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In recent years, there has been increased cultural interest in perimenopause and menopause. The importance of peri/menopause in many women's lives makes this topic particularly pertinent for feminist psychologists. Some feminist scholars have acknowledged both physical and psychological factors as important aspects of women's experiences within their wider social and cultural contexts. However, consideration of relational aspects during peri/menopause remains sparse. We report our research exploring peri/menopausal women's experiences of friendships, family, and relationships. Thematic analysis was used to analyse responses to an online qualitative survey in which 71 mainly British women participated. In our analysis, we discuss the Menopause Sisterhood and how these women described social support as grounded in embodied experiences shared with other women. However, there were tensions concerning partners, whose understanding varied, which we report in the second theme: Accounting for (lack of) partner support: Men as heroes (or as absolved of any blame). We discuss the importance and implications of our findings for feminist scholars and psychologists more widely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract\nLAY SUMMARYFemale sexual pain (FSP) occurs within a relational context, yet little is known about partners’ experiences. We explored 26 men’s understandings and experiences of FSP within their different-sex relationships, using an online qualitative survey and semi-structured interviews. Nine of the 25 men who completed the survey were also interviewed, and one man shared his experience via interview only. We report our reflexive thematic analysis which resulted in the following themes: 1. Pain is a communication of a problem: It could be a problem in me captured how men made sense of FSP; 2. On the outside - Where potency is problematic illustrated men’s experiences of being marginalised, and the ways in which this shaped their sense of power and agency within the medical setting and their relationship; 3. Downplaying suffering: My experience doesn’t matter… and yet described men’s view of their own distress, though complex and significant, as less worthy of attention compared to their partner’s; and 4. Hegemonic heterosexuality and the individual man illustrated how men resisted dominant cultural notions of men’s sexuality to various extents, and oriented towards an ‘intimacy imperative’. The implications of our findings are discussed in relation to the help-seeking context for men and couples.In this study we explore how men understand their female partner’s sexual pain during intercourse - how they make sense of it, are impacted by it, and their responses to this complex condition. Partnered sex is an interpersonal experience and these findings have important implications for expanding and enhancing treatment approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords: Codebook; coding; emerge; interpretation; methodology; positivist; reflexivity; theme; theory; topic summary EN Codebook coding emerge interpretation methodology positivist reflexivity theme theory topic summary 424 445 22 04/11/22 20220401 NES 220401 In 2006, psychologists Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke published a paper entitled I Using thematic analysis in psychology i in I Qualitative Research in Psychology i . That type of analysis doesn't tell a thematic story. B Ginny: b One of the things that we articulated later (Braun and Clarke [11]; Braun, Clarke, and Rance [5]) is the idea of a central organising concept, the central idea of each theme. In the subsequent years they have written an award winning and best-selling qualitative research textbook I Successful Qualitative Research i (Braun and Clarke [11]), numerous chapters (e.g. Braun and Clarke [4]; Braun, Clarke, and Rance, [5]; Braun, Clarke, and Terry [6]; Braun, Clarke, and Weate, [7]; Clarke and Braun [21]), encyclopaedia entries (Clarke and Braun [18], [19]), commentaries (Braun and Clarke [13], [14]; Clarke and Braun [23]) and editorials (Braun and Clarke [12]; Clarke and Braun [22]), and created a website (https://www.psych.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/our-research/research-groups/thematic-analysis.html), about TA, as well as written chapters and papers (e.g. Braun, Clarke, and Gray [9]; Clarke and Braun [24]), and co-edited a book and a special issue related to other aspects of qualitative research (Braun et al. [15]; Braun, Clarke, and Gray [8]). That we can offer more on: Ginny and Victoria are currently finishing that very paper, and it will eventually be available in a forthcoming Special Issue of I Qualitative Research in Psychology i on quality in qualitative research (Clarke and Braun [25]). [Extracted from the article]

Prior research has found that asexual people may fantasise or participate in activities typically conceptualised as 'sexual'. These behaviours may be considered paradoxical when an asexual person is conceptualised as someone who does not experience sexual attraction or desire. This research aimed to explore how kinks and fetishes are conceptualised, experienced, and negotiated by asexual individuals. Forty-eight participants were recruited to take part in an online qualitative survey. Thematic analysis resulted in three themes. In "Am I asexual?": (How) can you be a kinky ace?, we discuss the sense of dissonance which some participants reported in negotiating what was seemingly the paradox between their self-identity as asexual and their exploration of kinks and fetishes. In the second theme, Between me and me' and make believe: Kinks and fetishes as solo and imaginary, we report on how kinks, fetishes, and fantasies were often understood in a solitary context and as either undesirable – or impossible – to live out. In the final theme, Kink as a sensual enhancement in relationships, we highlight how participants positioned kinks and fetishes as an agent for intimacy. These findings expand our knowledge of how asexual people negotiate kinks and fetishes and capture the complexities of asexual identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we report on our survey research which sought to explore how pansexual and panromantic people experience and understand their identities. Eighty participants, mainly in the U.K., were recruited via social media and internet forums. Thematic analysis resulted in the development of two key themes. In The label depends on the context: It's like bisexuality, but it isn't, we report the blurred lines between pansexual and bisexual identities and discuss how, despite often having a preference for pansexual and panromantic, these participants nonetheless engaged in strategic use of both bi and pan terms. In the second theme entitled Educated and enlightened pansexuals we report how participants portrayed pansexual and panromantic identities as requiring an advanced understanding of gender and sexuality. This meant that those who engaged in these terms were represented as educated and enlightened. In the subtheme An internet education: Tumblr-ing into pan identities and communities, we discuss how educational resources and inclusive spaces were largely understood to exist only online. In this research, participants understood pansexual and panromantic identities to be related to, but distinct from, other identities (including bisexuality) and presented their identities as entailing distinctive experiences, including of prejudice and discrimination. We discuss the contribution and implications of our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminist scholars have identified a "motherhood imperative" in Western cultures, when heterosexual women are understood to both want and to have children. However, social shifts have resulted in a decrease in pronatalism as well as an increase in social recognition of the parenting desires of same-sex parents. Despite a resurgence of interest in childfree identities, research to date has predominantly focused on heterosexual women's explanations for being childfree and their experiences of marginalization. Our aim in the current study was to explore how childfree heterosexual, lesbian, bisexual, and queer women negotiate their childfree lives and identities in the context of their personal and social relationships within changing cultural contexts. Data from 23 interviews with women in the United Kingdom, who responded to a call for childfree participants, were thematically analyzed. We constructed two themes: (1) Never say never? Negotiating being childfree as ever precarious, which shows how women constructed being childfree as requiring constant revisiting and renegotiating to maintain and (2) An ordinary life: Constructing being childfree as rational and reasonable, in which we identify the rhetorical efforts of participants to establish their being childfree as an ordinary, reasonable, and rational position. We conclude that for these women, childfreedom was constantly in flux and that maintaining a positive childfree identity required considerable identity work in order to manage intimate personal relationships and wider friendships. Online slides for instructors who want to use this article for teaching are available on PWQ 's website at http://journals.sagepub.com/page/pwq/suppl/index [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study sought to develop knowledge about understandings of sexuality and appearance by using a story completion task combined with an innovative visual methodology. Fifty-four (mainly female) participants were randomly assigned to complete a story about a fictional bisexual, lesbian, or heterosexual character who is going on a date, and then asked to build a Bitstrips online avatar of their character. Our social constructionist thematic analysis identified that looking good was a common feature of the stories and that this was understood in largely heteronormative terms. This imperative was also clear in stories of the date, which relied on traditional notions of gender and heterosexuality. Finally, individuality and authenticity were rewarded in participants' stories, yet this was simultaneously constrained by (dominant) heteronormative narratives. We conclude that combining story completion with visual methods enabled deeper insights into representations of appearance, dating, and relationships, than a textual method alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many negative portrayals of bisexuality within Western culture relate to relationships, yet only a small body of research has explored bisexual people’s experiences of their bisexual identity within their partner relationships, particularly in relation to the wider cultural context of binegativity. Twenty qualitative interviews were conducted with bisexual men, women, trans and genderqueer/non-binary people in relationships. Participants were based in the United Kingdom and ranged from 18 to 40 years old. We conducted a thematic analysis of the data and identified two key themes: 1) The case of the disappearing bisexual: Invisible identities and unintelligible bisexual relationships and 2) That’s not my bisexuality and not my bisexual relationship: Defending self, relationships, and partners against bisexual negativity. In the first theme, we report how bisexual identity was understood by participants as largely invisible, particularly when they were in relationships, and discuss how the notion of a ‘bisexual relationship’ was seemingly unintelligible. In the second theme, we discuss how participants engaged in identity and relationship work to defend themselves and their partners against binegativity in order to protect their bisexual identity, their partners and their relationships. These results contribute novel findings to our understandings of how bisexual people experience and manage their identities and relationships within the wider context of binegativity. We conclude with a discussion of the importance and implications of our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on interviews with 20 self-identified bisexual women, this paper contributes to the limited psychological literature on bisexual women by exploring their experiences of social marginalisation. These (mainly white and middle class) British bisexual women reported that they did not feel at home in either lesbian or lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, nor in the wider (heteronormative) society. They identified a number of understandings – bisexuality as a temporary phase on the path to a fully realised lesbian or heterosexual identity and bisexuals as immature, confused, greedy, untrustworthy, highly sexual and incapable of monogamy – which they reported as arising from lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities and the wider society. The women refuted these accounts which they stated did not reflect their experiences of bisexual identity and which positioned bisexuality as invisible and invalid. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This research aimed to explore (predominantly heterosexual) students’ perceptions of sexuality and appearance. A short qualitative survey, which contained questions about the ‘typical appearance’ of lesbians, gay men, bisexual and heterosexual people, was completed by 36 university students. Previous research on dress and appearance in relation to sexuality has mainly focused on lesbian, gay or ‘queer’ individuals and communities. Minimal research has considered whether heterosexual people recognise non-heterosexuality through the dress and appearance of lesbians, gay men and bisexual people, and it would seem that previous studies have not explicitly considered the notion that heterosexuality might also be recognisable through appearance. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. Findings indicated that while students were able to provide appearance norms for lesbians and gay men (which conformed to those identified in previous research), they were also reluctant to give credence to (what they perceived as) ‘stereotypes’ of sexuality and appearance. They described heterosexual men and women in ways that conformed to ‘traditional’ gender norms, but were less able to identify any appearance norms for bisexual people, reflecting the invisibility of bisexuality within Western culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]