Minority Stress And Lesbian Women by Virginia R. Brooks

**Part I: Redefining the Problem**

**Introduction**
- Overview
- Terms and Definitions

**The Etiological Question**
- The Biological Argument
- Methodological Considerations
- The Psychoanalytic Argument
- The Socialization Argument
- The Sociocultural Response

**Sex Roles, Androgyny, and Mental Health**
- Concepts and Linkages
- Sex-Role Conformity versus Nonconformity: Comparative Outcomes
- Androgyny and Lesbian Women

**Stratification and Exclusion**
- Minority Status of Women
- Rationale for Minority Exclusion
- Social and Economic Exclusion of Lesbian Women

**Part II: Minority Stress: Theoretical and Empirical Model**

**The Theory of Minority Stress**
- Overview of Stress Theory
- Minority Status as Stressor
- Minority Stress and Problems in Measurement

**Stress-Response Variables among Lesbian Women**
- Stress Indexes
- Hypotheses
- Factors Associated with Negative and Positive Outcomes
- Need for Further Research

**Coping Resources**
- Defining Coping
- Stress-Mediating Resources
- Individual Responses and Minority-Group Patterns
- Model for Analysis of Minority-Stress Variables

**Part III: Redefining Self, Group, and Social Context**

**Identity Conflicts, Cognitive Dissonance, and Resolution**
- Faulty Premises and Self-Concept
- 'Personal' Identity versus 'Lesbian' Identity
- Reassessing Social Reality

**Intragroup Differences**
- Group Identity and Class Differences
- Upward and Downward Mobility
- Collective Diversity

**Social Disclosure**
- Stress of Disclosure versus Nondisclosure
- Variables in Disclosure Decisions
- Disclosure: The Personal Becomes Political