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Nonetheless, other anecdotal evidence strongly indicates the relative fragility of heterosexual identity versus gay identity. (2012) showed that same-sex behaviors in men can be construed as bonding between members of a sports team, rather than signs of being gay. Anderson (2005) likely intended this one-drop rule to be illustrative, rather than absolute. This “one-drop rule” is similar to the one-drop rule of Black racial identification ( Khanna, 2010), and claims that one same-sex experience is enough to categorize someone as gay, whereas one opposite-sex experience is not sufficient to consider someone heterosexual. 45) to describe the relative fragility of heterosexuality and the relative robustness of being gay.
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The aim of this research is to investigate the proposed asymmetry in perceptions of the fragility of heterosexual identity versus gay identity and to explore potential psychological explanations for this phenomenon.Īnderson (2008) introduced the “one-drop rule” of sexual orientation ( Anderson, 2005, p. This fragility refers to the relative ease with which one’s heterosexual status can be lost, compared to that of gay status. Diverse types of evidence (mostly qualitative) allude to the idea that heterosexual identity is perceived as more fragile (i.e., easily compromised) than gay identity ( Anderson, 2005 Lee, 2006 Mize & Manago, 2018). Additionally, we investigated multiple explanations (moderators) of the perceived difference in fragility between heterosexual identity and gay identity and found that higher estimates of the gay/lesbian population decreased the difference between the (higher) perceived fragility of heterosexual identity and the (lower) perceived fragility of gay identity.Īsymmetrical perceptions of sexual orientation matter because people who are identified as belonging to a sexual minority group (e.g., gay people) are subjected to discrimination, violence, and stereotyping ( Mishel, 2016 Powell et al., 2015). Neither participant nor target gender eliminated or reversed this effect. Support for fragile heterosexuality was found using various methods: sexual orientation perceptions of a target who engaged in incongruent behavior, free-responses concerning behaviors required to change someone’s mind about a target’s sexual orientation, agreement with statements about men/women’s sexual orientation, and agreement with gender-neutral statements about sexual orientation. Four studies ( N 1 = 90, N 2 = 247, N 3 = 500, N 4 = 1,176) investigated whether this was the case for heterosexual identity, relative to gay identity. Previous research demonstrates that membership of majority groups is often perceived as more fragile than membership of minority groups.