reinforce the concept of retribution.

scholarly journals “Nothing About Us Without Us”: Reading Protests against Oppressive Knowledge Production as Guidelines for Solidarity Research

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dilara Yarbrough
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Relevant Research ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Sex Worker ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Ethical Policy ◽  
Production Practice ◽  
Academic Researchers

Drawing from my analysis of sex worker and homeless protests as well as my experience doing ethnographic research with people experiencing homelessness and people in the sex trade, I put forth recommendations for ethical, policy-relevant research with groups of people who experience routine, normalized violence, and who are frequently silenced and misrepresented by academics and policy makers. This article analyzes protests against what activists identify as oppressive knowledge production by “outsiders” who are not sex workers or homeless. Protest events against research “about us without us” occurred between 2012 and 2015, and targeted academic researchers and policymakers. I draw lessons from marginalized groups’ protests against knowledge production by outsider “experts” to present three problems with traditional poverty research: pathologization, paternalism, and extractive exotification. I use my observations of protests and service provision to develop guidelines for solidarity research, a knowledge production practice that prioritizes the needs and perspectives of marginalized communities.

scholarly journals Co-opting the neoliberal manhood ideal: Masculinity, normativity, and recursive normalisation in Serbian gay men's digital dating profiles

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Ksenija Bogetić
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Gay Men ◽  
Online Dating ◽  
Gender Ideologies ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
Analytic Methods ◽  
Global Modernity ◽  
And Gender

Abstract This article investigates sexual and gender ideologies in online dating profiles of Sebian gay men using corpus-linguistic and discourse-analytic methods. Selected keywords are analysed in context, and particular attention is paid to collocation patterns, including grammatical collocates that are shown to carry discursive relevance beyond style. The analysis reveals that repeated associations centre on concepts of masculinity and normality, in a local indexical order of ‘proper’ manhood, sexuality, global modernity, and national identity. Overall, the texts are most strongly characterized by adversarial distance towards certain gay men, operating in normalizing assimilation to the national (heterosexual) citizen ideal. A broader mechanism, termed recursive normalisation, is described as underpinning the observed patterns. The findings are further discussed as highlighting the pitfalls of theory and social movements focused on social assimilation, arguing for the need for further queer linguistic deconstruction of the normalising discourses that intersect marginalized communities and broader, systemic hegemonies. (Gay men, online dating, masculinity, recursive normalization)

scholarly journals Deep neural networks are more accurate than humans at detecting sexual orientation from facial images.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yilun Wang ◽  
Michal Kosinski
Keyword(s):  
Neural Networks ◽  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Gay Men ◽  
Deep Neural Networks ◽  
Prediction Models ◽  
Facial Features ◽  
Facial Morphology ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Lower Accuracy ◽  
Facial Images

We show that faces contain much more information about sexual orientation than can be perceived and interpreted by the human brain. We used deep neural networks to extract features from 35,326 facial images. These features were entered into a logistic regression aimed at classifying sexual orientation. Given a single facial image, a classifier could correctly distinguish between gay and heterosexual men in 81% of cases, and in 74% of cases for women. Human judges achieved much lower accuracy: 61% for men and 54% for women. The accuracy of the algorithm increased to 91% and 83%, respectively, given five facial images per person. Facial features employed by the classifier included both fixed (e.g., nose shape) and transient facial features (e.g., grooming style). Consistent with the prenatal hormone theory of sexual orientation, gay men and women tended to have gender-atypical facial morphology, expression, and grooming styles. Prediction models aimed at gender alone allowed for detecting gay males with 57% accuracy and gay females with 58% accuracy. Those findings advance our understanding of the origins of sexual orientation and the limits of human perception. Additionally, given that companies and governments are increasingly using computer vision algorithms to detect people’s intimate traits, our findings expose a threat to the privacy and safety of gay men and women.

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