· Sexual acts between people of the same sex are more common than the stigmatised category of homosexual would suggest
· Plummer’s categorisation of homosexual activity allows us to see quite clearly the power of labelling and the response to it. The last category shows how a group can develop strategies to change the way that society views them. They attempt to shift the discourse.
· However the labelling theory implies that groups labelled as deviant are always powerless and must accept the stigma of the label.
· Labelling as a process is not clear cut and it differs from person to person as well as the response.
· Kitsuse asked mature students what constituted as homosexual behaviour and the definitions and responses varied considerably.
· However Kitsuse assumed that the respondents in his research were themselves heterosexual; it is possible that part of the variety of responses could be linked to the sexual preferences of the respondents
· The work of labelling theorists’ shows that it’s not the act itself which causes deviance but the societal reaction.
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