Why Understanding Minority Stress Theory is Essential As We Celebrate Pride Month
A quick history of the evolution of minority stress theory.
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A huge shoutout to
, who has done incredible work unpacking Project 2025, the policy package designed by The Heritage Foundation, in close conjunction with the Republican National Convention, that will likely be implemented with a Trump win in November.Yesterday, she published a Substack called Why Christian Nationalists Hate Pride Month. Watkins writes:
“While Project 2025 doesn’t outline specific policy recommendations like charge all LGBTQIA+ people with crimes and throw them in jail, its Christian Nationalist subtext is clear:
Marriage is between one man and one unrelated woman. That is God’s definition of the family, the only one that should be recognized. (See “What Is A Family” HERE.)
Because God punishes nations for sexual immorality, it is a Christian Nationalist’s right to drive LGBTQIA+ people back into closets and force them to reject their sinful lifestyles. (See “Christian Nationalism: Where Sex Never Deserves Privacy” HERE.)
Project 2025 calls for repealing all policies that support LGBTQIA+ equity and replacing them with policies that support stable married nuclear families. (See “Project 2025: How Section Author Roger Severino Is Gunning for Same-Sex Marriage” HERE.)”
The writing is certainly on the wall for the civil rights attained by queer folks over the last 30 years to be overturned. In fact, we’re already seeing that happen for trans friends in New Hampshire, who have been subjected to the repeal of anti-discrimination laws through the recent passing of HB396. As
explains:“The state is one of the first to roll back existing protections for transgender people and now allows for private bans of transgender people in bathrooms, locker rooms, sports, and more. The bill now heads to Governor Sununu’s desk and is the fourth anti-LGBTQ+ bill passed this year in New Hampshire.”
Given the cracks erosion in the legal protections for trans and queer people, as shown in state legislatures, embodied in many local American communities, and threatened on a national level, this seems like a good time to revisit the concept of minority stress theory.
Introduced by Virginia Brooks in her seminal 1981 book Minority Stress and Lesbian Women, and later popularized in the ‘00s by Ilan Meyer at UCLA, the minority stress theory suggests that the unique stressors that queer folks face, especially given the micro- and macro-levels of discrimination (both in terms of policy, threats of violence, and physical violence) they experience, are directly connected to poor mental health and physical health outcomes.
Meyer specifically notes how external pressure and discrimination can lead to fear and internalized stress, which may manifest itself in the expectation that one will be judged, and corresponding communication patterns, as well as internalized homophobia and other stigmatizing beliefs about oneself.
Last year, Shardé McNeil Smith, professor in the human studies department at the University of Illinois, and two of her students, Matthew Rivas-Koehl and Dane Rivas-Koehl, published an extension to Meyer’s work in December 2023’s Journal of Family Theory and Review. In the article “The temporal intersectional minority stress model: Reimagining minority stress theory”, they identify eleven factors to consider when assessing for anxiety and exploring the corresponding communication patterns within queer populations (and other minority populations).
Intersectional identities for marginalized individuals and families. A few notes here. First, Meyer’s original writings only consider individuals, while Smith and the Rivas-Koehl’s invite folks to explore the relationships that queer individuals exist in, from family of origin to chosen family relationships. Second, they implore conversations about a diversity of sociodemographic features—gender, age, class, ethnicity, able-bodiedness, geography, race—and how each of these categories intersect with each other. For instance, how does the Black community in a rural farming community in North Carolina engage with a gay Black teenager given both the historical and present-day economic and physical discrimination and stereotyping that community has lived through? And how might that differ from the experiences of a gay Black teenager who grows up in a middle-class Black family in Prince George County in Maryland, the second wealthiest Black-majority county in the US?
General stressors. What are the everyday stage of life stressors that an individual and family experiences separate from those connected with LGBTQ discrimination? We must simultaneously keep our eye on the impact of discrimination and not assume that everything that a queer person (or other minority) experiences has to do with discrimination.
Minority stress processes with external causes: What are the stressors that are unique to a queer person? What are the ways that their school system or city council engages and celebrates (or demonizes) queer people? What is the likelihood of experiencing physical violence connected with homophobia or transphobia? (As a note, Meyer refers to these as “proximal” stressors.)
Perception of identities: How might a queer person perceive other people would engage with them if they fully disclosed and enacted their orientation? Minority stress acknowledges that queer people (and other minorities) are doing a consistent cost-benefit analysis regarding the social consequences (or gains) for being fully out. For instance, what are the risks that a gay Black teenager who presents a bit more femme face in a rural North Carolina county versus Prince George’s County in Maryland? How might the enactment of these identities impact other family members, and the relationship between the queer teenager and these family members? To see how this plays out in real time, this dilemma is essentially the character line for Eric in all four seasons of Sex Education.
Minority stress processes that are internalized: How does the rejection of a queer teenager from their family of origin impact the way that they might expect rejection in other relationships? How does that expectation of rejection impact the way that communication happens with other people? How does the expectation of rejection impact the way that a queer person might conceptualize their own sexuality and orientation, and how might that inform the way that a person initiates and builds relationships (sexual and non-sexual) with other people?
Coping and social support. Who are the safe, fully accepting people within a person’s natural community (i.e. family of origin, neighborhood)? What are non-familial structures that exist that support, celebrate, and nourish the development of a queer sexual identity? Who are chosen family members that support both the queer individual and their family members?
Health and well-being. What are the specific mental health conditions that may have developed as a result of navigating discrimination, tension, and violence? What are the physical conditions that may have developed? What accessibility does the person have to contraception, PrEP, and/or gender-affirmative medical care? What are the positive psychological gains connected with a queer person being able to live in a just, safe community? (As a note: Items 2-7 are all part of Meyer’s model. Items 8-11 are new additions from Smith and the Rivas-Koehl’s.)
Historical time: What are the significant historical events that have shaped policy, culture, and media messages for marginalized people? For instance, on this day (June 11) in 1973, Haworth Press announced the publication of the Journal of Homosexuality, the first journal dedicated to researching queer development, relationships, and policy that supports the thriving of queer folks. For more “This Day in LGBTQ+ History” factoids, check out the website The Lavender Effect.
Ontological time: How does queerness get engaged with and evolve by a person and family over the lifespan? For instance, when does a person recognize that they have a queer sexual orientation? When do they communicate that to other people in their lives, and what role might their cultural upbringing or family system play in the timing of that communication?
Generational time: This is a fusion of historical time and ontological time. What are the shared experiences of queer folks who were born in the same year? For instance, I was born in 1984, which means that I was 12 when the egregious Title V Abstinence Only Until Marriage was passed, which gave public schools access to large amounts of federal money to teach that abstinence outside of marriage is the expected sexual standard. While Texas, the state of my origin, gobbled that money up, my particular school district didn’t say much about sexuality throughout my middle/high school years, other than using sexually transmitted infections as fear factors to discourage teenagers from engaging in sexual activity. My sister was born in 1993, grew up in the same school district, and reported much more overt messages that promoted abstinence only sexual education.
Societal hegemonies. I’ve spoken before about it drives me nuts when liberal arts fields and communities adopt academic words without defining what they mean, completely oblivious to the classism and power of education that they are wielding while dropping words like “decolonize” and “divest”, currently in a battle royale for 2024’s worst offender of this trend. “Hegemonies” is on the list. Hegemonies refers to the ways that groups with power consolidate their values and lived experiences and develop policies and
propagandamedia messages that suggest that you can only be successful if you make these specific decisions with your life. Heteronormativity suggests you can only be successful if you engage in opposite-sex relationships. Cisnormativity suggests you can only be successful if you present as the gender that’s connected to the genitalia you were born with.
My colleagues and I had the pleasure of hosting Lucie Fielding, author of Trans Sex, at a conference on Friday. Lucie described her agitation at the concept of using Pride Month to affirm the existence of queer people for 30 days. For starters, affirmation is a really low bar for human engagement.
This is a problem with Awareness months, like June’s Pride Month and February’s Black History Month, as well as specific days, like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Black history is American history. Queer history is American history. The history of mothers and fathers, and the delineation of gender roles when parenting and administrating household responsibilities is American history.
History is a process, not a standalone event. A process that gets written when groups of people engage in a push/pull with the larger systems of the day, often resulting in pain and subjugation. A process that we are actively engaging with.
The minority stress model provides a framework for understanding how this process of advocating for change and human rights impacts the relationships of queer people and other minorities, whether they are in the front lines of demanding for change, like Lucie, or trying to do the best they can to get from day to day.
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Let’s heal together!
Jeremiah and Julia