The Psychological World of the Gay Teenager:Social Change, Narrative, and “Normality”

Identities and Identifications: Changes in Metropolitan Bisexual Men's Attitudes and Experiences

“…The extent to which this is occurring is debated, with Cohler and Hammack (2007) arguing that meanings of identity are becoming important in different ways. They highlight how a narrative of struggle and success dominated in the 1980s and 1990s, and has since been replaced by one of emancipation.…”

“…Thus, Cohler and Hammack (2007) contend that identities are still important for youth, and Savin-Williams' (2005) research documents a move away from pathology in sexual minorities experiences that has fundamentally influenced how they identify. Taken together, it is evident that there are profound changes occurring in the behaviors, experiences of identities of sexual minority youth, and that the influence on bisexual identities is undertheorized.…”

Narrative, psychology and the politics of sexual identity in the United States: from ‘sickness’ to ‘species’ to ‘subject’

“…Hammack, 2008;Hammack, Thompson, & Pilecki, 2009). In the case of same-sex desire, this work suggests that how individuals make social and psychological sense of their attractions depends upon the scripts or master narratives that are available to them in a particular social ecology of development (Cohler & Hammack, 2007;Hammack, 2005b;Hammack & Cohler, 2009;Westrate & McLean, 2010). Consistent with Foucault (1978), we view these master narratives as linked to particular political interests and thus in need of critical interrogation.…”

“…The queer theory movement provided an intellectual prism through which to make sense of the dissatisfaction of many same-sex-attracted individuals with a rigid species script that seemed to benefit some members of the community more than others and to silence or minimise intragroup dissent. In the first decade of the twentyfirst century, these forces have run concurrent with the increasing 'normality' of same-sex attraction among contemporary youth (Cohler & Hammack, 2007;Savin-Williams, 2005), which has further destabilised the species narrative.…”

“…A subject script can be linked to queer theory's influence within the academy, as well as the shifting historical forces in the US society (as well as in other societies) in which ideas about the fluidity of sexual desire as more 'natural' than rigid ideas about sexual identity have begun to flourish. As contemporary youth are exposed to these ideas -ideas that compete with a received rigid sexual taxonomy -they provide psychological scientists with a new set of data (Cohler & Hammack, 2007;Hammack & Cohler, 2009;. For the few researchers within the discipline who have been open to hearing these voices, and hence gaining access to subjectivity as it is lived and embodied in personal narrative construction, a new set of ideas about sexual identity has been generated.…”