Positioning Identities: Lesbians' and Gays' Experiences with Mental Health Care

219 Pages·2006·12.126 MB·English

by  Hazel Katherine Platzer

Positioning Identities
•

•
Lesbians’ and Gays’ Experiences
with Mental Health Care
by
Hazel K. Platzer
First published 2006 by Qual Institute Press
Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 2006 Hazel Katherine Platzer
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereaf­
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retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Canadian Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Platzer, Hazel K. (Hazel Katherine), 1958-
Positioning identities : lesbians' and gays' experiences with mental health care / by Hazel K.
Platzer.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-9683044-6-X
1. Gays--Mental health services. 2. Lesbians—Mental health services. 3. Coming out
(Sexual orientation) 4. Homophobia. 5. Heterosexism. I. Title.
RC451.4.G39P58 2006 362.2'086'64 C2006-901107-9
Graphic Design: Murray Pearson
Cover Photos: Hazel K. Platzer
Copyeditor/Typesetter: Moira Calder
ISBN 13: 978-1-59874-292-3 (pbk)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements v
Preface ix
1 Disordered Identities 1
2 The Persistence of the Pathologization of Lesbian and
Gay Sexual Identities 7
3 On Not Grasping the Nettle 23
4 The Research That Cannot Speak Its Name 49
5 Identity Parade: Experiences in the Line-Up for
Mental Health Care 89
6 Mistaken Identities through a Phenomenological Lens 109
7 A Discursive Analysis of Resistance to Mistaken Identities 123
8 Disintegrating the Dualisms and Reintegrating Identities 143
9 Negotiating Sexual Identities 163
References 173
Index 203

Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I would like to thank all the research participants,
who remain anonymous and who trusted me enough to describe their
painful stories. Many of them also entrusted me with some grander
notion of trying to improve health care for future generations coming out
behind them. This duty will remain as a work in progress. I would also like
to thank Lizanne Wilson (Clinical Nurse Specialist HIV and Mental
Health), who helped me gain access to potential recruitment sites and who
acted as a safety net, offering and providing counseling and support to
research participants. Thanks also to Lizanne for emotional support provid­
ed to me, which was much needed at times, and also for her belief in the
importance of the research study. Lizanne introduced me to two key peer
researchers (Sharon and Rosy), whose participation in the project made a
real difference in terms of accessing local people who were not the “usual
suspects.” They also helped me cross the age divide and provided language
tuition, which helped me talk to the “youth of today.” Thanks also to local
youth workers Peter Matthews, Annabelle Hodgson, and Tracey Newman
for helping me to connect with young people through their youth services
and for helpful discussions.
A particularly tortuous quest to find a second supervisor or an external
advisor was supported by Sheila Payne, Rose Whiles, and Mike Hardey.
Roger Ingham was incredibly helpful and supportive, and put me in touch
with Adrian Coyle at the University of Surrey. I thank Adrian for all his
input as an external advisor, for squirreling me into an ESRC (Economic
and Social Research Council) research methods course, and for linking me
vi
into lesbian and gay psychology networks. I also thank Judith
Lathlean,who took over my supervision at Southampton after a period of
intermission: Without her, this piece of work would not have reached its
conclusion. Also thanks to Jill Macleod Clark, for the initial academic con­
versation about this project many years ago, and my examiners, Paul Flowers
and Andree Le May, for constructive feedback and support. Janice Morse
and Moira Calder worked tirelessly to produce the thesis for publication,
and I am indebted to both of them.
There are many other people who have supported me in different ways:
Bronagh Walsh for her sense of humor, intelligence, and solidarity in the
face of adversity; Martin McColl, for joining the Steering Group and offer­
ing to pick up any research participants under the age of 16 if they required
emergency counseling; Jan Bridget, for saving people’s lives while some of
us engaged in something more academic and for her contempt as an activist
toward armchair social constructionists; Jane Cant, for help traversing the
local ethics committee; Richard Ashcroft, for advice about consent in the
research process for young people; Jonathon Shepherd, for information
about the local peer education project; Robert Power, for a long conversa­
tion about privileged access interviewers and incentives; Dale Webb, David
Wright, Nick Drey, and Pete Betts, who helped me to understand the local
context; Glen Turner and Neil Dacombe at Gay Men’s Health Project, for
conversations about peer researchers and the use of their premises to inter­
view some participants; Chris Bagley, for a discussion about his random
household survey; Hilary Hinds, for pointing out the historical use of the
phrase “an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort”; Jacky Stacey, assisted by
Hilary Hinds, for an impromptu al fresco tutorial on writing introductory
and concluding chapters; Mary Everett, for continuing to ask me how I was
getting on with my Ph.D. and telling me it was important to finish it; Lucy
Yardley, for keeping me up to date with her draft publications on qualita­
tive methodologies; Mary Gobbi, for corridor conversations about the inef­
fable and the sixth moment; my sister-out-law Jen and her partner, Joan, for
paying my therapist; my therapist; Sally Munt, for recommending key texts
by Judith Butler, Anthony Giddens, Victor Seidler, and David Sibley;
David Wright, for recommending key texts by David Bell and Gill Valen­
tine, and Nancy Duncan; Chris Gildersleeve and all the other workers at
PACE; Helen Jones a nd Rose Hall at Mind in Brighton and Hove, whose
vii
daily work made them constantly remind me that any research that would
improve the plight of lesbians and gay men with mental health needs had to
be finished and put in the public domain; Louise Sprowl, the equal oppor­
tunities officer at the University of Southampton, for helping me to recog­
nize and cope with the homophobic bullying I was at the receiving end of
while registered as a full-time student; the Workers at Mind in
Southampton, particularly Donna Hiscock and Lesley Hall, for publicizing
the research to potential research participants; David Longman at
Switchboard, for the same; Wessex Medical Trust, for a grant to cover the
costs of transcribing interview material; to my sister, Shirley, and my broth­
er in law, Ron, for their railing against homophobes; and to David House,
for dragging me back to the St. Peter’s band of ringers just when I needed to
be distracted with Stedman and Surprise methods.
Finally and most important, I thank my “pretended” family: my partner,
Flis, for her continued belief in my ability to complete this piece of work
and crucial reminders at critical moments that I had started out as a confi­
dent person; also Flis again and our children, Jamie and Lizzie, who put up
with some absence on my part during the final push for the frontier.

Preface
This dissertation has its beginnings in a piece of political and profes­
sional activism instigated by the British Conservative government’s
attack on the human rights of lesbians and gay men when they intro­
duced a clause into the Local Government Bill in 1987; this later became
Section 28 of the Local Government Act, which was designed to prevent the
“promotion of homosexuality and pretended family relationships” (United
Kingdom, 1988). On attending local “Stop the Clause” meetings and a lobby
of Parliament, I began to realize the serious potential health implications of
this proposed legislation. Later, when participating in a lobby of the Houses
of Parliament, I was particularly struck by the number of placards demon­
strators were holding, which said,
No more teenage suicides
1 in 5 lesbian and gay teenagers attempt suicide
My feeling at the time on seeing these placards was one of dissociation
and a sense of anachronism; how was it possible for shame and pride to coex­
ist here? Out, proud, and confident demonstrators were pointing to the
shame carrièd within us. In retrospect, this was the first moment of my con­
scious recognition of and engagement with the binary. However, it has taken
me several years of activism, experience, and academic research to under­
stand this moment in a more complete and useful way, involving a journey
of contesting and reconstructing binaries. These binaries that shape our