Gilbert Herdt

Gilbert Herdt
San Francisco State University | SFSU · Department of Sexuality Studies

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44
Publications
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Introduction

Publications

Publications (44)
Article
Full-text available
Studying changing attitudes toward marriage rights in the United States, we consider how sexual and gender socialization and changes in values and beliefs regarding homosexuality and marriage influence lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning (LGBTQ) youth. We begin by presenting the cultural environment of policies, court decisio...
Article
Biomedical research on a rare hermaphroditic condition among males of the rural Dominican Republic has supported biologically reductionist explanations of male gender identity development. I reinterpret this research by comparison to a parallel case among the Sambia of Papua New Guinea. Meanings of mistaken gender are reviewed to contrast sex assig...
Article
“Sexuality” as a cultural notion has gradually expanded since the 1960s to include a broad spectrum of identities, rights, and communities. In effect, this has enlarged the meaning of “diversity” in neoliberal democracy. More than a generation ago, subjects of studies concerning such issues exclusively engage adults, keeping the youth out of its pu...
Article
Sexual inequality, in its various forms and consequences, manifested in various objective and subjective ways, is a vogue in the United States. Scarcity of social-legal protection is rivaled by that of knowledge of sexual health, and sexual rights. Research in this field has been fraught with stumbling blocks arising out of historical barriers. Mor...
Article
This book signals the emergence of a new paradigm of social analysis committed to understanding and analyzing social oppression in the context of sexuality and gender. The contributors, an interdisciplinary group of social scientists representing anthropology, sociology, public health, and psychology, illuminate the role of sexuality in producing a...
Article
A large body of medical and academic literature has established the connection between strong social support and vigorous physical and mental health in aging populations. Largely unexamined to date, however, are the meanings and processes through which lesbians and gay men come to perceive, develop, maintain, and mobilize social support in midlife...
Article
Marriage is a fundamental institution in American culture that provides a socialstructure of advantages for wedded couples. Unlike heterosexual citizens in the United States, lesbians and gay men are denied the tangible and intangible benefits of marriage, a deprivation that restricts their citizenship and hinders their mental health and well-being...
Article
This article reviews some of the factors that have created and reproduced intellectual, historical, political, and disciplinary barriers to understanding the contribution of social oppression as a force in the development of young people’s sexuality. Social oppression in sexual development is common in many places and times and creates an impact on...
Article
This article reviews the factors of sexual culture formation and stigma in the representation and prevention of HIV transmission. Two views of stigma, insider versus outsider meanings and practices, are contrasted in the history of anthropology and sexuality studies. Changes in ethnography and the understanding of ethnographic method since the rise...
Article
Developmental processes of "puberty" and their cultural contexts in understanding the emergence of sexual subjectivity, especially sexual attraction, prior to gonadarche are critically examined. In particular, we consider the hypothesis that "sexual attraction" follows the onset of adrenal puberty, termed adrenarche, precipitating the development o...
Article
This paper argues the case for critical regional enquiries in East and South East Asia into the study of gender and sexual diversity. The concept of 'regions' is here seen as a partial and provisional way of describing both the various ways in which an area of the world is imagined as being separate and distinct, and of describing the flows of peop...
Article
The authors report results from a study assessing the social service needs of gay menand lesbians over 45 years of age in Chicago. Results suggest that this population is diverse and presents a wide range of needs. The authors advocate the use of a community organizing approach that involves older gay men and lesbians in the provision of services....
Article
Dans cet article, ecrit en hommage a l'ethnologue australien Roger Keesing, l'A. analyse les origines du plaisir et de la souffrance dans l'experience masculine des rites d'initiation et de la cohabitation dans les maisons des hommes de la societe Sambia de Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinee. Apres un parcours synthetique des interpreations psychanalytiques...
Article
How much can we assume about the shared life experiences of older lesbians and gays? This article is broadly concerned with rethinking the significance of this question as it pertains to cultural images and stereotypes of “older gay and lesbian” identities in a large and diverse American city. In 1996, the authors completed a 10-month needs assessm...
Article
tinct and significant studies have pointed to the age of 10 as the mean age of first sexual attrac tion?well before puberty, which is typically defined as the age when the capacity to procreate is attained (Timiras, 1972). These findings are at odds with previous
Article
The purpose of this article is to examine ethnographic methodologies (and the conceptual frame used to define and apply such methodologies) relevant to the global study of AIDS. Included for consideration are participant observation, category systems, interviewer bias, formal/informal language and developmental perspective. As an illustration of et...
Article
The spread of the international AIDS pandemic has drawn attention to the urgent need for data on human sexual behavior; yet the absence of an established tradition of theory and method in sex research has limited the development of initiatives in this area. This has been particularly evident in the lack of attention given to the ways in which cross...
Article
Full-text available
Despite global similarities between the immunologic and pathogenic properties of HIV infection, there are substantial cultural and geographical variations in the transmission dynamics of HIV infection/AIDS. In the United States and Europe, for example, HIV infection/AIDS is predominantly evident among homosexual men and intravenous drug abusers. Ho...
Article
This article introduces work-in-progress on the ethnography of a gay and lesbian youth group in Chicago. The surrounding neighborhood is sketched and aspects of the supporting agency, within which the group functions, are described. Both are seen as contributing contexts for the "coming out" process here. The youth group is described in part, inclu...
Article
This introduction opens up the field of studies of gay and lesbian adolescents, both with regard to past and present studies in the research literature, and by allusion to the new studies collected in this issue. Historical and crosscultural elements of the context of the "coming out" process are discussed. Four preconceptions of gay youth are crit...
Article
Selected aspects of the "essentialist" critiques and reviews in Bisexual and Homosexual Identities: Critical Theoretical Issues (De Cecco & Shively, eds., 1983/1984) of the idea of the bisexual identity are examined from the standpoint of their cross-cultural significance. Examples from recent studies in Melanesia are used to highlight possible are...
Article
attempts a preliminary analysis of the interactive processes involved in 1 aspect of the problem [of bisexuality]: developmental relations between sexual/gendered identities and the cultures of persons either classified as bisexuals by investigators or self-identified as such / compares the assumptions about bisexuality present in the research lite...
Article
explore similarities and differences in develomental change in sexuality from an anthropological perspective suggest that when we sort the considerable cross-cultural archives, we discover that change in sexual behavior and experience after childhood is a clear part of the human condition / this point regarding the potential for change is support...

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