Religious faith and heterosexuality:a multi-faith exploration of young adults

This paper examines the understandings and practices of 515 heterosexual religious young adults living in the UK in terms of their religious faith and sexuality. It presents qualitative and quantitative data drawn from questionnaires, interviews, and video diaries. Four themes are explored. First, participants generally understood sexuality in relation to sacred discourses. Second, regardless of gender and religious identification, the participants drew from religious (e.g. religious community) and social (i.e. friends) influences to construct their sexual values and attitudes. Third, the religious and familial spaces within which the participants inhabited were structured by heteronormative assumptions. Thus, the participants must negotiate dominant norms, particularly those pertaining to marriage and sex within it. Finally, the paper focuses on married participants, offering insights into their motivations for, and experiences of, marriage. Overall, the paper demonstrates that, like their lesbian and gay counterparts, heterosexual religious young adults also had to manage various competing and mutually-reinforcing sexual and religious norms in constructing a meaningful life.

Enunciações afetadas : relações possíveis entre homofobia e esporte

Universidade Estadual de Campinas . Faculdade de Educação Física

Risco relativo para Aids de homens homo/bissexuais em relação aos heterossexuais

OBJETIVO: Analisar o risco relativo para Aids na população de homens que fazem sexo com homens em relação à população heterossexual masculina. MÉTODOS: Foram utilizadas estimativas sobre a proporção de homens que fazem sexo com homens no Brasil e dados de Aids do Sistema Nacionald e Agravos de Notificação. Foram calculadas estimativas para o risco relativo (RR) para Aids desta população em relação à população heterossexual masculina do Brasil; cidade e estado de São Paulo; e cidade e estado do Rio de Janeiro, para o período de 1996 a 2003. As trajetórias do RR neste período também foram analisadas. RESULTADOS: As estimativas do RR declinaram, mostrando tendência de estabilização: de 34,3 para 19,3 no País como um todo e entre 32,1 e 6,3 nos locais analisados. Para o País em 2003, o RR dos bissexuais masculinos em relação à população heterossexual masculina era 16. O RR para homossexuais exclusivos teve trajetória decrescente em todos os locais analisados, mas não para os bissexuais. CONCLUSÕES: O risco relativo para homens que fazem sexo com homens foi mais elevado em relação aos heterossexuais, em todos os locais. Esse resultado indica alta e persistente vulnerabilidade dessa população.

Living Our Lives on the Edge: Power, Space and Sexual Orientation in Cape Town Townships, South Africa

Much of social science literature about South African cities fails to represent its complex spectrum of sexual practices and associated identities. The unintended effects of such representations are that a compulsory heterosexuality is naturalised in, and reiterative with, dominant constructions of blackness in townships. In this paper, we argue that the assertion of discreet lesbian and gay identities in black townships of a South African city such as Cape Town is influenced by the historical racial and socio-economic divides that have marked urban landscape. In their efforts to recoup a positive sense of gendered personhood, residents have constructed a moral economy anchored in reproductive heterosexuality. We draw upon ethnographic data to show how sexual minorities live their lives vicariously in spaces they have prised open within the extant sex/gender binary. They are able to assert the identities of moffie and man-vrou (mannish woman) without threatening the dominant ideology of heterosexuality.

Discursos sobre homossexualidade numa comunidade educativa : perspetivas de professores

Dissertação de Mestrado em Psicologia da Educação, especialidade em Contextos Comunitários.

Travestis brasileiras em Portugal : percursos, identidades e ambiguidades

Os séculos XX e XXI corresponderam ao agudizar de processos globalizantes potenciados pelas novas tecnologias, quer no âmbito comunicacional, quer industrial, sublinhando dinâmicas de desruralização e de construção de tecidos urbanos densos onde o anonimato se tornou possível na vivência de experiências, outrora reconduzidas ao silêncio do sujeito socialmente isolado. A diferença, enquanto experiência vivida, tornou-se comunitariamente possível, surgindo grupos que delimitam geograficamente determinadas áreas urbanas a que correspondem afinidades eróticas ou de práticas sexuais, inicialmente de gays e lésbicas. Quebra-se na prática a uni-direccionalidade entre sexo e género, entre sexo e sexualidade, questionando-se esquemas de relações assimétricas e modelos de pensamento enraizados (heterossexualidade, patriarcado, machismo, etc.). Rubin (1975 in Lewin 2006, in Vance, 1984) propõe a existência de dois sistemas diferenciados de sexo e género que tornam plausível, sob o ponto de vista analítico, a não correspondência entre sexo, género e sexualidade. O paradigma máximo desta autonomia sistémica alcança-se na construção de uma identidade travesti. Esta identidade mutante, mutável e instável parece acompanhar um mundo de fluxos intensos e interdependências múltiplas. É na sociedade global que as travestis encontram espaço para a vivência comunitária da sua experiência, constituindo-se como um grupo com práticas transnacionais, marcado pela mobilidade de género e geográfica, primeiramente dentro das fronteiras brasileiras e depois para a Europa. Cidade, prostituição e migração surgem como factores chave da disseminação geográfica e identitária desta comunidade. Este projecto tomado sob uma perspectiva global mantêm ou reinventa relações com a estrutura, que aparentemente as apaga enquanto actores sociais e da qual, aparentemente, se auto-excluem.

Molecular epidemiology reveals long-term changes in HIV type 1 subtype B transmission in Switzerland.

BACKGROUND: Sequence data from resistance testing offer unique opportunities to characterize the structure of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection epidemics. METHODS: We analyzed a representative set of HIV type 1 (HIV-1) subtype B pol sequences from 5700 patients enrolled in the Swiss HIV Cohort Study. We pooled these sequences with the same number of sequences from foreign epidemics, inferred a phylogeny, and identified Swiss transmission clusters as clades having a minimal size of 10 and containing >or=80% Swiss sequences. RESULTS: More than one-half of Swiss patients were included within 60 transmission clusters. Most transmission clusters were significantly dominated by specific transmission routes, which were used to identify the following patient groups: men having sex with men (MSM) (38 transmission clusters; average cluster size, 29 patients) or patients acquiring HIV through heterosexual contact (HETs) and injection drug users (IDUs) (12 transmission clusters; average cluster size, 144 patients). Interestingly, there were no transmission clusters dominated by sequences from HETs only. Although 44% of all HETs who were infected between 1983 and 1986 clustered with injection drug users, this percentage decreased to 18% for 2003-2006 (P<.001), indicating a diminishing role of injection drug users in transmission among HETs over time. CONCLUSIONS: Our analysis suggests (1) the absence of a self-sustaining epidemic of HIV-1 subtype B in HETs in Switzerland and (2) a temporally decreasing clustering of HIV infections in HETs and IDUs.

Social meets molecular: Combining phylogenetic and latent class analyses to understand HIV-1 transmission in Switzerland.

Switzerland has a complex human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemic involving several populations. We examined transmission of HIV type 1 (HIV-1) in a national cohort study. Latent class analysis was used to identify socioeconomic and behavioral groups among 6,027 patients enrolled in the Swiss HIV Cohort Study between 2000 and 2011. Phylogenetic analysis of sequence data, available for 4,013 patients, was used to identify transmission clusters. Concordance between sociobehavioral groups and transmission clusters was assessed in correlation and multiple correspondence analyses. A total of 2,696 patients were infected with subtype B, 203 with subtype C, 196 with subtype A, and 733 with recombinant subtypes (mainly CRF02_AG and CRF01_AE). Latent class analysis identified 8 patient groups. Most transmission clusters of subtype B were shared between groups of gay men (groups 1-3) or between the heterosexual groups "heterosexual people of lower socioeconomic position" (group 4) and "injection drug users" (group 8). Clusters linking homosexual and heterosexual groups were associated with "older heterosexual and gay people on welfare" (group 5). "Migrant women in heterosexual partnerships" (group 6) and "heterosexual migrants on welfare" (group 7) shared non-B clusters with groups 4 and 5. Combining approaches from social and molecular epidemiology can provide insights into HIV-1 transmission and inform the design of prevention strategies.

Condom use with steady partners among heterosexual people living with HIV in Europe: testing the information-motivation-behavioral skills model.

Guided by a modified information-motivation-behavioral skills model, this study identified predictors of condom use among heterosexual people living with HIV with their steady partners. Consecutive patients at 14 European HIV outpatient clinics received an anonymous, standardized, self-administered questionnaire between March and December 2007. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and two-step backward elimination regression analyses stratified by gender. The survey included 651 participants (n = 364, 56% women; n = 287, 44%). Mean age was 39 years for women and 43 years for men. Most had acquired HIV sexually and more than half were in a serodiscordant relationship. Sixty-three percent (n = 229) of women and 59% of men (n = 169) reported at least one sexual encounter with a steady partner 6 months prior to the survey. Fifty-one percent (n = 116) of women and 59% of men (n = 99) used condoms consistently with that partner. In both genders, condom use was positively associated with subjective norm conducive to condom use, and self-efficacy to use condoms. Having a partner whose HIV status was positive or unknown reduced condom use. In men, higher education and knowledge about condom use additionally increased condom use, while the use of erectile-enhancing medication decreased it. For women, HIV disclosure to partners additionally reduced the likelihood of condom use. Positive attitudes to condom use and subjective norm increased self-efficacy in both genders, however, a number of gender-related differences appeared to influence self-efficacy. Service providers should pay attention to the identified predictors of condom use and adopt comprehensive and gender-related approaches for preventive interventions with people living with HIV.

The role of migration and domestic transmission in the spread of HIV-1 non-B subtypes in Switzerland.

BACKGROUND: By analyzing human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) pol sequences from the Swiss HIV Cohort Study (SHCS), we explored whether the prevalence of non-B subtypes reflects domestic transmission or migration patterns. METHODS: Swiss non-B sequences and sequences collected abroad were pooled to construct maximum likelihood trees, which were analyzed for Swiss-specific subepidemics, (subtrees including ≥80% Swiss sequences, bootstrap >70%; macroscale analysis) or evidence for domestic transmission (sequence pairs with genetic distance <1.5%, bootstrap ≥98%; microscale analysis). RESULTS: Of 8287 SHCS participants, 1732 (21%) were infected with non-B subtypes, of which A (n = 328), C (n = 272), CRF01_AE (n = 258), and CRF02_AG (n = 285) were studied further. The macroscale analysis revealed that 21% (A), 16% (C), 24% (CRF01_AE), and 28% (CRF02_AG) belonged to Swiss-specific subepidemics. The microscale analysis identified 26 possible transmission pairs: 3 (12%) including only homosexual Swiss men of white ethnicity; 3 (12%) including homosexual white men from Switzerland and partners from foreign countries; and 10 (38%) involving heterosexual white Swiss men and females of different nationality and predominantly nonwhite ethnicity. CONCLUSIONS: Of all non-B infections diagnosed in Switzerland, <25% could be prevented by domestic interventions. Awareness should be raised among immigrants and Swiss individuals with partners from high prevalence countries to contain the spread of non-B subtypes.

International differences in alcohol use according to sexual orientation.

Most research on sexual orientation and alcohol use in the United States has found higher rates of alcohol use and abuse among gay men and lesbians. Studies from other countries have found smaller or no differences between sexual minority and heterosexual women and men. The present study used general population survey data from 14 countries to examine high-volume and risky single-occasion drinking by sexual orientation. Data from 248 gay men and lesbians and 3720 heterosexuals were analyzed in a case-control design. In several countries partnered or recently partnered gay men and lesbians had no greater risk of heavy drinking or engaging in heavy drinking than heterosexual controls. Only lesbians in North America showed higher risk for both indicators. Future general population health research should include larger samples of gays and lesbians and use more comprehensive measures of sexual orientation for investigating the prevalence of health risk factors.

El medievalismo fértil de Paloma Díaz-Mas

The author of this article is concerned with trying to understand why Paloma Díaz-Mas, the writer of such an excellent novel as La tierra fértil (1999), has not received much critical attention. He underlines three main reasons. First, she does not live in Madrid or Barcelona and so she is far away from the main centres of cultural power. Second, she teaches Spanish literature in the Basque Country, a political and linguistic community which significantly differs from that of many other writers. Third, she writes historical novels, which does not appear to be very fashionable in Spain these days. Moreover, Díaz-Mas is a woman writer who does not make use of the most commonly available feminine patterns, and she does not seem to offer a model easy to include in a given feminist methodology either. However, Mérida-Jiménez argues that Paloma provides an intelligent deconstruction of “male authority” through subtle rhetorical means, as well as a representation of the weakness of his “domination” in very innovative ways, such as those derived from the dialectics between history and fiction, centrality and marginality, heterosexuality and homosexuality, individual and society, dream and reason or tradition and modernity.