Perceptions and knowledge about sexual identity and homosexuality in three continents: comparative interviews

Abstract

Sexual identity is developed thRough a com-plex interaction of biological, anatomical, phy-siological, psychological, interactional, sociolo-gical and cultural features. Nowadays, due to the fact that the different sexual orientations have not been considered pathologies since the Seventies, the research concerning them falls into the area of Humani-ties and Social Sciences. Despite this, die-hard prejudices and confusion, assimetry in the quality of information, dangerous sovrapposi-tions between moral values and scientific data, the tendency to level sexual identities into one of the two extremes still resist. This article aims to verify, by presenting six interviews to subjects coming from different geo-political backgrounds, if the lacking of information and the educational/informative/formative needs fall into the same areas; this research, which is the first step of an internationalcomparative research, will then contribute to design a `pedagogy of diversity’ that should include the-se topics into the curricula of every educational system