Sexual Subjectivity Research Articles

Sexual Myths In Women

Sexual myths are beliefs about sexual subjects, which are often exaggerated, wrong and non- scientific but thought to be true. These wrong beliefs and concepts affect individual’s attitudes and behaviors about sexuality. Sexual myths may cause consequences, which may affect sexual and consequently general public health; some of these sexual beliefs were investigated. A total of 822 women participants (432 medical women and 390 non-medical women not suffering from diseases that impair sexuality and not illiterate) answered a self-report questionnaire. Findings showed that, participants had high numbers of wrong beliefs. In addition, we found some sexual myths among medical women. The rural resident women had more misconceptions than the urban women did, while education affect the presence of the sexual myths between women as higher education obtained, fewer myths to be found.

Towards a queer affective economy of boys’ love in contemporary Chinese media

ABSTRACT This article expands the existing research on the boys’ love (BL) cultural phenomenon by analysing two popular BL films, A Round Trip to Love and Uncontrolled Love, and one TV series, Addicted, all streamed online in 2016. Previous research has explored the various aspects of BL such as cultural globalization from below, the online publishing industry and censorship, and the theme of incest and queer sexuality. This article turns a greater attention to the dialectical relationship between affect, queer desire and neoliberalism by unpacking further the affective work that BL performs in contemporary China. BL is both structurally constrained by the economic infrastructure of heteronormative kinship norms in neoliberal China and residual forms of socialism, as well as offering alternative modality of affective tendency that exceeds these structural impediments. Conceptually, this research explicates three forms of affective work in BL in contemporary China, namely affective imprisonment, queer affective reparation and affective overcoming, in order to illuminate the relationship between affect, queer desire and neoliberalism in contemporary China.

The politics and gendering of disability in Raymond Williams’s fiction

This article explores the theme of disability and sexuality, in the novels of Raymond Williams. In all of his novels, male characters are frequently crippled and emasculated, while the female characters are capable and cryptically powerful. The crippled figures not only serve as examples of the victims of the crippling divisiveness of capitalism, but also represent working-class people, whose voices are constantly silenced. These figures also epitomize their state, the colonized and disabled Wales, politically, economically and culturally subordinated to British power. As a woman’s face affects her prospects of achieving attention, respect and power, the article also explores the facial disfigurement of female characters. Williams chooses to cripple many of his male characters, while bestowing on the female characters a quietly effective capacity for exerting strong influence over their husbands, brothers, etc. However, in this particular process of gendering power, Williams manages to overturn the traditional gender orthodoxies and patriarchal discourses. The gendering of disability and the disabling of gender is highly intertwined and mutually reinforcing. Consciously and unconsciously, he offers the reader the possibilities of a re-gendered social and political configuration, primarily in Wales and by implication beyond.

Margarida Vale de Gato: apresentação de ‘Mulher ao mar’ e entrevista

O presente texto objetiva introduzir o leitor na poesia da escritora portuguesa Margarida Vale de Gato a partir de questões relacionadas às temáticas feministas, de gênero e sexualidade considerando, para tanto, seu projeto poético intitulado Mulher ao mar, publicado pela primeira vez em 2010. Contém ainda uma breve entrevista feita com a poeta no final de 2017.

Introduction: Sexuality, Holocaust, Stigma

The two topics of sexuality and Holocaust are connected by profound discomfort but also by immense public interest. Resonating with Elizabeth Heineman’s description of sexuality and Nazism as ‘doubly unspeakable’, these two poles—stigma and fascination—are interconnected, each engendering the other’s power and pull.1 How are we to make sense of this lasting potency? This Special Issue of German History examines how stigma connected to sexuality in the Holocaust is created and maintained and what purposes it serves. Stigmatizing a topic, in particular a sexual one, has a function: it endows that topic with an established meaning. This mechanism is particularly powerful in the context of the iconic genocide of...

Madness, sex, and risk: A poststructural analysis.

The body of the one deemed mad often remains a sexual body with sexual needs. Mental health services respond to these demands of the body in various ways, including constructing rules around physical movement. In this context, we were interested in how mental health clinicians problematized the sexual needs and practices of residents of a long-stay mental health rehabilitation facility and how solutions were constructed in relation to the residents' sexual desires. This paper reports findings from mental health clinicians, as part of a case study where we addressed this question. Mental health clinicians responded to residents' sexuality from a discourse of risk. The notion of the engagement with each resident as a sexual subject was subordinated to the paternalistic notion of protecting the patient from risk. The resident became an object to be monitored and protected rather than a subject with sexual desire and agency. This paternalism also showed itself in relation to a 'no-sex on-site' rule that allowed for a shift of risk from the organization to the resident. Residents, rather than having a relatively safe place to have sexual relations, were required to find a place elsewhere, potentially unsafe, outside the facility.

Compreensões de professoras dos anos iniciais sobre sexualidade humana no contexto do letramento científico

Relativo à linha temática Processos Formativos de Professores, o presente artigo apresenta recorte de uma pesquisa de mestrado, realizada em 2018, que investigou a sexualidade humana na perspectiva do letramento científico com professoras dos anos iniciais do ensino fundamental. O objetivo neste recorte é analisar as compreensões de professoras dos anos iniciais a respeito da temática sexualidade humana no contexto do letramento científico. A pesquisa ocorreu em uma Escola de Ensino Fundamental da cidade de Belém-PA e contou com a participação de quatro docentes: polivalentes, efetivas, licenciadas como docentes e que atuam em turmas de 1º ao 5º ano. O material empírico foi produzido por meio de questionário, encontros pedagógicos, interações cotidianas e entrevista semiestruturada. Na análise das compreensões docentes foi empregada a Análise Textual Discursiva (ATD) (MORAES; GALIAZZI, 2016). Como resultados das análises, evidenciaram-se pensamentos e práticas escolares, relativos a conteúdos de sexualidade humana, de contornos tradicionais descontextualizados de aspectos sociais e culturais, e que se pautam ainda em padrões biológicos e sem enfoque à diversidade sexual e seus desdobramentos nas relações sociais, havendo ausência de situações reais efetivas de letramento científico, provocado pelo pouco conhecimento ou modos incipientes dessa abordagem em aula, sendo ainda uma prática em construção. O estudo aponta para a importância da compreensão da sexualidade em dimensões (biológica, social, emocional, cultural e religiosa) e o letramento científico como conceito novo de grande importância e que necessita ser vinculado às práticas sociais dos alunos dos anos iniciais do ensino fundamental.

Wildlife Tourism Experience Based on Web Text Analysis

With the improvement of living standard, people are becoming more and more interested in traveling, especially to visit wild animals. How to analyze the tourism experience of tourists visiting wild animals has become a research hot spot. The text comments left by tourists on the Internet can provide relevant information, so it is essential to carry out the research on the tourism experience of wild animals based on the text analysis on the Internet. The purpose of this paper is to solve the problem on how to understand the tourism wild animals after the visit of the tourism experience problems, by studying the current common network text analysis method, the tourists leave comments on the Internet information extraction, using relevant software comprehensive analysis of relevant information, using content analysis and qualitative analysis of a combination of both sexual themes, on how to analyze tourism personnel to visit wildlife tourism experience has carried on the detailed analysis and research. The tourism experience of wildlife tourists is analyzed in detail and accurately. The results show that the core themes of wildlife tourism experience are tourists, destinations and wildlife. When tourists visit wild animals, they are more likely to take photos and get close contact with them. They are closer to wild animals and interact with them more, which means that tourists are more satisfied with their tourism experience. This web-based text analysis method is 20% more efficient than traditional methods such as questionnaires.

Orthodox Jewish women’s sexual subjectivity

In this article we argue that the open and clear presence of the regulation of sexuality for women in Orthodox Judaism allows for a remarkably conscious choice of sexual conduct. We listened to young Orthodox Jewish married women speak about their experience and understanding of their sexuality (past and present) as they gravitate from forbidden to permitted and back again, from their pre-marital state, to their first sexual experiences, to the sexual prohibitions of nida, and back to permitted sexual relations. Whereas one’s first assumption concerning women living under strict rules governing their sexuality might be that these women are out of relationship with themselves and their bodies, this was not the case with the Israeli Orthodox Jewish women whom we interviewed. Whether they rejected or accepted a particular rule, partially or fully, they did not do so under the gaze of a male Over-Eye. These modern Orthodox Jewish women, who live within a framework of laws detailing what is forbidden and permitted concerning their sexuality, developed a sexual subjectivity that conducts an open and conscious dialogue with those laws. In our Conclusion, we suggest how our work here could be of use to therapists.

Defining sexuality in later life: A systematic review.

To identify whether a consistent definition of sexuality is used across research articles to describe sexuality in later life for heterosexual men and women. A systematic review was conducted that examined how researchers define sexuality for heterosexual adults. Peer-reviewed journal articles on sexuality published between 1999 and 2018 were examined for the presence of sexuality definitions. Sexuality themes discussed in each article were recorded, and results were tabulated. Few articles explicitly provide a definition of 'sexuality' as it pertains to later life. Definitions from articles that defined sexuality explicitly were inconsistent across studies. Topics included in implicit and explicit definitions of sexuality were disparate across studies and included a diverse range of sexuality dimensions. Greater consistency is needed in how "sexuality" in later life is defined across studies and should be informed by data so that it accurately reflects the sexual experiences of older adults.

Self-objectification, sexual subjectivity, and identity exploration among emerging adult women

ABSTRACT As a result of the consistent sexual objectification of women across cultures, theorists have noted women objectifying themselves. Given the dehumanizing aspects of self-objectification, this process threatens the holistic development of the self. The present cross-sectional survey study examined how self-objectification is related to sexual subjectivity and identity exploration, among emerging adult women. We found that self-objectification negatively impacts the self-concept domains of self-esteem and sexual subjectivity. Self-esteem was found to mediate the association between self-objectification and identity exploration. Our results draw attention to the detrimental outcomes of self-objectification, highlighting the potential for educators and practitioners to aid young women in examining their self-concept within our broader culture to ensure a healthy trajectory of development of the self.

Diversity Management in Organizations in Brazil: A Literature Review / Gestão da Diversidade nas Organizações no Brasil: Uma Revisão de Literatura

The scientific production on Diversity Management in Brazil brings together several themes (religious diversity; ethnic-racial issues; gender and sexuality issues; and cultural issues). The objective is to present a literature review on Diversity Management in Organizations in Brazil based on a literature review in the Google Scholar, Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO), and Scientific Periodicals Electronic Library (SPELL) databases. It is considered that there is an increase in publications on Diversity Management; that the studies are crossed by several themes that can be brought together in the concept of Diversity; that the theme of Gender and Sexuality has had a greater focus. Therefore, it is evident that the management of diversity in Brazilian organizations is already a reality, when one observes publications of case studies that can be used in training at technical, undergraduate and graduate levels.

Single women’s sexualities across the life course: The role of major events, transitions, and turning points

Most research on women’s sexualities focuses on a single event or developmental period, often failing to document romantic and sexual trajectories over time. Moreover, life course studies of sexuality have not exclusively examined single women, including major life events that may alter their sexual attitudes and behaviors. Using life story interview data with 60 single, heterosexual women between the ages of 18 and 91, I document five common pathways through romantic and sexual life, including opting out of marital relationships, the development of sexual subjectivity, sexual exploration and maintaining independence, sex positivity and increases in sexual communication, and a maintenance of sexual conservatism. The findings also reveal the role of domestic violence, sexual abuse, relationship dissolution, sexually transmitted illnesses, and menopause in altering sexual attitudes and behaviors. This study has several implications for life course studies of intimate relationships and sexuality.

Pathways to Pleasure and Protection: Exploring Embodiment, Desire, and Entitlement to Pleasure as Predictors of Black and White Young Women’s Sexual Agency

Sexual agency is a fundamental dimension of sexual subjectivity and well-being. Research and theory suggest that it functions in the service of both protection from harm and enabling sexual pleasure. However, sexual agency can be difficult for women to navigate in a social landscape in which femininity ideologies remain powerful social forces, operating in racialized ways. We examined how embodiment, sexual desire, and entitlement to sexual pleasure were associated with sexual agency in the service of protection (i.e., condom use and refusing unwanted sex) and pleasure (i.e., asking for what one wants from a sexual partner) for Black and White heterosexual college women using path analysis and path invariance testing. We found that across race, women’s embodiment was associated with greater comfort with their sexual desire, which in turn was associated with greater entitlement to sexual pleasure and sexual agency in service of both pleasure and protection. While Black and White women evidenced similar levels of both forms of agency, Black participants’ agency in the service of protection was unrelated to their entitlement to sexual pleasure. We discuss these findings in light of racialized discourses of women’s sexuality and the importance of understanding sexual desire as anchored in the body and enabling young women’s sexual agency.

The Bitch Is Back: A Reappraisal of Mary McCarthy for the 21st Century

ABSTRACT This introduction to the Mary McCarthy special issue of Women’s Studies asks, why Mary McCarthy? Why now? Mary McCarthy is one of America’s leading women intellectuals – fiction writer, literary and cultural critic, editor, and public intellectual. Her career spanned over fifty years as theatre editor of Partisan Review; autobiographical writer of Memories of a Catholic Girlhood and the later Intellectual Memoirs and How I Grew; best-selling novelist of The Group; satirist of the New York intellectual scene in The Oasis and The Groves of Academe; public intellectual and reporter on the war in Vietnam, the Medina Trial, and the Watergate Hearings; and recipient of the National Medal for Literature and the MacDowell Medal. Yet her literary and critical contribution have been largely eclipsed by her cultural celebrity as a sharp wit with an acerbic tongue, striking good looks, and a penchant for taking on taboo subjects of female sexuality. This essay looks at how limited gender expectations have shaped McCarthy’s reputation as a “modern American bitch” and “our leading bitch-intellectual,” and why new feminist readers are ready to embrace her distinction as a smart, sharp, sexy woman of wit

Parental attitudes to the Australian anti-bullying Safe Schools program: a critical discourse analysis

LGBTIQ children and adolescents experience disproportionate levels of bullying. Safe Schools, an Australian anti-bullying program, has recently been a site of public debate, with parents and their imagined concerns being central to the debate. This study investigated how parents construct gender, sexuality, and bullying, in relation to Safe Schools. Utilising Critical Discourse Analysis, we analysed 11 parent interviews and identified four broad discursive themes: heterosexual anxiety, transhysteria, the contested ecology of bullying, and resistance. Many parents feared that children will be harmed mentally and sexually by exposure to the program, and that bullying is an isolated phenomenon. These attitudes serve a social function of maintaining heterosexual and cisgender hegemony, and a psychic function of disavowing the fluid nature of subjectivity. There was also evidence of resistance to these attitudes, with many contending that Safe Schools is necessary, due to bullying being viewed as a social phenomenon informed by homophobia and transphobia. Hostility towards transgender people was notable amongst parents. The discourses identified in this research highlight the strength of current anxieties around children and sexual subjectivity and how they function to undermine the lives of LGBTIQ people, including children who would benefit most from a meaningful implementation of Safe Schools.

Os contributos da Residência Pedagógica para a Formação Inicial de Professores de Ciências Biológicas: o Estado da Questão

Esta investigação incide na construção de um levantamento bibliográfico, do tipo Estado da Questão, para nortear uma proposta de dissertação sobre a formação de licenciandos de um curso de licenciatura em Ciências Biológicas inseridos no Programa Residência Pedagógica, sobretudo, com a temática sexualidade. Assim, este trabalho objetiva demonstrar como foi construído o Estado da Questão e como este possibilitou conhecer mais sobre pesquisas na área da Formação inicial com enfoque no Programa de Residência Pedagógica e Sexualidade. Para as buscas dos trabalhos foram utilizados: Portal de Periódicos da Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES), a Biblioteca Digital Brasileira de Teses e Dissertações (BDTD) e os Anais do Encontro Nacional das Licenciaturas (ENALIC) de 2018. Os achados mostraram a diversidade de trabalhos voltadas as distintas contribuições da Residência Pedagógica nos cursos de licenciatura em Ciências Biológicas, bem como os aspectos teóricos-metodológicos adotados nas pesquisas. Todos estes resultados podem auxiliar em outras pesquisas similares a da temática em ênfase.

EDUCAÇÃO PARA A SEXUALIDADE E FORMAÇÃO INICIAL DOCENTE: UMA INVESTIGAÇÃO NOS CURRÍCULOS DE LICENCIATURA EM CIÊNCIAS BIOLÓGICAS

A temática da sexualidade tem recebido nos últimos anos grande atenção por parte da sociedade, em virtude de seu viés político, social, religioso, de prevenção e manutenção da saúde dos indivíduos. Apesar disto, é comum ainda encontrarmos muitas resistências na inclusão da temática nas escolas e nas universidades. Um dos problemas comuns é a falta de preparo docente para o trabalho com tais assuntos, seja por motivos pessoais, falta de conhecimentos ou medo de serem perseguidos. Em virtude da necessidade do preparo de professores para o trabalho com os temas da Educação para a Sexualidade nas escolas, a resolução MEC nº 2, de 1º de julho de 2015, prevê a inclusão de tais temáticas nos currículos dos cursos de licenciatura das instituições de ensino; junto a ela, as Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para a Educação Básica (MEC, 2013b) também fazem menção para inclusão dos temas na formação docente. Em virtude disso, esta pesquisa teve por objeto de estudo as matrizes curriculares dos cursos de licenciatura em Ciências Biológicas da rede pública estadual do Paraná, a fim de identificar se os conteúdos da Educação para a Sexualidade, previstos nas diretrizes que norteiam o curso, estão sendo incluídos e, dentre eles, quais estão sendo priorizados por essas instituições. Com o auxílio da metodologia da Análise de Conteúdo, constatou-se que as temáticas voltadas para os estudos da sexualidade estão sendo incluídas na formação dos licenciandos em Ciências Biológicas destas instituições, porém, de forma heterogênea, entre assuntos voltados aos estudos biológicos e sociais, em representatividades desproporcionais, quando comparadas entre si. Por fim, com esta pesquisa pode-se observar que as instituições de ensino analisadas ainda apresentam uma certa resistência quanto à inclusão das temáticas da sexualidade em seus currículos, e, quando isto ocorre, os assuntos direcionados à área biológica ganham maior destaque, quando comparados a outros temas ligados ao afetivo ou social.

Sexual citizenship through resistance: a movement that centers disabled women’s voices

This research examines the discourses that shape disabled women’s sexual subjectivity. I wanted to see how disabled women’s understanding of themselves as sexual is socially influenced. I held a focus group and individually interviewed five self-identified physically disabled women about their sexual lives. They shared detailed stories of personal experiences and societal influences. The main social influences that were present in the women’s stories were ableism, sexism, and resistance; the focus of this article is resistance. Resistance discourses challenge mainstream notions of disability and sexuality and combat the oppression that ableism and sexism can create. It is important work to highlight these resistance narratives; they are often overlooked in society. Diverse social understandings of disability and sexuality are needed, and it is important that they come from disabled people. This research seeks to make space for disabled perspectives in the interest of sexual inclusivity and sexual citizenship for disabled women. Points of interest This research explores the social influences that affect the sexual lives of physically disabled women. Disability and sexuality are social constructs, and disabled women’s sexuality is often misunderstood, misrepresented, or disregarded altogether. Disabled women are sexual beings and their rights to sexual citizenship are important to consider. The social influence of resistance is a significant finding in this research; it encompasses sexual empowerment, liberation, pride, solidarity, and reclamation – it is opposition to oppression. Resistance plays a vital role in shaping disabled women’s sexual lives.

Performatividade, assujeitamento e silenciamento do “eu gay”: reflexões entre docência e diversidade sexual

A discussao e possibilidade de inclusao da tematica diversidade sexual na formacao educacional irrompem na possibilidade de se pensar outras formas de desejos e intencionalidades relacionados a vivencia da sexualidade, adquiridas enquanto uma (trans)formacao cultural e social voltada ao construto de referenciais e metodologias proprias ao entendimento das diferencas de relacoes afetivos-sexuais no espaco formativo educacional. O objetivo deste ensaio cientifico se ambasa na necessidade de analisar de que forma a docencia e diversidade sexual se articulam para construir e significar performances de genero, e de como essa construcao se aproxima ou influencia o fazer educativo no espaco da escola e da universidade. As reflexoes que ressalto neste artigo apontam que a escola em sua funcao de formacao para cidadania, emancipacao, direitos e deveres ainda nao contornou o retrocesso do preconceito estrutural. Por isso, tanto a educacao basica como superior descumprem em certa medida a transformacao da realidade dos sujeitos que nelas se inserem.