Author: Greggor Mattson

• November 25, 2015

  Thanks aren’t enough for gay bars

  There’s a nice profile of the last gay bar in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, Aunt Charlie’s. I hadn’t realized their famous drag shows were only an invention of 1998, the beginning of the end for the Tenderloin. In 1999, I counted 13 bars in the greater Tenderloin/Polk Street corridor; there were 6 by 2004 and…
• November 24, 2015

  The Traffic in Deer

  Deer trafficking: another example of the spread of what I call trafficking talk, or the traffic in trafficking. Recent headlines include Two Florida Men Sentenced for Trafficking in Deer or Deer-Trafficking Scheme Nets Record $1.6 Million Fine Up until around 2010, news outlets usually called such crimes “smuggling,””poaching,” “illegal sales” or “illegal transport” (the earliest…
• November 16, 2015

  The Key to Political Persuasion – The New York Times

  A great news article by my former colleague Robb Willer succinctly explains why cultural politics are so durable and contentious: our fundamental moral frames are so encompassing its almost impossible to see another’s point of view. Via The New York Times.
• November 4, 2015

  Article: Style and the Value of Gay Nightlife: Homonormative Placemaking in San Francisco

  Another of my journal articles on San Francisco gay bars appears in the current edition of Urban Studies. My very simple point is not all gay neighborhoods are (or were) the same. The point was so simple it languished in 4 journals for 7 years, going through 9 revisions. But now it’s out – complete…
• June 15, 2015

  Article: The Modern Career of “The Oldest Profession,” and the Social Embeddedness of Metaphors

  This article was fun to write, and it’s even more fun to play with Google n-grams to track the usage of metaphors about prostitution in the UK vs US (such as this or this). Among many nuggets I uncovered: Rudyard Kipling coined the metaphor “the most ancient profession!” “Sex work” initially referred to sexuality research!…
• June 2, 2015

  The Four U’s: Latent Classes of Hookup Motivations among College Students

  College students’ “hookups” have been the subject of a great deal of research in recent years. Motivations for hooking up have been linked to differences in well-being after the hookup, but studies detailing college students’ motivations for engaging in hookups focus on single motivations. Using data from the 2010 Duke Hookup Survey, we consider how…
• January 22, 2015

  Bar Districts as Subcultural Amenities

  Finally my bar research sees the light of day in City, Cuture and Society 6(1). Bar districts, agglomerations of drinking establishments, are important to urban economies by nurturing urban subcultures. Their vernacular nature presents important contrasts to planned urban entertainment districts (UEDs). Unlike UEDs, bar districts are not necessarily amenities for middle- and upper-class consumption…
• January 1, 2015

  Social Context and Sexual Intercourse among First-Year Students at Selective Colleges and Universities in the United States

  Most examinations of sexual behavior ignore social context. Using panel data from the National Longitudinal Study of Freshmen, a panel study of 3924 students at 28 selective colleges and universities, I examine how institutional and peer-group characteristics influence the incidence of sexual intercourse among students during their freshman year. Students who enter college as virgins…
• October 15, 2014

  Article: The Gender Gap in Reported Homosexuality

  An article of mine in the International Journal Advances in Social Science and Humanities 2(10) 20-26. Men consistently report higher rates of homosexual behavior and identity than women in national population surveys of sexuality, a gender gap that has received little attention. Though women express similar levels of same-sex desire, they are far less likely…
• April 4, 2014

  Nation-State Science: Lappology and Sweden’s Ethnoracial Purity

  My article on Lappology and Swedish nationalism just came out in Comparative Studies in Society and History. It covers 900 years of shifting classifications of the Sámi/Saami, linking those shifts to the geopolitical fortunes of Sweden in Europe. The image is of Carl Linnaeus in Lapp drag, his preferred self-presentation in paintings and engravings. This…