Open Access Policy Deposits

This series is automatically populated with publications deposited by UCLA School of Law researchers in accordance with the University of California’s open access policies. For more information see Open Access Policy Deposits and the UC Publication Management System.

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Witnessing Astronomy

(2011)

An analysis of the role of witnessing (and of its legal articulations) in early telescopic astronomy. Mostly focused on the conversations between Kepler and Galileo.

Sexual orientation in transgender adults in the United States.

(2023)

BACKGROUND: Sexual orientation refers to a persons enduring emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to other people. Sexual orientation measures do not typically consider desires for, or sexual behavior with, transgender people. We describe measures inclusive of transgender people and characterize sexual orientation identity, behavior, and attraction in a representative sample of the U.S. transgender population. METHODS: Between April 2016-December 2018, a U.S. national probability sample of transgender (n = 274) and cisgender (n = 1,162) adults were invited to complete a self-administered web or mailed paper survey. We assessed sexual identity with updated response options inclusive of recent identity terms (e.g., queer), and revised sexual behavior and attraction measures that included transgender people. Multiple response options were allowed for sexual behavior and attraction. Weighted descriptive statistics and sexual orientation differences by gender identity groups were estimated using age-adjusted comparisons. RESULTS: Compared to the cisgender population, the transgender population was more likely to identify as a sexual minority and have heterogeneity in sexual orientation, behavior, and attraction. In the transgender population, the most frequently endorsed sexual orientation identities were bisexual (18.9%), queer (18.1%), and straight (17.6%). Sexually active transgender respondents reported diverse partners in the prior 5 years: 52.6% cisgender women (CW), 42.7% cisgender men (CM), 16.9% transgender women (TW), and 19.5% transgender men (TM); 27.7% did not have sex in the past 5 years. Overall, 73.6% were somewhat/ very attracted to CW, 58.3% CM, 56.8% TW, 52.4% TM, 59.9% genderqueer/nonbinary-females-at-birth, 51.9% genderqueer/nonbinary-males-at-birth. Sexual orientation identity, behavior, and attraction significantly differed by gender identity for TW, TM, and nonbinary participants (all p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Inclusive measures of sexual orientation captured diverse sexual identities, partner genders, and desires. Future research is needed to cognitively test and validate these measures, especially with cisgender respondents, and to assess the relation of sexual orientation and health for transgender people.

Minority stress theory: Application, critique, and continued relevance.

(2023)

The minority stress model has been influential in guiding research on sexual and gender minority health and well-being in psychology and related social and health sciences. Minority stress has theoretical roots in psychology, sociology, public health, and social welfare. Meyer provided the first integrative articulation of minority stress in 2003 as an explanatory theory aimed at understanding the social, psychological, and structural factors accounting for mental health inequalities facing sexual minority populations. This article reviews developments in minority stress theory over the past two decades, focusing on critiques, applications, and reflections on its continued relevance in the context of rapidly changing social and policy contexts.

Disentangling the “net” from the “offset”: learning for net-zero climate policy from an analysis of “no-net-loss” in biodiversity

(2023)

Net-zero has proved a rapid and powerful convening concept for climate policy. Rather than treating it as a novel development from the perspective of climate policy, we examine net-zero in the context of the longer history and experience of the “no-net-loss” framing from biodiversity policy. Drawing on material from scholarly, policy and activist literature and cultural political economy theory, we interpret the turn to “net” policies and practices as part of the political economy of neoliberalism, in which the quantification and commodification of the environment, and in particular—trading through an offset market, enable continued ideological dominance of economic freedoms. This analysis highlights the ways in which the adoption of a “net” framing reconstructs the goals, processes and mechanisms involved. It is the neoliberal commitment to markets that drives the adoption of net framings for the very purpose of validating offsetting markets. Understanding the making of “net” measures in this way highlights the potential to disentangle the “net” from the “offset”, and we discuss the various obfuscations and perversities this entanglement affords. We argue that the delivery of net outcomes might be separated from the mechanism of offsetting, and the marketization of compensation it is typically presumed to involve, but may yet remain entangled in neoliberal political ideology. In conclusion we suggest some conditions for more effective, fair and sustainable delivery of “net-zero” climate policy.

Cover page of Violent victimization at the intersections of sexual orientation, gender identity, and race: National Crime Victimization Survey, 2017–2019

Violent victimization at the intersections of sexual orientation, gender identity, and race: National Crime Victimization Survey, 2017–2019

(2023)

Introduction

Prior research has found that experiences with violence in the U.S. differ across individual demographic characteristics, including race, gender, and sexual orientation. However, peer reviewed studies have yet to examine the relationship between the intersections of race, gender, and sexual orientation, victimization risk, and characteristics of victimization.

Methods

We use data from three years (2017-2019) of the National Crime Victimization Survey, the primary source of information on criminal victimization in the United States, to examine victimization at the intersection of sexual orientation, gender, and race/ethnicity. We test whether non-Hispanic Black, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic White sexual and gender minority (SGM) persons aged 16 or over are victimized at greater rates than their non-SGM counterparts and assess whether there are differences between sexual minority females and males of each racial group. We further document characteristics of victimization such as reporting to the police by SGM status and race or ethnicity.

Results

We find that SGMs are disproportionately more likely to be victims of violent crime than non-SGM people, and these disparities are present across the assessed racial and ethnic groups (non-Hispanic Black odds ratio [OR] = 3.3, 90% CI [CI] = 1.36, 5.16; Hispanic OR = 4.5, CI = 2.25, 6.71; non-Hispanic White OR = 4.8, CI = 2.25, 6.71). However, sexual orientation disparities are statistically distinguishable for lesbian or bisexual (LB) non-Hispanic White and Hispanic females but not for non-Hispanic Black LB females. Among LB females, the overall differences in victimization were primarily driven by bisexual respondents. We further find racial and ethnic differences among SGM victims in the likelihood of having the victimization reported to the police, in the utilization of community (non-police) resources, and in other aspects of victimization experiences, such as whether arrests occurred or in the suspicion that the violent incident was a hate crime.

Conclusions

Our findings raise indicate a complex picture of how sexual orientation, gender identity, sex, and race and ethnicity interact in victimizations and their characteristics that should be further explored.