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“Where Is the Love?” Expanding and Theorizing

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Valerie Rubinsky & Angela Cooke-Jackson

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HEALTH COMMUNICATION
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2016.1230809

“Where Is the Love?” Expanding and Theorizing With LGBTQ Memorable Messages
of Sex and Sexuality
Valerie Rubinskya and Angela Cooke-Jacksonb
a
Communication Studies Department, Ohio University; bCommunication Studies Department, Emerson College

ABSTRACT
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) women exist as a population with an increased
complexity in the relationship between themselves and their sexuality. For the LGBTQ community,
sexual behaviors are often silenced or erased. This exploratory qualitative research examines 186
memorable messages that emerged from 91 LGBTQ women and gender minorities who participated
in a national study. Each participant was asked to share memorable messages they received about sex,
sexuality, and sexual health. Consistent with past research, “advice” was a common memorable mes-
sages form; however, negative attributes and media-derived messages emerged. The results contribute
to understanding the messages that LGTBQ individuals confront on topics of sex and sexuality.

One of the ways we learn the cultural perceptions, guidelines,
and “rules of thumb” that influence our behavior is through
memorable messages (Knapp, Stohl, & Reardon, 1981).
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ)
women are a part of a community whose sexuality and sexual
behaviors are often silenced and erased. Additionally, the
interrelated issues of mental illness (Matza, Sloan, Kauth, &
DeBakey, 2015), substance abuse (Northridge, 2001), dating
violence, rape, and suicide (Center for Disease Control, n.d.)
disproportionately affect LGBTQ people and women. The
messages that women and LGBTQ people receive about sex
and sexuality may be fascinating, perplexing, or fragmented,
but are largely unexplored. Moreover, the language available
to describe sexuality brackets our understanding of it (Ritchie
& Barker, 2006), so women who identify as LGBTQ came to
understand their sexual identity through the available lan-
guage. Memorable messages may function as a means of
influencing understandings of sex and sexual identity. We
contend that LGBTQ women merit special attention in regard
to the memorable messages they receive about sex and sexu-
ality as those messages may impact their self-concept and
health behaviors.
Recent work in memorable message scholarship has begun
to address the plethora of impactful memorable messages
related to sex and sexuality (Heisler, 2014; Orbe, Johnson,
Kauffman, & Cooke-Jackson, 2014, among others). However,
to date, no scholarly work has examined the memorable
messages LGBTQ women receive about sex or sexuality. As
memorable messages can be a powerful form of socialization
(Dallimore, 2003; Stohl, 1986), this subject warrants further
exploration.
Before we begin, we consider the acronym LGBTQ to
include lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer-
identified individuals; we view queer as an umbrella term
that encompasses the array of less normative identities,
including asexual and pansexual1 women, and any other sex-
ual, gender, or romantic minority who self-identifies under
that umbrella. In this study, we explore the memorable mes-
sages that LGBTQ women receive about sex and sexuality. In
the following section, we present an abbreviated review of the
literature that informs the present study.
Literature Review
Memorable messages maintain a varied and extensive back-
ground in communication literature. In this study, we utilize a
memorable message framework to examine the messages
LGBTQ women recall about sex and sexuality. We define
memorable messages as any message an individual recalls
for a long period of time and perceives to have had some
significant impact on that person’s life (Stohl, 1986).
Memorable messages research in communication studies
formally began with Knapp et al. (1981), who define memor-
able messages as short, verbal messages that people remember
for long periods of time and perceive as a major influence on
the course of their lives. While these researchers proposed
several stricter conditions for memorable messages, including
that they are typically short, verbal, and rule-structured
(Knapp et al., 1981), later memorable message work deviated,
proposing experiences and more ambient socializing messages
as potential memorable messages (Dallimore, 2003). This

CONTACT Angela Cooke-Jackson angela_cooke_jackson@emerson.edu Associate Professor, Communication Studies Department, Emerson College, 120
Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02116.
1
Asexual refers to a spectrum of identities that do not traditionally experience sexual attraction. Pansexual refers to the potential to experience sexual
attraction to all genders.
© 2016 Taylor & Francis
2 V. RUBINSKY AND A. COOKE-JACKSON
early work acknowledged the potential for memorable mes-
sages to impact behavior (Knapp et al., 1981).
While memorable messages vary in content and have been
applied to a number of health, organizational, and relational
contexts, they tend to share several important characteristics.
Memorable messages often impact self-concept and serve as a
referent point for behavioral self-assessment (Smith & Ellis,
2001). Memorable messages are usually delivered interperson-
ally and come from an important other (Kellas, 2010;
Kranstuber, Carr, & Hosek, 2012). The source of the memor-
able message is often someone older and of higher status
(Knapp et al., 1981). Koenig-Kellas and Kranstuber
Horstman (2015) consider memorable messages one of the
constructs within communicated narrative sense-making; they
argue that memorable messages are a way people make sense
of their lives and their relationships to others. Furthermore,
part of what makes messages memorable messages (and not
another kind of message) is that an individual reports them
retrospectively, so the person has had time to consider
whether the messages were impactful in the long term.
Although memorable message scholarship does not typi-
cally address messages as they are happening, other types of
sexuality message research inform this study. For example,
Romo, Lefkowitz, Sigman, and Au (2002) studied Latina
mothers’ messages about dating and sexuality to their adoles-
cent children and found this parent–child communication
about sex to be both positively and negatively related to
adolescent sexual behavior. Hirschman, Impett, and Schooler
(2006) found that girls whom they identified as “less self-
objectified” reported more open communication with their
parents, which extended to conversations about sexuality.
These studies support that messages about sex and sexuality
can impact behavior and that parents and family are often a
significant source of these messages.
Further, Stohl’s (1986) work on organizational socialization
supports employing a memorable message framework to
study LGBTQ memorable messages about sex and sexuality.
Stohl (1986) found memorable messages in the workplace
context emphasized how one should behave in an organiza-
tion and served to assimilate individuals into the work cul-
ture. Stohl (1986) also found that memorable messages
benefited employees in an organizational setting by providing
them with sense-making structures and a guide to what was
appropriate behavior for the organizational setting. We argue
that memorable messages about sex and sexuality could serve
similar socializing functions, especially for a population whose
members are marginalized by those aspects of their identity.
Additionally, memorable message scholarship has found
gendered differences in messages (among others, Dallimore,
2003; Heisler, 2014), which informs our decision to focus
specifically on women and sexual and gender minorities in
examining memorable messages about sex and sexuality. As
both sex and sexuality are arguably some of the most gen-
dered topics, the messages that women receive about sex and
2
We chose to recruit participants under age 30 years because we argue the climate in sexual communication may vary between age cohorts.
3
After obtaining human subjects approval from the college’s institutional review board.
4
Which is an e-mail listserv managed by the National Communication Association.
5
Cisgender describes a person who identifies with the sex that person was assigned at birth.
that LGBTQ people receive about sexuality are important to
examine and thus far absent from memorable message litera-
ture. While memorable message literature has addressed
socialization into organizational identities (among others,
Dallimore, 2003; Stohl, 1986), it has not examined how mem-
orable messages might socialize people into their sexual iden-
tity. In this article, we seek to take a meaningful gaze at the
memorable messages LGBTQ participants shared about sex
and sexuality. We argue that messages about identity and
messages about sex—behavior that is closely linked to perso-
nal identity—have a unique potential to impact self-concept,
mental health, and health behaviors. Understanding the con-
tent of these impactful messages warrants scholarly attention.
Specifically, we contend that LGBTQ women would have an
increased complexity in their understanding of their sexual
identity, and that memorable messages have the potential to
offer insight into one of the ways in which they came to have
that understanding. Therefore, the following research ques-
tion guides our analysis:
RQ: What are the memorable messages LGBTQ women
receive about sex and sexuality?
Methods
Participants and Procedures
We engaged in purposive, volunteer, and snowball sampling
to recruit participants who identify as women or female
between the ages of 18 and 30 years.2 We distributed the
survey link3 to different social media platforms, including
Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and the Communication,
Research, and Theory Network.4
The survey yielded 488 participants, of whom 91 identified
under the LGBTQ umbrella. The population was a geographi-
cally and internationally diverse group representing 24 states
and Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Turkey.
The majority, 68.1%, identified as White, European, or
Caucasian, 18.7% identified as mixed race, and African
Americans comprised 1.1% of the sample. Participants wrote
in their assigned sex and gender identity. Most participants
(n = 59) identified as cisgender5 female or female; however, 32
participants identified under the transgender or gender-
nonconforming umbrella, with 9.9% identifying as a transgen-
der woman and 3.3% as a transgender man. Participants also
wrote in their sexual orientation, which included bisexual or
pansexual (50.5%), lesbian, gay, or homosexual (14.3%), queer
(4.4%), open (2.2%), asexual and homoromantic (3.3%),
unsure or questioning (4.4%), bisexual and homoromantic
(1.1%), demisexual and biromantic (4.4%), “mostly” hetero-
sexual (2.2%), asexual (6.6%), demisexual and heteromantic
(1.1%), asexual and panromantic (1.1%), heterosexual identi-
fied but currently in a same-sex relationship (1.1%), and
demisexual (1.1%). Two participants (2.2%) who identified

as heterosexual were included in this article because they
identified their gender as transgender.
Instrumentation
Prior to starting the survey, participants were taken to an
informed consent page; once they clicked “I agree,” they
could move onto the survey. The survey could be broken
into five parts; the two parts addressed in this article include
demographic information and memorable messages about sex
and sexuality.
Participants were asked in open-ended form to describe
where they currently live (location) and their age, and to
identify their race/ethnicity, assigned sex, and gender identity,
along with their sexual orientation. Self-identified descriptions
were then coded.6 We provided participants with Stohl’s
(1986) definition of a memorable message, and asked them
to recall a brief but detailed story that described something
from their past, a story, memory, experience, and/or message
from another source that has most impacted their current
perspective on sex, sexual health, and sexuality.
Data Analysis
To address the research question posed earlier, we employed a
qualitative content analysis (Dallimore, Hertenstein, & Platt,
2004; Orbe et al., 2014) for the thematic analysis process. As
the data discussed in this article are part of a larger study, we
first separated those participants who identified under the
LGBTQ umbrella (anyone who did not identify as strictly a
heterosexual, cisgender female) (n = 91). Those responses
were coded for message source, valence (positive, negative,
or neither positive nor negative), and message theme. To
identify themes, we analyzed 186 memorable messages gath-
ered from 91 participants for this study using Owen’s
Thematic Analysis, which stipulates that a theme must meet
the criteria of recurrence, repetition, and forcefulness (Owen,
1984). The first round of coding involved reading through the
data to identify more descriptive categories meeting Owen’s
criteria. A second round of analysis involved axial coding to
produce themes. Each author coded the responses individu-
ally, discussing any discrepancies. The results discussed in this
article reflect 100% agreement between coders.
Results
Nine themes emerged from the coded data placed in three
primary categories in relationship to identity: (a) challenging
messages, (b) affirming messages, and (c) neutral messages.
Challenging messages involved themes that undermined par-
ticipants and their identities, including erasure, homosexuality
is wrong, sex is for men, and rape as a normal female experi-
ence. We organized messages under the challenging category
that were blatantly disaffirming to the participants’ self-
concept concerning sex and/or sexuality. Affirming messages
included subthemes of understanding sexuality, validation
and support, and you don’t owe sex. Affirming messages
6
Complete tables of each demographic characteristic are available from the corresponding author upon request.
HEALTH COMMUNICATION 3
organized within understanding sexuality were generally posi-
tive; disaffirming messages related to understanding sexuality,
such as trauma dictating sexual orientation, which we argue
provides participants with a (negative) sense-making function
related to their sexuality, are organized under challenging
messages. Neutral memorable messages focused on behavior
rather than identity, and included subthemes of “wait until
you’re ready” and safety. While all of the data presented in
this study come from LGBTQ participants, we argue that
these neutral messages are likely experienced by many
women regardless of their sexual or gender identity.
Message Source
Memorable messages across all three themes came from
mothers (19.8%), peers (19.8%), media (17%), other adults
(teachers, therapists), (6.9%), multiple sources (6.9%), a cur-
rent or former partner (5.3%), other relatives (4.8%), fathers
(3.2%), both parents (3.2%), church (2.1%), a general cultural
awareness (2.1%), or sex education class (1%). Some did not
specify a message source (6.9%). Collectively, parents and
family continue to comprise the largest source of memorable
messages, consistent with past research. However, peers and
media also account for a significant portion of formative
messages about sex and sexuality.
Challenging Messages
Challenging memorable messages involved themes that
undermined participants and their identities, including eras-
ing messages that invalidate and silence identities and beha-
viors, messages that homosexuality is wrong, messages
concerning the idea that sex is for men, and messages that
normalize rape as a part of the female experience. While many
of these messages could function as sense-making messages
enabling participants to understand their sexuality, we thema-
tically organized affirming messages related to understanding
sexuality separately.
Erasure
LGTBQ participants expressed feelings of erasure with mes-
sages that sought to invalidate or silence the participant, a
particular identity, or sexual behavior (“lesbian sex isn’t real
sex”). Gay, bisexual, and asexual erasure were present, as well
as suggestions that alternate sexual identities were immature
feelings, or that the participant was “too young” to know her
identity. For instance, one participant, an 18-year-old who
identified as asexual and genderfluid, was told by a peer,
“I’d be interested to see if you felt the same way in a few
years.” Similarly, an 18-year-old pansexual woman recalled
the message “You’re too young to know what you like” from
another adult in her life.
A 28-year-old bisexual woman recalls a similar invalidating
response to coming out to her mother:
coming out to my mother as both bisexual and poly, i was met
both times with a negative reaction. this suggested to me that
4 V. RUBINSKY AND A. COOKE-JACKSON
there was something wrong with how i felt and what i liked, or
that my desires were still immature and not fully developed and
therefore illegitimate
A 21-year-old asexual female participant had someone in
her Internet community say, “Someone told me that oral sex
wasn’t sex and lesbians who didn’t have sex with a man would
always be virgins.” The same participant also remembered the
message “That if you aren’t heterosexual you need to keep
your ideas of sex out of society.”
Other participants recalled erasing memorable messages,
like one 18-year-old bisexual woman who recalled a message
she heard in her sex education class: “A teacher said we didn’t
need to talk about homo- and bisexuality during sex ed
because nobody in the room was gay, I was 14 and thought
i was a lesbian.”
Instances of erasure also took the form of participants not
being exposed to an identity they were experiencing. For
instance, a 30-year-old bisexual woman remembered how
the lack of messages she was receiving about bisexuality
impacted her experience of feeling attraction to men and
women:
Growing up I was initially told by my grandparents, aunts, uncles,
pastors, teachers, etc that being gay was something bad. It should
be hidden and shunned. I was very scared when I started feeling
an attraction to both genders. Nobody had ever explained to me
what being bisexual was, so I felt there was something wrong
with me.
While each participant’s experience was different, they all
expressed instinctually having their views of sex and sexual
identity erased through direct verbal messages or mainstream
societal norms.
Homosexuality Is Wrong
Messages that positioned being LGBTQ as wrong, disgusting,
or a sin (n = 11) were also found. These messages often took
the form of disparaging comments about other LGBTQ peo-
ple that made an impact on the participant, although some
were comments or advice made directly to participants. Some
of the disparaging memorable comments included childhood
memories whereby a 27-year-old lesbian woman’s stepfather
stated that “the Long Beach Gay Pride Parade, pictured in a
newspaper article, was disgusting” or a 27-year-old question-
ing woman who shared how both parents told her that “any-
one who expressed as homosexual or bisexual was wrong and
was making a choice to be a sinner.”
One 25-year-old lesbian woman remembered her mother
telling her that “Gay people are going against God and will
therefore go to hell.” A 23-year-old demisexual7 woman
remembered, “I was told by three youth minister at a church
I attended for 2 years loving another of the same biological
sex it’s a sin and deserves hell.” She further noted, “I was
engaged to a woman at the time. For weeks, maybe months, I
dreamt of falling into a fiery pit.” These comments from
LGBTQ women highlight the salience of messages describing
homosexuality as wrong.
7
Demisexual refers to an identity on the asexual spectrum in which a person does not typically experience sexual attraction unless accompanied by
romantic attraction.
Sex Is for Men
Another challenging message type participants identified
included messages that informed them that sex is for men
or that women do not generally enjoy sex (n = 10). Several
messages furthered this concept by informing participants
that sex was meant to hurt for women, that it was painful,
or that the first time hurts (n = 5). For instance, a 21-year-old
asexual woman described a message from her mother: “Mom,
since then, has repeated these statements [men have needs],
guilting me when I tell her I don’t have sex with my boy-
friends. Guys have needs, its unfair of you to deny them.”
Similarly, a 26-year-old bisexual woman recalls, “I once read
an interview where an actress said women hate sex but are
obligated to have it to keep their man satisfied. I was a teen-
ager and at the time it freaked me out and made me more
anxious than I needed to be.”
A 23-year-old pansexual woman recalls receiving a mem-
orable message from her mother:
One time I was waiting for a checkup at the doctor’s and my mom
was filling out the questionnaire they give you at the beginning. It
asked if anyone had talked to me about sex, so my mom went “I’m
assuming you already know about this, right? Just take it from me,
wait until you’re married. It’s not that great, anyway.”
Additionally, messages implied to women that they should
feel bad about sex, that women should not want sex, or that
women are dirty (n = 9), like a message a 29-year-old bisexual
woman received during her high school years: “When I was in
high school I had a teacher tell us not to have sex because
vaginas can produce yeast, exactly like the yeast in bread, and
how gross was that.”
Rape as Normal Female Experience
A final challenging memorable message theme that several
participants noted included messages that prepared them to
be raped or sexually assaulted, excused rape and sexual
assault, suggested rape or sexual trauma impacts identity, or
otherwise positioned rape as a normal female experience
(n = 9). An 18-year-old asexual woman recalls hearing a
teacher say, “Most of you will be raped at least once in high
school.” Another participant, a 28-year-old bisexual woman,
described, “Once when I was about 13, my 10-year-old male
cousin grabbed my breast and my mom said, ‘That’s just
something you’re going to have to learn to deal with now
that you have boobs.’” A 29-year-old bisexual woman’s
mother told her “to wear a bra at all times because no men
could control themselves, including my dad and brothers.”
Lastly, an 18-year-old demisexual woman heard from a peer,
“It’s natural for guys to rape girls, I mean we have all these
hormones we can’t ignore, but since you girls don’t have these
hormones you can’t rape anyone. It isn’t natural.” Messages of
rape as normal female experiences help illuminate the litera-
ture that confirms how rape and sexual assault messages serve
to silence women’s voices and contribute to mental health
problems that often go undiagnosed (Ahrens, 2006).

Affirming Messages
Beyond challenging memorable messages, affirming messages
were also reported by participants. Generally affirming mem-
orable messages about understanding sexuality, validation and
support, and “you don’t owe sex” form this theme. In addition
to providing similar sense-making functions for participants,
these messages largely serve to help participants construct
their sexuality and support network.
Understanding Sexuality
The most prominent theme to emerge included messages that
helped participants understand and construct their own sexu-
ality or construct sexuality as a concept. These messages
included patterns of sexuality as fluid and exposure to infor-
mation and education that the participant identified as aiding
in their own identity construction. We organized disaffirming
messages related to understanding sexuality, like trauma as
dictating sexual identity, under challenging messages, so they
are not presented in this section.
A 24-year-old bisexual woman who did not identify the
source of this message recalls hearing, “Sexuality means the
‘spirit’ of a person when it comes to sex, such as the things
one likes during sex, how often they desire sex, etc. Everyone’s
sexuality is different, including those within the same sexual
orientation.” A 30-year-old genderqueer8 participant
described, “One of the most impactful messages I received
about sexuality when I was young was that gay people are
born gay, that being gay is an essential and innate
characteristic.”
These affirming messages distinguished between sex, sexu-
ality, and gender, positioned sexuality as a spectrum, and
positioned sexuality as an identity that only the participant
gets to define. Additionally, messages related to understand-
ing sexuality sometimes encouraged participants to worry
about their happiness more than their label, and to under-
stand the options and fluid nature of sexual orientation. A 19-
year-old bisexual woman read on the Internet that “gender
identity and biological sex aren’t linked, so I can both male
and female,” and an 18-year-old pansexual woman learned
that “it’s less of a spectrum and more of a color wheel and
nothing is rigidly set in stone.” Similarly, a 23-year-old lesbian
woman recalled the message “Gender and sexuality are not
the same thing. Not all gay guys are FABULOUS, and not all
lesbians are butch.”
The subtheme of understanding sexuality also included the
idea of labels or boxes to categorize sexuality. One 18-year-old
bisexual woman read online, “You shouldn’t try and fit your-
self into a box and force yourself to define who or what you
are as a person until you’re absolutely ready.” Another 22-year
-old asexual woman heard from a peer, “You don’t have to
identify with a label throughout your entire life. If it suits you
right now that’s great. If in a few years you’ve changed your
mind, that’s great too.” As this section demonstrates, partici-
pants recalled a variety of affirming messages that functioned
to help them understand their sexuality.
8
Genderqueer is an intentionally ambiguous gender identity in which the individual does not identify as man, woman, or agender (no gender).
HEALTH COMMUNICATION 5
Validation and Support
Although many of the memorable messages participants
described were negative (48.4%), there were a number of
positive messages too (39.2%, with 12.4% coded as neither
positive nor negative). Of these, some were messages of vali-
dation, comfort, and support (n = 18). For example, a 21-year
-old lesbian woman stated, “I was told that if I don’t want to
have sex, that’s OK, and that if I identify as asexual, that’s
OK,” while a 24-year-old pansexual woman recalls, “it doesn’t
matter what body you were born in, your looks, your gender,
we’re all human and we all deserve to be loved.”
“You Don’t Owe Sex”
A more empowering theme within the messages was of those
that informed participants that they did not owe sex, men are
not entitled to sex, and “your body, your choice.” Examples of
these more empowering messages include an 18-year-old
bisexual woman’s message from her mother, “You don’t owe
anyone anything.” A 28-year-old lesbian also recalled a mes-
sage from her mother:
When I was in middle school my mom told me I didn’t have to go
down on boys or shave. She said it briefly and super concerned.
At the time it didn’t mean much to me but was the first time
someone implied I might not want to do those things. It didn’t
have any impact until college but I do make a point to evaluate
whether I want to do something or just feel like I should.
These messages about understanding sexuality, validation
and support, and “you don’t owe sex” are affirming messages.
In the next section, we report the final major theme, which we
categorized as neutral messages.
Neutral Messages
Neutral memorable messages included subthemes of wait
until you’re ready and safety. Neutral messages were both
positive (agency, empowerment) and negative (sex is danger-
ous), but characterized thematically as related to sexual beha-
vior more than sexual identity. Although all examples
presented here are from LGBTQ participants, we argue most
women likely receive these regardless of their sexual identity.
While we prompted participants to discuss memorable mes-
sages related to sex and sexual identity, these participants’
more salient messages related to advice about sexual behavior
and sexual health.
Wait Until You’re Ready
“Wait until you’re ready,” “Find the right person,” and similar
comments encourage participants to wait until they are ready
or comfortable with the right partner to begin engaging in
sexual activities. Consider, for example, a 27-year-old bisexual
transgender woman’s message of “Your first time should be
special, you should feel ready and in love,” or an 18-year-old
lesbian woman who stated, “If you can’t talk to your partner
openly about sex, you’re not ready to have it.”
6 V. RUBINSKY AND A. COOKE-JACKSON
Safety
Another dominant theme was safety (n = 12). Safety messages
mostly centered on sexual health advice and warnings, but
also included physical safety messages (“watch your drink”)
and implications that sex can be dangerous. A 27-year-old
bisexual transgender woman describes a message from her
mother: “Shortly after puberty my mother handed me a con-
dom and said ‘If you’re going to have sex, make sure to wear
protection and I don’t care who you’re sleeping with man or
woman there is no exception to this rule.’” Similarly, other
participants including a 19-year-old asexual transgender per-
son stated hearing “Be safe, protect yourself (with contracep-
tives)” and “Always watch your drink and make sure no one
can put anything in it.” Additionally, a 30-year-old bisexual
woman describes a more open environment for receiving
messages about safety:
Growing up, my mother worked for an AIDS coalition magazine.
Often she would bring me to work and I would see condoms and
messages for safe sex openly displayed. Sex was such a normal
topic that it didn’t seem scary to ask about it. I remember when I
first became sexually active my mother told me that if I decided to
have sex that I could ask her to buy me condoms because she
would rather me be safe than feel I had to hide from her and end
up with an STD.
Finally, participants offered insight and opinions about
how the memorable messages they received impacted them,
or they shared reflections about the context in which they
received the message. It is worth providing a few examples. A
27-year-old bisexual woman’s reflected on the impact of the
memorable messages she received:
I think that my mother’s initial message about sex being “com-
plicated” and a matter of gray areas rather than “black and white”
areas has really stuck with me and shaped my view of sexuality
throughout the years. For example, I have had sexual partners that
have wanted to stick to specific feminized or masculinized sexual
roles during sexual expression, however, this is not something to
which I want to limit myself. Sexual orientation, sexual expression
and sexual fulfillment are all very complex and nuanced and
deserve to be treated as such. I don’t feel sexual comfort or
fulfillment when my sexuality is boxed up by a sexual partner
and I will usually want to talk about my feelings with that partner.
Another example is from a 30-year-old bisexual transgen-
der woman who reflects on her mother’s message to her. She
said, “My mother once explained her misogynistic view on
teenage sexual relations with a dog example. She said the male
can roam freely but the female must be kept on a leash to keep
it from losing its purity and getting pregnant.”
Memorable messages about sex and sexuality have the
potential to affirm or undermine identity for LGBTQ
women. These memorable messages impact the self-concept
and behavior of a population who are disproportionately
affected by a number of physical and mental health issues
(Winter, 2012). The next section discusses the implications of
this study’s findings.
Discussion
Our analysis found major themes of memorable messages
about sex and sexuality that challenge or affirm LGBTQ
women’s identities and identity-neutral messages about sex
and sexuality, with common subthemes including under-
standing sexuality, erasure, validation and support, and safety,
although several others were identified. Importantly, LGBTQ
women receive messages that undermine and affirm their self-
concept. Memorable messages remain an important construct
in identifying a communicative aspect of the socialization
process that informs self-concept and provides guidelines for
behavior (Koenig Kellas & Kranstuber Horstman, 2015; Smith
& Ellis, 2001). In this section, we address the implications of
this study in light of literature on identity and language, along
with acknowledging the study’s limitations. We also make
suggestions for future research.
Three of the subthemes that arose within these messages
under both challenging and affirming message types relate to
understanding sexuality (for affirming messages) or erasure
and rape as the normal female experience (for disaffirming/
challenging messages). The dominance of these themes could
support Stohl’s (1986) claim that memorable messages may
enable understanding of situations and provide sense-making
structures; this study extends this framework into the sociali-
zation of one’s sexual identity, which may be particularly
important for LGBTQ women, who are at a greater risk for
a number of health concerns including mental health, sub-
stance abuse, and dating violence (Center for Disease Control,
n.d; Matza et al., 2015).
Understanding sexuality messages discussed in this article
contributes to how participants make sense of their own
identity or sexuality as a concept. Further, the participants
in this study largely echoed Ritchie and Barker’s (2006) pro-
position that language impacts our understanding of sexuality.
The participants in this study acknowledged that discovering
identities existed or that there were words to describe their
experience enabled their understanding of their own identity
and of sexuality. “Erasure” messages further demonstrate this
concept. While coded separately from the subtheme of under-
standing sexuality, the theme of erasure could also serve to
help LGBTQ women make sense of their sexuality and gen-
der, and reinforces the marginalization of their identity at a
young age by erasing, silencing, or otherwise invalidating it.
This supports Ng and Ng’s (2012) concern that silencing
messages are a powerful form of messages and one of the
ways that language can marginalize lower status groups.
Hyde and Jaffee (2000) looked at the messages young girls
received about heterosexuality. They found that all message
sources suggested antigay attitudes and made homosexuality
invisible. Consider again the following excerpt: “A teacher
saying that we didn’t need to talk about homo- and bisexuality
during sex ed because nobody in the room was gay, I was 14
and thought i was a lesbian [sic].” This participant’s experi-
ence during adolescence served as a memorable message
about sexuality. While this does not follow a short, verbal
prescription for behavior as Knapp and colleagues (1981)
proposed memorable messages might look like, the memor-
able message of homosexual erasure was clear to the partici-
pant. This also supports Dallimore’s (2003) argument for a
broader definition of memorable messages to include ambient
socializing messages and personal experience, in addition to
direct advice, as memorable messages.

The open-ended responses examined in this article only
prompted participants to discuss sex and sexuality, not sexual
health specifically. Regardless, safety emerged as a theme
within this data set. We suggest these messages may be com-
mon for heterosexual women as well. Sexual health messages
(use a condom, use protection, etc.) were included in these, as
well as messages that positioned sex as dangerous (“you will
get AIDS”/STDs). Warning messages regarding physical safety
(“watch your drink”) were also present. Dallimore’s (2003)
work on gendered socialization of university faculty supports
the notion that memorable messages for women sometimes
function as a warning or survival strategy, which characterizes
our neutral theme. As we did not prompt for these responses
in this data set, the focus on safety still present in LGBTQ
women’s memorable messages may highlight a common
thread in the messages that socialize women into their
sexuality.
Messages including “Your body, your choice,” “You don’t
owe sex,” and “Men are not entitled to sex” encouraged
empowerment and agency, suggesting to the participants
that it was their choice whether and when to engage in sexual
activities. Batchelor, Kitzinger, and Burtney (2004) found the
right for girls to “Say no” was a theme in UK media depicting
youth sexuality. Additionally, they found that within the
magazines and television shows they examined, men were
depicted as always wanting sex, and women as having to
draw the line and manage “how far to go” (Batchelor et al.,
2004). While we view this theme of “you don’t owe sex” as
empowering and positive, further research may consider
whether these messages exist within a context of assuming
(within a heterosexual) relationship that it is a young woman’s
responsibility to manage how the relationship sexually pro-
gresses and to draw the line. Messages such as “wait until
you’re ready” and “find the right person” encourage partici-
pants to wait until they are ready or comfortable to engage in
a sexual activity and were generally positive, encouraging
agency and comfort, but may also support this mediated
script that within a heterosexual context, women are meant
to be gatekeepers.
Further, rape as a normal part of the female experience and
rape/trauma dictating sexuality are particularly disturbing
themes, but important to highlight as we discuss the implica-
tions of this research. These messages either prepared or
warned women that they would be raped or assaulted, advised
them to just “take it,” or aimed to normalize men as rapists
who cannot control themselves. As this is a particularly harm-
ful narrative, although not necessarily surprising given the
rate of rape for young lesbian and bisexual women (Center
for Disease Control, n.d), this research positions memorable
messages as one way of examining part of the cultural narra-
tive that women are receiving about rape and assault. While
further research that utilizes memorable messages to examine
this is necessary, rape prevention and education campaigns,
sexual health campaigns, and college campuses may find a use
in understanding the common messages that LGBTQ women
are receiving concerning rape, especially as identified as a
memorable message about sexuality, and the sources of these
messages. Zerubavell and Messman-Moore (2013) found that
college women indicated that fear of sexual powerlessness was
HEALTH COMMUNICATION 7
a barrier to sexual assertiveness, and compared to nonvictims
of sexual violence, women who had been sexually victimized
had greater problems with sexual assertiveness. The role of
these kinds of memorable messages (“lie back and take it,”
“get used to that kind of thing”) may have an impact on fear
of sexual powerlessness in women. More research is war-
ranted in how we communicate messages to young women
that normalize rape as a part of their experience.
Self-Categorization, Identity, and Language
We initially approached this study through an atheoretical
memorable message framework. However, retrospectively,
Self-Categorization Theory (SCT) and literature on language
and identity construction may help make sense of our results.
SCT describes how people put themselves and others into
social categories (Reid & Anderson, 2010). SCT assumes mul-
tiple possible self-images. People organize their information
about the social world according to which social identity fits a
given social context (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, &
Wetherell, 1987). Particularly important to how memorable
messages fit into this process is SCT’s understanding of social
influence. When identities become more salient, people some-
times engage in depersonalization or self-stereotyping where
they can adopt the norms, beliefs, and behaviors of members
of their social group (Turner et al., 1987).
Additionally, Sutton (2010) describes how language shapes
our socializing experience by three metaphors: language as a
vessel, a lens, and a barometer. As a lens, language focuses our
attention and memory, and therefore shapes how we see
reality (Sutton, 2010). How we label a group influences how
we perceive that group (the saying-is-believing effect) (Sutton,
2010). As memorable messages require retrospective recollec-
tion in the context of an individual’s current identification (in
our case, about sex/sexuality in the context of current sexual
identification), they may function as a method through which
these self-categories initially emerge or provide an important
referent point for evaluation of these categories. Affirming
and challenging memorable messages may therefore compli-
cate the identity development process by providing either a
means of identity support or disconfirmation as individuals
attach a value (positive/negative) to their own and others’
identities. Sutton (2010) also describes language as a barom-
eter, which can reveal motives, thoughts, and memories of the
sender of a particular message. Memorable messages also
serve as a barometer for how important others feel about
salient aspects of an individual’s identity (like gender or
sexuality).
Unsurprisingly, some of the memorable messages that
LGBTQ women reported about sexual identity were in line
with “homosexuality is wrong,” “homosexuality is disgusting,”
“homosexuality is a sin,” and so on. Several more were about
sex in general being wrong or bad for women to think about
or desire, and women’s bodies being dirty or disgusting.
Importantly, these messages sometimes took the form of dis-
paraging comments about other LGBTQ people (see Results
section). LGBTQ identity management and female sexuality
may be negotiated on a situational basis, with negative com-
ments about other LGBTQ people or women serving as an
8 V. RUBINSKY AND A. COOKE-JACKSON
immediate red flag or as Sutton’s (2010) barometer. Some
participants identified having not “come out” to their parents
because of comments their parents made about other LGBTQ
people. The impact of memorable messages on coming-out
narratives and decisions to self-disclose sexual identity may
warrant further investigation. It is our duty as communication
scholars to continue working to create a space for this
dialogue.
Limitations and Further Research
Our article presents one portion of a larger study and is
exploratory in nature. Therefore, the data we present in this
article pose two significant limitations. First, participants were
not prompted to specifically identify whether or not each
individual memorable message had an impact on their
behavior. Second, all survey answers were open-ended, and
as a result some participants did not answer all of the ques-
tions. Further, memorable messages in this context are a part
of how individuals are socialized into their sexual identity.
However, we did not consider individual identity salience in
our study.
Throughout this section, we have proposed several areas
for further research, including research examining sexual
health memorable messages. We also recommend looking at
the specific impact of Internet communities or information
that mediates familial memorable messages about sex and
sexuality. How memorable messages may function to normal-
ize rape or sexual assault to young women also warrants
additional exploration. Finally, the impact of memorable mes-
sages on sexuality self-disclosure and “coming out” would
benefit from further study.
It is worth noting that we found more negative than
positive memorable messages about sex and sexuality. This
salience of negative memorable messages warrants further
investigation. Importantly, messages that challenge, under-
mine, or erase the feelings and experiences of a sexual identity
may relate to poor self-esteem or mental health challenges,
which in itself warrants further research. Negative memorable
messages themselves may function differently than they have
in previous scholarship, which has predominantly explored
positive memorable messages.
Conclusion
Memorable messages continue to provide a rich source of
information about ourselves and our society (Knapp et al.,
1981). In this article, we examined the messages that LGBTQ-
identified women recall about sex and sexuality. This research
extends and supports some of the existing memorable mes-
sage scholarship, while proposing new areas for memorable
message research to explore.
As communication scholars, this research offers a starting
point for a more robust conversation about how LGBTQ
women have to work to extrapolate these deeply embedded mes-
sages or information that frames how they interact with relation-
ships and their own self-image. Additionally, memorable
messages continue to provide guidelines for behavior. Given the
increased rate of violent crime, sexual assault, suicide, and mental
health risks chronicled in the press toward this community, the
need to address the memorable messages specific toward LGBTQ
women is critical. This line of inquiry is paramount for informing
our understanding of LGBTQ mental health, and important to
help enable families, parents, and media ensure adolescents and
children receive messages of inclusion, empowerment, and
agency.
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