Predictors of Attitudes toward Lesbians and Transgender Women in Relationships on a College Campus

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of the attitudes which perpetuate intolerance toward LGBT individuals, and to recognize, in particular, the unique attitudes transpeople face as a minority in the nation and even in the LGBT community. This research contributes to the bodies of research concerning the interrelatedness of intrinsic religiosity, political conservatism, sexism, the rape myth, lack of effective legal protection, and the intolerance of gender non-conformists. I have identified distinctions between attitudes on the part of both women and men, as well as toward different gender non-conformists. I have also taken research as a whole further by assessing the predictors of attitudes toward specific members of the LGBT community in public relationships. The implications of these findings are potentially as far reaching as to have an impact on policies effecting healthcare, education, anti-discrimination and employer rights legislation, on both local and national levels. Predictors of Attitudes toward Lesbians and Transgender Women 5 Introduction The 2001 film, Southern Comfort documents the story of a man, named Robert Eads, who died of ovarian cancer. Eads explained how many of the two dozen plus doctors with which he consulted were willing to go forward with his cancer treatment despite the fact that he did not have health insurance. However, once he explained which type of cancer he had, Eads was immediately identified as a transperson and denied treatment for a variety of reasons. Some doctors told him that his cancer treatment would make the other patients uncomfortable, others told him that they, themselves, would be uncomfortable about treating him, and a few simply stated that Eads would not be treated because the staff did not agree with what he was. Eads did not receive treatment until 1997 and died in 1999 at the age of 53. Southern Comfort attempted to shed light on just a few of the many unique dilemmas that people face as members of the trans-community. Out of intellectual curiosity, I began to further research these issues in my subsequent college courses and collaborated my findings with ideas from a variety of individuals and group-activists in the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transgender 1 ) community. As a result of this exploration, I became interested in the political significance of the unique dilemmas that transpeople face as part of the LGBT community and the modern paradox of the philosophical standpoint with which similar issues are currently being dealt. 1 For the purpose of this study we used the definitions of “transgender” provided by the National Center for Transgender Equality: “Transgender: An umbrella term for people whose gender identity, expression or behavior is different from those typically associated with their assigned sex at birth, including but not limited to transsexuals, cross-dressers, androgynous people, genderqueers, and gender non-conforming people” Predictors of Attitudes toward Lesbians and Transgender Women 6 Literature Review Past Research on Intolerance Attitudes and Attitudes toward LGBT indiviudals The tolerance of difference and diversity among minority groups in the United States, in general, has become popularized to the extent that public displays of intolerance are one of the few forms of expression that pro-tolerance advocates deem absolutely intolerable. The paradox of this current movement is described by philosopher of science, Karl Popper; “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them”. Truly, a philosophical standpoint from which intolerant attitudes are deemed intolerable essentially contradicts itself. Nevertheless, the way Americans conceive of tolerance has been altered by this modern philosophy, termed “moral relativism” (Daniels, 2002). Furthermore, despite the controversial implications of moral relativism in relation to minority populations such as the LGBT community, (Morrison & Morrison, 2002; Horn, Szalacha & Drill, 2008; Lind, 2004; Ohlander et al., 2005; Eckes & McCarthy, 2008; Daniels, 2002), the movement has inspired a plethora of constructive research. Current studies show a trend of expressed tolerance toward LGBT people (Morrison & Morrison, 2002; Hill, 2005; Antoszewski et al., 2007) among youth in the United States, as well as young adults; a group that expresses more tolerance with the number of years dedicated to postsecondary education (Pearl & Galupo, 2007; Ohlander et al., 2005). However, as gender nonconformists have become more publicly open about their sexuality, attitudes have become increasingly complex (Pearl & Galupo, 2007) and research geared toward attitudes concerning „out‟ Predictors of Attitudes toward Lesbians and Transgender Women 7 individuals, as opposed to those who pass as gender normative, is lacking (Hill, 2005). Various researchers suggest that new research must focus not only on evaluating modern social attitudes toward LGBT individuals (Morrison & Morrison, 2005) in the context of sexually open individuals (Pearl & Galupo, 2007) but also on evaluating the wide range of influences from which attitudes concerning gender non-conformists are formed (Aosved & Long, 2006). Subsequent to a series of studies on a variety of social attitudes, researchers have proposed that intolerant views are essentially interrelated (Aosved & Long 2006; Parrott & Gallagher 2008). Although sexism, racism, homophobia, classism, ageism, religious intolerance, and acceptance of the rape myth 2 may seem like loosely related attitudes, Aosved and Long found that they are all cooccurring systems of belief. According to the authors, results such as these suggest that intolerant attitudes are not distinct elements of any given individual‟s repertoire attitudes but rather part of an overarching outlook that is intolerant. The indications of this research are summarized in the Integrated Model of Behaviors, also summarized in the article by Aosved and Long, which implies that in order to understand an individual‟s behavior one must consider that individual in the context of both their personal and social life experiences. The former, known as the microsystem, pertains to the influence of an individual‟s specific life experiences and the latter, known as the exosystem, pertains to the influence of the greater social system in which an individual resides. The microsystem refers primarily to intolerant attitudes on an individual level while the exosystem pertains to the society as a whole and the laws by which it is governed. The Social Cognitive Domain Theory (Heinze & Horn, 2009) also contains multiple domains of knowledge, including moral, conventional and personal domains, from which social reasoning is formed. Theories such as the Integrated Model of Behavior and Social Cognitive Domain Theory 2 The Rape Myth refers to be belief that both female and male victims of rape are to blame for having been raped in situations where believer expects that the individual should have been able to avoid or escape it (Aosved & Long, 2006). Predictors of Attitudes toward Lesbians and Transgender Women 8 point to the breadth and complexity of attitude formation in both social and individual contexts and provide insight as to why, when questioned, some study participants are unable to ascertain where their own attitudes come from (Stotzer, 2009). Abundant empirical research has assessed attitudes toward LGBT people in the context of the social pressure for the general expression of tolerance, as well as attitudes toward LGBT people in the context of sexism, conservative orientation, and the law. Attitudes toward LGBT individuals and current social demands Contrary to norms in past decades, the outward expression of tolerance has become the current norm among youth and young adults in the United States. In fact, recent studies suggest that openly derogatory attitudes toward sexual orientation minorities are often automatically rejected among the general population of college-aged students (Morrison & Morrison, 2002). Traditional forms of prejudice have become „old-fashioned‟ and these authors affirm that, in many cases, the attitudes of youth and young adults toward LGBT people have shifted from having foundations in religion to morally abstract, less direct, and socially-oriented concerns. This social adaptation has thus made it essential for researchers to develop new ways of measuring intolerant attitudes. Such changes have lead to the development of scales such as the “Short Internalized Homonegativity Scale” (Currie et al., 2004) and the “Genderism and Transphobia Scale” (Hill et al., 2005). Both of these scales were used in the present study so that modern attitudes toward LBGT people could be assessed among college students. Intolerance toward LGBT individuals and sexism Adherence to traditional gender role beliefs is positively associated with sexual prejudice (Parrott & Gallagher, 2008) and, in certain cases, sexual prejudice has predicted amplified levels of anger in response to gender non-conformists (Parrott & Gallagher, 2008). The study by Aosved and Predictors of Attitudes toward Lesbians and Transgender Women 9 Long supports these findings, suggesting that sexist and homophobic attitudes are essentially interrelated. This considered, the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory was employed so that sexism could be assessed as a possible predictor of intolerant attitudes toward LGBT people. Intolerance toward LGBT individuals and conservatism Even people who are not personally motivated to be intolerant are likely to adopt negatively biased views toward LGBT people simply by living within a gender conservative culture (Adamczyk & Pitt, 2009). As a result, these authors affirm that