Abstract:In this study, we asked participants to "describe their sexual orientation" in an open-ended measure of self-generated sexual orientation. The question was included as part of the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (N = 18,261) 2013/2014 wave, a national probability survey conducted shortly after the first legal same-sex marriages in New Zealand. We present a two-level classification scheme to address questions about the prevalence of, and demographic differences between, sexual orientations. At the most d… Show more
“…Participants who selected the latter option subsequently went on to identify with a range of different terms, with nonbinary, agender, and genderqueer being the three most popular. Likewise, in their New Zealand national probability sample, Greaves et al (2017Greaves et al ( , 2421 pointed to a correlation between asexual identification and non-cisgender identification (although they do not disaggregate this category).…”
Gender diversity is seemingly prevalent amongst asexual people. Drawing on qualitative research, and focusing on agender identities in particular (which have received very little sociological or queer scholarly attention), this article explores why this might be the case. I argue that previous explanations which centre 1) biologistic understandings of sexual development, or 2) the liberatory potential of asexuality, or 3) psycho-cognitive conflict, are insufficient. Instead, I offer a sociological perspective in which participants' agender subjectivities can be understood as arising from an embodied meaning-making process where gender was understood to fundamentally be about sexuality. I emphasise the importance of understanding asexuality and agender in the broader structural context, as particular subjectivities were shaped and sometimes necessitated in navigating hetero-patriarchy.However, these entangled understandings of (a)sexuality and (a)gender were sometimes rendered unintelligible within LGBTQ+ discursive communities, where there is often a rigid ontological distinction between gender and sexuality arising from histories of misrecognition and erasure. The article is therefore an attempt to complicate this distinction, as I argue that already-invisible subjectivities may be made even more invisible by this distinction. The article serves as an illustration of the need to empirically explore meanings of the categories 'gender' and 'sexuality', and the relationship between them, rather than siloing them in our methodological and conceptual frameworks.Asexuality, which has been dubbed the "invisible orientation" (Decker 2014) is arguably becoming less so. Not only can we find the existence of some asexual characters in mainstream entertainment (Todd in the Netflix series Bojack Horseman, Liv Flaherty in the UK soap Emmerdale), but these characters are also portrayed as complex and nuanced, rather than one-dimensional stereotypes. The US clothing retailer Hot Topic sell Asexual Pride tshirts (Hot Topic 2019), and asexual terminology such as ace and aromantic were added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018 (OED 2018). Asexual is increasingly included in official governmental research (e.g. in the findings from the UK government's NationalLGBT survey in 2018) and there are plans to include asexual in the 2021 UK census (ONS 2018). We may well be seeing an asexual 'tipping point'.There has also been a small but growing body of scholarship on asexuality for a decade and a half, ranging from the positivistic, to textual explorations, to the sociological. Not only is asexuality of interest as a social phenomenon in and of itself (especially given the increased visibility demonstrated above), but those working in asexuality studies have pointed out that should be interested in asexuality because of its potential to inform our understandings about society and social organisation more broadlyfor example, about the compulsory nature of sexuality (Gupta 2015); about the possibilities for conducting relationships ...
“…Participants who selected the latter option subsequently went on to identify with a range of different terms, with nonbinary, agender, and genderqueer being the three most popular. Likewise, in their New Zealand national probability sample, Greaves et al (2017Greaves et al ( , 2421 pointed to a correlation between asexual identification and non-cisgender identification (although they do not disaggregate this category).…”
Gender diversity is seemingly prevalent amongst asexual people. Drawing on qualitative research, and focusing on agender identities in particular (which have received very little sociological or queer scholarly attention), this article explores why this might be the case. I argue that previous explanations which centre 1) biologistic understandings of sexual development, or 2) the liberatory potential of asexuality, or 3) psycho-cognitive conflict, are insufficient. Instead, I offer a sociological perspective in which participants' agender subjectivities can be understood as arising from an embodied meaning-making process where gender was understood to fundamentally be about sexuality. I emphasise the importance of understanding asexuality and agender in the broader structural context, as particular subjectivities were shaped and sometimes necessitated in navigating hetero-patriarchy.However, these entangled understandings of (a)sexuality and (a)gender were sometimes rendered unintelligible within LGBTQ+ discursive communities, where there is often a rigid ontological distinction between gender and sexuality arising from histories of misrecognition and erasure. The article is therefore an attempt to complicate this distinction, as I argue that already-invisible subjectivities may be made even more invisible by this distinction. The article serves as an illustration of the need to empirically explore meanings of the categories 'gender' and 'sexuality', and the relationship between them, rather than siloing them in our methodological and conceptual frameworks.Asexuality, which has been dubbed the "invisible orientation" (Decker 2014) is arguably becoming less so. Not only can we find the existence of some asexual characters in mainstream entertainment (Todd in the Netflix series Bojack Horseman, Liv Flaherty in the UK soap Emmerdale), but these characters are also portrayed as complex and nuanced, rather than one-dimensional stereotypes. The US clothing retailer Hot Topic sell Asexual Pride tshirts (Hot Topic 2019), and asexual terminology such as ace and aromantic were added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018 (OED 2018). Asexual is increasingly included in official governmental research (e.g. in the findings from the UK government's NationalLGBT survey in 2018) and there are plans to include asexual in the 2021 UK census (ONS 2018). We may well be seeing an asexual 'tipping point'.There has also been a small but growing body of scholarship on asexuality for a decade and a half, ranging from the positivistic, to textual explorations, to the sociological. Not only is asexuality of interest as a social phenomenon in and of itself (especially given the increased visibility demonstrated above), but those working in asexuality studies have pointed out that should be interested in asexuality because of its potential to inform our understandings about society and social organisation more broadlyfor example, about the compulsory nature of sexuality (Gupta 2015); about the possibilities for conducting relationships ...
“…In terms of prevalence of sexual minorities, Greaves et al (2017) reported that out of a large national sample of more than 18,000 New Zealanders, 2.6% described their sexual orientation as lesbian/gay, with another 1.8% bisexual. However, the researchers used a novel approach to gather this data, offering the question of sexual orientation as an open-ended item.…”
normalizing same-gender parenting is what needs to happen next. Our study adds to the research focused on adoption professionals in various countries, with the ultimate aim to inform practices and policies supportive of families headed by same-gender couples and formed through adoption.
“…“What is your gender?”) from the sixth wave (2014/2015) and were coded as men, women, transgender, nonbinary, unsure, or outside the scope. Our need to maximize potential matches meant only those coded as men or women were included in the model (0.3% of participants in the NZAVS identify as gender diverse; Greaves et al, 2017). Participants were asked which ethnic group they identify with; analyses included codes for the minority groups “Māori” (0 = no, 1 = yes), “Pasifika” (0 = no, 1 = yes), and “Asian” (0 = no, 1 = yes) with the reference group representing the NZ Pakeha/European majority.…”
People low in self-esteem are likely more vulnerable to the wellbeing costs of relationship dissolution. Yet, several methodological limitations may mean that prior studies have overestimated such vulnerability. Overcoming prior limitations, we apply propensity score matching (PSM) to compare the later wellbeing of matched samples who experienced a dissolution over the past year ( N = 1,333) versus remained in a romantic relationship ( N = 1,333). Controlling for pre-dissolution wellbeing, people who experienced a dissolution reported lower later wellbeing compared to people who remained in a relationship. Although this pattern was more pronounced for people initially lower in self-esteem, the relative effects were small. Using PSM to provide stringent tests of the wellbeing effects of dissolution reveals a general resilience when experiencing dissolution and indicates that the vulnerability of low self-esteem may be smaller than assumed. Acknowledging the strengths and limitations of the PSM approach, we consider theoretical and methodological implications.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.