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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Cultural Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 |
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1433156
This article is part of the Research Topic Gender, Sexuality, and Well-Being: Impact on Well-Being Due to Gender and Sexual Orientation-Based Discrimination View all 4 articles
"Where exactly do I fall?": A qualitative study investigating the intersection of race, gender, and sexual orientation
Provisionally accepted- Shandong University, Jinan, China
The purpose of this study was to explore the intersection of race, gender, and sexual orientation as they relate to the lived and educational experiences of Asian American female sexual minority (AAFSM) college students attending Midwestern universities in the U.S. To explore their experiences, qualitative research, as a scientific tool, was best suited to serve the goal of this study. We employed one of McCall’s (2005) three intersectionality methodological approaches—intra-categorical complexity—to guide the study. The first finding indicated that the AAFSM student participants had experienced intersectional objectifications, including racial, gendered, and sexual objectification. This finding answered our research question regarding what it is like to be AAFSM students attending predominantly White campuses in Midwestern universities. Our findings also showed that the participants intersectionally internalized racism, sexism, and heterosexism as strategies to avoid being ostracized, which in turn allowed society/institution to internalize these -isms as norms. The manifestations of intersectional internalizations reported by participants included racial stereotypes, Whitenization, stereotypical gender roles, gender norms, parental influence, and institutional influence. The findings also indicated that our participants had experienced intersectional blindness; consequently, their understandings of Asianness, womenness, and LGBTQness were affected. Another meaningful finding was that the racism, sexism, and heterosexism experiences of the AAFSM students were compounded and complex. The theme was best categorized as intersectional post-racism-(hetero)sexism. The findings regarding students’ experiences with intersectional internalizations, intersectional blindness, and intersectional post-racism-(hetero)sexism answered the remaining two research questions. We, then continuously discussed intersectional internalization; de-intersectional-internalization; re-intersectional-internalization; intersectional visibilities, connections, and representations; the implementation of intersectionality; and intersectionalism. Discussions and suggestions were presented for providing an intersectional inclusive campus environment for our participants who were AAFSMs attending Midwestern predominantly White universities. The discussions, as a milestone, provided meaningful suggestions for educators, administrators, and universities to effectively create an intersectional inclusive educational environment for AAFSMs.
Keywords: Intersectionality, Racism, Sexism, heterosexism, intersectionalism, Asian Americans, LGBTQ, internalization
Received: 15 May 2024; Accepted: 02 Sep 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 Zhang and Du. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Wenqian Du, Shandong University, Jinan, China
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