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Volume CIV, Number 2	University of Southern California	Wednesday. May 27, 1987
Gays, lesbians still ‘hidden minorities’
By Joan Lapeyrouse
Staff Writer
JONA FRANK
HAPPY CAMPERS — Troy Camp took children from the neighborhood on a six-day field trip to talk about growing up. These 32nd Street School students are just a few of the 150 campers that will stay at Cottontail Ranch in Malibu Hills.
By Linda Chong
Staff Writer
The stereotype: Men never cry or need nurturing, and they only compete in life to win.
The dilemma: Isolation from community services, events, and issues.
The service: Men's Resource Hotline in Pasadena.
As a new public service in the
Hotline helps men’s problems
Los Angeles area, the Men's Resource Hotline is a free 24-hour listing of seminars, workshops, and events that support and explore positive changes for men.
The hotline also works with many newly emerging groups and organizations to help men discover the answers to such questions as why it's hard for men to show their sensitivity; why the roles men learn in business don't work at home; and when vulnerability can help to establish better relationships with women.
In addition, the program also serves as a referral service to the 70 other local-based groups which offer services for men to help them redefine their own roles, working conditions, and social expectations, said Nancy Niebrugge who handles the public relations for the Hotline.
"The intent of these various programs is to help men deal with the results of concepts such as Success, Solutions, and Control," Niebrugge said. She also added that those ideas are typically associated with the "male experience."
"Boys learn the importance of these concepts very early. In a very real sense, the male experience has been as socially onesided and limiting as that of women," she said. "Men grow up isolated from one another."
While services and opportunities for women have opened up, the trend has not meant co-existing opportunities for men, Niebrugge said. There are also various means of publicizing women's services, including television and radio announcements. However, men’s services are still unknown to most members of the male community, she said.
Among the programs which the resource hotline works with are the UCLA’s Dad's Groups, a support group for fathers and
their children; Alone, But Not Lonely, a Sherman Oaks-based support groups for men going through separation or divorce; Manpower—Adventures in Modem Masculinity, a two-day workshop in West Los Angelas which explores men's roles in transition; and Learning to Live Without Violence, a Pasadena-based self-help group presented by the Center Against Abusive Behavior.
Another community organization affiliated with the hotline is the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Organization for Changing Men, she said.
"Each in its own way, these groups are striving to help men become more effective fathers, lovers, friends, and co-workers," she said. "Men often do not share their needs with others."
Despite their prominent roles in societv-, men have continued to lack emotional or social outlets. Niebrugge said.
"Men may support the family but they are not able to be fully involved in the raising of their children. Men often become destructively dependent on their wives for emotional support," Niebrugge said.
Also, she said men often avoid closeness with other men for fear of being accused of homosexuality or they step back from intimacy with other women for fear of being accused of having an affair.
During times of high stress such as marriage, childbirth, job problems, divorce, or separation, the isolation which men experience causes them to withdraw at times when they should be reaching out for help, she said. Yet, she said, men often respond to such situations by resorting to destructive behavior such as suicide, domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse, (Continued on page 2)
Discrimination in the workplace against gays and lesbians continues despite the recent trend to uphold their rights, said Linda Po-verny at a conference last weekend called "Equity in the Workplace: Today's Challenge."
Povemy is currently the director of the UCLA Staff and Faculty Service Center but will take over a similar position at the university July 1. Then, she will direct the university's Staff and Faculty Counseling Center.
"Problems don't stop for work, and work problems don't stop at home," she said. "We will cover the whole range of personal and work-related problems that affect people on the job."
The conference, designed for social workers and related professionals, was sponsored by the School of Social Work and discussed many issues including affirmative action, child care in the workplace, AIDS education and discrimination in the workplace due to sexual orientation.
Povemy said the two prominent types of discrimination are de facto and de jure.
De facto discrimination is blatant and often involves writing down symbols or numbers that are intelligible only to the interviewer.
De facto discrimination may mean the person just won't be hired or it can lead to the denial of licenses, certificates, or promotions.
De jure discrimination does not seem to be discrimination at first glance and often means the denial of health benefits and different forms of life and health insurance than other employees.
Povemy said that while looking for the solution to discrimination, she found programs or practices that were non-merit and were suspect as being discriminatory.
"Corporate America is still a homophobic environment," she said. "People look for the characteristic myth of the gay and lesbial person. But the 'hidden minority' is still an accurate description."
Those discriminated against have ways to redress the issues, Povemy said. The legislative approach, collective bargaining and litigation are avenues open to homosexuals discriminated against.
Povemy said that in 1981, a 10-year employee of TRW lost his security clearance when the administration learned of his homosexuality.
But, said Wilbur Finch of the School of Social Work, since this case and others like it have always been settled out of court, no precedent has been set.
Finch said that showing a person was fired because of homosexuality is difficult because corporations and others are reluctant to report anything having to do with homosexuality.
Finch also said that although there is legislation to protect against discrimination, many gay and lesbians don't take advantage of it.
Finch said that a recent Wall Street Journal article said that 66 percent of executives would hesitate to promote gay men.
Breaking the camel’s back
Bardet predicts last straw9
By Amy Adkins
Staff Writer
Jean-Pierre Bardet, a civil engineering professor at the university, has developed a "last straw" approach to the prediction of rock and soil collapse.
Bardet compares the point when a catastrophe occurs to the "straw that breaks the camel's back."
"I'm applying to this problem to the concept that Americans call the straw that breaks the camel's back and that people in my native France call the drop that causes the bucket to overflow," said Bardet.
The main influence to Bar-det's last straw approach came from Rene Thom, a French scientist who developed a catastro-
phe theory applicable almost anything.
"Almost anything" means researchers trying to adjust Thom's theory to predicting nervous breakdowns and political revolutions.
Bardet is trying to adapt this theory to predicting rock and soil collapse.
Bardet said his research is like the "party stunt in which someone demonstrates that an object as flimsy as an empty beer can will support his full weight.
"Then the showoff's confederate causes the can to abruptly collapse by barely touching it.
"The beer can in that stunt is a perfect example of a system that reaches a critical point of instability at which the system will suddenly respond far out of proportion to that 'last straw' force," Bardet said.
Through his research, Bardet hopes to find the "precise degree (of pressure) that will cause a collapse in any given system" and why some systems collpase while others do not.
Bardet's answers to these problems may lead to the prevention of soil/rock collapse in
(Continued on page 2)