Intimate Experience Research Articles

:Unfinished Spirit: Muriel Rukeyser’s Twentieth Century

:<i>Unfinished Spirit: Muriel Rukeyser’s Twentieth Century</i>

Pooled analysis of the association between food insecurity and violence against women: Evidence from low- and middle-income settings.

Intimate partner violence impacts relationships across the socioeconomic spectrum, nonetheless its prevalence is reported to be highest in areas that are most socio-economically deprived. Poverty has direct and indirect impacts on intimate partner violence (IPV) risk, however, one of the postulated pathways is through food insecurity. The aim of this paper is to describe the association between food insecurity (household hunger) and women's experiences, and men's perpetration, of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence in data from Africa and Asia. We conducted a pooled analysis of data from baseline interviews with men and women participating in six Violence Against Women prevention intervention evaluations and present a meta-analysis using mixed-effects Poisson regression models. Data were from South Africa (two studies), Ghana, Rwanda (two data sets), and Afghanistan and comprised interviews with 6545 adult women and 8104 adult men. We assessed food insecurity with the Household Hunger Scale. Overall, 27.9% of women experienced moderate food insecurity (range from 11.1% to 44.4%), while 28.8% of women reported severe food insecurity (range from 7.1 to 54.7%). Overall food insecurity was associated with an increased likelihood of women experiencing physical intimate partner violence, adjusted incidence rate ratio (aIRR) = 1.40 (95% CI = 1.23 to 1.60) for moderate food insecurity and aIRR = 1.73 (95% CI = 1.41 to 2.12) for severe food insecurity. It was also associated with an increased likelihood of men reporting perpetration of physical IPV, with aIRR = 1.24 (95% CI = 1.11 to 1.39) for moderate food insecurity and aIRR = 1.18 (95% CI = 1.02 to 1.37) for severe food insecurity. Food insecurity was not significantly associated with women's experience of non-partner sexual violence, aIRR = 1.27 (95% CI = 0.93 to 1.74) for moderate or severe food insecurity vs none, nor men's perpetration of non-partner sexual violence aIRR = 1.02 (95% CI = 0.90 to 1.15). Food insecurity is associated with increased physical intimate partner violence perpetration and experience reported by men and women. It was not associated with non-partner sexual violence perpetration, although there was some evidence to suggest an elevated risk of non-partner sexual violence among food-insecure women. Prevention programming needs to embrace food insecurity as a driver of intimate partner violence perpetration, however, non-partner sexual violence prevention needs to be shaped around a separate understanding of its drivers.

Séculaires par Olivier Barbarant

Reviewed by: Séculaires par Olivier Barbarant Khadija Khalifé and Deborah Gaensbauer Barbarant, Olivier. Séculaires. Gallimard, 2022. ISBN 978-2-07-298386-3. Pp. 128. In his latest autobiographical collection, composed in Barbarant's characteristic supple blend of diverse forms of poetry and sonorous prose pieces, the poet, born in 1966, meditates at a mid-point in his life on both intimate and broadly historical memories and experiences spanning forty years. Crucially for Barbarant, they bridge a change of centuries and altered personal perspectives, hence the title conjuring a significant sweep of time. "Jadis j'étais l'été/À présent je le vois" (38). The first section, essentially an affective balance sheet, continues in the lyrical and sensual vein of his Un grand instant (prix Apollinaire 2019). Barbarant probes in "ma mémoire grenier en désordre" childhood vignettes blended by time into dream-memory hybrids, conjurations of intimate moments with lovers, and confrontations with aging (20). Engagingly, too, he chronicles the relationship to words, sounds and rhythms that has impelled him to "faire entendre quelque chose de sa perception de son émotion, dans le corps respiratoire du langage" (49). His melancholic meditations become more searingly political in the second section, which he opens by declaring: "[i]l n'y a plus de paille dans l'étable espérance" (55). An extensive segment entitled "Complainte à la charnière des temps" limns consequential events for each year from 1981 through 2020. The strongest pieces, corroborating his conviction that "[c]'est à l'intérieur que la vérité creuse son sillon," capture his acute sense of light and color in evocations of intimate experiences that bear historical weight (95). The prose elegy on the fire-ravaged Notre-Dame Cathedral, for example, conjures student memories of emerging from the train "directement sous son soleil/Elle était maternelle volumineuse et couleur de blé tendre," to render the momentous reverberations of the cultural loss with poignant simplicity (18). "C'était comme si chaque pierre était un sable cristallisé/un morceau du pays mêlé à l'intime mémoire" (95). As the calendar moves toward the millennium, the poetic reflections increasingly focus on social injustice: "[d]es violences du temps naissent celles des êtres/Brillent dans les regards l'éclat d'affreux couteaux" (99). Séculaires advances toward a grim finale with "Fils de feu," ten poems concerning a global rash of self-immolations. Barbarant concludes, nonetheless, by juxtaposing darkness with a positive entreaty. "Que vaut un siècle dont les fils/souffrent tant qu'ils se font bûcher?" (125). This despairing query in the final poem, "Envoi," is followed by a plea that alters the strictly personal context of his earlier paeans to corporeal intimacy: "[e]nfants, brûlez/de colère/et [End Page 217] de désir, mais laissez/l'ardeur à l'âme, à la langue,/et que d'étreinte seule/flambent vos paumes nues" (125). "Envoi" connects to previous affirmations of life in the collection but responds to concrete socio-political violence by tempering the ferocity of an earlier exhortation: "cri ou couteau mais que/ la vie/ déborde" (20). A disciple of Louis Aragon, Barbarant fears neither emotions nor the mundane: "[i]l sut que frémir ne serait jamais ridicule" (45). Although a few poems in Séculaires come across as palely sentimental and nostalgic, his intertwining of personal intimacy, public history, and combat against the "grésil des écrans" creates overall a compelling work (105). [End Page 218] Deborah Gaensbauer Regis University (CO), emerita Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French

Intimate Lovers, Legal Strangers—The Politics of Dissident Relationality in Portugal

Dominant cultural frameworks, laws, and social policy in Southern Europe often stem from and replicate a collective imaginary based on a reproductive, cohabiting, monogamous, and cis-heterosexual couple. Concomitantly, despite significant advances in legislation in recent years, LGBTQ+ intimacies continue to be subject to daily prejudice, violence, and shame. The purpose of this article is to understand how state recognition contributes to the un/doing of the abject culturally attached to LGBTQ+ intimacies; and to examine personal, sociocultural, and legal traits that shape biographies turning intimate citizens into intimate lovers and/or legal strangers. The first part of this chapter involves an outlining of developments regarding law and relational diversity in Portugal. The second part deals with the visibility of non-normative sexuality that is often a target of abject gaze, rejection, and other cultural practices of discrimination. It is suggested that legally recognized marital status can become a way to overcome the abject or the invisible, both in relation to the state and the cultural milieu. We offer the notion of relational performativity and suggest that non-monogamy (even when consensual) is a major cultural source of the relational abject, encapsulating moral panic around the promiscuous, unhealthy, and uncommitted sexual monster. The article finishes with reflections that move beyond the examples provided to dialogue with dissident relationality as a concept that describes the intimate experiences of aging LGBTQ+ people.

Disclosure of intimate partner violence experiences during COVID-19: patient-provider communication in a Southern United States emergency department

ABSTRACT Using the lens of Communication Privacy Management (CPM) theory, this article examines communication between health care providers in the southern United States emergency department (ED) and patients who have experienced IPV. We qualitatively examine communicative challenges that COVID-19 protocols have created, as well as routine difficulties that occur when communicating with survivors of violence. The participants described challenges including: (1) Feeling uncertainty, (2) Encountering patient resistance, (3) Managing apathy and frustration, and (4) Navigating time pressure. Furthermore, the providers explained how COVID-19 compounded those challenges through: (1) Minimizing contact, (2) Losing nonverbal behavior, (3) Encountering limited resources, and (4) Facing visitor complications. This article extends CPM theory by exploring disclosure challenges related to IPV in health care settings during the COVID-19 pandemic including permeability, linkages, and privacy rules. It offers practical suggestions for increasing patient disclosure of IPV experiences.

Relational mindfulness themes in descriptions of intimate encounters across six interpersonal contexts

A growing body of research suggests that mindfulness is associated with relational processes and outcomes, including intimate behavior and experience. Yet, substantial questions exist as to interpersonal manifestations of intrapsychic mindfulness. The current study used a qualitative approach to explore participant descriptions of intimate experience, across six interpersonal communication contexts (talk, sex, play, grief, conflict, and forgiveness), for evidence of relational mindfulness themes. Using reflexive thematic analysis ( Braun &amp; Clarke, 2022 ) as a guide, analysis produced 10 themes represented by three mindfulness supra-categories: (1) present with - presence, emotional expression, and feeling understood, (2) awareness of - attention, observation, defining, and understanding, (3) nonjudgment by - acceptance, vulnerability, and nonreactivity. All themes were identified in participant responses across the six interpersonal contexts, with the exception of nonreactivity in play and grief. Significantly, these findings broaden the lens with which mindfulness researchers may continue to explore the mindfulness - interpersonal relationship connection.

A Pro in Intimacy: The Use of GoPro Camera within Art-Based Research

This article presents the primacy of video in research. It integrates notes from art-based research that used a GoPro video camera to explore intimate experience, with demonstrating applications of video for documentation, artistic inquiry, systematic processing, analysis, and presentation of results. The article addresses the natural linkage between artistic expression both in-person and online and its relation to intimacy.

Exploring the Lived Experiences of Marital Intimacy among Nepali Married Couples: A Transcendental Phenomenological Approach

There is a widespread agreement in the literature that marital intimacy is positively associated with relationship satisfaction. A growing body of literature on marriage and family has focused increasingly on sexual and emotional intimacy. However, little is known about other facets of intimacy. Hence, the objective focuses on exploring married couples' lived experiences of various facets of marital intimacy. The present study is informed by a transcendental phenomenological qualitative approach to analyse data from the semi-structured interviews and generate the overarching themes. Criterion-based purposive sampling of 28 females and males (i.e., fourteen intimate couples) from Pokhara participated in the present study. The thematic analysis demonstrated five significant themes that couples attached to the facets of intimacy such as emotional intimacy (feeling of closeness); social intimacy (social bonding); sexual intimacy (physical and non-physical); intellectual intimacy (enriching each other’s mind) and recreational intimacy (bonding through activities of fun and enjoyment). The results demonstrated that various facets of intimacy are experienced positively in married Nepali couples. This study contributes to the body of current literature by examining married couples' actual intimate experiences and within the context of Bowen's family system theory, which supports the study's findings. The study results have practical implications for marital therapists, counsellors and clinicians. Limitations of the study have been discussed, which are potential future research areas.

Creating Our Own Spaces: Disruptive Approaches to Educational Leadership Research

Our work seeks to reflexively make visible the blurring of binary markers at the intersection of our research, sexuality, gender, and professional socialization as a necessary disruption to liberate our intersectional possibilities in the making. We argue the queering of educational leadership is met by the intimate and layered experiences of identity dismemberment operating to tarnish, devalue, and displace the wealth of intersectional knowledge. The ultimate goal is to subjugate the researcher; to trace a stencil of a binary identity whereby the image of the non-binary cannot be conjured as contributors to epistemology, theory, methodology, pedagogy, leadership, or practice. We utilize testimonios to interrogate how these lines were drawn from the everyday of academic life to blur the binary; to conjure the queer in every nook and cranny of experiences until the reification of whiteness, patriarchy, and sexuality is made a mess from which prescribed lines can no longer be drawn. We assert the toll of securing this “way” positioned us in a binary, more often than not, to research about queerness without any overlap in the praxis of queerness in the relationships, institutions, and teaching that guard the landscape of “being” in Educational Leadership. In doing so, we position the (re)membering of our identities at the intersection of Queer and Chicana Feminist theoretical perspectives to theorize a third space to heal and build a leadership practice in our image.

Whites Only: Race and Mobility in Kym Ragusa's The Skin Between Us: A Memoir of Race, Beauty, and Belonging and Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric

Whites Only: Race and Mobility in Kym Ragusa's <i>The Skin Between Us: A Memoir of Race, Beauty, and Belonging</i> and Claudia Rankine's <i>Citizen: An American Lyric</i>

Analysis of EEG and ECG in women with intimate partner violence experience during an emotional task

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) has been associated with cognitive, emotional, physical and physiological alterations, and with the presence of anxiety disorders. There is not enough research on this problem from an interdisciplinary approach despite the above. Therefore, this research compared the emotion perception and electrophysiological responses, elicited by an emotional task, in women who had experienced IPV and women who had not (WIPV). Forty-five participants (22 with and 23 without IPV experience) were presented with nine images from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) database and performed a self-report using the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM). In parallel, electrophysiological signals (ECG and EEG) were acquired, for the analysis of emotional response. In the between-group analysis, the IPV group showed lower perceived dominance and greater central asymmetry in the alpha band than the WIPV group; additionally, the IPV group exhibited a significant positive correlation between the valence of the images and the alpha band power in central areas. In the within-group analysis, the WIPV group showed greater activation in the alpha band and alpha/beta ratio in frontal areas during the emotional elicitation, as compared to baseline. Furthermore, the ECG analysis showed that, for the IPV group, there was a decrease in the power of the high-frequency (HF) band and an increase in the power of the very-low-frequency (VLF) band of heart rate variability (HRV) during the elicitation stage. It is hypothesized that the IPV group could present higher stress levels and greater physiological activity during emotional stimuli than the WIPV group. Possible changes in emotional regulation and anxiety levels due to IPV experiences are discussed.

Persistent Gender and Racial Hierarchies: Marriage Migration and Mixedness in Morocco from the French Protectorate to the Present

This article presents a historical and anthropological approach to mixed marriages in Morocco, tracking the continuities and changes between the French colonial period and contemporary experiences to see how attitudes towards mixed couples changed in Morocco throughout the French protectorate, in the post-independence period and the increasingly globalised world of the 21st century. This interdisciplinary approach combines historic data (primarily from a 1949 study into mixed marriages conducted by the colonial government as well as magazines, novels and memoirs) with 52 anthropological semi-structured interviews (conducted in Morocco between 2018 and 2022) with children of mixed couples and some of their parents.We examine first how the demographic make-up of mixed couples and where they choose to settle has shifted, looking at their gender split, their countries of origin, their occupations and where they met. This has diversified considerably throughout the 20th century: the individuals come from a much larger number of countries (no longer primarily Moroccan soldiers who returned from France with French women) and Moroccan women are now more likely to travel abroad. But gender still impacts mobility as the country of settlement is still often linked to the husband’s job. We then compare how in some cases legal and religious restraints have affected which mixed couples can marry. Although European men could marry Moroccan women, the French colonial authorities sought to ban European wives or partners of Moroccan men from entering Morocco because they believed these relationships would threaten the hierarchies of colonial rules. However, in contemporary Morocco migration is considerably easier for individuals from the Global North. Today the Moroccan family law (Mudawana) states that a foreign man has to convert to Islam if he wishes to marry a Moroccan Muslim woman. What is forbidden has changed, but women’s freedom remains subject to external pressures to maintain social cohesion. Finally, we examine the emotional motivations behind choosing mixed marriages, often overlooked by studies of migration, arguing that mixed marriage in Morocco has always shown a “desire for elsewhereness” and offered a space of freedom, a way to embrace new possibilities and turn away from certain social norms. In the 20th century, in the colonial and post-independence period, many Moroccan men used mixed marriage as a way to escape traditional pressures to pay a bride price (sdaq) to a Moroccan woman’s family. Some Moroccan men also expressed colonialist ideas that European women were more “evolved” and would make better partners than Moroccan women as they were more educated because of gender inequalities in access to education. This has changed due to Moroccan women’s improved access to education. But emotions are still at the heart of these experiences of intimacy across racial, national and religious borders. Contemporary and historical couples see mixedness as imbued with new opportunities to express their desire for change, for a new way of living and for creativity. Mixed marriages provide a change to re-evaluate customs and lifestyles, but these are also deeply intimate relationships born out of emotional attachment. This article reminds readers that marriage migration is, at heart, a migration for love. This love, and the feeling of possibility it offers, can be considered a threat to existing power structures. We argue that in post-independence Morocco, mixed marriages are no longer considered a threat to political power but that they still reveal the existence of persistent racial and gender symbolic boundaries. Indeed, social perception of mixed couples has shifted from a fear of neo-imperialism to a feeling of opportunities in a globalized world, but gender and racial hierarchies still prevail as significant symbolic boundaries that shape mixed couples and attitudes towards them.

Where Pragmatism Gets Off: Sexuality and American Philosophy

Abstract: American philosophy has an uneasy relationship with sex. At least, this is the central claim of Richard Shusterman’s recent article, “Pragmatism and Sex: An Unfulfilled Connection,” in which he provides for us an overview of the failures of Peirce, James, Dewey, and Mead to theorize about erotic life in any particularly “useful” way. This paper will critically examine this claim by advocating for a more careful reading of the appearance of sexuality within classical American thought—particularly as it is cast within Dewey’s aesthetics—while ultimately sympathizing with the felt need for American philosophers to engage intimate experience with more frankness, respect, and focus. Although American philosophy has erred on the side of reserve, Shusterman’s misreading of Dewey’s critique of Freud, and his mistaking the appearance of Darwin’s theories as reductive, are critical blunders that paint the tradition as overly prudish, and egregiously dismissive of this important sphere of experience.

Architecture Against Theatre

Architecture Against Theatre

Conceptualizing Sexual Pleasure at Home as a Work-Related Stress Recovery Activity

ABSTRACT Job stress is pervasive in today’s workforce and has negative implications for employees’ mental and physical well-being and job performance. Recovery activities outside of work can reduce strain and improve work outcomes; however, little is known about pleasurable intimate recovery experiences and their influence on work outcomes, even though these experiences are important parts of most people’s lives outside of work. The present study examined sexual activity that is shared either with a relationship partner or oneself (masturbation) and how pleasure specifically predicts well-being and work outcomes to induce recovery. Results suggest that pleasurable sexual activity, with a partner or alone, is related to perceived recovery from work stress, job satisfaction, work engagement, and life satisfaction. Moreover, perceived recovery from work mediated the relationship between pleasurable sex and work outcomes. Gender moderated this relationship such that pleasurable sex was a stronger predictor of recovery for women (compared to men) in the context of sex within committed relationship partners (but not masturbation). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Is falling in love within the mental health system a problem? How to turn it into a chance for the care relationship.

INTRODUCTION: The care pathway within a mental health service can create situations of strong emotional impact, including physical attraction and falling in love. This may evolve in moments of impasse for the staff and sometimes compromise the success of therapeutic treatment. This article offers some evidence about how intervene in a situation such as a client falling in love with a nurse, avoiding transforming it into a problem. The fear of the nurse, maybe already inclined to blame themselves for what has happened, when he/she asks for supervision, is to feel judged also by the supervisor. This story teaches that to refer to figures from outside the team, as would usually be the case with supervision, may be replaced by enhancing the role composition already available in the residential community as a resource. The story was listened and enhanced thankyou to an exchange between M. and the community manager. From the analysis of the narratives co-produced by M., the former substance user, and the community manager, the elements that made it possible to transform a feeling of falling in love into an interaction of extended trust emerged. The non-judgmental and confidential context, but above all the training in interpersonal exchange, facilitated the client sharing very intimate and private experiences, which are usually hidden or denied. This made it possible to make the community responsible for the individual's experiences and to overcome the role impasse and the related identity dilemma. Neither nurses nor clients should be held accountable or blamed when these episodes occur. The strongest resource is sharing in the group and putting one's own experiences into play. Following the M. story, a targeted confrontation between team members and clients is an accessible and effective resource to respond to situations of strong emotional impact, falling in love being just one example; however, it can be effectively activated only through a collective taking charge of the individual's difficulties has already been implemented.

Violent intimate relationships of Brazilian women in Portugal

This study aims to understand the intimate experiences of immigrant Brazilian women living in Portugal, and also to characterize possible victimization experiences in their intimate relationships. The empirical base was constituted by 114 immigrant women, and the results show that the intimate experiences of these women are marked by violence episodes both in Portugal and in Brazil. The most frequent types of violence were psychological and verbal violence, with these practices occurring more than once in their intimate relationships. When experiencing violence episodes, these women do not seek help and do not file a formal complaint, which legitimizes and reinforces the victimization to which they are subjected. This study intends to contribute to the development of action strategies that lead to the real protection of immigrant victims and to challenge the greater risk that immigration can entail in the lives of immigrant women, especially for victims of intimate violence.

Enhancing Nurse Leadership Through a Cohort-Based Model

The Doctor of Nursing Practice leadership program at Case Western Reserve University was designed to prepare nurses for advanced practice and leadership roles. The program is delivered off-campus, in a hospital setting. This delivery model allowed for a more intimate learning experience, as well as the opportunity to learn from and work with experienced nursing leaders. The Doctor of Nursing Practice leadership cohort model is an effective way to train future nursing leaders. It allows for a more intimate learning experience and the opportunity to learn from and work with experienced nursing leaders. During the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, this delivery model proved to be advantageous. The Doctor of Nursing Practice students were able to work closely with nursing leaders who were on the front lines of the pandemic response. They gained valuable firsthand experience in leading a team of nurses during a crisis. Additionally, they were able to take what they learned back to their own hospitals and apply it to their own responses to coronavirus disease 2019.

Fisting intimacy: The sexual scripting of intimacy in gay men’s anal fisting

ABSTRACT Anal fisting has often been caricatured as an aggressive, if not violent, mode of sexual and erotic practice between gay men, circumscribed by discourses of risk, danger, and even death. In this study, I explore how a sample of 28 South African gay men who regularly incorporate anal fisting into their preferred sexual practices construct and understand the experience of intimacy in the practices and relations of their fist-fucking. Through sexual scripting theory and a Thematic Analysis of unstructured individual interviews conducted with participants, the results highlight a scripting of intimacy with/in anal fisting that is grounded on three recurrent and interrelated themes: trust and vulnerability; connection and communication; as well as pleasure and skill. The results of this study draw attention to the ways in which anal fisting is not only experienced as a deeply intimate form of pleasure and lovemaking for its participants, but, moreover, how the construction and understanding of intimacy in fist-fucking is framed as a queer/er mode of anal sex/uality and erotics that defines and constitutes itself in contradistinction to both hetero- and homo-normative scripts.

The Importance of Embodiment and Agency in Parents’ Positive Attitudes Towards Shared Reading with Their Children

Parents’ attitudes are an important indicator of whether and how parents engage in shared book reading (SBR) at home. This study analysed Norwegian parents’ attitudes towards reading books with their children aged between 1–4.5 years. Thematic analysis of data from 24 interviews revealed two main themes in parents’ accounts: agency (the child’s independence, the adult’s control as well as their shared control during SBR) and embodiment (physical presence and intimate experience of a SBR session). Both themes correspond to parents’ preference for reading print rather than digital books with their children. Findings are discussed from the socio-material theoretical perspective, with attention to their practical and policy implications.