Search

In a qualitative study on masculinity, embodiment and sexuality, we interviewed men who were recreational gym-goers about their bodywork practices in Melbourne, Australia. We also asked whether the men had used performance and image-enhancing drugs (PIEDs) as an adjunct to their bodywork practices. While none had used PIEDs, all were considering, or had considered, using them. We found that participants held varying opinions on PIED use and those who used them. The literature on PIEDs noted men's concerns with body appearance and health and focused largely on individual problematic use, but non-users were not mentioned. A second issue in the literature focused on social influences on PIED use, but again with no mention of non-users. Discussion on risk reduction as a public health response did not mention non-users either. This paper, therefore, reports on non-users' thoughts on, regular exposure to, and considerations of PIEDs and other men who use them. We propose that PIEDs might more usefully be understood as an everyday, if contradictory, consideration within most men's bodywork and health practices. We argue that PIEDs constitute a discursive practice exposing a potentiality that engages non-users also and this requires new health promotion approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical Sexuality Studies is an emerging field of academic enquiry linked to an international network of advocacy agencies, activists, and political issues. This paper reports on the development of an advanced short course in sexuality theory and research, drawing on Critical Sexuality Studies and aiming directly at academics in developing countries working in sexuality issues. Over a three-year period, a new curriculum was developed by an international team. The course was piloted in two continents, refined, revised, and released globally under a Creative Commons licence in 2010 on a dedicated website. This paper documents the project and its progress to date. (Contains 5 figures and 8 notes.)

This paper explores how women think about men's bodies as objects of desire. It reports on one part of a larger qualitative study on men's bodywork practices in contemporary Australia. Drawing on material from three focus groups with 24 Australian women of varying ages, sexual orientations and backgrounds, the paper considers how women experience, understand and reflect on their desire for men and men's bodies. It also explores themes such as the connection women draw between what a man's body looks like and what it can do, how attraction is experienced, the meaning making women engage in as they think about men and men's bodies, and the broader politics of sexuality and objectification that inform their perceptions and ideas. These experiences are set against ideas in post-feminist thinking on women's sexual desire and debates on their sexual empowerment. The paper argues that these women are grappling with tensions between their personal experiences of sexual objectification and a feminist ethics relating to their active and reflexive projects of sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The certainties that characterized modern intimate life, and supported a hegemonic male sexuality defined by action and virility, are less present in contemporary men's intimate lives. In-depth interviews with ten heterosexual and gay men were conducted to explore how they organize their sexual and relational lives in contemporary Australia. Participants were committed to a 'late' modern notion of intimacy characterized by reciprocity, and placed emphasis on committed relationships where opportunities to disclose vulnerability and relinquish the burden of responsibility for sexual activity were present. However, casual sex appeared to be ordered by more conventional discourses related to male sexuality. These men reveal the importance of particular definitions of sexual intimacy to a meaningful sense of self in late modernity. Keywords: intimacy, late modernity, masculinity, men, sexuality, How do men conduct their sexual and relational lives in contemporary Australia? Certainly, their circumstances have changed. Australian women now have increased autonomy compared with earlier generations and demand equality [...]

Psychological and health science research has identified a disparate experience of body image dissatisfaction among gay men (particularly in relation to heterosexual men), and have theorised that this reflects an emphasis placed on physical appearance in gay male settings. However, these studies largely fail to reflect upon the centrality of the body in securing a visible gay identity, or upon discourses of the nature, appearance and expression of gay identity in a historical and social context. Similarly, sociologically informed work has tended to emphasise gay men's paradoxical relationship--dependant upon and desirous of--heterosexual masculinity as the foundation for this emphasis. Drawing on a concept of 'reflective embodiment,' interviews with four gay men are conducted to demonstrate how each negotiates an athletic, muscular body ideal with reference to understandings of masculinity, pride, and gay sexuality as a way of complicating these theorizations and injecting a discussion of subjectivity into this issue. Keywords: gay men, embodiment, body image, masculinity, pride, The suggestion that gay culture and gay male communities place emphasis on physical appearance and body shape is hard to dismiss if one spends any amount of time within the [...]

Analysis of alcohol policy suggests women are marked out for special attention while men and masculinities are often ignored. In this paper, we employ Carol Bacchi's work on 'gendering practices' and John Law's concept of 'collateral realities' to examine how gender is constituted in Australian alcohol policy. For Bacchi, policies actively produce what it is possible for 'men' and 'women' to become. For Law, realities are constituted through methodological instruments and representational practices. We analyze the making of three collateral realities in Australian alcohol policy: gender as an individual attribute; gender as a synonym for women; and gender as confined to the domestic sphere. These collateral realities contribute to the maintenance of binary notions of gender and reinforce a straightforwardly causal role for alcohol in harms, including violence. Attention to the political effects of these 'realities' should be prioritized in the development of more equitable responses to alcohol and harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Alcohol‐fuelled violence' and its prevention has been the subject of recent intense policy debate in Australia, with the content of this debate informed by a surprisingly narrow range of research resources. In particular, given the well‐established relationship between masculinities and violence, the meagre attention paid to the role of gender in alcohol research and policy recommendations stands out as a critical issue. In this article, which draws on recent work in feminist science studies and science and technology studies, we focus on the treatment of gender, alcohol and violence in Australian research on 'alcohol‐related presentations' to emergency departments (EDs), analysing this type of research because of its prominence in policy debates. We focus on four types of 'gendering practice' through which research genders 'alcohol‐related presentations' to EDs: omitting gender from consideration, ignoring clearly gendered data when making gender‐neutral policy recommendations, methodologically designing out gender and addressing gender in terms of risk and vulnerability. We argue that ED research practices and their policy recommendations reproduce normative understandings of alcohol's effects and of the operations of gender in social arrangements, thereby contributing to the 'evidence base' supporting unfair policy responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on gay men's relationships has neglected monogamy. Instead, it has tended to (a) emphasize HIV risk and relationship agreements between partners regarding sex and condom use with outside partners or (b) focus on nonmonogamous relationships as emblematic of relationship innovation. On the basis of qualitative interviews with 36 gay Australian men who favored a monogamous relationship as ideal, this article explores the meaning and practice of monogamy and its association with HIV risk. The authors present themes that include men's use of condoms in monogamous relationships, expectations of fidelity, and understandings of trust and security as the basis to meaningful and satisfying relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In much psychological literature, gay men are reported as experiencing body image dissatisfaction as a result of participating in an appearance-focused subculture. Based on interviews with gay men, this paper uses discourse analysis to explore the wider media and consumer images informing gay identity in relation to contemporary political discourses underpinning gay and lesbian movements. Personal and political questions around masculinity, visibility, and the status of gay men in society more broadly informed these men's body -identity relationships, with implications for how gay men might embody their identities and be understood by the dominant psychological research on body image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]