Penny Harvey

California Institute of Integral Studies · Human Sexuality

This study examined how gender shapes sexual interactions and pleasure outcomes. We highlight varying expectations people have in regard to sex by combining questions about orgasm frequency and sexual pleasure. Our analysis was driven from a sample of 907 survey responses from cis women, cis men, trans women, trans men, non-binary, and intersex mil...

Mainstream television scarcely features Deaf persons. When they do, they are usually cameo, secondary, and rarely multidimensional characters. This paper examines Deaf identity of a main character, Daphne Vasquez, on the popular show Switched at Birth. We analyze moments where Daphne’s identity, a constructed Deaf identity, is showcased. We map how...

The purpose of this study is to explore the ways in which LGBTQ campers and counselors are shaped by and shape summer camp. Summer camps are often the place where many U.S. youth begin to learn about sex and sexuality. It is a unique and important spatial locale that is understudied in both sexualities and wider sociological enquiry. To better unde...

LGBTQ+ people face many barriers when trying to expand their families. The COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated existing structural barriers. In this report, we detail several existing structural barriers to reproduction that LGBTQ+ people face, highlight how those barriers are worsened by COVID-19, and suggest solutions to these barriers. We bring into...

Transgender adults face a health care system rife with stigma, including a lack of culturally responsive providers and high likelihood of discrimination and mistreatment. However, there is a gap in knowledge about trans men—those assigned a female sex at birth who identify as men or as transmasculine—including subgroups, such as trans men of color....

This chapter examines how LGBTQ people, who grew up in the ‘internet generation’, perceived the effect of mainstream online video pornography as being a positive tool for sexual exploration or as a harmful and exploitative media. Three focus groups were conducted with LGBTQ students aged 18–25 in the north of England. Groups talked about the hetero...

Assessing course goals is often challenging; assessing an abstract goal, like empathy, can be especially so. For many instructors, empathy is central to sociological thinking. As such, fostering empathy in students is a common course goal. In this article, we report the initial findings of a semester-long assessment of empathy change in undergradua...