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Maintaining the Hegemonic Masculinity Through Selective Attachment, Homophobia, and Gay-Baiting in Schools: Challenges to Intervention

I am pleased to discuss and offer commentary, with a focus on implications for intervention, on the issues and research findings presented in the articles that comprise this special issue of School Psychology Review, titled "Sexual Orientation, Homophobia, Bullying, and Psychological Sequelae in Adolescents: Research and Practice Findings." I imagine I was invited to comment on the studies because of my own scholarship in the area of sexual minority youth. I have written, with my graduate students, about the prevalence of homophobia and heterosexism in our culture and its effect on the development of gay, lesbian, bisexual (GLB), or questioning youth (Lasser & Tharinger, 1997; Lasser, Tharinger & Cloth, 2006). I have also applied attachment theory to the understanding of the "coming out" process for sexual minority youth, as well as the important roles family members and school personnel can play by providing a continuity of attachment behaviors for these youth as they are integrating their nonconforming sexual orientation (Tharinger & Wells, 2000). With Lasser (Lasser & Tharinger, 2003), I have discussed strategies related to "visibility management" that may be useful to GLB and questioning youth to employ, especially when a relationship, system, or environment is not safe. I draw from this combined base of knowledge in commenting on these articles. There is no doubt that in our current society being adolescent and GLB or questioning continues to be challenging and in many cases can be detrimental to the mental and behavioral health of the developing youth. The effect on health is primarily from the negative response that is still all too prevalent (often summed up with the words homophobia or heterosexism). The negative response has been viewed as the last bastion of prejudice in our society, and even applauded in some contexts. Efforts continue to be needed on individual, family, peer, school, community, societal, and legal bases to create a safe and healthy environment to eliminate harm and promote optimal development of GLB and questioning youth. I have addressed some of these needed efforts elsewhere (Lasser & Tharinger, 1997, 2006; Thar-inger & Wells, 2000), primarily from an attachment, relational psychology. However, in preparing this commentary, I found that my existing knowledge was not sufficient. My deficiency became apparent as I was considering the question, "Why is it so difficult to intervene and why is there such resistance?" In response, I began to familiarize myself with another literature, which has its home in sociology, psychology, and the interdisciplinary area of masculinity (Connell, 2005; Garbarino & deLara, 2002; Gilbert & Gilbert, 1998; Kimmel & Mahler, 2003; Mills, 2001; Sroudt, 2006). I came to understand and maintain here that until educators and health/ mental health professionals in and linked to schools, as well as parents and adolescent students, acquire a more in-depth understanding of gender politics, currently and historically, especially as it relates to masculinities and masculine hegemony, our interventions will be shortsighted. And I am starting to see and maintain here that masculine hegemony results in selective attachments--which results in a high cost, both for those withholding attachment behaviors and for those who are not receiving attachment behaviors they were accustomed to expecting. Comments on Research Findings and Their Implications I found the four research articles in this special issue to be well done, informative, methodologically sophisticated, and rich in ideas for further research and intervention efforts. The findings reported add to an accumulating literature that deserves serious attention in the academic community, but even more so in the community of schools and the policy that affects schools. I offer a tragic example of the need. The week I was finishing this commentary I was flying through the Dallas airport and heard on the televised news in the terminal about the ultimate type of bullying--the murder of a 15-year-old, openly gay adolescent in California. …