Adherence to highly active antiretroviral therapies (HAART) in HIV-infected patients: from a predictive to a dynamic approach.

Male-male social bonds have a powerful influence on the sexual relations of some young heterosexual men. Qualitative analysis among young men aged eighteen to twenty-six in Canberra, Australia, documents the homosocial organization of men's heterosexual relations. Homosociality organizes men's sociosexual relations in at least four ways. For some of these young men, male-male friendships take priority over male-female relations, and platonic friendships with women are dangerously feminizing. Sexual activity is a key path to masculine status, and other men are the audience, always imagined and sometimes real, for one's sexual activities. Heterosexual sex itself can be the medium through which male bonding is enacted. Last, men's sexual storytelling is shaped by homosocial masculine cultures. While these patterns were evident particularly among young men in the highly homosocial culture of a military academy, their presence also among other groups suggests the wider influence of homosociality on men's sexual and social relations.

/pdf/men-sex-and-homosociality-how-bonds-between-men-shape-their-5eemnzhejt.pdf

Men, Sex, and Homosociality How Bonds between Men Shape Their Sexual Relations with Women

Postmodernism and Popular Culture

A tradition of predominately feminist literature has revealed that there is a ‘missing discourse of desire’ in many sex education programmes. Building on this work, this article explores the gendered effects of this de‐eroticized and clinical form of education. It is argued that young women and men's (hetero)sexual subjectivities are differentially affected by the invisibility of desire and pleasure in this curriculum. To offer young women a sense of personal empowerment and entitlement, and young men a broader range of (hetero)sexual subjectivities, it is proposed that sex education include a discourse of erotics. This would comprise more than an acknowledgement of desire and pleasure and incorporate the embodied practicalities of these experiences. As a means of developing this discourse within sexuality programmes, empirical evidence of 17‐ to 19‐year‐olds' experiences of desire and pleasure are examined.

Beyond the birds and the bees: constituting a discourse of erotics in sexuality education

In Australia and Canada, the sexual health needs of migrant and refugee women have been of increasing concern, because of their underutilization of sexual health services and higher rate of sexual health problems. Previous research on migrant women’s sexual health has focused on their higher risk of difficulties, or barriers to service use, rather than their construction or understanding of sexuality and sexual health, which may influence service use and outcomes. Further, few studies of migrant and refugee women pay attention to the overlapping role of culture, gender, class, and ethnicity in women’s understanding of sexual health. This qualitative study used an intersectional framework to explore experiences and constructions of sexual embodiment among 169 migrant and refugee women recently resettled in Sydney, Australia and Vancouver, Canada, from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Sri Lanka, India, and South America, utilizing a combination of individual interviews and focus groups. Across all of the cultural groups, participants described a discourse of shame, associated with silence and secrecy, as the dominant cultural and religious construction of women’s sexual embodiment. This was evident in constructions of menarche and menstruation, the embodied experience that signifies the transformation of a girl into a sexual woman; constructions of sexuality, including sexual knowledge and communication, premarital virginity, sexual pain, desire, and consent; and absence of agency in fertility control and sexual health. Women were not passive in relation to a discourse of sexual shame; a number demonstrated active resistance and negotiation in order to achieve a degree of sexual agency, yet also maintain cultural and religious identity. Identifying migrant and refugee women’s experiences and constructions of sexual embodiment are essential for understanding sexual subjectivity, and provision of culturally safe sexual health information in order to improve well-being and facilitate sexual agency.

/pdf/negotiating-discourses-of-shame-secrecy-and-silence-migrant-3od6p6r30s.pdf

Negotiating Discourses of Shame, Secrecy, and Silence: Migrant and Refugee Women’s Experiences of Sexual Embodiment

Academic interest in sexuality and sexual practices has led to a growing body of scholarly work concerned with the deconstruction of heterosexuality. Amid past claims of women's abiding oppression ...

Femininities in Flux? Young Women, Heterosexuality and (Safe) Sex

This article concerns the issues of young women's reputations. By employing a notion of “technology” to investigate “the practices, knowledges and strategies” which surround young women's reputations, this article draws on the recent findings of a 3-year Australian study of young women, heterosexuality, and safe sex practices. By focussing upon the ways in which young women's social lives are both reflected in, and regulated by, a concern for reputation, new insights are generated about the social context in which young people's sexual practice takes place.

“Once you get a reputation, your life's like … ‘wrecked’”

In light of the current and ongoing threats to young women's health of unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmissible diseases (including HIV/AIDS), assured access to appropriate and sensitive health services is of paramount importance. In this article, the results of a recent Victorian study involving rural and urban female secondary school students on issues relating to sexual health are reported. Drawing upon the findings of an extensive self-report questionnaire, young women's attitudes towards and use of health services are presented with a particular focus upon the variations that exist between the rural and urban populations. Apart from issues associated with privacy, which were found to be more crucial to rural young women's decisions to seek medical care, this study found young women's concern about the attitudes of medical and non-medical staff alike, the atmosphere of surgery or clinic, and gender of doctor all to be important factors in their general use of health services, regardless of location.

Fiona J. Stewart

Papers

Femininities in Flux? Young Women, Heterosexuality and (Safe) Sex

“Once you get a reputation, your life's like … ‘wrecked’”

Rural and urban female secondary school students' attitudes towards and use of primary care services.

EnGendering AIDS: Deconstructing Sex, Text and Epidemic by Tamsin Wilton