Gay Men's Knowledge of HIV Transmission and ‘Safe’ Sex: A Question of Accuracy

The study described in this paper is part of a project assessing the impact of the HIV epidemic on 535 men who have sex with men. These men were surveyed about their knowledge of HIV, their sexual practices, other issues concerning the transmission of HIV, and AIDS. This paper focuses on these men's beliefs about HIV transmission, their perceptions of the safety of a number of sexual and social practices, and the factors influencing these perceptions. The findings indicate, in general, that the men surveyed were moderately well informed about HIV transmission. Some twenty percent of the men were well-informed about both ‘safe’ and ‘unsafe’ sexual practices, a small number were ill-informed and the remainder, the majority, were well-informed about some aspects and ill-informed about others. The data suggest that information from the mainstream and gay press is not only differentially available but that information is processed and interpreted by the men in different ways. Variables which influence the manner in which information is interpreted are place of residence (locale), awareness of gay community posters and pamphlets, and the men's sexual practice; these are associated with cautiousness or rashness in the men's judgments of safety and risk.     

Dialogical Demand: Discursive Position Repertoires for a Local and Global UK Sex Industry

The increasing incidence of ‘trafficking’ has added an incontestably disturbing dimension to the contestable nature of a ‘non‐trafficked’ UK sex industry. Men who buy sex remain under‐researched, though some studies have indicated ambivalence within men's attitudes. This study combines a critical discursive psychology in support of dialogical self theory. Secondary data, from prominent UK media resources, were analysed using Edley's (2001) method of combining ‘interpretative repertoires’, ‘ideological dilemmas’ and ‘subject positions’. Contrasting discursive practices indicative of wider ideological conflict were found. Discursive concepts were ‘mapped’ onto Hermans and Hermans‐Konopka's (2010) ‘I‐positions’ to explore how these potentially dilemmatic positions might be understood in terms of identity production. The function of ‘uncertainty’, particularly salient with the increasing complexity of globalisation, was considered a factor in how men's identities might be limited by the current discursive space. A ‘dialogical’ model of self is introduced as a framework for understanding how men who buy sex might take up new, inclusive, positions. A corollary is reflected upon; that researchers, activists and buyers alike, who remain ideologically inflexible, may be sustaining the conditions for coercion through their contribution to the discursive conflict. The synthesis of discursive and dialogical analytical tools is recommended for investigating the production of selves in contested spaces.     

Preventing Domestic Violence in the South Asian Context: Men's or Family Involvement?

Globally there is a growing tendency to involve men in preventing domestic violence. Since men are the main perpetrators of violence against women, proponents of men's involvement argue that men must be involved to prevent men's violence against women. Conversely, opponents of men's involvement argue that involving men would not bring about the expected outcome, since men's involvement is challenging, particularly in the cultural context, and men intentionally perpetrate violence against women. In this paper, an attempt has been made to critically justify the suitability of men's involvement and to find a more culturally acceptable alternative for preventing domestic violence against women in South Asia. This article critically discusses theories related to the sociocultural understanding of domestic violence, insightfully presents domestic violence in this regional perspective, argues the pros and cons of men's involvement, and proposes family involvement as a culturally suitable approach to prevent domestic violence.     

Men's things: Masculine possession in the consumer revolution

This article uses the diaries of the Sussex shopkeeper Thomas Turner, the Reverends James Woodforde of Norfolk and William Holland of Somerset, and the Yorkshire schoolmaster Robert Sharp to explore men's multiple relations to the consumer market in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England. Arguing that historians have unduly discounted male participation in household provisioning and personal purchasing, it documents these diarists' engagement with a host of quotidian exchange activities. Avid purchasers and consumers of fish, potatoes, lace, buttons,china and clocks,these men were also active in promoting extended gift relations among neighbours, friends and kin. Their strategic deployment of gifts fostered sociability and commerce while bolstering hierarchical distinctions within the community and the state. Helping to constitute a broad-based moral economy of exchange, these masculine gifting behaviours meshed easily with the men's identities as acquisitive purchasers of consumer goods but undercut their ability to act as economic free agents. An understanding of men's shifting relations to the world of things in this period helps to explain the broader changes in English market moralities that underpinned the transition from custom to contract in the nineteenth century.     

“Respect for each gender”: Gender,equity and backlash in Australia's male health policy

Australia is one of the few countries which has specific health policies for boys/men and girls/women as distinct groups. In this article I present an analysis of the discourses of gender, equity and disadvantage drawn upon in Australia's men's health policy. Through comparison with the women's health policy, I show that a dual focus on the essential differences between men and women and the ways in which the health system has failed men contribute to an adversarial gender politics, positioning men and women as rivals with competing needs. Reflecting broader debates concerning the negative impact of societal change on boys/men, I argue that, in its current form, Australia's health policy both taps into and, crucially, legitimises backlash politics, enabling it to ‘pass’ as sound public policy.     

The politics of gendered emotions: disrupting men's emotional investment in privilege

This paper explores the implications of the neglect of emotions in critical masculinity studies and profeminist masculinity politics. This neglect in part results from feminist and profeminist critiques of the literature on emotional inexpressiveness as a tragedy for men that ignores male privilege and men's social power. To focus on men's emotions is seen by some profeminist commentators as psychologising men at the expense of sociological understandings of men's social power. However, in neglecting the place of emotions in men's lives, critical masculinity studies has overlooked the ways in which men's emotional attachment to privilege can perpetuate oppressive gender relations and male violence against women. By exploring men's emotional investment in unequal gender relations, the article outlines ways in which emotions can also be used as a catalyst to disrupt men's attachment to male privilege.     

Early intervention and holistic,relationship‐based practice with fathers: evidence from the work of the Family Nurse Partnership

This paper seeks to add to the literature on working with fathers by focusing on early intervention. It draws on research into fathers involved in a home visitation service delivered by the Family Nurse Partnership in England and evaluates the men's experiences of the intervention. The vulnerability of fathers was striking and many were helped to develop their practical skills and confidence in caring for their babies. The intervention was effective because of the quality time that was invested in developing relationships with fathers (as well as mothers), the focus on their strengths as well as areas for improvement and the skilled, therapeutically oriented, holistic approach through which the service was delivered. The ‘early’ nature of the help was crucial to its success because of how it so effectively tapped into the men's redefinition of themselves as caring fathers during pregnancy and following the birth. We argue that there is important learning here for social care and health services in general about how to engage men and promote fathers' capacities to care for their children.     

Rethinking the Significance of Attitudes in Preventing Men's Violence Against Women

The concept of attitudes has been an important component of campaigns to address men's violence against women. Attitudes have been examined in relation to men's perpetration of violence, women's experience of violence and community and institutional responses. In this article we argue that there has not been sufficient interrogation of the limitations of attitudes in understanding and addressing men's violence. We propose a social constructionist approach to attitudes and emphasise the need to locate attitudes within the context of familial, organisational, community and social norms which support violence against women. Furthermore, we argue that to prevent violence against women, we must develop interventions beyond cultural and attitudinal change to encompass changes in structural relations and social practices.     

Hard to reach and easy to ignore: the drinking careers of young people not in education,employment or training

Young people's drinking in the UK remains a matter of medical, social, media and political concern. The notion of transition and drinking styles in the move from childhood to adulthood and from education to employment has been central to understanding young people's drinking behaviour, but little is known about how the drinking patterns of those not in education or employment, both men and women, develop over time. This paper reports on research which aimed to examine the current drinking habits and drinking careers of young people not in education employment and training who are traditionally described as hard to reach. In‐depth qualitative interviews were undertaken with 23 young people: 15 women and 8 men aged between 14 and 23. The findings are presented with respect to three stages of drinking: starting, continuing or increasing, and decreasing or stopping. The conclusions indicate that for the majority of these young people, alcohol is a significant factor in their lives and that peers, gender, time and place combine to structure both their current alcohol use and drinking career. The paper argues that an understanding of young people's drinking career development and current alcohol use will help target effective social work and multi‐agency intervention.     

Reimagining the Northern Territory Intervention: Institutional and cultural interventions into the Anglo‐Australian imaginary

This paper draws on the example of the Northern Territory Intervention to examine the role of Australia's broader socio‐cultural context in maintaining racist policies concerning Indigenous self‐governance. Central to this paper is the claim that legislative, constitutional, and other structural reforms are limited on their own to prevent institutional practices of violence and exclusion that are bound up with popular ways of imagining Indigenous and non‐Indigenous identities. In light of the potential limitations of top‐down reforms to prevent the perpetuation of discriminatory policymaking in relation to Australia's First Peoples, this paper explores the value of bottom‐up initiatives that constructively engage the imaginative, affective, and reflective capacities of individuals to facilitate a ‘critical re‐imagining’ (The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations, Oxford University Press, 2013) of Indigenous Australians as social and political actors. Developing and supporting such initiatives, on this view, is integral to the wider task of promoting and protecting Indigenous rights, interests, and entitlements.     

Drinking: Another glass ceiling? Social drinking and alcohol use among women in Korea

Korean society is experiencing a rapid increase in alcohol consumption among women. Research on women's alcohol use has focused mostly on problems and pathological symptoms associated with alcohol use. Focusing only on problems of alcohol use risks overlooking some important social phenomena where alcohol use is a medium. We examined the association between marital status, childcare responsibility, employment status and social drinking behaviour. Our aim was to examine how these factors influence women's alcohol consumption in order to provide an empirical explanation of how the traditional division of labour limits women's social drinking practices. Findings show that women are structurally excluded from social drinking behaviour due to domestic responsibilities (as a wife and a mother). In other words, social drinking has become another glass ceiling for women. Key Practitioner Message: ● Attention should be given to structural influences on women's alcohol use; ● It is important to consider gender inequality in both formal and informal domains.     

Walking: A Gender Issue?

Gender has been neglected in models of the social determinants of health. We use walking as a case study to demonstrate how gender might be incorporated into multilevel social determinants of health frameworks to investigate health behaviours. We found that while men and women had some similar individual (e.g. confidence in doing regular physical activity) and environmental (e.g. presence of destinations) predictors of walking there were also gender differences in the associations found at both of these levels. For example, low levels of education were only associated with men's walking time while having people in the household who made walking easy or hard was only associated with women's walking time. Likewise, having a variety of places to walk to was important for women's walking but not men's. These results indicate that both universal and gender‐specific approaches to health education, health promotion and planning might be needed to improve walking levels.     

More of a Bridge than a Gap: Gender Differences in Arab‐American Political Engagement*

Objective. Research on immigrant women's economic and cultural adaptation has increasingly come to the fore of immigration research, yet relatively little remains known about their engagement in the political arena. This study examines this question among Arab Muslims, a group that has been at the center of much public debate but little scholarly discourse. Methods. Using nationally representative data on Arab Muslims, this study examines gender differences in political consciousness and activity and assesses the degree to which different dimensions of religious identity contribute to differences in men's and women's attitudes and behaviors. Results. Both women and men have high levels of political engagement, in part reflecting their relatively affluent socioeconomic positions. Men are slightly more involved than women, and this is explained by their greater participation in religious activities and higher levels of political religiosity. In contrast, subjective dimensions of religiosity—or being a devout Muslim—have no effect on political engagement. Conclusions. Overall, there are few gender differences in Arab Muslim political engagement, suggesting that collective identity based on ethnicity and religion is more salient for the political mobilization of this group. Further, religion is not uniformly associated with political activity, varying by gender and the dimension of religious identity in question, suggesting that future research needs to focus on how different facets of religion influence U.S. political involvement.     

Romantic relationships,college student alcohol use,and negative consequences of drinking

This study examined whether being in a romantic relationship is associated with undergraduates’ alcohol use and negative consequences of drinking. Alcohol use was operationalized to include amount and frequency of drinking, binge drinking, and drunkenness. Negative consequences included: having a hangover, missing a class, getting behind in school work, doing something that was later regretted, forgetting where the student was or what they did, having unplanned sex, and getting hurt or injured. Data came from an online survey distributed to Midwestern undergraduate students (N = 572), with analyses conducted separately for men and women. Results indicated that being in a committed relationship generally served as a protective factor against drunkenness, but did not reduce frequency of drinking or binge drinking. Whereas romantically committed men were only less likely to report doing something that was later regretted, women in romantic relationships were less likely to experience all negative consequences of drinking considered here.     

Peer and Friend Influences on Children's Eating

Peers and friends are perceived as important role models for the formation of children's attitudes and behaviours. A wealth of research has aimed to establish the contribution of peers and friends to children's developing eating behaviours, and their attitudes towards eating. This review describes and evaluates such research. Experimental research examining peer modelling of food consumption and liking is reviewed, and several individual child factors that are suggested to make children more or less receptive to peer and friend influences are discussed. The influence of children's perceptions of their peers’ and friends’ eating behaviours upon their own eating practices is also explored. The benefits of future longitudinal research to improve understanding of peer and friend influences on children's eating are emphasized.     

Chinese immigrant child and maternal reactions to disappointment: Cultural fit impacts the bidirectional associations

Culture provides a context in which emotion socialization is embedded, and the bidirectional effects between parents’ emotion socialization and children's emotional behaviors may work differently across cultures. To understand how emotion socialization may be shaped by the cultural context, we examined the moderating role of Asian cultural values in bidirectional associations between maternal emotion socialization practices and child anger and sadness. Seventy-four U.S. Chinese immigrant mothers (M_age = 40.71 years, SD = 3.61) completed measures assessing their Asian cultural values and parenting style. Children experienced a disappointment task in the lab (Cole, 1986), and mothers and their children (M_age = 6.73 years, SD = .95; 55% female) were observed at two different time intervals. Mothers’ socialization practices (emotion dismissing, emotion coaching, and moral and behavioral socialization) and children's anger and sadness responses at both intervals were coded. Mothers’ greater Asian cultural values buffered the negative effects of their emotion dismissing practices on children's anger and sadness. However, Asian cultural values did not impact the effects of children's anger and sadness on mothers’ emotion dismissing practices. When mothers endorsed fewer Asian values, their emotion coaching practices reduced children's anger and sadness. Children's anger and sadness evoked more emotion coaching practices when mothers endorsed lower levels of Asian cultural values. In addition, children's anger and sadness evoked greater moral and behavioral responses from their mothers when mothers endorsed more Asian values. Overall, findings underscored the importance of cultural values in the interplay between mothers’ emotion socialization practices and children's emotions.     

The Royal Commission,ATSIC and Self-Determination: A Review of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody

The National Report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, in recommending fundamental reforms of government policy, proposed a primarily political and administrative notion of Aboriginal empowerment or ‘self-determination’. That is, the Commissioner argued the fundamental importance of publicly-funded Aboriginal organisations and urged governments to relax financial accountability requirements imposed on them. The paper quotes extensively from the National Report to argue that this, rather than ‘land rights’ or ‘economic independence’ is what the Commissioner meant by ‘self-determination’. But what is the place of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) in such a view of Aboriginal and Islander political development? The paper demonstrates the Commissioner's ambivalence about ATSIC, and his failure consistently to project ATSIC's role when making his recommendations about health, alcohol and housing policies. It concludes by citing Commonwealth responses which indicate that ATSIC is likely to emerge as an obstacle in the Commissioner's scenario of Aboriginal and Islander political development.     

Retirement timing in Europe: The influence of individual work and life factors

This study considers the rational choice and life course theories to predict European retirement timing. It is relevant to compare men's and women's retirement decisions to determine whether they are influenced by work or by the interplay between work and familial, educational, and leisure life. An event history analysis of the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) suggests that work factors have a greater impact on European women's retirement timing than they do for men and that both men's and women's retirement timing is influenced by the interplay of work and life.     

‘Drink a 12 box before you go’: pre-loading among young people in Aotearoa New Zealand

The practice of pre-loading—drinking large amounts of alcohol rapidly in private spaces prior to socialising in the night-time economy—has come to notice recently in the study of alcohol-related harm, but no studies have explored these phenomena in Aotearoa New Zealand. We used a theoretical framework developed with public health alcohol studies for understanding drinking cultures that conceptualises patterns of behaviours as arising within a dynamic interaction between forces of hedonism, function and control. We report findings from 34 focus groups conducted with 18–25 year olds as part of a project supported by the Marsden Fund, between 2011 and 2012, to investigate drinking cultures among young people. Our thematic analyses of participants’ accounts of pre-loading show that the term is in common use, applying to a range of practices motivated by price of alcohol but influenced by the pleasures of intoxication, the importance of peer processes and certain aspects of the regulatory system. We conclude with a discussion of the usefulness of the framework and the implications of the findings for public health policy that aims to reduce alcohol consumption and the harm that arises from it.