scholarly journals Changing landscapes: Gay men in the west and northwest of Ireland

Sexualities ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 136346072098169
Author(s):  
Aidan McKearney

This article focuses on the experiences of gay men in the rural west and northwest region of Ireland, during a period of transformational social and political change in Irish society. These changes have helped facilitate new forms of LGBTQI visibility, and local radicalism in the region. Same-sex weddings, establishment of rural LGBT groups and marching under an LGBT banner at St Patricks Day parades would have been unthinkable in the recent past; but they are now becoming a reality. The men report continuing challenges in their lives as gay men in the nonmetropolitan space, but the emergence of new visibility, voice and cultural acceptance of LGBT people is helping change their lived experiences. The study demonstrates the impact of local activist LGBT citizens. Through their testimonies we can gain an insight into the many, varied and interwoven factors that have interplayed to create the conditions necessary for the men to: increasingly define themselves as gay to greater numbers of people in their localities; to embrace greater visibility and eschew strategies of silence; and aspire to a host of legal, political, cultural and social rights including same-sex marriage. Organic forms of visibility and local radicalism have emerged in the region and through an analysis of their testimonies we can see how the men continue to be transformed by an ever-changing landscape.

Author(s):  
Michael O’Toole

In this article I examine aspects of the relationship between mothers and sons from an attachment perspective in an Irish context. Through the works of Irish writers such as Seamus Heaney, John McGahern, and Colm Tóibín, I focus on particular aspects of this relationship, which fails to support the developmental processes of separation and individuation in the many men who come to me for psychotherapy. I illustrate key points concerning this attachment dynamic through the use of clinical examples of my work with two men from my practice. While acknowledging that many other cultural factors play a significant role in the emotional development of children, integrating the work of our poets, novelists, and scholars with an attachment perspective


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Sandra Patton-Imani

I begin this book with the story of my spouse and I essentially being kicked out of the Des Moines YMCA for being lesbians. I use this narrative to introduce the ways relationships between social and legal definitions of “legitimate” family are used to regulate access to social rights and resources. The most pervasive stories in public dialogues about families headed by lesbians and gay men at the turn of the twenty-first century suggest that legalizing same-sex marriage should be either the panacea for all the constitutional vulnerabilities of queer citizenship, or the downfall of civilization due to the crumbling of the institution of marriage. I argue that the construction of lesbian-headed families should be explored in the context of other arenas of social policy, including adoption, immigration, and welfare. I discuss my family’s location in this research.


1994 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 271-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon R. Pilcher

This paper will examine some of the types of biological evidence that allow us an insight into past environments and will consider some of the concepts that affect and limit our interpretations of past environments, and through them climatic changes.Scandinavia was the birthplace of palaeoenvironmental studies; basic to these being the concepts of speciation formulated in Uppsala by Linnaeus nearly 250 years ago. Sernander proposed his bog regeneration theories in 1910 and von Post gave his first two lectures on pollen analysis in 1916. Iversen demonstrated how the impact of human activities could be disentangled from climate change and later discussed the effects of lags in the vegetation at the start of the post glacial. These laid the framework for much that I will describe.At the turn of the century the two botanists Blytt and Sernander proposed a sub-division of the recent past (the post glacial period or Holocene as we now call it) on the basis of biological evidence preserved in bogs. They described wood layers in peat bogs and introduced the terms Boreal and Sub-Boreal for the time spanned by the wood layers, and the Atlantic and Sub-Atlantic for what they interpreted as the intervening wetter periods. These wood layers are as obvious now as they were in 1900 and the terms Boreal and Atlantic have gone in and out of fashion over the intervening years.


Out in Time ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Perry N. Halkitis

The Stonewall Riots of 1969 set the foundation for the civil rights movement of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) population in the United States. Despite policies and laws, which have been enacted since that historical turning point, gay men continue to experience challenges in their lives as they emerge into their sexual identities. This chapter provides an overview and the thesis of the volume, which posits that development and negotiation of gay identity is a challenge with which many gay men grapple during their lifetimes despite the advances in LGBTQ rights over the last several decades. The thesis is explored in relation to the life narratives of three generations of gay men—the Stonewall Generation, the AIDS Generation, and the Queer Generation. These narratives are indicative of the many life challenges gay men face, the impact of these challenges on health and well-being of many gay men, but also of pride, dignity, and resilience that is evidenced in the population.


2000 ◽  
Vol 44 (12) ◽  
pp. 2-800-2-803
Author(s):  
Sheryl L. Bishop ◽  
M. Ephimia Morphew ◽  
Jason P. Kring

Data from studies on real-world groups situated in extreme environments provides us insight into the many factors that impact group performance, health and well-being. Unlike simulation studies, the impact of environmental threat, physical hardship, as well as true isolation and confinement have proven to be key factors in individual and group coping. Results from several real world teams will be discussed with the intent of focusing on interpersonal, environmental and individual factors that affected functioning and well-being at both the physiological and psychological levels.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shane Doyle

Abstract By 2018 approximately 32 million deaths worldwide had been attributed to HIV/AIDS. Yet the impact of the AIDS pandemic has been profoundly uneven. In the Global North, HIV has been constructed as marginal; in much of Africa, it is pervasive and transformative, fundamentally reshaping local economies, civil society, state structures and the continent’s relations with the outside world. HIV is in reality a series of distinct epidemics, each with their own histories. In recent years, scientists have challenged historians’ understanding of HIV’s chronology and patterns of transmission, providing alternative histories of the virus’s origins, expansion and resilience within mature epidemic settings. Epidemiologists and geneticists have realigned the temporal focus of archival and oral research while conceptualizing change over time around moments of divergence and focusing on historical episodes rather than process, and on diffusion over intensification. This article analyses scientists’ historical understanding of sexually transmitted infections, migration and same-sex relationships, challenging narrow understandings of causality and the assumption that the contexts of the recent past can be applied backwards to more distant periods. Reconstructing HIV’s long history requires recognition of the evolving complexity of sex and marriage, morality and discretion, migrancy and displacement, ethnic and racial preconceptions, and locality and connection.


2021 ◽  
pp. 716-732
Author(s):  
Peter Saunders

A key goal of any welfare state is to promote social justice by tackling inequality and poverty. This chapter reviews some of the ideas and evidence that have informed the debate about the causes of differences in inequality and poverty, including alternative interpretations of the meaning of both as policy objectives and how each can be measured. Although the two concepts are often related, they are conceptually distinct: inequality captures differences in economic outcomes, while poverty covers those with inadequate economic resources. Estimating the impact of policy on either variable is difficult because of the many other factors involved. Examining cross-country differences provides an insight into the impacts of different policies introduced in otherwise broadly similar countries. These studies have shown that transfers and taxes reduce inequality and poverty, and also that those countries that spend more on social programmes have less inequality and lower poverty rates, but the relationship is weak and there are many exceptions. While considerable progress has been made in understanding the role of the welfare state in accounting for these differences, we are a long way from fully understanding the many complex interactions that are the drivers of inequality and poverty.


2016 ◽  
Vol 73 (6) ◽  
pp. 752-768 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Diem Tran

A difference-in-difference approach was used to compare the effects of same-sex domestic partnership, civil union, and marriage policies on same- and different-sex partners who could have benefitted from their partners’ employer-based insurance (EBI) coverage. Same-sex partners had 78% lower odds (Marginal Effect = −21%) of having EBI compared with different-sex partners, adjusting for socioeconomic and health-related factors. Same-sex partners living in states that recognized same-sex marriage or domestic partnership had 89% greater odds of having EBI compared with those in states that did not recognize same-sex unions (ME = 5%). The impact of same-sex legislation on increasing take-up of dependent EBI coverage among lesbians, gay men, and bisexual individuals was modest, and domestic partnership legislation was equally as effective as same-sex marriage in increasing same-sex partner EBI coverage. Extending dependent EBI coverage to same-sex partners can mitigate gaps in coverage for a segment of the lesbians, gay men, and bisexual population but will not eliminate them.


1997 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
pp. 179-187
Author(s):  
Clifford N. Matthews ◽  
Rose A. Pesce-Rodriguez ◽  
Shirley A. Liebman

AbstractHydrogen cyanide polymers – heterogeneous solids ranging in color from yellow to orange to brown to black – may be among the organic macromolecules most readily formed within the Solar System. The non-volatile black crust of comet Halley, for example, as well as the extensive orangebrown streaks in the atmosphere of Jupiter, might consist largely of such polymers synthesized from HCN formed by photolysis of methane and ammonia, the color observed depending on the concentration of HCN involved. Laboratory studies of these ubiquitous compounds point to the presence of polyamidine structures synthesized directly from hydrogen cyanide. These would be converted by water to polypeptides which can be further hydrolyzed to α-amino acids. Black polymers and multimers with conjugated ladder structures derived from HCN could also be formed and might well be the source of the many nitrogen heterocycles, adenine included, observed after pyrolysis. The dark brown color arising from the impacts of comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter might therefore be mainly caused by the presence of HCN polymers, whether originally present, deposited by the impactor or synthesized directly from HCN. Spectroscopic detection of these predicted macromolecules and their hydrolytic and pyrolytic by-products would strengthen significantly the hypothesis that cyanide polymerization is a preferred pathway for prebiotic and extraterrestrial chemistry.


2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 311-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Brambilla ◽  
David A. Butz

Two studies examined the impact of macrolevel symbolic threat on intergroup attitudes. In Study 1 (N = 71), participants exposed to a macrosymbolic threat (vs. nonsymbolic threat and neutral topic) reported less support toward social policies concerning gay men, an outgroup whose stereotypes implies a threat to values, but not toward welfare recipients, a social group whose stereotypes do not imply a threat to values. Study 2 (N = 78) showed that, whereas macrolevel symbolic threat led to less favorable attitudes toward gay men, macroeconomic threat led to less favorable attitudes toward Asians, an outgroup whose stereotypes imply an economic threat. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding the role of a general climate of threat in shaping intergroup attitudes.


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