Doug Meyer | University of Virginia (original) (raw)

Books by Doug Meyer

Violence against lesbians and gay men has increasingly captured media and scholarly attention. Bu... more Violence against lesbians and gay men has increasingly captured media and scholarly attention. But these reports tend to focus on one segment of the LGBT community—white, middle class men—and largely ignore that part of the community that arguably suffers a larger share of the violence—racial minorities, the poor, and women. In Violence against Queer People, sociologist Doug Meyer offers the first investigation of anti-queer violence that focuses on the role played by race, class, and gender. Drawing on interviews with forty-seven victims of violence, Meyer shows that LGBT people encounter significantly different forms of violence—and perceive that violence quite differently—based on their race, class, and gender. His research highlights the extent to which other forms of discrimination—including racism and sexism—shape LGBT people's experience of abuse. He reports, for instance, that lesbian and transgender women often described violent incidents in which a sexual or a misogynistic component was introduced, and that LGBT people of color sometimes weren't sure if anti-queer violence was based solely on their sexuality or whether racism or sexism had also played a role. Meyer observes that given the many differences in how anti-queer violence is experienced, the present media focus on white, middle-class victims greatly oversimplifies and distorts the nature of anti-queer violence. In fact, attempts to reduce anti-queer violence that ignore race, class, and gender run the risk of helping only the most privileged gay subjects. Many feel that the struggle for gay rights has largely been accomplished and the tide of history has swung in favor of LGBT equality. Violence against Queer People, on the contrary, argues that the lives of many LGBT people—particularly the most vulnerable—have improved very little, if at all, over the past thirty years.

Papers by Doug Meyer

Sexualities, 2023

The author employs a critical sexualities approach and draws on feminist theories of sexual assau... more The author employs a critical sexualities approach and draws on feminist theories of sexual assault to examine queer male survivors' constructions of hierarchies of victimhood. Results, based on in-depth interviews conducted with 60 queer male survivors, reveal that participants most commonly responded to questions concerning hierarchies of victimhood by arguing that sexual assault is taken more seriously when it happens to women than to men. The second most common response involved participants constructing other queer male survivors as blameworthy, invoking a stereotype of a feminized queer man seeking consensual sex. In light of these findings, the author argues for greater attention toward building solidarity among survivors across the lines of gender and sexuality and for further feminist, sex critical interventions that challenge the pathologizing of male femininity and consensual sex.

Social Problems, 2022

This article focuses on how 60 queer men perceived emasculation in relation to their experiences ... more This article focuses on how 60 queer men perceived emasculation in relation to their experiences of sexual assault, drawing particular attention to racial and ethnic differences. While previous scholarship has focused primarily on gender, the author of this article uses an intersectional approach to explore queer men's narratives. Results demonstrate that queer men of color with intra-racial experiences of assault typically denied feelings of emasculation, emphasizing instead other emotions that were intimately related to challenges they faced due to their social position. Most White participants with intra-racial experiences felt emasculated after the assault. Racial and ethnic differences appeared even more pronounced with interracial forms of violence, as Black queer men drew attention to racialized concerns, such as fear over being perceived as a "troublemaker" for reporting a White assailant, while White and Latino participants described feeling emasculated, in large part due to masculinizing stereotypes of Black men. The implications of this research suggest that emasculation is a racialized, as well as a gendered, process for queer men-one that does not arise automatically from simply being a man who has been sexually violated but one that springs disproportionately from whiteness and that generally involves particular racialized gender dynamics.

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 2020

The author employs a critical queer criminology approach to examine the negative reporting experi... more The author employs a critical queer criminology approach to examine the negative reporting experiences of queer men who have been sexually assaulted. Based on qualitative, in-depth interviews, findings reveal that queer men of color's perceptions differed based on gender expression with those participants who did not describe themselves as feminine or gender-nonconforming expressing surprise that police officers had disparaged their sexuality. Moreover, White participants differed based on age, as younger White queer men expected the police to provide support, whereas their older counterparts were not surprised by the negative police response. These findings have implications for theorizing the intersections of gender and sexuality with race and age, given that results indicate younger White queer men may now increasingly perceive the police as providing protection. In contrast, gender-nonconforming queer men of color described continual profiling experiences based on their gender presentation and their racial identity.

Sexualities, 2020

This article focuses on how 377 reports from popular lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and que... more This article focuses on how 377 reports from popular lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) websites represented Omar Mateen, the shooter of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, drawing particular attention to the exclusion of Mateen’s native-born status. Based on a grounded theory analysis of the five most-trafficked LGBTQ websites, results demonstrate that the reports generally decontextualized Mateen from his country of birth, the United States, and excluded any emphasis on xenophobia or anti-Latinx prejudice as a potential motivating factor in the shooting. Instead, Mateen was usually associated with “terrorism” and sometimes implicitly positioned as a “foreign threat.” These results, building on Jasbir Puar’s concept of homonationalism, have implications for LGBTQ positions on the U.S. political left, as the reports typically constructed themselves as anti-Republican and opposed to Islamophobia, while simultaneously reinforcing homonationalist, and relatively conservative, positions.

Journal of Homosexuality, 2020

This study illustrates the radical potential of intersectionality to offer a more deeply critical... more This study illustrates the radical potential of intersectionality to offer a more deeply critical analysis of hierarchies in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities. The author examines how 377 reports from the five most-trafficked LGBTQ websites represented victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida. Findings support previous scholarship that has emphasized Latinx exclusion, as the articles generally failed to present the victims in an intersectional way, focusing on their LGBTQ status and excluding their Latinx identities. At the same time, a significant minority of the reports emphasized Latinx queer people, most frequently in a way that continued to prioritize LGBTQ-identification, sometimes even advancing stereotypical representations of Latinx communities as extraordinarily focused on faith, family, or “machismo.” Moreover, none of the articles considered xenophobia as a potential motivating factor in the shooting, and the reports typically presented policing agencies in a neutral, and sometimes even positive, way.

Critical Criminology, 2014

Hate crime laws have reinforced neoliberalism by expanding police and prosecutorial power, adding... more Hate crime laws have reinforced neoliberalism by expanding police and prosecutorial power, adding to the rapid expansion of incarcerated populations. Further, hate crime discourse associates anti-queer violence with notions of ''stranger danger,'' and thereby reproduces problematic race and social class politics in which an innocent, implicitly middle-class, person is suddenly and randomly attacked by a hateful, implicitly low-income, person. Thus, the author argues that queer and intersectional resistance should reject hate crime discourse and, instead, focus on the experiences of marginalized lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. By doing so, scholarship and activism concerned with reducing anti-queer violence can benefit a wide range of LGBT people without reinforcing inequalities based on race and social class.

Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 2017

This article focuses on how lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) adults in 159 ... more This article focuses on how lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) adults in 159 "It Gets Better" videos used happiness discourse to provide advice for an assumed adolescent viewer experiencing anti-queer bullying. Employing a grounded theory approach to analyze the videos and building on sociological analyses of changing sexuality norms, the author develops the concept of "disregarding heteronormativity" to account for processes that draw attention away from the widespread privileging and normalizing of heterosexuality. Indeed, findings reveal that makers of the videos not only localized anti-LGBTQ violence and harassment to adolescent schools, emphasizing the decline or disappearance of discriminatory events into adult-hood, but also emphasized happiness and positivity more than power relations and structural constraints. At times, this emphasis included suggestions that bullied LGBTQ youth could improve their lives by adopting a more positive outlook or ignoring the negative opinions of other people. Thus, makers of the videos generally positioned violence against queer youth as primarily solvable through emotional management, contributing to the individualizing and depoliticizing of this social problem. In contrast, the author argues for analyses that resist the disregarding of heteronormativity and instead position unequal power relations as enduring and widespread structural features of US society.

Critical Sociology, 2017

The author examines the " It Gets Better " (IGB) anti-gay bullying project, focusing particular a... more The author examines the " It Gets Better " (IGB) anti-gay bullying project, focusing particular attention on social class narratives in videos made for the campaign. Results, based on a content analysis of 128 videos, indicate that individuals most commonly began by describing negative experiences during adolescence before shifting to a narrative of progress, emphasizing how their life had improved since high school. In doing so, the makers of the videos drew on class-based standards of success such as traveling, attending college, and moving to a big city. At the same time, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people sometimes stigmatized the bullies in classist ways. Thus, as IGB encourages makers of the videos to underscore their financial success and to condemn the perpetrators of anti-gay bullying, the project reinforces the cultural elements of neoliberalism.

Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 2016

The author argues for the concept of "gentle" neo-liberalism to account for how discourse in anti... more The author argues for the concept of "gentle" neo-liberalism to account for how discourse in anti-bullying texts has increasingly presented itself as gentle and kind, while simultaneously reinforcing systems of surveillance and control. Results, based on a grounded theory analysis of 22 anti-bullying books, reveal that the texts generally decoupled bullying from power relations based on sexuality, overlooking homophobia and heteronormativity and marginalizing the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth. Further, findings demonstrate a shift over time in the texts from an explicitly harsh description of the bullies to a seemingly kinder emphasis on reporting and intervening on behalf of the individual being bullied. This shift to interven-tionist discourse potentially expands mechanisms of control and reinforces inequalities based on race and social class, as bystanders are increasingly held accountable and students are encouraged to report their peers to authority figures. In response to neoliberal anti-bullying discourse, the author argues for scholarship and policy solutions that undermine unequal power structures and yet also oppose surveillance strategies of monitoring, reporting, and intervening.

Gender & Society, 2012

The author uses an intersectionality framework to examine how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transge... more The author uses an intersectionality framework to examine how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people evaluate the severity of their violent experiences. Previous research focusing on the severity of anti-LGBT violence has given relatively little attention to race, class, and gender as systems of power. In contrast, results from this study, based on 47 semi-structured, in-depth interviews, reveal that Black and Latino/Latina respondents often perceived anti-queer violence as implying that they had negatively represented their racial communities, whereas white respondents typically overlooked the racialized implications of their violent experiences. Furthermore, while lesbians of color emphasized their autonomy and self-sufficiency to challenge this discourse, Black and Latino gay men underscored their emotional and physical strength to undermine perceptions that they were weak for identifying as gay. Results also indicate that LGBT people experience forms of anti-queer violence in different ways depending on their social position, as Black lesbians faced discourse that neither white lesbians nor Black gay men were likely to confront. Thus, these findings suggest that topics primarily associated with homophobia should be examined through an intersectional lens.

Sociology, 2010

This article employs an intersectional approach to examine the ways in which lesbian, gay, bisexu... more This article employs an intersectional approach to examine the ways in which lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people evaluate the severity of hate-motivated violence. Previous studies of LGBT hate crime victims have typically
focused on the psychological effects of violence. In contrast, this article explores
the sociological components of hate crime by comparing the perceptions of poor
and working-class LGBT people of colour with the perceptions of white, middle-class
LGBT people. Data were collected from semi-structured, in-depth interviews,
conducted in New York City, with 44 people who experienced anti-LGBT violence.
Results indicate that middle-class white respondents were more likely than
low-income people of colour to perceive their violent experiences as severe, even
though the latter experienced more physical violence than the former.This finding
suggests that the social position of LGBT people plays an instrumental role in
structuring how they evaluate the severity of hate-motivated violence.

Race, Gender & Class, 2008

This qualitative research project explores how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) peo... more This qualitative research project explores how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people determine that violence is based on their sexuality or gender identity. Data were collected from semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 44 people who experienced anti-LGBT violence. Findings reveal that their violent experiences differ along the lines of race, class, and gender. In particular, LGBT people of color often found it more difficult than White gay men to determine whether violence was based on their sexuality. These findings suggest that hate crime statutes may serve the interests of White gay men more than the interests of other LGBT people.

Journal of Gender Studies, 2009

Race & Society, 2003

Employing a variety of available data and previous research, the authors examine issues related t... more Employing a variety of available data and previous research, the authors examine issues related to Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people's parenting practices and experiences. Findings indicate that parenting may serve to more fully-integrate Black LGBT people into both White LGBT communities and Black heterosexual communities. Black LGBT parents may also be disproportionately harmed as a result of anti-gay parenting measures. In light of these findings, the authors discuss foster parenting and adoption, racial and economic justice, and the current same-sex marriage debate. In sum, although the intersection of race and sexuality creates circumstances unique to Black LGBT people that neither White LGBT people nor Black heterosexual people are required to confront, Black LGBT people's similarities with other groups should not be overlooked.