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Sexually and gender diverse staff in Higher Education Institutions may experience a sense of belonging and acceptance in inclusive environments, but may also face discrimination and bias, leading to feelings of isolation and exclusion. This paper reports on findings from 40 in-depth interviews and six focus group discussions with LGBTQIA+ self-identified staff members in a HEI and LGBTQIA+ allies who may identify as LGBTQIA+ themselves. Findings reveal that first impressions when joining a university as a staff member may have a long-lasting effect, while both positive and negative experiences are present. Further, a pattern is developed among gay men who may be placing more emphasis on their relationship with line managers, which can be supportive but at times toxic, unsupportive and inattentive. In addition to this, the findings highlight discrimination faced by staff, its impact on their wellbeing, and the significance of visibility and representation. This paper concludes that lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ staff members in Higher Education continue to be mixed with a high percentage of staff experiencing discrimination, primarily in the form of microaggressions, but institutions need to be more pro-active to foster safe spaces for all with more inclusive policies and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the UK a polarised and politicised discourse exists that attempts to pitch transgender identities in opposition to discourses on sexual orientations. This suggests that interventions assisting clients in their understanding of one, would be detrimental on exploration of the other i.e., to be affirming of gender identity is to cause conversion of sexuality and vice versa. This paper attempts to address some of the problems with this oppositional critique and solve some of the practical problems that the theorist and/or clinician may encounter while attempting to help their clients within the realm of psychological therapies. It does so through Deleuzian ontologies of difference, coupled with Bhaskarian critical realism. We aim to present a (re)consideration of the biopsychosocial model of Health. The recent publication of the International Classification of Diseases 11th Edition and its reclassification of trans aetiology as a Disorder of Sexual Development has presented a conceptual shift from gender dysphoria towards a gender incongruence model (WHO 2022). The aim of this article therefore is to develop practice by enhancing the conceptual toolbox of the clinician and therapist working with Gender Sex and Relationship Diversities (GSRD). Thereby enabling them to better approach a wider diversity of clients safely. This paper explores current conversations and ideas around the phenomenon of trans gender identities and minority orientations. It aims to present an ethical model which can inform the clinical practice of therapists and is underpinned by a critical realist interpretation of biological, psychological and sociological aspects of the mind and body. Overall, the paper acts as a call to action against conversion practices which aim to position trans experience and sexual attraction in opposition to each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on South African teenage girls’ engagement with pornography. Using a decolonial approach and drawing upon new feminist materialism, this study focuses on the ways in which bodies, gender and sexuality configure to produce and constrain girls’ capacities for sexual expression. The paper makes three claims. First, the article turns away from a one-sided representation of girls as only possible to know through the lens of sexual suffering while challenging childhood sexual innocence. Second, the online pornographic field is situated in a gendered and racialised system of organisation whereby the perfect body is naturalised as an esteemed object of desire. Third, the desire for the perfect, slim, blemish-free, hairless body through self-surveillance constricts capacities in line with normative standards of female beauty. A decolonial porn assemblage is harnessed to illustrate the contradictions produced as girls both desire and object to idealised bodies that are naturalised through heterosexual and racialised hierarchies. The paper concludes by considering the implications of approaching girls’ engagement with pornography in relation to the expansion and limitation of their capacities and the body as an intense site of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After more than twenty years of programming and activism aimed at stemming the sexual transmission of HIV (and addressing the needs of those most vulnerable to infection) the HIV/AIDS epidemic continues to grow worldwide. Taking up this concern, this paper argues that one of the reasons why HIV prevention has had limited success is because of inadequate conceptualization of human sexuality in such work. Giving sexuality a more prominent position in responses to the epidemic raises a range of issues, including theorization of gender, understanding of sexual subjectivity, the significance of pleasure (or lack of pleasure) in sexual decision-making, and conceptualization of sexual behaviour and culture. Taking these themes forward entails asking significant questions about the underlying paradigmatic and methodological commitments of mainstream HIV/AIDS research, especially the tendency to reproduce accounts of human sexuality as if it were a measurable form of conduct only. Advocating new approaches that take the meaning and symbolic value of sexualities into account complicates established orthodoxies in the field whilst offering potential for more effective HIV prevention strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports on results of a survey on inclusive education developed for a university. The University Inclusive Education Survey was designed to examine academics’ views on inclusion of a diverse range of students including sexuality and gender, disability, cultural and ethnic diversity and Indigenous Australians. Inclusiveness has focused on access for students with disabilities and has broadened to access for all with little research on how this is being achieved. The survey contained five scales – comfort, confidence, importance of including a range of specific diversities, intention to implement strategies and overall inclusiveness. The results indicate connections between self-efficacy and importance of diversity with a weaker connection to implementation strategies. Those who completed the survey indicated very strong interest and efforts in inclusive teaching. A majority outlined inclusive practices in qualitative responses though there was evidence of uncertainty about implementing inclusive practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we draw upon a qualitative study to investigate how black teenage girls interact with digital spaces to provide both capacities to express and constrain sexuality. Following a new feminist materialist approach, we demonstrate girls' experiences of sexuality as embedded within a complex entanglement of matter (both human and more-than-human) that produce capacities, mediating what girls can do, feel or be on social media. Specifically, we conceptualize girls' experiences within a 'techno-sexual' assemblage of bodies, things, ideas, social media applications, videos and pictures to illustrate how ideals of heterosexuality are connected to an affective flow of matter that creates vibrancy, permitting capacities and constraints. Firstly, we show how girls' entanglement with celebrity and media culture, sexy selfies, and videos through digital affordances unlocked agentive capacities for the experience of heterosexual desire. Secondly, we illuminate how the assemblage generated restrictive capacities for girls who did not ascribe to heteronormative and racialized ideals of beauty through objectification and online sexual harassment. We argue that a recognition of this online micro-political space remains a vital part of gender transformative interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the recent proliferation of anti-discrimination protections supporting LGBTIQ+ youth internationally, backlash periods have ensued. Whilst liberal-progressive rights models theorise ‘backlash’ as an expected consequence of rights recognitions progress, some post-colonial and Queer scholars frame backlash within enduring authoritarian anti-rights tendencies, and question assumptions of progress. To understand backlash more adequately, this paper explores state-level anti-LGBTIQ+ Bills potentially impacting youth proposed in the USA between 2018 and 2022. Critical discourse analysis is used to map the different types, locations, conceptual arrangements and outcomes of 543 anti-LGBTIQ+ rights US state-level proposed Bills. Bill attempts were mainly concentrated in Republican-governed states including Tennessee (48), Missouri (40), Iowa (39), Oklahoma (32) and Texas (32). Overly extended claims concerning girls/women’s religious and parental rights were advanced in opposition to LGBTIQ+ youth rights, and as part of wider rights attacks. Bills used anti-rights and pro-rights discourses to mask as ‘backlash’ the rights claims advanced by elite-led anti-rights mobilisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine ways in which a group of teenage fathers in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, talk about their involvement in becoming a teenage father. We draw from a qualitative research project based on five focus groups and 20 individual interviews with teenage fathers aged between 17 and 19 years of age. We argue that when teenage fathers talk about their experiences, they locate caring and traditional versions of masculinity in understanding their roles. These versions of masculinity are socially and culturally located which both expand and constrict teenage fatherhood and caring masculinities. We conclude with some implications for addressing teenage men in the construction of masculinities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a critical discourse analysis of policy documents and textbooks, this paper contributes to the growing field of research on the role of schools and schooling with regards to the construction of gender and sexuality by focusing on school practices and educational spaces. We argue that the nation-state in the Islamic Republic of Iran is a religious biopolitical state and its official discourse in the realm of gender and sexuality relies on heteronormative as well as gender normative belief systems. School spaces are therefore constituted as strongly heteronormative, and non-heterosexuality is not recognised as a legitimate subject position. Through its everyday practices, the education system upholds the state's ideology, by which the ideal/normal student is read as being heterosexual and cisgender, adhering to Islamic/state values, and constituted on the axis of strict gender binaries. Education about sexuality-gender diversity is therefore excluded and/or silenced. This paper aims to explore school discourses and practices in terms of gender and sexuality and how schools construct and regulate sexual and gender identities, with the aim of producing the ideal Islamic/Iranian subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As femvertising, through "strong" and "realistic" portrayals of women, has been gaining momentum with brands, it is essential to determine whether it is considered "authentic" and "reformative" by women. As a primary step, this paper uses the Generational Cohort Theory to analyse and compare the perceptions of two distinct groups of women based on fixed parameters of empowerment, sexuality, and identifiability. These cohorts can be viewed as merely an example of a demographic variable to create/describe segments, but as is evident, it goes beyond that to unveil distinct emotions, interpretations, and perceptions based on unique values and social norms pertinent to the groups. Results obtained through focus groups exhibit that the essence of empowerment has shifted from a collective concept of social transformation to an individualistic concept of self-transformation. Contrary to popular belief, that the older cohort is threatened by the erosion of familiar traditional values due to the emergence of pervasive cultural changes through powerful imagery; femvertising was more accepted by Gen-X, than Gen-Y. It provides theoretical and practical implications by categorising the cohorts based on characteristics and decision-making patterns that can be useful to improve the understanding of the target audience and increase the persuasive power of the media images accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jair Bolsonaro, the unapologetically homophobic and ultraconservative Brazilian president, managed to emerge from the margins of the political system and gained electoral momentum during the impeachment hearing against Dilma Rousseff in 2016. The hearing, which ultimately demoted the first female president of the country, epitomizes the current affective polarization of Brazil in which sexual dissidence plays an important role. This paper discusses the politics of discourse, affect and sexuality which has drawn Bolsonaro and his far-right ideologies into greater political relief. To do so, I will focus on the scene in which Jean Wyllys, a human rights activist and the only openly gay congressmember at the time, spat on Bolsonaro. Wyllys' misdemeanor caused a commotion in the country and was recontextualized in several venues such as memes, social media, op-eds, YouTube parodies etc. This paper investigates the intense circulation of Wyllys' actions and how it responds to and takes issue with the larger affective scenario of the country. I analyze the socio-semiotic life of Wyllys' spit by tracking its textual trajectory with a view to discussing the performativity of disgust and the forging of political (in)sensibilities with regards to gender and sexuality in contemporary Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a response to writer, philosopher, and trans activist Paul Preciado's 2019 presentation to 3,500 psychoanalysts at the École de la Cause Freudienne's annual conference in Paris. There, Preciado wittily alluded to Kafka's 1917 short story, "Report to an Academy." In the story, an ape named Red Peter, who has learned to behave like a human, presents to an academy the story of how he achieved his transformation into an acceptable, educated European (but he is ready to pull his pants down as needed to show a bullet wound commemorating his capture). Thus, Preciado exhibited himself as a transsexual specimen like Kafka's ape, who ironically claimed that he was as "human" as anyone in the audience. To push the metaphor further, I will invoke Kafka's novella Metamorphosis and argue that psychoanalysis needs to undergo a mutation whose first sign might well be a sex change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper critically engages with the notions of sexuality in the lives of women with intellectual disabilities through the analytical categories of gender and care. An in-depth narration of the case study from a BUDS Rehabilitation Centre in Kerala, South India, is used to trace the patterns of care that monitor the sexuality of persons with intellectual disabilities. There is gender bias in the interpretations of sexual expressions and emotions of a woman with intellectual disability as immoral and hypersexual in the BUDS Rehabilitation Centre. The prevalence of sexual ableism leads to hypersexual objectification of a woman with an intellectual disability. The sexual rights of the woman are suppressed by the discourse of vulnerability. The study also traces the resistance from women with intellectual disability towards ableist notions of normative sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes forces of gender and sexuality that evoke intense controversies in religion, society, and politics, and influence acts of discrimination and hostility. These forces have potential for wholeness, but are often used to reinforce power hierarchies and justify violence, as in cases of anti-abortion aggression, racialized sexual violence, domestic abuse, and bans on gender minorities. Drawing on psychology and theology, the paper analyzes the nature of truth and post-truth, and poses a pedagogy of truth-seeking and five practices that can guide learning communities as they seek truths about gender and sexuality that liberate and support human wholeness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her groundbreaking text, Male Daughters, Female Husbands, Ifi Amadiume offers an ethnographic account which depicts, among others, gender in the making in Nnobi society in Nigeria. This paper, drawing from Amadiume's work, looks at three related specific moments of understanding gender and sex categories in a South African context. Through empirical research based on a qualitative study; a literary text; as well as visual arts, the paper tracks the notion of nongayindoda, a Nguni term for (gender) fluidity to offer new insights that go beyond Western gender binaries. Nongayindoda has been used to refer to masculine women or men-like women. In some contexts, it has been assumed to relate only to women who have chosen not to have relations with men. Some have considered the term derogatory and thus shied away from using it. In this paper, the term is turned upside and interrogated to reveal broader meanings. In the end, I argue that nongayindoda offers an opportunity to move beyond gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Burnett and Richardson's paper has two related aims. First, it develops a model of how gender is articulated within fascist and other far-right discourses based on a review of the relevant scholarship. This model is presented in the first section. Researchers have in the past suggested a gap, or even a wilful ignorance, of gender in studies of the far right, and claimed that the topic is 'neglected' and 'under-researched'. This gap is to some extent held open by disciplinary, historical and definitional boundaries that work fractally to split inquiry. Burnett and Richardson have thus read the literature in a kaleidoscopic fashion, including analysis across different historical periods and country contexts, to examine how gender surfaces in various 'fascist' discourses. This approach covered psychoanalytical, discourse analytical, historical, art historical, literary, political and anthropological approaches to gender and fascism. The second aim of the paper is to show how the model proposed is brought into relief in a particular country context: that of the United Kingdom since the Second World War. Gender in post-war British fascism has been the subject of several important studies, though none of them have specifically traced the textual journey of key ideas and themes related to gender in mediatized far-right discourse. Building on a discourse-historical analytic approach to the development of fascist politics of this period, Burnett and Richardson argue that paying attention to gender in fascist discourse is a useful lens through which to analyse the local and historical contingencies that make one fascist discursive formation differ from another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue of Global Public Health brings together papers examining how sexuality, gender, health and human rights have become increasing visible and highly contested within global health. The papers included here question and explore the often contradictory processes through which global equity-seeking populations negotiate pleasure and danger across multiple arenas (including HIV and AIDS, LGBTQ+ health and rights, intersex rights, sex worker rights, realities of refugee and displaced persons, and gender-based violence) and in diverse geographic contexts (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Canada, Ghana, Haiti, Kenya, Mauritania, Nigeria, Peru, Rwanda, and the USA). These papers examine emerging questions about the gaps and limits in current legal structures that do not legitimize sexual rights as fundamental human rights, the role of agency (and of bounded agency) needed to navigate constrained contexts, ways in which community-based solidarity efforts shape access to sexual rights, and how sexual pleasure and consent are experienced and negotiated in rights-constrained contexts. The interdisciplinary authors included in this collection showcase how the ranging definitions of sexual rights, their enactment, and expressions of pleasure and danger are inextricably entangled with local contexts and cultural systems that underpin not only people's lived experience but simultaneously become central topics for global health research, policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Creative Change Laboratory (CCoLAB) was conceived as an immersive learning space in which young people from the Western Cape province of South Africa could develop unconventional solutions to problems in their communities. Unlike most art-activism projects, CCoLAB harnessed a wide range of expressive forms (visual art, interactive drama, narrative writing and photography/videography) to identify, analyse and respond to social justice challenges. In many ways, CCoLAB was an experiment, asking what could be achieved if an art-activism project was held over a long period and was not constrained by a focus on just one theme/topic. Over eight months, CCoLAB's twenty collaborators were exposed to different ways of thinking and doing activism, culminating in the development of original creative prototypes. Many of the final artworks spoke to the nuances of sexuality, gender and health, exploring topics such as sexual- and gender-based violence, the everyday challenges facing queer and trans youth, and physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. Drawing on artworks produced during the project, facilitator/collaborator reflections, and audio and visual recordings made during the process, this paper investigates the benefits and challenges of long-term, well-resourced art-activism interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While teaching a secondary gender studies course, high school teacher "Eleanor" found that though most students identified as queer and expressed interest in disrupting normative understandings of genders and sexualities, their classroom contributions often reified problematic norms. She implemented what she termed a Queer Contemplative Pedagogy to challenge students to think more contemplatively about genders and sexualities. Based on ethnographic classroom observations and individual interviews, this paper examines Eleanor's and the students' efforts to use meditation and contemplative writing to challenge a range of norms and personal assumptions. This study offers a rare pairing of contemplative practice with queer research and provides an instructional approach that pushes youth and educators to continue to examine assumptions and societal constructions related to genders and sexualities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing numbers of women are showing interest in clitoral reconstructive surgery after 'Female Genital Mutilation'. The safety and success of reconstructive surgery, however, has not clearly been established and due to lack of evidence the World Health Organization does not recommend it. Based on anthropological research among patients who requested surgery at the Brussels specialist clinic between 2017 and 2020, this paper looks at two cases of women who actually enjoy sex and experience pleasure but request the procedure to become 'whole again' after stigmatising experiences with health-care professionals, sexual partners or gossip among African migrant communities. An ethnographic approach was used including indepth interviews and participant observation during reception appointments, gynecological consultations, sexology and psychotherapy sessions. Despite limited evidence on the safety of the surgical intervention, surgery is often perceived as the ultimate remedy for the 'missing' clitoris. Such beliefs are nourished by predominant discourses of cut women as 'sexually mutilated'. Following Butler, this article elicits how discursive practices on the physiological sex of a woman can shape her gender identity as a complete or incomplete person. We also examine what it was that changed the patients' mind about the surgery in the process of re-building their confidence through sexology therapy and psychotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and asexual (LGBTQA+) Australians are vulnerable to religion-based attempts to change or suppress their sexuality and/or gender identity, including conversion ideology messaging in school-based sex education. Conversion bans are currently being debated across the country. This paper reports on a critical survivor-driven study which retrospectively explored Australian LGBTQA+ youth exposure to conversion practices both within and outside of education settings. It privileges the perspectives of self-titled 'survivors' of conversion ideology and practices through the use of a reference group and constructivist grounded theory. Qualitative data were collected 20 from Australian LGBTQA+ conversion ideology and/or practice survivors aged 18 years and over, using focus groups and 35 individual interviews between 2016 and 2020. In conversion-promoting religious contexts including education institutions and groups, messages concerning sexuality and gender changed as individuals grew older and were drawn into more/enclosed settings in which core conversion messages of LGBTQA+ 'brokenness' were prevalent. While individuals progressed through the conversion experience in different ways, their experience was characterised by the absence of any form of affirming LGBTQA+ education – enabling conversion itself to become their LGBTQA+ (mis)information source. School policy addressing conversion, alongside enhanced provision of affirmative age-appropriate gender and sexuality education, may mediate this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Was there a state-socialist model of school sex education and if so, what characterized its form and content? What shaped the specificities and divergent characteristics of each country? The paper explores and compares programs of 'education for family life' as these became part of state-driven reproductive politics in late stages of state socialism in three countries (Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary), with a particular focus on sexuality and gender. We analyze how sexuality was framed in these otherwise broadly understood programs, which aimed not just at discussing sex but also interpersonal relations within the family, forming the ways in which gender was to be understood, and sexuality was to be practiced. We show that school curricula for education for family life, which included sexual education, were introduced in the early 1970s in all three countries, and these programs displayed many similarities. We identify transnational influences in triggering the interest in such type of education and cross-border exchanges that shaped it further. Nevertheless, when analyzing the content of these curricula, national factors and peculiarities become visible, like the heightened focus on 'normal' family life in Czechoslovakia, the importance of ethnicity (Roma minority) in Hungary or religion (Catholicism) in Poland. As a result, we cannot speak of a universal model of state-socialist sex education. Methodologically, we follow the sociology of expertise that focuses on the ways in which expertise forms, links or disjoins, creating new areas of social life in need of expert intervention (Eyal, Rose, Hacking). Changes in expertise thus map onto broader social changes and analyzing the shifts in expertise can help understand societal processes of social reproduction and change. In our paper, we focus on sexological and pedagogical expertise, as these intersected on the issue of school-based sex education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While feminist and queer pedagogic literatures can celebrate the inclusion of "other lives", and the successes of their endeavours, this paper seeks to focus on the "here" and everyday hegemonies of heterosexualities and masculinities and the "failings" inherent to teaching practices. When engaging Irish and UK students in learning about geographies of genders and sexualities teaching about hegemonies seeks to perform a political pedagogy of questioning privilege from our positionings. The teaching that I discuss is informed by student and popular presumptions about places such as Ireland and the UK as "sorted" and, indeed, "leaders" in terms of progress about sexualities (and gender identities). Such presumptions not only create specific geopolitical regimes, but have specific classroom manifestations. In this paper, I reflect on my presumed "outness" and deliberate non-namings in shared/communal spaces, extending the discussion of "here" to include how personal-institutional-national nexus create, and are created by, teaching spaces. Thus, the paper explores diverse possibilities for teaching social difference and how pedagogies are always geographically created. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a small snapshot of some of the issues regarding LGBTIQ+ experiences and identities. Of particular importance are the political and personal agencies of personhood and expression – how do individuals perform and experience gender and sexuality outside both heteronormativity and homonormativity? This paper analyses fluidity across geographies and mobilities, with a specific emphasis on age, categorization and identity expression. It also looks at sexual expression in individuals outside of dominant Western culture, as well as post-modern expressions of queerness and social media representations. Most importantly, the paper focuses on homonormativity, non-normativity, and divergent ways of being, interrogating the same-sex marriage debates and legislation in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conceptualization of femininity and masculinity beyond normative viewpoints is one of the most difficult challenges to the psychoanalytic field. It is challenging to think of gender beyond the binary phantasies of a stabilized body – male/female. And yet, binaries are unstable. While new subjectivities such as transgender and non-binary challenge our conception of gender, increased debates in the field regarding demands for gender transitioning, particularly among children and adolescence, reveal an implicit investment and limiting heteronormative ideology that is animated in the tacit alignment of gender with biology. In this brief paper I conceptualize gender in a way that is consistent with a psychoanalytic view of the body and psyche as being out of joint. The psychoanalytic conceptualization of the relationship between the body and its ever-flourishing meanings, as uneven, positions gender as closely linked with sexuality. Conceptualizing gender as a libidinal experience, not easily separated from the unruliness of sexuality, allows us to encounter new and creative formations that exceed our limited conception of human nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Romance in modern societies is undergoing a two-fold process of transformation: on the one hand, traditional gender relationships are being revised and criticized; on the other, new digital communication technologies are making possible to initiate, sustain and end romantic relationships through a set of practices that mix physical co-presence and online interactions. Using a qualitative approach (N = 48), this paper explores how young people (ages 18–29) in Chile conceive of romantic relationships in this social and technological context. Our results show that romantic relationships are a significant terrain in which gender is negotiated through digitally mediated practices of courtship and maintenance of established romantic relationships. These mirror the power dynamics involved in the existing gendered normativity, but also provide some leeway to transform it, depending on the resources that individuals bring to the technological milieu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Australian Chinese diaspora's digital dating experiences afforded by both Chinese-language and global English digital dating/hook-up services. Digital dating offers an interesting context for an analysis of the Australian Chinese diaspora's interracial romantic and sexual engagements, through which we can examine how race, and its intersections with ethnicity, gender and sexuality is represented, consumed, and practised. We were able to reach three conclusions from the participant experiences presented in this article. First, digital dating and its constitutive norms play a role in maintaining certain tropes of cultural representation of racial subjects and securing cultural power within an overarching system of white racial entitlement. Second, we found that agency is key to understanding the female participants' dating experiences. Third, the male participants tended to form negative and sometimes distorted social perceptions of white Australian women as a result of being neglected on English-language dating sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital media have significantly contributed to the articulating and shaping of the contemporary debate about gender and sexuality, often disrupting numerous stereotypes promoted insistently by the media. This contribution aims to deepen the relationships among gender, sexuality, and media, through the analysis of a specific case study based on the Fertility Day campaign, an initiative launched by the Italian Ministry of Health to draw attention to the country's fertility and counteract the falling birth rates. The campaign intended to encourage couples to have more sex and conceive more babies, focusing on 'the beauty of maternity and paternity'. But the campaign was denounced as being offensive, sexist, and ageist, triggering numerous online reactions. In this paper we present the findings of a content analysis of 5,300 public tweets characterized by the hashtag #fertilityday. These data show how hundreds of citizens used the campaign's hashtag to construct a counter-narrative around the right and the choice to have a baby (Vicari et al., 2018. Political hashtag publics and counter-visibility: A case study of #fertilityday in Italy. Information, Communication & Society, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1555271). We focused our attention on how female users narratively reframed the institutional discourse, shifting the topic from the problem of 'fertility', in a strict sense, to the importance of welfare policies capable of supporting maternity and facilitating gender equality. We consider this case study as emblematic for its power of being an indicator of progress in public discourse on the sociocultural construction of the role of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights are fundamental human rights. Previous studies on gender and sexuality in displacement settings have often focused on sexual and gender-based violence and the reproductive health problems of women while underplaying their needs for sexual expression, pleasure and procreation. This paper examines the influence of conflict and displacement on gender relations, sexuality and natality of internally displaced women in Nigeria. It draws on data from a larger study in which focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were used to explore 52 women's gendered experiences with Boko Haram insurgency and displacement. A critical thematic analysis of data revealed that the women's relationships with their men were complex and ambiguous, characterised by both tensions and solidarity. The women saw their men as partners in their struggle against multi-level oppression, including the structural barriers that undermine their mutual sexual expressions and pleasure, as well as their desire to procreate and repopulate their decimated ancestral communities. We recommend collaborative efforts to promote and protect the Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights of displaced women which includes building physical structures and living conditions that promote healthy, safe and pleasurable sexual expressions, and socio-political structures that create access to the long term social security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At an embodied and personal level this paper plays with what Evans, J., & Davies, B. (2011. New directions, new questions? Social theory, education and embodiment. Sport, Education & Society, 16(3), 263-278) suggests are ‘the complexity and nuances of biology in culture and the influence of body pedagogies in the production of social inequalities and hierarchies.’ (p. 263). Despite extensive attention to gender order, sexualization, sexual subjectification, sexual and gender representation in physical culture (sport, active lifestyles and health and physical education), research/scholarship has paid little attention to the positioning of and constitution of practices by body parts, such as breasts specifically. Given that gendered cultural pedagogies teach humans how to understand their selves, physical culture has potentially extensive affordances for learning the self. Drawing on narrative inquiry and content analysis, six diverse participants’ breastories are examined for breast pedagogies and how the materiality of breasts constructs and position humans and their gendered representations in physical culture. This paper suggests the recognition of breastism and employment of breastwork to work towards gender justice and dismantling some of the oppressions of gender. While others argue that productions of the gendered body lead to discipline and control of body parts, actions, and gender presentation, I consider instead the material and symbolic role of body parts, their actions and the gendered construction of those parts and how these gendered constructions act to discipline and control body pedagogies and engagement for more equitable futures in physical cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper maps the development of a response-able (Barad 2007), creative professional learning programme for in-service teachers of an unfolding relationships and sexuality education (RSE) curriculum in Wales (UK) where the authors are uniquely and deeply entangled. We chart crucial aspects of the ethical, political and creative praxis informing this journey and explore how the post-qualitative concepts of darta and dartaphacts (Renold 2018), through creative audits facilitated by teachers that surfaced what students know and wonder about RSE, challenge assumptions about 'what matters' in RSE for children and young people. We diffractively analyse teachers' experiences of conducting creative audits across three post-qualitative vignettes and a poem. These dartaphacts-in-the-making offer glimpses at the boundless potential of making student voice matter, which we argue can spark and sustain a co-produced curriculum that comes from and stays close to 'what matters'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the relationship between gender, sexuality and nation in late Francoist popular culture, exploring and comparing different and conflicting representations of masculinity and femininity. The analysis focuses mostly on how popular film comedy engages with existing sexological discourses disseminated through medical essays or sex manuals. In this sense, attention is particularly paid to filmic representations of marital relations and to the cultural pervasiveness of the figure of the polygamous, lustful, and adulterous macho ibérico. It is contended that sexological discourses expressed concern about a 'sexual divorce', which referred to the inability of men and women to function sexually together. At the same time, anxieties were voiced about the so-called female frigidity. This condition was blamed on the sexual ineptitude of Spanish men, which ultimately rested on the primitive and selfish character underlying their national and racial nature. Finally, it is argued that these discourses showcase diverse narratives about gender and nation against the backdrop of a crisis of masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian and international research consistently indicates that inclusive school cultures improve the educational outcomes and health and wellbeing of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) students. Little is known, however, about how Tasmanian school staff are supporting LGBTI students or the needs of teachers and school staff in creating and sustaining inclusive school environments. To address this knowledge gap, this paper reports on findings from a qualitative inquiry conducted with teachers and school staff. Drawing on Szalacha's (2004. "Educating Teachers on LGBTQ Issues." Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education 1 (4): 67–79. doi:10.1300/J367v01n04_07.) three paradigms of LGBTI-inclusive education practices, this study found that teachers and school staff employ Safety and Equity approaches in an education system where there is little time or resources given to knowing and understanding relevant policy focused on supporting LGBTI students. We argue that the school staff's perception of school and departmental policy influences how they understand what is expected and what is possible in supporting LGBTI students. Findings from this study point to the need for inclusive education policies that inform and support teachers and foster potential for more critical approaches to equity and diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While feminist postcolonial literature provides valuable insight into the intersectional effects of race, gender and sexuality, other dimensions of difference-making like region or class often remain invisible. Combining postcolonial and post-socialist perspectives, this paper explores the intersections of multidimensional frontiers in the social production of "otherness". Using a sociology of knowledge approach to discourse, we analyze how current mediatizations of migration and conflict in East German cities link ethnosexual with spatio-cultural-historical frontiers. This interplay of multifaceted frontiers constitutes internal and external images of a cultural "other" and contributes to internal coherence within the sexually and racially imagined nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a study of love magic, this paper examines the ways in which sexual desire is culturally mediated among the Lelet of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. The Lelet regulate sexuality heavily through what Foucault refers to as 'prescriptive discourses' which severely constrain expressions of sexuality, especially for women, who are construed as properly lacking sexual desire. While women are readily the object of men's desire, men are not readily the object of women's desire. Despite passionlessness being the ideal for women, men turn to love magic as a means of cultivating sexual desire in them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While critical analyses of media representations of lesbians continue to grow, less attention is paid to audience responses to those representations. This paper explores women’s experiences of viewing lesbians on screen, analysing qualitative data from focus groups with audiences of a women-only film season screened in a UK cinema: “Lesbians on Screen: How Far Have We Come?” We consider how the internalisation of the “male gaze” complicates some women’s viewing of lesbian characters and how women attempt to challenge and resist that gaze through their viewing practices and strategies. We discuss audience creativity in re-signifying representations of women, as well as other strategies including choosing to view privately or in women-only spaces. These acts of resistance disrupt the dominance of the male gaze, patriarchal cinema spaces, and reception of images on screen. By examining women’s reflections on the experience of being in a women-only audience, a unique cinema space that “felt free” of conventional constraints of heteronormativity and patriarchy, this paper also examines how the gendered cinema space affects audience experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The role of place is undertheorized in the literature on intersectional social movements; this study uses Atlanta, Georgia as an exemplary case study of how the characteristics of geographical areas shape the possibilities for intersectional social movement organizing. Atlanta is home to a rare trend of men's gender justice groups that organize around one or more additional intersecting identities (e.g. race, sexuality, religion). Across the country there are groups like Men Can Stop Rape and Men Against Sexual Violence, but Atlanta has Black Men for the Eradication of Sexism, Muslim Men Against Domestic Violence (MMADV), and the Sweet Tea Southern Queer Men's Collective. Based on a year of participant-observation and interviews with MMADV and Sweet Tea, this paper illustrates how local grassroots activism is shaped by four types of interweaving place-based factors: demographic, geographic, cultural, and institutional. By enabling necessary precursors, these factors combine to create an environment where multiple intersectionally-organized men's gender justice groups could form, independently of each other, despite being extremely uncommon elsewhere in the country. The article develops a model for theorizing about intersectionality, space and place, social movements and activism, and contemporary feminism, as well as contributing to knowledge about activism in the understudied context of the Southern city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY, or the Tribunal) completed its mandate in 2017, marking the end of its 24-year lifespan. While the ICTY has officially ceased operations, the implications of the Tribunal's closure continue to manifest in contemporary settings of transitional justice. Embracing a queer approach to time, the ICTY can be better understood as temporally fluid, open, and contested, rather than confined to its establishment and closure. This is because as a site for the (re)production and (re)presentation of discourses, the ICTY transcends temporal boundaries, continuing to shape and constitute (post-)conflict and transitional contexts. In this paper, I deploy queer approaches to time to interrogate how discourses of gender, sexuality, and violence at the ICTY traverse legal-political temporalities. Using the Tribunal's Srebrenica remembrance as a case study, I demonstrate how gendered and sexualised logics constituted at the ICTY exceed the Tribunal's official temporal mandate. Adopting a queer approach to time, I argue that gendered memories of violence at the ICTY permeate temporalities of international justice and global politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper theorises the speculative process of how an arts-based online youth activist resource, AGENDA () is becoming eventful and re-mattering youth voice on gender and sexual violence. Utilising the concept of the 'cwrdd' – a Welsh word for gatherings made, found and stumbled upon – we explore how our AGENDA cwrdds attune to, nurture and platform a range of micro-political moments across performances and workshops that entangle human and non-human participants. Inspired by Erin Manning's concept of the 'more-than', we illustrate how the cwrdds carry the past-present-future potentials of what has mattered and is mattering to young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jazz has been a familiar element of secondary music curricula in the United States since the late 1960s (Worthy 2013). Yet, as broader social dialogue addresses equity and justice concerning gender and sexuality, secondary instrumental jazz education remains underrepresented in those discussions. Pressures to conform to heteronormative notions and performances of gender and sexuality in this field demand participants deemphasize aspects of their identities in order to avoid stigmatisation, a practice known as 'covering' (Yoshino 2002). Pressure to perform gender and sexuality 'intelligibly' (Butler 1999) can serve as motivation toward assimilation or as a force of discrimination (Yoshino 2002). Thus, in this paper I argue historically that established and contemporary instrumental jazz pedagogies comprise acts of discrimination. I recommend ways of troubling heteronormativity embedded in conventional methods of teaching aspects of instrumental jazz such as improvisation and swing feel. Suggestions are offered for shifts toward diminishing discriminatory pressures to cover. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do teenagers located in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa, the epicentre of the HIV pandemic, give meaning to sexuality? This paper examines teenage black Africans investments in sex and sexuality and the gendered dynamics through which sexuality is articulated. Whilst unequal gender relations of power continue to feature prominently within relationship dynamics fuelling the gendering of HIV, attention to the micro-processes through which relationships are forged remain significant in illustrating the complex connections between love, sex and gender. Drawing on empirical findings with teenagers between the ages of 16 and 17 years old, the paper shows how relationships are conceptualised based on discourses of love. Love is inextricably bound up with sex and when teenagers talk about love and sex they also talk about condom use, multiple sexual partners and gender inequalities. What teenagers were interested in for their sexual relationships was not raised in sex education programmes at school. Implications for addressing teenage constructions of sexuality are discussed in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Any analysis of South African gendered performances, identities and inequalities confront past and present experiences of and struggles with race, colonialism, post-colonial development and sexuality. These tensions shape gendered geographical work, highlighting the importance of histories of race, class, and sexuality, as well as the ways in which gender itself can be approached as an analytical category and epistemic framing in South Africa. In this paper we focus on two avenues that have engaged scholars since the end of apartheid, namely: gender and development; and gender and geographies of sexualities. The former articulates the particular ways that the historical spatially exclusionary trajectory of the country has impacted especially on women and their ability to engage with state and national building projects post-apartheid. The latter explores how South African geographies (despite the country's progressive post-apartheid constitution with regard to LGBT rights) continue to reflect and (at times) enable spatial segregation and inequalities related to gender. A key strength of research in South African gender scholarship is that it complicates and challenges how we might approach gender and gender-based inequalities, and the diverse ways in which gender categories and framings can be imagined, deployed and troubled in post-colonial states and cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares data on gay men and lesbians' sexual life courses in Italy from repeated cross-sectional surveys in 1995–1996 and 2012–2013. Gay men and lesbians increasingly experience sexual developmental milestones at similar ages and rates across the gender divide. They decreasingly experience their first coming out and first same-sex sexual contact in conventionally gendered situations. The number of lesbians' sexual partners rises towards that of gay men's. Sexual exclusivity spreads in gay and lesbian couples and the places were gay men and lesbians meet sexual partners consistently differ, but gendered trends point to common underlying norms. Growing similarities in gay and lesbian sexual experience across the gender divide suggest that, in line with on-going transformations in the meanings of sexuality in contemporary Italy, norms centred on relational preoccupations and sexual pleasure spread at the expense of the once hegemonic procreational and naturalised perspective on sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pre-service teacher education on LGBTI rights and inclusion is impacted by multiple conflicting education governance provisions carrying different risks and duties for teachers. Pre-service teacher education has an international reach – catering to both international pre-service teachers and domestic pre-service teachers destined for careers and travel abroad. This paper argues that pre-service teacher education efforts focussing solely on local education treatments of LGBTI rights may leave pre-service teachers sorely underprepared for the differing education contexts they may encounter. The article proposes that teacher educators should communicate relevant international human rights legislation provisions and education policies on LGBTIs. It provides overviews of LGBTI identities, laws and policies, and data across multiple contexts based on key informant interview data and desk-based research. It argues that some sources on LGBTIs are unreliable and informed by broader disruptive geopolitical efforts, and suggests why and how to train pre-service teachers to avoid them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increased acceptance of LGBTQ people in U.S. society has arguably led explicitly queer social spaces, such as the gay bar, to be displaced by more 'questionably queer' venues—fluid spaces where LGBTQ people seek to build community while not foreclosing sociality with their straight peers. This paper uses 34 interviews with the patrons and managers of two 'questionably queer' bars in a small Southeastern city to show how the masculine domination of these spaces converges with the greater willingness of straight people to occupy them to create an atmosphere where many LGBTQ women feel excluded and alienated. By examining the processes through which this marginalization occurs and analyzing the cultural narratives and pragmatic strategies that LGBTQ women construct to legitimate or contest that marginalization, this study sheds light upon how these women are being impacted by changes in queer spaces and what can be done to address their exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This narrative review will draw attention to the current limitations within the literature related to women following traumatic brain injury in order to stimulate discussion and inform future directions for research. Background: There is a wide-ranging body of research about traumatic brain injury with the higher incidence of brain injury among males reflected in this body of work. As a result, the specific gendered issues facing women with traumatic brain injury are not as well understood. Method: A search of electronic databases was conducted using the terms "traumatic brain injury", "brain injury", "women", "participation", "concussion" and "outcomes". Results: The 36 papers revealed the following five themes (1) Relationships and life satisfaction; (2) Perception of self and body image; (3) Meaningful occupation; (4) Sexuality and sexual health; and (5) Physical function. Conclusions: Without research, which focuses specifically on the experience of women and girls with traumatic brain injury there is a risk that clinical care, policy development and advocacy services will not effectively accommodate them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how our understandings of gender and Physical Education (PE) have developed since the publication of Shaping Up to Womanhood in 1992. I reflect back on my research which, using qualitative methodology and a socialist feminist lens, explored dominant gender relations in the teaching of girls’ PE in English secondary schools. The analysis of my data revealed how PE teachers had clear ideas about ‘appropriate’ activities and behaviours based on notions of acceptable femininity relating to physical ability and capacity; female sexuality and expectations of motherhood and domesticity. I consider how my conclusions have been taken forward in international feminist PE research over the past 25 years as theory has shifted from structural to poststructural analyses. I conclude that we now have far more micro analyses of teachers’ and students’ subjectivities, identities and differences and more complex understandings of power. I argue we need to re-align subjectivities with the social, political and economic landscape of education. The paper considers the cultural backlash against feminism underpinned by postfeminist, neoliberal discourse that emphasises individual self-determination evidenced by the ‘can do’ girl. This is set in contrast to recent evidence that concludes that gender expectations are still very evident in PE for girls in schools. Finally, I consider the 4th wave of feminism that through digital platforms is re-asserting feminist activism and developing a ‘call out’ culture of sexism and inequalities. For a more equitable PE we need to bridge the gap between theoretical sophistication and school experience. There are both continuities and changes in relation to gender and PE but the need for critical feminist work in PE is as important today as it was as I concluded my research 25 years ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the role that discourses of fundamental acoustic parameters, in particular pitch and timbre, have played in the reproduction of a significantly (male) gendered digital music landscape in and beyond the UK. By revisiting a nineteenth-century debate about the definition of tone, which occurred between Georg Simon Ohm and August Seebeck, the paper exposes some of the ways that these foundational audio-technical discourses have been articulated through implicitly gendered, sexualised and racialised discourses. Certain ways in which these discourses have been performed differently are then addressed through Kim Gordon's and Jutta Koether's installation,Reverse karaoke: Automatic music tent(2005), which establishes a creative space where performing and listening function as social events that are transmitted along a specifically queer feminist frequency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the meanings educators produce about their experiences working with trans and gender-nonconforming students, and the effects of this discursive process. In this paper, I draw on 62 interviews with school staff conducted in British Columbia to examine how educators understand their role in an institutional context (a school) that is shaped by systems of power that legitimise and enforce sexual and gender conformity. By drawing on the dominant narratives available to them, educators recounted their experiences through discursive resources that tend to distance them from the institutional systems of power they were operating within. Four specific discursive resources through which the educators’ experiences became intelligible are described: (1) relying on bullying discourses, (2) framing themselves as open-minded individuals, (3) emphasising external institutional obstacles and (4) acknowledging their complicity in systems of power. Through these discursive framings, the role that educators themselves play in shaping the field of legibility and legitimacy in schools is downplayed, thus limiting the potential to resist and displace existing systems of power and generate systemic transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To date, girls and women are significantly underrepresented in computer science and technology. Concerns about this underrepresentation have sparked a wealth of educational efforts to promote girls’ participation in computing, but these programs have demonstrated limited impact on reversing current trends. This paper argues that this is, in part, because these programs tend to take a narrow view of their purpose, ignoring important factors that shape girls’ identities and education/career choices – not least broader narratives around gender, race, and sexuality. This paper focuses on the issue of sexuality – that is, how sexuality discourses are shaping a diverse range of girls’ experiences with technology, their perceptions of themselves, and their ultimate educational and career choices. The paper makes the case for considering these important connections, bringing together research in two disparate areas: (1) sociological research in gender, diversity, and technology and (2) critical cultural studies research in youth sexualities and schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]