Sexual Orientation - Sexual Orientation and Culture

Sexual Orientation and Culture

See also: LGBT history, Societal attitudes toward homosexuality, and LGBT community and multiculturalism

Research suggests that sexual orientation is not independent of cultural and other social influences. Social systems such as religion, language and ethnic traditions can have a powerful impact on realization of sexual orientation. Influences of culture may complicate the process of Measuring sexual orientation. The majority of empirical and clinical research on LGBT populations are done with largely white, middle-class, well-educated samples, however there are pockets of research that document various other cultural groups, although these are frequently limited in diversity of gender and sexual orientation of the subjects. Integration of sexual orientation with sociocultural identity may be a challenge for LGBT individuals. Individuals may or may not consider their sexual orientation to define their sexual identity, as they may experience various degrees of Fluidity of sexuality, or may simply identify more strongly with another aspect of their identity such as family role. American culture puts a great emphasis on individual attributes, and views the self as unchangeable and constant. In contrast, East Asian cultures put a great emphasis on a person’s social role within social hierarchies, and view the self as fluid and malleable. These differing cultural perspectives have many implications on cognitions of the self, including perception of sexual orientation.

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Famous quotes containing the words orientation and/or culture:

    “Institutions of higher education in the United States are products of Western society in which masculine values like an orientation toward achievement and objectivity are valued over cooperation, connectedness and subjectivity.”
    —Yolanda Moses (b. 1946)

    “Why is it so difficult to see the lesbian—even when she is there, quite plainly, in front of us? In part because she has been “ghosted”Mor made to seem invisible—by culture itself.... Once the lesbian has been defined as ghostly—the better to drain her of any sensual or moral authority—she can then be exorcised.”
    —Terry Castle, U.S. lesbian author. The Apparitional Lesbian, ch. 1 (1993)