Sexual Identities and Protesting Among College Students: Exploring Political Distinctiveness Mediation Factors (original) (raw)
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College Students, Sexualities Identities, and Participation in Political Marches
Sexuality Research & Social Policy, 2017
Student protest is often an engine of social change for sexual minorities and other oppressed groups. Through an analysis of college students in the Add Health survey (n = 2, 534), we found that sexual minorities attend more political marches than heterosexuals. To understand why this sexuality difference occurs, we performed a logistic regression analysis to decipher the importance of four explanations: essentialism, selection, embeddedness, and conversion. We discovered that participation in political groups is the best explanation of the sexuality gap in activism, but racial attitudes were also important. Type of college major was generally connected to student activism, but educational attainment and disciplinary curricu-lums did not explain the increased activism of sexual minorities.
Explaining the Sexuality Gap in Protest Participation
Journal of Homosexuality, 2019
This study investigated the relationship between sexual orientations and the protest actions of adults in the United States. Drawing from General Social Survey data from 1996 to 2004, we found that lesbians, gays, and bisexuals were more than twice as likely to protest as heterosexuals. To account for this sexuality gap, we used Patrick Egan’s (2008) political distinctiveness theories to identify possible underlying causes of these protesting differences. After running several regressions, we found that sexuality and protesting relationships were moderated by issues of educational attainment, marital statuses, metropolitan residencies, political partisanships, governmental grievances, and gender role expectations.
Sexual identities and participation in liberal and conservative social movements
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A B S T R A C T The desire for social change, political activism, and sexual identities may all be related. Lesbians and gays generally contest heterosexism more than heterosexuals but we do not know how sexual identities sways participation in class, race, and gender based social movements. When analyzing the American National Election Surveys of 2012 (n = 3519), gays and lesbians were about twenty times more likely to join LGB justice campaigns than heterosexuals. Moreover, the greater activism of gays and lesbians also crossed over to recent Occupy Wall Street, peace, and environmental mobilizations. Finally, this analysis ends with logistic regressions that determine if any sexual identity gaps in movement participation are the result of demographic, contextual, and ideological covariates.
Swank2019Political distinctiveness of gays and lesbians-protest actions PGI.pdf
Politics, Groups, & Identities, 2019
This study explores the relationship between people's sexual identities and their tendencies to join political protests. When analyzing American National Election surveys from 2012 (n = 3813), gays and lesbians were more than twice as likely to protest as heterosexuals. To explain the increased activism of gays and lesbians, this study applied Patrick Egan's theories of political distinctiveness to the ANES data. After running a set of hierarchal logistic regressions, the link between sexualities and protesting became insignificant when issues of age, education levels, friendships circles, group memberships, and political ideologies were introduced into regressions. This suggests that gays and lesbians protested more often because they are younger, more educated, integrated into political networks, and are more likely to notice the negative consequences of social inequalities than heterosexuals.
Social movements aimed at increasing rights for sexual minorities have mobilized in the United States and throughout the world, yet studies on why gays and lesbians from a variety of racial backgrounds join and participate in these collective actions are rare. To address this gap, this study used a survey to identify the key factors that inspired four types of gay and lesbian rights activism: voting, petition signing, protesting, and civil disobedience. After conducting an intersectional analysis on 285 self-identified gays and lesbians from throughout the U.S. of how gender, race, and framing factors impacted these political behaviors, this study concluded that the act of publicly revealing one's sexual identity and experiencing heterosexist discrimination generally increased activism on the behalf of gay and lesbian rights (regardless of gender or race). However, race and gender differences were noted, as White lesbians were less likely to protest and vote than lesbians of color. For gay men, race was less crucial to activism but experiencing workplace discrimination and embracing an activist identity were especially relevant in predicting activist behaviors.
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Utilizing the resource model of political participation, we identify the antecedents of willingness to sign a petition supporting employment protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people among sexual minority and heterosexual college students. Through secondary data analysis, we investigate the role of sociodemographic, mobilizing context, and framing variables, including various
Journal of Civil Society, 2016
While sexual minorities have produced large and efficacious social movements in many countries, there are few systematic studies on why gays and lesbians join these movements. To address this void, this study created a unique sample of activist and nonactivist listservs to identify some factors that inspired greater involvement in protests for gay and lesbian equality (n = 285). Through the use of binary logistic regression, this study highlights the importance of several contextual, framing, and demographic variables on the protesting actions of sexual minorities. In particular, the act of protesting for gay and lesbian rights was predicted by involvement in voluntary groups, the concealment of sexual orientations, a concern over institutionalized heterosexism, and the internalizing several sorts of activist identities. Finally, racial background, but not gender, age, or economic factors, was associated with attendance at gay and lesbian rights demonstrations.
This article explores the reasons why some college students join the gay and lesbian rights movements. After addressing the frequency of students joining this social movement, the article then considers the contexts and motivations behind such actions. To explore the catalysts to gay and lesbian rights activism, this study utilizes variables from resource, mobilizing, and framing theories of political participation. Using data from 820 heterosexual, lesbian, gay, and bisexual students, we found that economic and educational resources failed to explain participation in gay and lesbian politics. Instead, predictors of gay and lesbian activism were more closely aligned to four key variables: the political orientations of trusted peers, knowing full-fledged activists, an ability to recognize heterosexism, and participants' maintenance of activist identities.
Pathways to political activism among Americans who have same-sex sexual contact
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Abstract Empirical systematic studies on political activism among self-identified sexual minorities are sparse and underdeveloped. When using three waves of a random national survey of respondents who have sex with people of the same sex (N= 184), this study tested the predictive capabilities of “resource,”“framing,” and “network” theories of political participation. After running discriminant analysis regressions for electoral and protest activities, the potency of eclectic and integrative models became apparent.