Betsy Crane

Pleasure is paramount: Adults with intellectual disabilities discuss sensuality and intimacy

The purpose of this qualitative case study research was to explore how adults with mild intellectual disabilities (ID) live out their social-sexual lives. Findings revealed the importance of both physical and emotional pleasure to five adults with ID. Research and educational efforts with this population have focused largely on reproduction and abuse prevention, emphasizing safety over the possibilities of human connectedness. Data sources included observations and a series of interviews. Findings in five areas – sensuality, intimacy, sexual experience, sexual attitudes, and sexual self-identity – demonstrate the richness of data that can be obtained with this population using qualitative research. Participants’ own words about their social-sexual lives are poignant, mirroring core social work pillars: self-determination and strengths perspective. Discussion includes recommendations for ways that social workers, as well as, sexuality and disability professionals can support individuals’ quality of life by addressing sexual pleasure as a key component of sexual health services.

Contesting Essentialist Theories of Patriarchal Relations: Evolutionary Psychology and the Denial of History:

This essay emerges from an ongoing mother-son dialogue about contemporary gender relations and their genesis in the history of patriarchy. In order to reframe patriarchy as a relational construct, rather than a simple group-based oppression, a performative notion of identities grounds the paper. It offers a critique of the body of literature that has developed under the broad heading of “evolutionary psychology,” insisting that gendered relations are not outcomes of genetic selection, divine mandate, or historical inevitability. An antidotal, millennia-spanning history of gender is offered as an epistemically and politically preferable explanation for patriarchal relations.

The Four Boxes of Gendered Sexuality: A Lesson Plan for Teaching About the History and Effects of Gendered Sexuality.

Why might intelligent, assertive females overlook sweet, caring guys, choosing instead to date males whose traditional masculinity makes them popular with other powerful males but who treat females and “weaker” males poorly? This lesson provides a structure for, reflection on, and critique of contemporary gender stereotypes. Students explore the history and effects of gendered sexuality, which begin at birth and continue until death. Gendered sexuality refers to the ways in which we experience our sexuality based on the interaction of our biological sex and gender socialization. The story told in this lesson illuminates how expectations for males and females are based on an historical and cultural legacy that all too often goes unexamined. We describe this legacy as an historically constructed pair of binaries, called the Four Boxes of Gendered Sexuality: Good Girl vs. Bad Girl and Tough Guy vs. Sweet Guy. Educators may use this lesson to assist a range of populations in understanding where these expectations come from, what enforces them, and their effects on sexual attitudes and behavior.

Teaching and learning qualitative methods through the dissertation advising relationship: Perspectives from a professor and a graduate

Mastery of qualitative research and its methods can be a challenge for doctoral students who often have had more academic course exposure and practical experience with quantitative research. Qualitative courses frequently provide a theoretical preliminary understanding, but it is the rich “on-the-ground” experience of doing research that synthesizes the learning, allowing a student to fully appreciate qualitative research as their own. This article presents the experience of a doctoral advisor and a student in the process of coaching a qualitative dissertation. Individual reflexivity, dialogic meaning making, and meeting notes from the dissertation process comprise the data sources for this inquiry. The instructor’s teaching approach is discussed as well as the student’s knowledge, values, and skills employed during the learning process. Additionally, two ethical dilemmas encountered by the student are examined, as well as use of a newly minted special education PhD as a qualitative research consultant. Technological tools such as Skype and Dropbox were used to bridge the geographical distance between their locations. Both the advisor and student offer insight into the experience, highlighting what worked well for them, lessons learned, and recommendations for future student/instructor dyads. The student finished his dissertation in four semesters, and won an “Outstanding Dissertation” Award, and is now cowriting subsequent journal articles with his dissertation chair. Thus, it is concluded that teaching qualitative research during the dissertation process creates a bridge between graduate course work and the practical application of qualitative methodology, in order to transition doctoral students to early career PhD-level researchers.

Queering Classes: Disrupting Hegemonic Masculinity and the Effects of Compulsory Heterosexuality in the Classroom

This essay focuses on the classroom and school environment as a setting where queering masculinity has opportunity and benefit for students, teachers, and administrators, particularly as relates to boys and the learning environment. Queering is defined as the disruption of those normative attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors evidenced in the curriculum, classroom, and school culture that reinforce hegemonic heterosexuality and gender conformity. As used here, such disruption introduces a paradigm of masculinity and sexuality that has a plurality of expressions and potentialities. This requires systemic change that addresses, models, and supports ways of being masculine that might otherwise be devalued because of association with and meaning given to homosexuality. Queering, then, disrupts assumptions of masculinity and its relationship to hegemonic heterosexuality.