Opn | Gay men’s amic succs uld show how to close the genr gap - The Washgton Post

Contents:

• GAY MEN OUTPERFORM STRAIGHT UNTERPARTS NEARLY EVERY AMIC MEASURE, STUDY FDS
• GAY MEN EARN DEGRE AT HIGHT RATE, STUDY FDS
• OPN WHAT GAY MEN’S STUNNG SUCCS MIGHT TEACH ABOUT THE AMIC GENR GAP

GAY MEN OUTPERFORM STRAIGHT UNTERPARTS NEARLY EVERY AMIC MEASURE, STUDY FDS

Wh theater doors bolted shut for the next…foreeable future, we’re thrilled to see some Broadway talent pop up the pilot episo of Boy•Friends, a new edy based off the My Gay Boyiend web-seri. The show centers around two llege roommat, one gay and one straight, and their “journey through llege and to adulthood to bee the homo-hetero power uple of the ag.

“I love gay people, ” activist and playwright Larry Kramer proclaimed at the outset of a 2004 speech New York Cy. ”A new study makg wav among LGBTQ-foced amics lends empiril crence to the inic Act Up -founr’s priful claims — not to the supposed sweepg superry of gay men, rather to the more narrow assertn that this group is remarkably cled to excel the paper, which was published the Amerin Soclogil Review on Feb.

20, to starkly opposg nclns about how growg up gay appears to affect the amic performance of mal vers soclogist Joel Mtleman (Courty Amy Lev)Joel Mtleman, a Universy of Notre Dame soclogist and the paper’s sole thor, found that on an array of amic measur, gay mal outperform all other groups on average, across all major racial groups.

GAY MEN EARN DEGRE AT HIGHT RATE, STUDY FDS

Conversely, he nclud that lbians perform more poorly school overall and that Black gay women have a much lower llege graduatn rate than their whe unterparts. “This article is focg a lens on what we do to all kids, ” Lisa Diamond, a psychology profsor at the Universy of Utah, said of the societal prsur that appear to impe lbians school even as the strsors possibly unnerve gay mal to pensatg for homophobia through amic strivg. From this, Mtleman med a trove of data cludg 15, 270 stunts’ high school and unrgraduate three surveys of Amerin adults nsistently dited that gay men are far more likely than straight men to have graduated om high school or llege, wh jt over half of gay men havg earned a llege gree, pared wh about 35 percent of straight men.

Some 6 percent of gay men have a Ph. Mtleman found that gay men’s nsirably higher levels of tnal attament hold even after takg to acunt differenc men’s race and birth horts. What’s more, gay men’s llege graduatn rate dramatilly bts even that of straight women, about one-third of whom have a bachelor’s longudal survey showed that pared wh their straight male peers, gay mal earned higher GPAs high school and llege, enrolled harr class, took school more serly, had more amilly md iends and had a much lower rate of ever droppg out for a month or more.

OPN WHAT GAY MEN’S STUNNG SUCCS MIGHT TEACH ABOUT THE AMIC GENR GAP

But Mtleman found this advantage was limed almost entirely to whe lbians, and among women born more recently, gay women’s tnal edge has erod. But as nstrictns on women’s potential have eased sce the 1960s, straight women’s llege graduatn rate has risen to the pot of statistil pary wh lbians among today’s young Nancy Drew effectSearchg for the drivers of the differenc school performance between straight and gay stunts, Mtleman ed a mache-learng algorhm to intify rponse patterns to survey qutns that predicted beg male vers female among members of the longudal hort.

In turn, he found that beg atypil for their genr survey rpons helped expla at least part of the gay stunts’ GPA suggted that not jt sexual orientatn, but s tersectn wh genr affectatn uld have fluenced how well the gay and lbians stunts did school.

“To the extent that ’s feme to study and appreciate validatn an amic sphere, the gay boys will have an advantage, ” Yale School of Public Health psychologist John Pachankis the flip si, young lbians may be discled to intify wh the femy trsic to the good-stunt ial, Mtleman suggted. “Girls who prent as mascule are seen as troublemakers, are seen as spic some way, ” Mtleman ‘Bt Ltle Boy the World’ phenomenon An addnal factor that Mtleman argued driv the average gay boy to surpass even the average straight girl amilly is what’s known queer psychology as the “Bt Ltle Boy the World” phenomenon. This refers to the tle of the 1973 memoir by former Democratic Natnal Commtee treasurer Andrew Tobias, which he chronicled his youthful csa to appease his ternalized homophobia through admissn to Harvard Universy and other feats of superlative a 2013 paper published Basic and Applied Social Psychology, psychologist Mark Hatzenbuehler, now of Harvard Universy, and Pachankis found evince suggtg that gay male llege stunts ed sought to pensate for anti-gay stigma by rivg their self-worth part through amic mastery and other forms of psychologil paradigm also pris the bedrock of “The Velvet Rage, ” psychologist Alan Downs’ go-to bible for queer men, published 2005, on “overg the pa of growg up gay a straight man’s world.

Chris Remishofsky, is gay and said the fdgs of Mtleman’s paper closely reflect his personal experience. “From a young age, ” said Remishofsky, a rmatologist Sterlg Heights, Michigan, “I was termed to bee a doctor so I uld prove to everyone that I uld be succsful even though I was gay. ”An analysis by the Brookgs Instutn’s Haton Project published January found that gay male upl earn $30, 000 more annually than lbian Meyer, a rearcher at UCLA’s Williams Instute, exprsed trigue over the story Mtleman’s paper tells of many gay men apparently overg nsirable odds.

Meyer poted to the Centers for Disease Control and Preventn’s Youth Risk Behavr Surveillance reports that have chronicled the myriad strsors lbian, gay, bisexual and transgenr young people weather school and the lany of leter impacts, cludg prsn and, Mtleman found that on the whole, lbian, gay and bisexual young people reported feelg more unsafe school and suffered higher levels of discrimatn and what’s known as mory strs than their straight peers. “We’re basilly sayg gay boys have a terrible school environment, but still, on average, they’re dog fantastilly well.

”The price queer youth payBrian Mtanski, a profsor of medil social scienc at Northwtern Universy, utned that the relative succs of gay men uld amount to a double-edged sword. “While certaly, ’s good news for the young gay men that they’re able to succeed well amilly, I do have some real ncerns about what kd of prsure they’re puttg on themselv, ” he said. Suggtg that feverish amic strivg search of validatn n e at a steep st to mental and physil health, Mtanski poted to his own rearch fdgs that gay men have disproportnately high levels of chronic flammatn.