Heterosexism

In their article, Woodford, Kulick, Sinco and Hong analyze the effect of both overt, such as physical or verbal attacks, and subtle, such as the use of micro-aggressions, forms of heterosexism on college LGBQ students’ mental health, with a focus to see how self confidence and acceptance counteracts the prejudice. All students in question are cisgender, self-identified as either gay, lesbian, bisexual or queer, and attended a post secondary education facility in the United States of America, with the largest demographical group coming from Michigan and the surrounding areas. In addition to expecting certain populations (such as those whose gender expression varies from the norm, persons of colour, and men) to experience harsher judgement, the

However, the article is first and foremost a detailed conclusion of experiment results, which countered the analytical paper I had anticipated. Nevertheless, one of the paper’s main strengths is that its empirical nature leaves very little room for bias, which I had expected upon touching such a sensitive topic. The authors do not condone nor shun those in the LGBTQ+ community, nor do they sanction those who perpetuate heterosexism. The article’s language, which is highly mathematic, made the analysis portion of the paper difficult to fully comprehend, as a student who has never been very skilled at math, and as such, I feel I relied mainly on the introduction, discussion and conclusion, therefor missing a large part of the information. Furthermore, the research itself is limited in its nature, and the authors acknowledge this in their claim that further research will be needed. Despite the hypothesizing that certain populations, such as persons of colour, were to experience more heterosexism, 78% of the surveyed students were white. In addition to this, the majority of the schools being studied were from Northern regions of the country, though surveying schools in the South may have provided more of a