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Displays of hegemonic masculinity within research contexts are often perceived to inhibit the collection of 'good' data and present a problem which the researcher must overcome. Instead of being seen as hindering the research process, this article takes such moments as 'data', which provide first hand insights into the way male sexuality is made within focus group settings. This environment is seen as constitutive of male sexual subjectivities in the way that it provides a public forum for young men's presentation of self. Through their talk about sexuality young men engage in the management of their own sexual identities, fashioning these through what they reveal and conceal about their sexual selves. In order to meet the objective of the focus group and discuss sexuality 'seriously' yet also preserve masculine identity, young men deploy discursive constructions in complex ways. Such demands render the maintenance of an identity which conforms to traditional constructions of masculinity precarious, so that constant slippage between projections of 'hard' and 'softer' versions of male sexuality occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research that has explored young people's (hetero)sexual behaviour has often assumed that the idea of 'relationships' is transparent. Subsequently, the diversity which exists within this concept has been neglected. This paper endeavours to unpack the concept of 'relationships' with reference to young people's own understandings and meanings of the term. Drawing on findings from focus group research with 17-19 year-olds in New Zealand, it analyses how relationships are constituted and differentiated. Some of the determining characteristics are: the time partners spend together, a sense of exclusivity and intimacy, emotional attachment and the kinds and frequency of sexual activity engaged in. On the basis of various configurations of these elements, young people's relationships can be loosely categorized as 'one-night stands', 'short-term relationships', 'casual dating' and 'going out'. The diversity, complexity and fluidity in these conceptualizations present a challenge to traditional understandings of these relationships, and have implications for how sexual health promotion might be carried out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on empirical research with 17-19 year olds, this article explores young people's understandings of themselves as sexual in relation to dominant discourses of (hetero)sexuality. It is concerned with providing empirical evidence of resistance in young people's constitution of their sexual subjectivities. The research findings suggest that young people generally draw upon dominant discourses of (hetero)sexuality in their talk about themselves as sexual. However some took up subject positions that involved more resistant conceptions of the sexual self. For some young people this took the form of simultaneously accommodating and resisting subject positions offered by traditional discourses of (hetero)sexuality. It is argued that the potential to take up more resistant subject positions was partly contingent upon young people's location in contexts that offered access to, or opened space for, other ways of constituting themselves as sexual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people may face conflicting and confusing messages about what it means to respond well in relation to homophobia and transphobia. Consequently, we ask – What might it mean to respond well to homophobia and transphobia? This strategy, inspired by Anika Thiem and Judith Butler, is recognition of the ambivalent conditions which structure attempts to respond well to bullying related to gender and sexuality. Such an approach is counter to educational responses that suggest a remedy in advance of the enactment of perceived bullying. Our paper draws on research conducted by the authors in four such schools, two in Australia and two in Aotearoa/New Zealand. It is a deliberate turn away from focusing on who should be held to account for homophobia and transphobia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the potential of queering as a mode of critique by problematising the ways in which liberal politics of race shape normative understandings of health in a high school classroom. Drawing on findings from an Australian and New Zealand (NZ) research project designed to respond to religious and cultural difference in school-based sexuality education programmes, we critically queer how the Māori concept ofhauorais deployed in the intended and operational NZ Health curriculum to shape the raced subject. Despite the best intentions of curriculum developers and classroom teachers to utilise Māori ways of knowing to meet their obligations within a bicultural nation, we argue that the notion ofhauorais domesticated by being aligned with normalising individualistic notions of well-being that reflect the Eurocentric neoliberal individual enterprise subject. Palatable notions of Māori epistemologies as cultural artefacts and iconography drive that ‘inclusion’. The ‘cunning politic’ of (bicultural) recognition legitimates Māori ways of knowing in ways which privilege whiteness – reproducing rather than disrupting networks of power and dumbing down Māori epistemologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]