Male Homosexuality in Four Societies

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Male Homosexuality in Four Societies: Brazil, Guatemala, the Philippines and the United States
Cover of the first edition
AuthorsFrederick L. Whitam
Robin Mathy
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
SubjectMale homosexuality
PublisherPraeger
Publication date
1985
Media typePrint (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages241
ISBN978-0030042980

Male Homosexuality in Four Societies: Brazil, Guatemala, the Philippines and the United States is a 1985 work about male homosexuality by the sociologists Frederick L. Whitam and Robin Mathy.

Summary[edit]

The authors discuss male homosexuality in four societies: Brazil, Guatemala, the Philippines, and the United States.[1]

Reception[edit]

Male Homosexuality in Four Societies received a mixed review from the sociologist Barbara Risman in Social Forces.[2] The book was also reviewed by Evelyn Blackwood in the gay magazine The Advocate.[3] In the American Journal of Sociology, it received a notice as an important new book,[4] and a review from the sociologist John Gagnon.[5]

Risman wrote that the book provides the "strongest social-scientific argument yet made for the essentialist paradigm of sexuality" according to which sexual orientation is biologically innate" and "raises hard questions that cannot be ignored". However, she maintained that its arguments "ultimately fails on logical, theoretical, and empirical grounds." In her view, while it deserved to be commended for its complex "multi-method, cross-cultural" design, the work still suffered from "serious problems of sampling bias and analytic technique". She questioned the value of its finding that the gay men in their samples reported more "cross-gender interests" than the heterosexual controls, and accused its authors of "disregard for the large body of scholarship on sex/gender systems".[2]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Whitam & Mathy 1986, pp. 1–241.
  2. ^ a b Risman 1988, pp. 553–554.
  3. ^ Blackwood 1987, p. 62.
  4. ^ American Journal of Sociology 1985, p. 757.
  5. ^ Gagnon 1987, pp. 742–744.

Bibliography[edit]

Books
Journals
  • Blackwood, Evelyn (1987). "Nature vs. Nurture". The Advocate (483).  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
  • Gagnon, John (1987). "Male Homosexuality in Four Societies: Brazil, Guatemala, The Philippines and the United States". American Journal of Sociology. 93 (3): 742–744. doi:10.1086/228811.  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
  • Risman, Barbara (1988). "Male Homosexuality in Four Societies: Brazil, Guatemala, the Philippines, and the United States (Book)". Social Forces. 67 (2): 553–554. doi:10.2307/2579207. JSTOR 2579207.  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
  • "Important new Sociology Books from Praeger". American Journal of Sociology. 91 (3). 1985.  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)