The effect of attitudes on inferences of homosexuality and perceived physical attractiveness in women

Physical attractiveness of girls with gender identity disorder

“…A socially phenotypic masculine appearance is extremely common among adult females with gender identity disorder (Stoller, 1972) and is characteristic of some homosexual women (Rothblum, 1994; see also Dew, 1985;Dunkle and Francis, 1990;Laner and Laner, 1980;Unger et al, 1982). To date, the number of girls with gender identity disorder who have been followed prospectively into their adolescence or adulthood is too small to verify the retrospective data.…”

“…It appears warranted to analyze infant photographs of girls with gender identity disorder to see if similar properties could be identified. This would be particularly intriguing from a psychosexual perspective, since some studies have implicated objective properties of infant faces, even newborns, that are correlated with accurate predictions of biological sex (e.g., Gewirtz and Hernandez, 1984, 1985, Gewirtz et aL, 1990; for studies of the sex-correlated features of adult faces, see Brown and Perrett, 1993;Bruce et al, 1993;Burton et al, 1993). Hildebrandt andFitzgerald (1977, 1979b) found that perceived facial "cuteness" predicted college students' judg6Most physical attractiveness studies instruct the rater to judge the attractiveness of the stimulus with the simple anchor points of "attractive" and "unattractive" or "very cute" and "not very cute."…”

African American Lesbian Couples:

“…Heterocentric thinking often results in misconceptions about lesbians, as common in ethnic minority groups as the dominant culture, among which are that lesbians either want to be men, look like men, are less attractive than heterosexual women, are less extroverted, are unable to get a man, have had traumatic relationships with men which presumably ''turned'' them against men, or are defective females (Collins, 1990;Dew, 1985;Greene, 1994aGreene, , 1994bKite, 1994).…”

Introducing lesbian, gay and bisexual appearance psychology

“…Research on heterosexual perceptions of lesbian and gay appearance and embodiment has shown a strong association between physical unattractiveness and homosexuality, and between femininity and male homosexuality and masculinity and female homosexuality (e.g., Dew, 1985, Laner & Laner, 1979, Unger, Hilderbrand & Mader, 1982. Studies have also found links between homophobia and perceptions of unattractiveness.…”