Institutional, Subcultural, and Individual Determinants of Same-Sex Sexual Contact Among College Women

Pham, Janelle M.

doi:10.1080/00224499.2019.1607239

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…These studies emphasize that sexual identification is shaped not only by the sexual acts one engages in but also by numerous social factors (Silva 2019; Silva and Whaley 2018) and “the different subcultural, institutional, affective, gendered, and racialized contexts” (Ward 2015, 193) in which these acts take place. For instance, at college parties in the United States, some straight women engage in performative acts such as kissing and fondling each other to attract men’s attention (Hamilton 2007; Rupp and Taylor 2010), showing how institutional and subcultural dynamics provide conditions for same-sex interactions (Pham 2019). Meanwhile, studies on straight white men who have sex with men reveal that their straight identification is connected to their investment in normalcy and enjoyment of straight privilege (Silva 2019; Ward 2015), underlining that “there are both queer and straight ways of having same-sex sex” (Silva 2018, 85).…”

Section: Feminist and Queer Critiques Of Heterosexualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Bounded Nonnormativity of Heterosexuality: Gendered Sex Partying in Hong Kong

Tsui

2023

Gender & Society

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Despite queer theory’s intention to critically analyze the institution of heterosexuality, how heterosexual men and women are differently constrained by normativity—or potentially rupture it—is underexplored. Through an ethnography of sex partying, I integrate queer and feminist perspectives to examine how people navigate and cope with institutionalized heterosexuality and compulsory monogamy. This study finds a contradictory relationship between sex partygoers and normativity: They embrace the ideal of straight manhood and womanhood but simultaneously feel constrained by and desire to transgress it. Therefore, the bounded nonnormativity of sex partying, which allows the compartmentalization of normative and nonnormative desires, is instrumental in helping them cope with the contradiction. This paper contributes to gendering transnational queer sociology by highlighting the distinct experiences of men and women in relation to the regime of normalcy in Hong Kong.

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Section: Feminist and Queer Critiques Of Heterosexualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Bounded Nonnormativity of Heterosexuality: Gendered Sex Partying in Hong Kong

Tsui

2023

Gender & Society

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“…(2019) examined emotional outcomes of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) youth and found that most had positive experiences with hooking up; however, their research assumed that LGB youth sought hookups as a way to alleviate minority stress, framing hookups in a sex‐negative light and ignoring other causal possibilities (including but not limited to the influence of the emerging adulthood stage of the life course linked to heterosexual hookups). Janelle Pham explored how institutional and subcultural factors impact and regulate public and private sexual acts in hookups between college women (2019a) and how LBQ women navigate among queer, heteronormative, and digital spaces to find partners (for hookups or more) (2020). While Pham's work is integral to the literature of queer hookups, it does not answer the question of how queer life courses shape behaviors among queer college students who hookup.…”

Section: Queer Hookupsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Open to More: Queer Hookups, Temporalities, and Life Courses

Kampler

2022

Sociological Forum

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Research on hookups established that they are facilitated by alcohol consumption, interpreted as meaningless fun, and couched in ambiguous communication to avoid intimacy. In the United States, hookup culture is associated with a life course stage called “emerging adulthood.” This stage allows college students to suspend longer term relationships, parenthood, and the dictates of domesticity that will organize normative adult lives while establishing the careers that will help fund such goals. Hookups allow a mode of sexual engagement that buffers them from the burdens of serious intimacy and normative life course milestones. Scholars examined how the hookup scripts differ for queer hookups and the centrality of heternormativity in the enactment of hookup culture (e.g., Lamont et al. 2018). Less has been said about differences between straight and queer hookups from a life course perspective; this paper takes up this perspective, drawing on 28 interviews with queer participants about their college hookups. Participants' expectations about post‐college intimacy, love, and sex are less fixed, and they are therefore open to more expansive possibilities of intimacy in college than their straight peers. By taking a life course perspective, this paper shows how queer temporalities reveal and challenge the heteronormativity that governs hookup culture.

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“…Unfortunately, we did not assess the gender of each participant's partner-some heterosexual women possibly had female partners, and some lesbian women possibly had male partners (Diamond, 2016;Pham, 2019), and our three-category assessment of sexual orientation (heterosexual, lesbian, bisexual) oversimplifies the full range of sexual orientation identities (Greaves et al, 2019;Kaestle, 2019). In contrast to many national sex surveys that focus primarily on risk behaviors, the survey contained a rich set of questions on attitudes, practices, and sexual and intimate behaviors.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Debunking Lesbian Bed Death: Using Coarsened Exact Matching to Compare Sexual Practices and Satisfaction of Lesbian and Heterosexual Women

et al. 2021

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The current study examined the prevalence and correlates of over 50 sexual practices in a national survey of heterosexual and lesbian women in relationships. Coarsened exact matching was used to create comparable samples of heterosexual (n = 2510) and lesbian (n = 283) women on six demographic factors, including relationship length. Heterosexual and lesbian women were equally likely to be sexually satisfied (66% heterosexual women vs. 68% lesbian women). Compared to heterosexuals, lesbians were more likely to report having sex 0-1 times per month (11% vs. 23%) and were less likely to report having sex greater than once per month (89% vs. 77%). Among women who had been in relationships for longer than 5 years, heterosexual women were less likely than lesbian women to report having sex 0-1 times per month (15%; 42%). This steeper drop in sexual frequency among lesbian women than heterosexual women has pejoratively been labeled lesbian bed death. Rather than accept the label "lesbian bed death" as characterizing these sexual relationships, we turn our attention to what we call lesbian bed intimacies: the myriad ways that lesbian women incorporate behaviors promoting emotional connection, romance, and mood setting, as well as relying on a wide variety of specific sexual acts (e.g., use of sex toys) and sexual communication. Compared to heterosexual women, lesbian women were more likely to usually to always receive oral sex during sex in the past month (28%; 47%) and to use sex toys in the past year (40%; 62%). In their last sexual encounter, lesbian women were more likely to say "I love you" (67%; 80%), have sex longer than 30 min (48%; 72%), and engage in gentle kissing (80%; 92%). These intimacies likely help explain why sexual satisfaction was similar in these groups despite notable differences in sexual frequency.

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Institutional, Subcultural, and Individual Determinants of Same-Sex Sexual Contact Among College Women

Cited by 5 publications

References 59 publications

Bounded Nonnormativity of Heterosexuality: Gendered Sex Partying in Hong Kong

Bounded Nonnormativity of Heterosexuality: Gendered Sex Partying in Hong Kong

Open to More: Queer Hookups, Temporalities, and Life Courses

Debunking Lesbian Bed Death: Using Coarsened Exact Matching to Compare Sexual Practices and Satisfaction of Lesbian and Heterosexual Women

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