A Legal Analysis: The Transgender Bathroom Debate

This article examines the current legal battles over transgender bathroom, locker room, and employment rights. In the recent years, there has been a major uproar surrounding the rights of transgender individuals; concurrently, our country is witnessing a shift in the ways in which individuals understand their gender outside of the binary male and female classification. While the word transgender can serve as an “umbrella term encompassing a wide array of identifies,” transgender rights have steadily grown across numerous areas (Buck, 2016, p. 465). However, there have been contentious legal issues that have put transgender individuals rights in the spotlight. The author examines Title IX of the Education Amendment of 1972, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Fourteenth Amendment. Additionally, the sociocultural risk factors, mental health issues, and medical concerns that transgender individuals face are examined. An ethical analysis is conducted to better understand the ethical quagmire of bathroom, locker room, and employment discrimination for transgender individuals. Lastly, four legal cases are expounded upon: Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins (1989), Johnston v. University of Pittsburgh of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education (2015), G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board (2016), and Whitaker v. Kenosha Unified School District (2017). While enormous progress has been made, transgender people continue to traverse many complex systems in order to navigate everyday life. As we witness evolving social and legal strides for transgender individuals, further legislation involving transgender rights is warranted. Implications for social work practice is discussed

Future directions for psychotherapeutic treatment of shame: A scoping study

This study uses Arksey and O’Malley’s (2005) framework for scoping studies and references Rubin and Bellamy’s (2012) discussion on evidence-based practice to scope the current literature concerning the use of psychotherapy to treat shame in adolescents and to develop a research question. The author focused on shame in adolescents and explored ways in which social work practitioners understand and treat shame during the “identity versus role confusion” stage of development. While definitions of shame vary across the scholarly literature, many of them include similar elements. Morrison (2011) defines shame as “a negative feeling about the state of the whole self, a noxious conviction that the self is bad, defective, a failure” and emphasizes the pervasive sense of self-condemnation (p. 25). Recurring themes and therapeutic approaches for managing shame in the therapeutic context are reviewed and summarized. The findings of this scoping study suggest that while the preponderance of the literature points towards the importance of addressing shame and its associated psychopathologies within the therapeutic context, there are few scholarly works that address how to reduce shame in a psychotherapy context and none that present data from studies whose designs were experimental. This paper calls for developing an evidence-based body of research into how best to treat shame in psychotherapy settings. Implications for social work practice, education, and research are discussed

The exploration of young adults\u27 online and offline interpersonal relationships

The present study sought to learn about the ways in which young adults who are avid social networking site users (SNS) build and maintain interpersonal relationships given the ways in which social media shapes how young adults connect. This research explored how experiences via SNS such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tinder played a role in one\u27s online and offline relationships. Inclusion criteria included being between the ages of 18 and 30, being an English speaker, logging onto SNS at least 10 times per day, and being able to speak in person or on the phone for one hour. With a sample of twelve young adults, the majority of participants identified as Caucasian, 9, and female, 9, with a mean age of 24.3. The study concluded that the majority of participants\u27 relationships with friends originated offline via in-person encounters. Offline relationships were strengthened due to online SNS activity due to SNS\u27s ability to connect long distance friends and family members, post photos online that increased offline engagement, reinforce positive aspects of offline relationships, and deepen one\u27s personal development offline. Participants also noted the ways in which SNS adversely impacted their relationships offline, including trust, embarrassment, and exclusion. The findings also showed a gender-specific pattern, revealing that all three male participants used SNS as a tool for developing businesses; the women never spoke about using SNS to assist in the development of a business but, rather, spoke only about using it exclusively as a social environment and tool

PERSPECTIVES ON SOCIAL WORK VOLUME 14 (WINTER 2018)

This is the full-text volume of Perspectives on Social Work, vol. 14 (Winter 2018)