LGBT

Stigmatization

LGBT people have experienced stigma because they transgress the generally accepted identities and practices of social activities such as dating and institutions such as marriage. LGBT people have historically experienced discrimination in covert and overt ways. [Page 504]They have also experienced outright hatred and violence from those who believe that they are sinners, criminals or mentally ill. LGBT people have historically had challenges negotiating a variety of environments, including the workplace, the educational setting, health care, politics, religion and family of origin. Each one of these contexts—work, education, health care, religion and politics—represents an area in which action research—carried out for, with and by the LGBT population or subsets of the population—could offer insights and awareness around sexual minority issues. In the workplace, LGBT people have negotiated heterosexist environments in which sexual minority identity and sexual minority issues have been invisible and unaddressed. In educational settings, from K–12 to higher education, LGBT people have faced discrimination and marginalization that have ranged from covert discrimination to outright hostility and violence. In health care, there is a range of issues related to LGBT people. For example, gay men have experienced the devastation of the AIDS crisis that decimated their community during the 1980s. Lesbians have experienced challenges negotiating the health-care system, despite the fact that they are just as much at risk for certain types of diseases, such as breast cancer, ovarian cancer and cervical cancer, as the general female population. Bisexual people experience a unique kind of stigma, because they are often seen as ‘fence sitters'—that is, people who cannot make up their minds about their sexuality. As such, they face challenges related to stigmatization and marginalization not only among heterosexuals but also within the LGBT community itself. Transgender people face a constellation of challenges with respect to the workplace. When transgender persons decide to transition, which is a term that means that the person has decided to undergo the process of changing to his or her true sense of gender, they face the possibility of suffering discrimination, lack of support and understanding and may even risk losing their employment. The transition from one gender to the other involves a rather lengthy, complex and expensive process of hormone therapy, psychoanalysis and then surgery.

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