Gender bias on Wikipedia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_bias_on_Wikipedia

 

The Wikipedia Monument in Słubice, Poland, features both male and female editors. The initial model for the sculpture featured only men.

Gender bias on Wikipedia, also known as the Wikipedia gender gap, refers to the fact that Wikipedia contributors are mostly male, that relatively few biographies on Wikipedia are about women, and that topics of interest to women are less well-covered.

In a 2018 survey covering 12 language versions of Wikipedia and some other Wikimedia Foundation projects, 90% of 3,734 respondents reported their gender as male, 8.8% as female, and 1% as other; among contributors to the English Wikipedia, 84.7% identified as male, 13.6% as female, and 1.7% as other (total of 88 respondents). In 2019, Katherine Maher, then CEO of Wikimedia Foundation, said her team's working assumption was that women make up 15–20% of total contributors.

Wikipedia's articles about women are less likely to be included, expanded, and detailed. A 2021 study found that, in April 2017, 41% of biographies nominated for deletion were women despite only 17% of published biographies being women. The visibility and reachability of women on Wikipedia is limited, with a 2015 report finding that female pages generally "tend to be more linked to men". Language that is considered sexist, loaded, or otherwise gendered has been identified in articles about women. Gender bias features among the most frequent criticisms of Wikipedia, sometimes as part of a more general criticism about systemic bias in Wikipedia.

In 2015, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales announced that the encyclopedia had failed to reach its goal to retain 25% female editorship. Programs such as edit-a-thons and Women in Red have been developed to encourage female editors and increase the coverage of women's topics.

Gender bias in participation

Efforts to measure gender disparity

The first study of world-wide presence in 2008 found that 13% of all editors were female, which, after a follow-up study in 2011, was reduced to 9% globally. In the United States, especially within the English Wikipedia, a 2015 study found that 15% of contributors were women.

In 2009, a Wikimedia Foundation survey revealed that 6% of editors who made more than 500 edits were female, with the average male editor having twice as many edits.

Comparison of results for the proportion of Wikipedia readers and editors from the nationally representative Pew survey and the WMF/UNU-MERIT survey (UNU) for a series of dichotomous variables in both surveys. Adjusted numbers for editors assume that response bias for editors is identical to observed response bias for readers and, in the rightmost column, that bias is stable for editors outside the United States. Table reproduced from this source.

Variable	Readers US (Pew)	Readers US (UNU)	Editors US (UNU)	Editors US Adj.	Editors (UNU)	Editors Adj.
female	49.0	39.9	17.8	22.7	12.7	16.1
married	60.1	44.1	30.9	36.3	33.2	38.4
children	36.0	29.4	16.4	27.6	14.4	25.3
immigrant	10.1	14.4	12.1	9.8	8.2	7.4
student	17.7	29.9	46.0	38.5	47.7	40.3

In 2010, United Nations University and UNU-MERIT jointly presented an overview of the results of a global Wikipedia survey. A 30 January 2011 New York Times article cited this Wikimedia Foundation collaboration, which indicated that fewer than 13% of contributors to Wikipedia are women. Sue Gardner, then executive director of the foundation, said that increasing diversity was about making the encyclopedia "as good as it could be". Factors the article cited as possibly discouraging women from editing included the "obsessive fact-loving realm", associations with the "hard-driving hacker crowd", and the necessity to be "open to very difficult, high-conflict people, even misogynists". In 2013, the results of the survey were challenged by Hill and Shaw using corrective estimation techniques to suggest upward corrections to the data from the survey and to recommend updates to the statistics being surveyed, giving 22.7% for adult US female editors and 16.1% overall.

In February 2011, The New York Times followed up with a series of opinions on the subject under the banner, "Where Are the Women in Wikipedia?" Susan C. Herring, a professor of information science and linguistics, said that she was not surprised by the Wikipedia contributors' gender gap. She said that the often contentious nature of Wikipedia article "talk" pages, where article content is discussed, is unappealing to many women, "if not outright intimidating". Joseph M. Reagle reacted similarly, saying that the combination of a "culture of hacker elitism", combined with the disproportionate effect of high-conflict members (a minority) on the community atmosphere, can make it unappealing. He said, "the ideology and rhetoric of freedom and openness can then be used (a) to suppress concerns about inappropriate or offensive speech as 'censorship' and (b) to rationalize low female participation as simply a matter of their personal preference and choice." Justine Cassell said that although women are as knowledgeable as men, and as able to defend their point of view, "it is still the case in American society that debate, contention, and vigorous defense of one's position is often still seen as a male stance, and women's use of these speech styles can call forth negative evaluations."

In April 2011, the Wikimedia Foundation conducted its first semi-annual Wikipedia survey. It suggested that 9% of Wikipedia editors are women. It also reported, "Contrary to the perception of some, our data shows that very few women editors feel like they have been harassed, and very few feel Wikipedia is a sexualized environment." However, an October 2011 paper at the International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration found evidence that suggested that Wikipedia may have "a culture that may be resistant to female participation".

A study published in 2014 found that there is also an "Internet skills gap" with regard to Wikipedia editors. The authors found that the most likely Wikipedia contributors are high-skilled men and that there is no gender gap among low-skilled editors, and concluded that the "skills gap" exacerbates the gender gap among editors. During 2010–14, women made up 61% of participants of the college courses arranged by the Wiki Education Foundation program that included editing Wikipedia as part of the curriculum. Their contributions were found to shift the Wikipedia content from pop-culture and STEM towards social sciences and humanities.

In 2015, Katherine Maher, Gardner's successor as the director of the Wikimedia Foundation, argued that Wikipedia's gender bias "reflects society as a whole". For example, she noted that Wikipedia is dependent on secondary sources which have similar biases. She agreed that Wikipedia's editing process introduces biases of its own, especially as topics that are popular among its predominantly male editors draw more edits.

A 2017 study found that women participating in an experiment by editing a Wikipedia-like site tended to view other editors as male, and to view their responses as more critical than if the other editor was gender-neutral. The study concluded that:

...visible female editors on Wikipedia and broader encouragement of the use of constructive feedback may begin to alleviate the Wikipedia gender gap. Furthermore, the relatively high proportion of anonymous editors may exacerbate the Wikipedia gender gap, as anonymity may often be perceived as male and more critical.

A 2017 study by Heather Ford and Judy Wajcman observes that research on the gender bias continues to frame the problem as a deficit in women. In contrast, their central argument states that infrastructure studies in feminist technoscience allows the gender analysis to be taken to a further level. It looks at three issues within the infrastructure: content policies, software, and the legalistic framework of operation. It suggests that progress can be made through altering that culture of knowledge production through encouraging alternate knowledge, reducing the technical barriers to editing, and addressing the complexity of Wikipedia policies.

In their February 2018 article, "Pipeline of Online Participation Inequalities: The Case of Wikipedia Editing", Shaw and Hargittai concluded from their studies that solving the problems of participation inequality including gender bias requires a broader focus on subjects other than inequality. They recommended a focus on encouraging participants of all educational backgrounds, skill levels, and age groups will help Wikipedia to improve. They recommended further that informing more women that Wikipedia is free to edit and open to everyone is critical in eliminating gender bias.

In March 2018, mathematician Marie A. Vitulli wrote in Notices of the American Mathematical Society, "The percentage of women editors on Wikipedia remains dismally low."

In 2014, Noopur Raval, a PhD candidate at UC Irvine, wrote in "The Encyclopedia Must Fail!– Notes on Queering Wikipedia" that "making a platform open access does not automatically translate to equality of participation, ease of access, or cultural acceptance of the medium." In 2017, researchers Matthew A. Vetter and Keon Mandell Pettiway explain that the white, cis-gendered male dominance among Wikipedia editors has led to the "erasure of non-normative gender and sexual identities", in addition to cis-gendered females. The "androcentric and heteronormative discourses" of Wikipedia editing insufficiently allow "marginalized gender and sexual identities to take part in language use and the construction of knowledge."

Causes

Former Wikimedia Foundation executive director Sue Gardner provided nine reasons, offered by female Wikipedia editors, "Why Women Don't Edit Wikipedia."

Some gender research literature suggests that the difference in contribution rates could be due to three factors: (1) the high levels of conflict in discussions, (2) dislike of critical environments, and (3) lack of confidence in editing other contributors' work.

The New York Times pointed out that Wikipedia's female participation rate may be in line with other "public thought-leadership forums". A 2010 study revealed a Wikipedia female participation rate of 13 percent, observed to be close to the 15 percent overall female participation rate of other "public thought-leadership forums". Wikipedia research fellow Sarah Stierch acknowledged that it is "fairly common" for Wikipedia contributors to remain gender-anonymous. A perceived unwelcoming culture and tolerance of violent and abusive language are also reasons put forth for the gender gap. According to a 2013 study, another cause of the gender gap in Wikipedia is the failure to attract and retain female editors, resulting in a negative impact on Wikipedia's coverage. As well, Wikipedia "...editors that publicly identify as women face harassment" from other Wikipedia editors.

Former Wikimedia Foundation executive director Sue Gardner cited nine reasons why women don't edit Wikipedia, culled from comments by female Wikipedia editors:

1. A lack of user-friendliness in the editing interface.
2. Not having enough free time.
3. A lack of self-confidence.
4. Aversion to conflict and an unwillingness to participate in lengthy edit wars.
5. Belief that their contributions are too likely to be reverted or deleted.
6. Some find its overall atmosphere misogynistic.
7. Wikipedia culture is sexual in ways they find off-putting.
8. Being addressed as male is off-putting to women whose primary language has grammatical gender.
9. Fewer opportunities for social relationships and a welcoming tone compared to other sites.

Though the proportion of female readership to male readership on Wikipedia is roughly equal (47%), women are less likely to convert themselves to editors (16%). Several studies suggest that there may be a formed culture in Wikipedia that discourages women from participating. Lam et al. link this culture due to a disparity in male-to-female centric topics represented and edited, the tendency for female users to be more active in the social and community aspects of Wikipedia, an increased likelihood that edits by new female editors are reverted, and/or that articles with high proportions of female editors are more contentious.

In 2019, Schlomit Aharoni Lir described "the vicious circle" model, displaying how the five layers of negative reputation, anonymity, fear, alienation and rejection – enhance each other, in a manner that deters women from contributing to the website. In order for more women to join Wikipedia, the researcher offers the implantation of a "Virtuous Circle" that consists of nonymity, connection to social media, inclusionist policy, soft deletion and red-flagging harassments.

In Wikimedia's Gender Equity Report in 2018, 14% of interviewees identified poor community health as a significant challenge in being an editor on Wikipedia. In the study, community health was defined as harassment, a general lack of support for gender equity work and a lack of diversity in leadership.

After reviewing testimonies that ranged from microaggressions to direct attacks, the Wikipedia Board of Trustees voted in May 2020 to adopt a more formal moderation process to fight against harassment and to uphold Wikipedia's community standards. The foundation has been tasked to finish the draft of this plan by the end of 2020, and it will include banning users who participate in gender harassment, providing support and communities for all gender identities, putting more resources into the Trust and Safety Team, and more.

Collier and Bear in 2012 summarized the reason for working barriers of women in Wikipedia in three words: conflict, criticism and confidence. The authors suggested that "If a community tolerates a culture of conflict that males perceived to be simply 'competitive' or witty and sarcastic they are likely to find themselves losing the many benefits female contributors can bring to the table." Criticism refers to women's unwillingness to edit someone else's work and to let their work be edited by someone else; Confidence shows that women are often not too confident about their own expertise and ability in editing and contributing to a certain work. Wikipedia's free to edit policy gives Internet users an open platform, while also unconsciously breeding a competitive and critical environment that limits women's incentives to participate.

Through examining the power infrastructure of Wikipedia, Ford and Wajcman pointed out another cause that may reinforce Wikipedia's gender bias. Editing on Wikipedia requires "particular forms of sociotechnical expertise and authority that constitute the knowledge or epistemological infrastructure of Wikipedia". People who are equipped with this expertise and skill are considered more likely to reach positions with power in Wikipedia. These are proposed to be predominantly men.

Studies have also considered the gender bias in Wikipedia from a historical perspective. Konieczny and Klein indicated that Wikipedia is just a part of our biased society which has a long history of gender inequality. As Wikipedia records daily activities by individual editors, it serves as both "a reflection of the world" and "a tool used to produce our world".

An example of a direct account of gender bias comes from Wikipedia user Lightbreather, where she recounts having pornographic images linked to her username as a way to discredit her Wikipedia contributions.

Harassment, however, also exists for LGBT people. Those who identify as being part of the community are typically subjected to harassment if their identities are made public. For example, an administrator on a Wikipedia page blocked an editor, merely because the person's username implied they were a part of the LGBT community.

Gender bias in content

In 2016, Wagner et al. found that gender inequality manifests itself in Wikipedia's biographical content in multiple ways, including unequal thresholds for including an article on the person, topical bias, linguistic bias, and structural inequalities. The authors found that women with biographies on Wikipedia are slightly more notable than men on Wikipedia, and proposed three possible explanations for future research: 1) that editors are more likely to write about their own gender, 2) that men are more likely to create articles about themselves, and 3) that external sources make women less visible. As for topical bias, biographies about women tend to focus more on family-, gender-, and relationship-related topics. This is especially true for biographies of women born before 1900. The authors also found structural differences in terms of meta-data and hyperlinks, which have consequences for information-seeking activities.

Article creation and deletion

Of the roughly 1.5 million biographical articles on the English Wikipedia in 2021, only 19% were about women. The biographies that do exist are considerably more likely to be nominated for deletion than existing articles of men.

In the English Wikipedia and five other language editions that were studied by researchers, the ratio of articles about women to articles about men was higher than in three other databases. However, analysis with computational linguistics concluded that the way women and men are described in articles demonstrates bias, with articles about women more likely to use more words relating to gender and family. The researchers believe that this is a sign Wikipedia editors consider male the "null gender" (in other words, that "male" is assumed unless otherwise specified, an example of male as norm). Another critique of Wikipedia's approach, from a 2014 Guardian editorial, is that it has difficulty making judgments about "what matters". To illustrate this point they noted that the page listing pornographic actresses was better organized than the page listing women writers.

The International Journal of Communication published research by Reagle and Lauren Rhue that examined the coverage, gender representation, and article length of thousands of biographical subjects on the English-language Wikipedia and the online Encyclopædia Britannica. They concluded that Wikipedia provided better coverage and longer articles in general, that Wikipedia typically has more articles on women than Britannica in absolute terms, but Wikipedia articles on women were more likely to be missing than articles on men relative to Britannica. That is, Wikipedia dominated Britannica in biographical coverage, but more so when it comes to men. Similarly, one might say that Britannica is more balanced in whom it neglects to cover than Wikipedia. For both reference works, article length did not consistently differ by gender. A 2011 study by researchers from the University of Minnesota and three other universities found that articles edited by women, "which presumably were more likely to be of interest to women", were "significantly shorter" on average than those worked on by men or by both men and women.

A side-by-side comparison of the portion of available biographies about women on Wikipedia versus the portion of women biographies nominated for deletion from January 2017 to February 2020, Francesca Tripodi

According to a 2021 study by sociologist Francesca Tripodi, biographies on Wikipedia about women are disproportionately nominated for deletion as non-notable. In October 2018, when Donna Strickland won a Nobel Prize in Physics, numerous write-ups mentioned that she did not previously have a Wikipedia page. A draft had been submitted, but was rejected for not demonstrating "significant coverage (not just passing mentions) about the subject".

In July 2006, Stacy Schiff wrote a New Yorker essay about Wikipedia entitled "Know It All". The Wikipedia article about her was created the very same day. According to Timothy Noah, she was apparently not notable by Wikipedia standards, despite the Guggenheim fellowship and Pulitzer Prize many years previous. Her essay and the article about her are now featured in the Wikiproject to counter systemic bias.

Article content

While most attention falls on the gap between biographies of men and women on Wikipedia, some research also focuses on linguistics and differences in topics covered. In 2020, the Association for Computational Linguistics performed a textual analysis of gender biases within Wikipedia articles. The study found that articles about women contain more gender-specific phrases such as "female scientist" while men are referenced using more gender-neutral terms such as "scientist". The study concluded that overall gender bias is decreasing for science and family oriented articles, while increasing for artistic and creative content.

A 2015 study found that, on the English Wikipedia, the word "divorced" appears more than four times as often in biographical articles about women than men. According to the Wikimedia Foundation, "We don't fully know why, but it's likely a multitude of factors, including the widespread tendency throughout history to describe the lives of women through their relationships with men."

A 2020 study of the coverage of Fortune 1000 CEOs found a gender bias in favour of women. The study investigated contributions from brandnew versus more established editors and found that new editors are more likely to introduce information biased against women, but that established users tend to overcompensate when reacting to these edits. Articles written by a more diverse group of new and established editors were found to be most neutral.

Gender bias harassment also goes beyond those who identify as cisgender on Wikipedia. For example, when celebrities come out and identify as transgender, they are commonly subjected to discrimination and their pronouns are then put up for debate. Notable examples of these debates include Chelsea Manning in 2013 and Caitlyn Jenner in 2015, when their self-declared pronouns were vandalized and reverted to their previous pronouns. A 2021 study found that articles about transgender women and non-binary people tend to have a higher percentage of their article devoted to the "Personal Life" section, which often focuses on the person's gender identity: "The implication that gender identity is a noteworthy trait for just these groups is possibly indicative of 'othering', where individuals are distinguished or labeled as not fitting a societal norm, which often occurs in the context of gender or sexual orientation."

Reactions

Wikipedia has been criticized by some academics and journalists for having primarily male contributors, and for having fewer and less extensive articles about women or topics important to women.

Writing for Slate in 2011, conservative political commentator Heather Mac Donald called Wikipedia's gender imbalance a "non-problem in search of a misguided solution." Mac Donald asserted, "The most straightforward explanation for the differing rates of participation in Wikipedia—and the one that conforms to everyday experience—is that, on average, males and females have different interests and preferred ways of spending their free time."

In August 2014, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales announced in a BBC interview the Wikimedia Foundation's plans for "doubling down" on the gender content gap at Wikipedia. Wales said the Foundation would be open to more outreach and more software changes.

In Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Caroline Criado Perez notes that many Wikipedia pages that refer to men's teams or occupations are listed as gender neutral (England national football team), while pages for similar teams or occupations for women are specifically gendered (England women's national football team).

Efforts to address gender bias

Attendees at the 2013 Women in the Arts edit-a-thon in Washington, DC

Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation has officially held the stance, since at least 2011 when Gardner was executive director, that gender bias exists in the project. It has made some attempts to address it but Gardner has expressed frustration with the degree of success achieved. She has also noted that "in the very limited leisure time women had, they tended to be more involved in social activities instead of editing Wikipedia. 'Women see technology more as a tool they use to accomplish tasks, rather than something fun in itself.'" In 2011, the Foundation set a target of having 25 percent of its contributors identifying as female by 2015. In August 2013, Gardner said, "I didn't solve it. We didn't solve it. The Wikimedia Foundation didn't solve it. The solution won't come from the Wikimedia Foundation."

In 2017, Wikimedia Foundation put a funding of $500,000 in building a more encouraging environment for diversity on Wikipedia.

VisualEditor, a project funded by the Wikimedia Foundation that allows for WYSIWYG-style editing on Wikipedia, is said to be aimed in part at closing the gender gap.

Thanks to a Wikimedia Foundation grant, in March 2021 an alpha version of Humaniki was released, providing a wide variety of gender gap statistics based on Wikidata. The stats are automatically updated as new information is made available.

User-led efforts

Dedicated edit-a-thons have been organized to increase the coverage of women's topics in Wikipedia and to encourage more women to edit Wikipedia. These events are supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, which sometimes provides mentors and technology to help guide newer editors through the process. Recent edit-a-thons have given specific focus to topics such as Australian female neuroscientists and women in Jewish history.

An early-2015 initiative to create a "women-only" space for Wikipedia editors was strongly opposed by Wikipedians.

Some users have tried to combat this male dominated space by creating support groups for female Wikipedia users, a prominent one being the WikiWomen's User Group. This group is used not only to promote women editing and contributing on more pages, but to also add more pages about women who contribute to society at large.

The Wikipedia Teahouse project was launched with the goal to provide a user-friendly environment for newcomers, with a particular goal of boosting women's participation in Wikipedia.

In the summer of 2015, the WikiProject Women in Red was launched on the English-language version of Wikipedia, focusing on the creation of new articles about notable women. Mainly through its monthly virtual editathons, Women in Red encourages editors to participate in extending Wikipedia's coverage. Thanks in part to the efforts of this project, by June 2018 some 17,000 new women's biographies had been added to Wikipedia.

Many Wikiprojects are committed to promoting editors' contribution on gender and women studies, which include "WikiProject women, WikiProject feminism, WikiProject gender studies, and the WikiProject countering systemic bias/gender gap task force".

Expanding beyond the male/female gender binary, Wikiproject LGBT creates a space for "re/writing the inclusion and representation of LGBTQ culture into Wikipedia mainspace."

In 2018, one edit-a-thon organizer named Sarah Osborne Bender explained to The Guardian how men take down Wikipedia pages about women leaders. "I wrote a Wikipedia article about a woman gallerist and the next day, I got a message saying it was deleted because she is not a 'noteworthy person', but someone in our community gave me advice on how to edit it to make the page stay."

In 2022, an article in VICE magazine detailed how British scientist Jessica Wade has created over 1,700 Wikipedia entries on women scientists since 2017, as many women whose contributions have gone unnoticed.

Third parties

In 2013, FemTechNet launched "Wikistorming" as a project that offers feminist scholarship and encourages Wikipedia editing as part of school and college teaching.

In July 2014, the National Science Foundation announced that it would spend $200,000 to study systemic gender bias on Wikipedia.

In 2015, Jennifer C. Edwards, history department chairperson at Manhattan College, explained that educational institutions can use Wikipedia assignments such as encyclopedia's gender gap analysis and coverage of female topics to inspire students to alter the current gender imbalance.

In 2022, Angela Fan, a researcher at Meta Platforms, announced an open-source software artificial intelligence model that will be able to create Wikipedia-style biographical rough drafts that "will one day help Wikipedia editors create many thousands of accurate, compelling biography entries for important people who are currently not on the site", including women.

Normality (behavior)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normality_(behavior)

Normality is a behavior that can be normal for an individual (intrapersonal normality) when it is consistent with the most common behavior for that person. Normal is also used to describe individual behavior that conforms to the most common behavior in society (known as conformity). However, normal behavior is often only recognized in contrast to abnormality. In many cases normality is used to make moral judgements, such that normality is seen as good while abnormality is seen as bad, or conversely normality can seen as boring and uninteresting. Someone being seen as normal or not normal can have social ramifications, such as being included, excluded or stigmatized by wider society.

Measuring

Many difficulties arise in measuring normal behaviors—biologists come across parallel issues when defining normality. One complication that arises regards whether 'normality' is used correctly in everyday language. People say "this heart is abnormal" if only a portion of it is not working correctly, yet it may be inaccurate to include the entirety of the heart under the description of 'abnormal'. There can be a difference between the normality of a body part's structure and its function. Similarly, a behavioral pattern may not conform to social norms, but still be effective and non-problematic for that individual. Where there is a dichotomy between appearance and function of a behavior, it may be difficult to measure its normality. This is applicable when trying to diagnose a pathology and is addressed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Statistical normality

In general, 'normal' refers to a lack of significant deviation from the average. The word normal is used in a more narrow sense in mathematics, where a normal distribution describes a population whose characteristics center around the average or the norm. When looking at a specific behavior, such as the frequency of lying, a researcher may use a Gaussian bell curve to plot all reactions, and a normal reaction would be within one standard deviation, or the most average 68.3%. However, this mathematical model only holds for one particular trait at a time, since, for example, the probability of a single individual being within one standard deviation for 36 independent variables would be one in a million.

In statistics, normal is often arbitrarily considered anything that falls within about 1.96 standard deviations of the mean, i.e. the most average 95% (1.96). The probability of an individual being within 1.96 standard deviations for 269 independent variables is approximately one in a million. For only 59 independent variables, the probability is just under 5%. Under this definition of normal, it is abnormal to be normal for 59 independent variables.

Sociology

Durkheim

In his Rules of the Sociological Method, French sociologist Émile Durkheim indicates that it is necessary for the sociological method to offer parameters in order to distinguish normality from pathology or abnormality. He suggests that behaviors, or social facts, which are present in the majority of cases are normal, and exceptions to that behavior indicate pathology. Durkheim's model of normality further explains that the most frequent or general behaviors, and thus the most normal behaviors, will persist through transition periods in society.

Crime, for instance, should be considered normal because it exists in every society through every time period. There is a two-fold version of normality; behaviors considered normal on a societal level may still be considered pathological on an individual level. On the individual level, people who violate social norms, such as criminals, will invite a punishment from others in the society.

Social norms

Main article: Social norm

An individual's behaviors are guided by what they perceive to be society's expectations and their peers' norms. People measure the appropriateness of their actions by how far away they are from those social norms. However, what is perceived as the norm may or may not actually be the most common behavior. In some cases of pluralistic ignorance, most people wrongly believe the social norm is one thing, but in fact very few people hold that view.

When people are made more aware of a social norm, particularly a descriptive norm (i.e., a norm describing what is done), their behavior changes to become closer to that norm. The power of these norms can be harnessed by social norms marketing, where the social norm is advertised to people in an attempt to stop extreme behavior, such as binge drinking. However, people at the other extreme (very little alcohol consumption) are equally likely to change their behavior to become closer to the norm, in this case by increasing alcohol consumption.

Instead of using descriptive norms, more effective social norms marketing may use injunctive norms which, instead of describing the most common behavior, outline what is approved or disapproved of by society. When individuals become aware of the injunctive norm, only the extremes will change their behavior (by decreasing alcohol consumption) without the boomerang effect of under-indulgers increasing their drinking.

The social norms that guide people are not always normal for everyone. Behaviors that are abnormal for most people may be considered normal for a subgroup or subculture. For example, normal college student behavior may be to party and drink alcohol, but for a subculture of religious students, normal behavior may be to go to church and pursue religious activities. Subcultures may actively reject "normal" behavior, instead replacing society norms with their own.

What is viewed as normal can change dependent on both timeframe and environment. Normality can be viewed as "an endless process of man's self-creation and his reshaping of the world." Within this idea, it is possible to surmise that normality is not an all-encompassing term, but simply a relative term based around a current trend in time. With statistics, this is likened to the thought that if the data gathered provides a mean and standard deviation, over time these data that predict "normalness" start to predict or dictate it less and less since the social idea of normality is dynamic. This is shown in studies done on behavior in both psychology and sociology where behavior in mating rituals or religious rituals can change within a century in humans, showing that the "normal" way that these rituals are performed shifts and a new procedure becomes the normal one.

Since normality shifts in time and environment, the mean and standard deviation are only useful for describing normality from the environment from which they are collected.

Sexual behavior

As another example, understandings of what is normal sexual behavior varies greatly across time and place. In many countries, perceptions on sexuality are largely becoming more liberal, especially views on the normality of masturbation and homosexuality. Social understanding on normal sexual behavior also varies greatly country by country; countries can be divided into categories of how they approach sexual normality, as conservative, homosexual-permissive, or liberal.

The United States, Ireland, and Poland have more conservative social understanding of sexuality among university students, while Scandinavian students consider a wider variety of sexual acts as normal. Although some attempts have been made to define sexual acts as normal, abnormal, or indeterminate, these definitions are time-sensitive. Gayle Rubin's 1980s model of sexual 'normality' was comprehensive at the time but has since become outdated as society has liberalized.

Regulation

A disharmony exists between a virtual identity of the self and a real social identity, whether it be in the form of a trait or attribute. If a person does not have this disharmony, then he or she is described as normal. A virtual identity can take many definitions, but in this case a virtual identity is the identity that persons mentally create that conforms to societal standards and norms, it may not represent how they actually are, but it represents what they believe is the typical "normal" person. A real social identity is the identity that persons actually have in their society or is perceived, by themselves or others, to have. If these two identities have differences between each other, there is said to be disharmony. Individuals may monitor and adapt their behavior in terms of others' expected perceptions of the individual, which is described by the social psychology theory of self-presentation. In this sense, normality exists based on societal norms, and whether someone is normal is entirely up to how he or she views him- or herself in contrast to how society views him or her. While trying to define and quantify normality is a good start, all definitions confront the problem of whether we are even describing an idea that even exists since there are so many different ways of viewing the concept.

Effects of labeling

When people do not conform to the normal standard, they are often labelled as sick, disabled, abnormal, or unusual, which can lead to marginalization or stigmatization. Most people want to be normal and strive to be perceived as such, so that they can relate to society at large. Without having things in common with the general population, people may feel isolated among society. The abnormal person feels like they have less in common with the normal population, and others have difficulty relating to things that they have not experienced themselves. Additionally, abnormality may make others uncomfortable, further separating the abnormally labelled individual.

Since being normal is generally considered an ideal, there is often pressure from external sources to conform to normality, as well as pressure from people's intrinsic desire to feel included. For example, families and the medical community will try to help disabled people live a normal life. However, the pressure to appear normal, while actually having some deviation, creates a conflict—sometimes someone will appear normal, while actually experiencing the world differently or struggling. When abnormality makes society feel uncomfortable, it is the exceptional person themselves who will laugh it off to relieve social tension. A disabled person is given normal freedoms, but may not be able to show negative emotions. Lastly, society's rejection of deviance and the pressure to normalize may cause shame in some individuals. Abnormalities may not be included in an individual's sense of identity, especially if they are unwelcome abnormalities.

When an individual's abnormality is labelled as a pathology, it is possible for that person to take on both elements of the sick role or the stigmatization that follows some illnesses. Mental illness, in particular, is largely misunderstood by the population and often overwhelms others' impression of the patient.

Intrapersonal normality

Most definitions of normality consider interpersonal normality, the comparison between many different individual's behaviors to distinguish normality from abnormality. Intrapersonal normality looks at what is normal behavior for one particular person (consistency within a person) and would be expected to vary person-to-person. A mathematical model of normality could still be used for intrapersonal normality, by taking a sample of many different occurrences of behavior from one person over time.

Also like interpersonal normality, intrapersonal normality may change over time, due to changes in the individual as they age and due to changes in society (since society's view of normality influences individual peoples' behavior).

It is most comfortable for people to engage in behavior which conforms to their own personal habitual norms. When things go wrong, people are more likely to attribute the negative outcome on any abnormal behavior leading up to the mishap. After a car crash, people may say "if only I didn't leave work early," blaming the crash on their actions which were not normal. This counterfactual thinking particularly associates abnormal behavior with negative outcomes.

Behavioral normality

In medicine, behavioral normality pertains to a patient's mental condition aligning with that of a model, healthy patient. A person without any mental illness is considered a normal patient, whereas a person with a mental disability or illness is viewed as abnormal. These normals and abnormals in the context of mental health subsequently create negative stigmatic perceptions towards individuals with mental illness.

According to the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, "an estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older—about 1 in 4 adults—suffer from one or more of (several) disorders in a given year." Though the population of American individuals living with mental illness is not as small of a minority as commonly perceived, it is considered abnormal nonetheless, therefore the subject of discrimination and abuse such as violent therapies, punishments, or labeling for life by the normal, healthy majority. The CDC reported that "cluster[s] of negative attitudes and beliefs motivate the general public to fear, reject, avoid, and discriminate against people with mental illnesses." In continuum, the resources available to those who suffer from such illness are limited, and government support is constantly being cut from programs that help individuals living with mental illness live more comfortable, accommodative, happier lives.

Neuronal and synaptic normality

Hebbian associative learning and memory maintenance depends on synaptic normalization mechanisms to prevent synaptic runaway. Synaptic runaway describes overcrowding of dendritic associations, which reduce sensory or behavioral acuteness proportional to the level of synaptic runaway. Synaptic/neuronal normalization refers to synaptic competition, where the prosper of one synapse may weakening the efficacy of other nearby surrounding synapses with redundant neurotransmission.

Animal dendritic density greatly increases throughout waking hours despite intrinsic normalization mechanisms as described as above. The growth rate of synaptic density is not sustained in a cumulative fashion. Without a pruning state, the signal to noise ratio of CNS mechanism would not be able to operate with maximum effectiveness, and learning would be detrimental to animal survival. Neuronal and synaptic normalization mechanisms must operate so positive association feedback loops to not become rampant while constantly processing new environmental information.

Some researchers speculate that the slow oscillation (nREM) cycles of animal sleep constitute an essential 're-normalization' phase. The re-normalization occurs from cortical large amplitude brain rhythm, in the low delta range (0.5–2 Hz), synaptically downscaling the associations from the wakeful learning state. Only the strongest associations survive the pruning from this phase. This allows retention of salient information coding from the previous day, but also allows more cortical space and energy distribution to continue effective learning subsequently after a slow-wave oscillation episode of sleep.

Also, organisms tend to have a normal biological developmental pathway as a central nervous system ages and/or learns. Deviations for a species' normal development frequently will result in behavior dysfunction, or death, of that organism.

Clinical normality

Applying normality clinically depends on the field and situation a practitioner is in. In the broadest sense, clinical normality is the idea of uniformity of physical and psychological functioning across individuals.

Psychiatric normality, in a broad sense, states that psychopathology are disorders that are deviations from normality.

Normality, and abnormality, can be characterized statistically. Related to the previous definition, statistical normality is usually defined it in terms of a normal distribution curve, with the so-called 'normal zone' commonly accounting for 95.45% of all the data. The remaining 4.55% will lie split outside of two standard deviations from the mean. Thus any variable case that lies outside of two deviations from the mean would be considered abnormal. However, the critical value of such statistical judgments may be subjectively altered to a less conservative estimate. It is in fact normal for a population to have a proportion of abnormals. The presence of abnormals is important because it is necessary to define what 'normal' is, as normality is a relative concept. So at a group, or macro, level of analysis, abnormalities are normal given a demographic survey; while at an individual level, abnormal individuals are seen as being deviant in some way that needs to be corrected.

Statistical normality is important in determining demographic pathologies. When a variable rate, such as virus spread within a human population, exceeds its normal infection rate, then preventative or emergency measures can be introduced. However, it is often impractical to apply statistical normality to diagnose individuals. Symptom normality is the current, and assumed most effective, way to assess patient pathology.

DSM

Normality, as a relative concept, is intrinsically involved with contextual elements. As a result, clinical disorder classification has particular challenges in discretely diagnosing 'normal' constitutions from true disorders. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the psychiatric profession's official classification manual of mental disorders since its first published version (DSM-I) by the American Psychological Association in 1952.

As the DSM evolved into its current version (DSM-V) in late 2013, there have been numerous conflicts in proposed classification between mental illness and normal mentality. In his book Saving Normal, Dr. Allen Frances, who chaired the task force for content in the DSM-IV and DSM-IV-TR, wrote a scathing indictment of the pressures incumbent on the definition of "normal" relative to psychological constructs and mental illness.

Most of this difficulty stems from the DSM's ambiguity of natural contextual stressor reactions versus individual dysfunction. There are some key progressions along the DSM history that have attempted to integrate some aspects of normality into proper diagnosis classification. As a diagnostic manual for classification of abnormalities, all DSMs have been biased towards classifying symptoms as disorders by emphasizing symptomatic singularity. The result is an encompassing misdiagnosis of possible normal symptoms, appropriate as contextually derived.

DSM-II

The second edition of the DSM could not be effectively applied because of its vague descriptive nature. Psychodynamic etiology was a strong theme in classifying mental illnesses. The applied definitions became idiosyncratic, stressing individual unconscious roots. This made applying the DSM unreliable across psychiatrists. No distinction between abnormal to normal was established.

Evidence of the classification ambiguity were punctuated by the Rosenhan experiment of 1972. This experiment demonstrated that the methodology of psychiatric diagnosis could not effectively distinguish normal from disordered mentalities. DSM-II labelled 'excessive' behavioral and emotional response as an index of abnormal mental wellness to diagnose some particular disorders. 'Excessiveness' of a reaction implied alternative normal behavior which would have to include a situational factor in evaluation. As an example, a year of intense grief from the death of a spouse may be a normal appropriate response. To have intense grief for twenty years would be indicative of a mental disorder. As well, to grieve intensely over the loss of a sock would also not be considered normal responsiveness and indicate a mental disorder. The consideration of proportionality to stimuli was a perceived strength in psychiatric diagnosis for the DSM-II.

Another characteristic of the DSM-II systemization was that it classified homosexuality as a mental disorder. Thus, homosexuality was psychiatrically defined as a pathological deviation from "normal" sexual development. In the 7th printing of the DSM-II, "homosexuality" was replaced with "sexual orientation disturbance." The intent was to have a label that applied only to homosexual individuals who were bothered by their sexual orientation. In this manner homosexuality would not be viewed as an atypical mental disorder; only if it was distressing would it be classified as a mental illness. However, the DSM-II did not state that homosexuality was normal, either, and a diagnosis of distress related to one's sexual orientation was retained in all editions of the DSM until the DSM-5 in 2013, under different names.

DSM-III

DSM-III was a best attempt to credit psychiatry as a scientific discipline from the opprobrium resulting from DSM-II. A reduction in the psychodynamic etiologies of DSM-II spilled over into a reduction symptom etiology altogether. Thus, DSM-III was a specific set of definitions for mental illnesses, and entities more suited to diagnostic psychiatry, but which annexed response proportionality as a classification factor. The product was that all symptoms, whether normal proportional response or inappropriate pathological tendencies, could both be treated as potential signs of mental illness.

DSM-IV

DSM-IV explicitly distinguishes mental disorders and non-disordered conditions. A non-disordered condition results from, and is perpetuated by, social stressors. Included in DSM-IV's classification is that a mental disorder "must not be merely an expectable and culturally sanctioned response to a particular event, for example, the death of a loved one. Whatever its original cause, it must currently be considered a manifestation of a behavioral, psychological, or biological dysfunction in the individual" (American Psychiatric Association 2000:xxxi) This had supposedly injected normality consideration back into the DSM, from its removal from DSM-II. However, it has been speculated that DSM-IV still does not escape the problems DSM-III faced, where psychiatric diagnoses still include symptoms of expectable responses to stressful circumstances to be signs of disorders, along with symptoms that are individual dysfunctions. The example set by DSM-III, for principally symptom-based disorder classification, has been integrated as the norm of mental diagnostic practice.

DSM-5

The DSM-5 was released in the second half of 2013. It has significant differences from DSM IV-TR, including the removal of the multi-axial classifications and reconfiguring the Asperger's/autistic spectrum classifications.

Criticisms of diagnostics

Since the advent of DSM-III, the subsequent editions of the DSM have all included a heavy symptom based pathology diagnosis system. Although there have been some attempts to incorporate environmental factors into mental and behavioral diagnostics, many practitioners and scientists believe that the most recent DSM's are misused. The symptom bias makes diagnosing quick and easier allowing for practitioners to increase their clientele because symptoms can be easier to classify and deal with than dealing with life or event histories which have evoked what may be a temporary and normal mental state in reaction to a patients environmental circumstances.

The easy-to-use manual not only has increased the perceived need for more mental health care, stimulating funding for mental health care facilities, but also has had a global impact on marketing strategies. Many pharmaceutical commercial ads list symptoms such as fatigue, depression, or anxiety. However, such symptoms are not necessarily abnormal, and are appropriate responses to such occurrences as the loss of a loved one. The targets of such ads in such cases do not need medication and can naturally overcome their grief, but with such an advertising strategy pharmaceutical companies can greatly expand their marketing.

Straight pride

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_pride

Straight pride is a slogan that arose in the 1980s and early 1990s that has primarily been used by social conservatives as a political stance and strategy. The term is described as a response to "gay pride", a slogan adopted by various groups (later united under the moniker LGBT) in the early 1970s, or to the accommodations provided to gay pride initiative.

Straight pride backlash incidents have generated controversy and media attention. School policies and court decisions regarding freedom of expression have drawn particular attention, spotlighting individuals protesting school expressions against harassment of LGBTQ adolescents.

Background

Stonewall riots spark gay pride

Main article: Gay liberation

Further information: 1960s in LGBT rights and Counterculture of the 1960s

LGBTQ history traces back to ancient civilizations, but the term gay pride is usually associated with the modern LGBTQ rights movement that was sparked by the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City. Newspaper coverage of the events was minor, since, in the 1960s, huge marches and mass rioting had become commonplace and the Stonewall riots were relatively small. It was the commemorative march one year later that drew 5,000 marchers up New York City's Sixth Avenue, that got nationwide publicity and led to modern-day LGBTQ pride marches. A new period of liberalism in the late 1960s began a new era of more social acceptance for homosexuality which lasted until the late 1970s. In the 1970s, the popularity of disco music and its culture in many ways made society more accepting of gays and lesbians.

Late in 1979, a new religious revival among conservative Catholics and evangelical Protestants ushered in the conservatism politically aligned with the Christian right that would reign in the United States during the 1980s, becoming another obstacle for the progress of the LGBTQ rights movement. During the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, LGBTQ communities were further stigmatized as they became the focus of mass hysteria, suffered isolation and marginalization, and were targeted with extreme acts of violence.

Straight pride as an appeal to ridicule

The concept of LGBTQ pride originates as a movement which seeks to challenge the negative images of LGBTQ people by being openly identified with a culturally stigmatized group; as such, it creates a discomfort.

In this context, the terms straight pride and heterosexual pride have been used as an argument criticizing gay pride as unnecessary, stating by contrast with heterosexuality that heterosexuals "don't talk about straight pride", do not have "straight pride rallies", and would be seen as ridiculous if they were to "band together and have a heterosexual pride [...] parade".

This appeal to ridicule argument expresses the idea that showing pride for LGBTQ orientations is equally absurd. Analysts of LGBTQ rights state as a counter-argument that mainstream culture offers many approved social venues (weddings, baptism, family reunions and so on) for heterosexuals to express and celebrate their sexual orientation in public, while LGBTQ individuals feel more isolated and pride parades offer them support and an opportunity for socializing.

Straight pride events

Heterosexual pride parades exist as a response to societal acceptance of LGBTQ visibility, and originated in campuses in the 1990s as a backlash tactic.

Incidents where the slogan or concept of "Straight pride" caused controversy have occurred since the late 1980s. In 1988, Vermont Republican John Burger asked the state's Governor to establish a "Straight Pride Day". In 1990, rallies in support of Straight Pride were held at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst) organized by the group Young Americans for Freedom; and at nearby Mount Holyoke College. The UMass event was promoted as "Burn a Fag in Effigy" rally. Conservative organizations at UMass Amherst held another such event the next year, attended by about fifty people and protested by a crowd estimated to be ten times larger.

"Straight pride parades" or "straight pride days" have been organized in response to similar events organized by LGBTQ groups. Other events, typically occurring in United States high schools where First Amendment concerns arise, have revolved around people desiring to wear "straight pride" t-shirts.

At a 2010 Tea Party Express rally in Lansing, the state capital of Michigan, a vendor was selling t-shirts printed with the slogan "straight pride". Some state and national gay advocacy groups denounced the shirts, claiming that they echoed the use by racist groups of a "white pride" slogan. Some of the opposition arose from reports that the shirt seller was a sponsor of the event with a cut of sales funding the Tea Party Express, although those reports may not have been accurate.

Support for straight pride events is often based on religious objections to homosexuality. Groups such as the White Aryan Resistance and Ku Klux Klan have also tried to oppose "gay pride" by stressing straight pride.

Individual events

Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada (2005)

In May 2005, the northern Canadian city of Yellowknife announced that it would mark both a gay and straight pride day. After the mayor proclaimed June 10, 2005, as Gay Pride Day, Councillor Alan Woytuik proposed that there be a Heterosexual Day. The mayor agreed and set it for June 9. Woytuik defended the proposal for Heterosexual Day by stating that "recognizing the contributions of heterosexuals is just as legitimate as recognizing the contributions of gay and lesbian communities." The group seeking the Gay Pride Day designation was dismayed, asking if Black History Month would be partnered with White Heritage Month and whether days marking heart disease and strokes should be paired with days celebrating good health. Woytuik's request for Heterosexual Day was widely reported on. Shocked by the attention, he withdrew his request for the proclamation and apologized. He referred to his request as a simple one seeking to treat everyone the same which was blown out of proportion. The city subsequently rescinded its proclamation of Heterosexual Day.

Budapest, Hungary (2010)

In 2010, a heterosexual pride march was held in Budapest. Following the route of an earlier gay pride parade, one hundred people participated including two politicians. The march's stated goal was to prevent future use of public spaces by homosexuals for gatherings.

São Paulo, Brazil (2011)

In August 2011, the city council of São Paulo, Brazil, designated the third Sunday in December as Heterosexual Pride Day [pt] (Portuguese: Dia do Orgulho Hétero). Debate in Brazil over this decision was intense. Evangelical supporter Carlos Apolinário, who previously tried to ban São Paulo Gay Pride Parade, told reporters that his idea was "not anti-gay, but a protest against the privileges the gay community enjoys". The Brazilian Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Association criticized this claim, arguing "it could provoke homophobic violence."

Chipman, New Brunswick, Canada (2018)

A straight pride flag similar to this was used in New Brunswick

In October 2018, Chipman, New Brunswick resident Glenn Bishop put up a straight pride flag, which was taken down a short while later by LGBTQ people. Hoisting the straight flag was likened to "putting up a swastika" by local Margaret Clark. The flag drew further protests.

San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States (2019)

Don Grundmann, a Bay Area chiropractor, founded the National Straight Pride Coalition (NSPC) in Spring of 2019 for "protecting traditional gender roles, Christianity, heterosexuality, Western Civilization, babies, and the contributions of whites to Western Civilization from the malevolence of the homosexual movement." Grundmann had previously founded Citizens Against Perversion and American Warrior Ministry. The NSPC's first event was planned to be at Modesto, California's Mancini Bowl, the Graceada Park amphitheater, but the permit was denied for safety and compatibility issues, and because their insurance was voided. After failing again to get the needed insurance for a public venue because of the nature of their event, they moved the rally to a private space but were shut down by the owners when they were alerted the event was live streaming and more counter-protesters would likely arrive. The owners were unaware of the nature of the event or group and have disavowed their involvement. After the rally was kicked out of the private venue, they moved to the parking lot of the area's Planned Parenthood, which was closed. "Grundmann had predicted some 500 attendees, but reports put the number closer to 20." Counter-protestors outnumbered participants ten-to-one.

Boston, Massachusetts, United States (2019)

Boston Straight Pride Parade attendees on August 31, 2019. An attendee holds a sign depicting two hands making the 'OK' gesture.

The group Super Happy Fun America (SHFA) organized an August 31 "Straight Pride Parade" that attracted several hundred participants and thousands of protesters. Counter-protesters vastly outnumbered attendees of the parade. SHFA called the event "a response to the 'identity politics' of the left." Emerson College's president M. Lee Pelton warned about the event, as the parade route, starting at Copley Square and ending at Boston City Hall, borders the college campus. He said the event represents "fear and ignorance, humanity's most potent cocktail, masquerading as freedom of speech" in response to which SHFA organizer Samson Racioppi asked for a retraction and apology. The SHFA group was created in 2017 by Kyle Chapman, who founded the group Fraternal Order of the Alt-Knights a week after the Charlottesville Unite the Right riot. Staff include president John Hugo, former Republican Congressional candidate; and vice president Mark Sahady, "a member of the right-wing group Resist Marxism, who has organized several right-wing demonstrations in the past." SHFA announced the event in June 2019. Racioppi, Sahady, and Hugo contacted the police in early July 2019 when envelopes filled with glitter were mailed to them. One of the event's attendees, Marky Hutt, previously founded a group for gay Trump supporters; he said the organizers of the Straight Pride event had invited him to attend, and he was present at the event with his same-gender fiancé.

Thirty-four counter-protesters were arrested at the event. Boston city councilor Michelle Wu suggested that police tactics and choice of equipment raised tensions between police and counter-protesters.

High school shirt incidents

"All students benefit from the respectful and thoughtful exchange of ideas and sharing of beliefs and practices. Schools, in particular, are environments that can provide education of both the substance of diversity and the responsible manner with which such diversity is approached and expressed"

Judge Donovan Frank closing Chambers v Babbitt (2001)

In 2001, Woodbury High School in Woodbury, Minnesota, a suburb of Saint Paul, Minnesota, created homophobia-free areas called "safe zones" designated by an inverted pink triangle and intended for gay students. Student Elliot Chambers reacted by wearing a makeshift sweatshirt with the slogan "Straight Pride" and the image of male and female stick figures holding hands. In light of previous anti-gay incidents, the school's principal ordered Chambers to remove the shirt, and a court case ensued. A court upheld Chambers' complaint that his First Amendment rights had been violated, and that the principal's decision was unjustified. Although praising the principal's intentions, the judge explained that views of both sides of the debate should be allowed and that such issues should be resolved within the school's community, not within the court system. Under the Tinker case, the court stated that the substantial disruptions claimed by the school must be shown to have some connection to Chambers' sweatshirt message of "Straight Pride".

In 2010, in response to suicides amongst gay adolescents, an Ally Week was held at St. Charles North High School in St. Charles, Illinois. On the first day of this Ally Week, though, three students arrived wearing "Straight Pride" t-shirts. The back of these t-shirts displayed "Leviticus 20:13", a verse stating that men who perform homosexual acts should be put to death. While the school did not force the students to remove their t-shirts, it did persuade them to remove the Bible quotation. The following day two different students arrived wearing "Straight Pride" t-shirts minus the Bible quotations and were consequently asked to remove their shirts.

Balancing freedom of expression vs. protection of students

In school environments, straight pride expressions and events have been reviewed within a framework of balancing freedom of expression with protection of other students. In some situations, schools take actions against students who are open about or encourage hiding homosexuality, or limit clothing that has references to sexual orientation. Such may prompt lawsuits. In the Minnesota Chambers v. Babbitt case, "The court noted that maintaining a school community of tolerance includes tolerance of such viewpoints as expressed by 'Straight Pride' as well as tolerance of homosexuality." Conversely, it is advocated that students (including openly gay students) who are valued and respected are "more likely to learn and achieve than students who are not", requiring a balance in the school's approach to straight pride expressions.