A 1997 postdoc fellow of the SSRC’s Sexuality Research Fellowship Program (SRFP), Arlene Stein details her SRFP-funded research on antigay social mobilization in rural Oregon in the late 1990s for our “Sexuality & Gender Studies Now” series. Stein studied how some individuals, whom she calls conservative moral entrepreneurs, persuaded these communities to attribute their worsening economic situation to “elites” and, in particular, gay and lesbian people. Reflecting on this research, Stein asserts the importance of sexuality research and how it can help us understand current political and social dynamics.
Arlene Stein
Arlene Stein is a sociologist of gender, sexuality, culture, and politics at Rutgers University, where she directs the Institute for Research on Women. Her latest book is Unbound: Transgender Men and the Transformation of Identity (Pantheon, 2018). She is also the author of The Stranger Next Door (Beacon Press, 2002), an ethnography of a Christian conservative campaign against lesbian/gay rights, which explores clashing understandings of religion and sexuality in American culture; it received the Ruth Benedict Book Award. Going Public: A Guide for Social Scientists (coauthored with Jessie Daniels; The University of Chicago Press), is a guidebook for publicly engaged scholars. She received the American Sociological Association’s Simon and Gagnon Award for career contributions to the study of sexualities. Stein is a 1997 postdoc fellow of the SSRC’s Sexuality Research Fellowship Program.