Desire, Hierarchy, and Agency: Youth, Homosexuality, and Difference Markers in Sao Paulo

In this article, we present the results of ethnographic research undertaken in areas with concentrated recreational venues frequented by diverse youth groups in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil. This material is part of the larger ""Relationships between race, gender and sexuality in different national and local contexts"" research initiative. Here, we focus upon data collected through ethnographic observation and interviews conducted in various locales where young men meet to engage in homoerotic sociability, demonstrating different degrees of conviviality among groups of different socioeconomic profiles and distinct esthetic preferences, consumer habits, and body types. We explore the production of styles and body presentations that link markers of color/race, gender, and sexuality, as well as the relationships that these maintain with opening or restricting possibilities for the establishment of erotic and affective partnerships involving these boys.

Teachers' attitudes and beliefs about homosexuality

Schools play a key role in transmitting attitudes towards sexual diversity. Many studies stress the importance of teachers" and other professionals" attitudes towards gay men and/or lesbian women. This study evaluates attitudes and prejudices toward homosexuality in a sample of 254 elementary and high school teachers in Barcelona and its surrounding area. The results obtained using a scale of overt and subtle prejudice and a scale of perceived discrepancy of values indicate that discrepancy between likely behavior and personal values was significantly greater in women, those who hold religious beliefs, churchgoers and people without any gay or lesbian acquaintances. Approximately 88% of the teachers showed no type of prejudiced attitudes towards gay men and lesbian women. The experience of proximity to gay men and/or lesbian women reduces not only the discrepancy between personal values and likely behavior but also the presence of homophobic prejudice. It would be advisable to expand specific teacher training in the subject of sexual diversity in order to reduce prejudicial attitudes, thus fostering non-stereotyped knowledge of homosexuality

Readings of homosexuality in Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and four film adaptations

This essay proposes to read one more time the issue of homosexuality in Mary Shelley's first novel, "Frankenstein". In order to offer a new angle on the homosexual component of Victor Frankenstein's relationship with his creature when next teaching this most canonical Romantic novel, this essay considers Shelley's work alongside four film adaptations : James Whale's 1931 "Frankenstein", Whale's 1935 "The bride of Frankenstein", Richard O'Brien's 1975 "The rocky horror picture show", and Kenneth Branagh's 1994 "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein". [...]

Mediated action and sexual risk: Searching for 'culture' in discourses of homosexuality and AIDS prevention in China

This paper examines the concept of ‘culture’ and its relationship to HIV prevention. Culture is here seen as the interaction between human beings and the various ‘cultural tools’ they appropriate when taking action. Among these tools are ways of speaking which encode certain meanings, ideologies and social practices. When individuals take action with regard to AIDS, what they do is mediated through voices which they borrow strategically from their environ- ment. The textual tools that are available and the ways individuals adapt and combine them work to either limit or amplify their participation in HIV prevention. What are traditionally seen as ‘cultures’ or ‘sub-cultures’, or worse, ‘risk groups’, are, in this perspective, viewed as ‘communities of practice’, groups of individuals who share particular cultural tools and ways of using them. This conceptual framework is applied to recent discourses of homosexuality and AIDS prevention in China. An instance of ‘of� cial’ discourse in the form of an AIDS education pamphlet for ‘gays’ is analysed for the voices it contains and how these voices are strategically marshalled by the authors and mixed with other voices in ways which amplify participation in AIDS prevention for some and limit it for others. This ‘offical’ discourse is then compared to the discourse of homosexually active Chinese men recently interviewed in Beijing and Fuzhou to examine which of these of� cial voices and other voices they appropriate, and how they adapt these voices in responding to HIV.

Anton Nyström's Defense of Homosexuality

In 1919 Anton Nyström became the first person in Sweden to publish a comprehensive defense of homosexuality. He believed that its classification as a mental illness was erroneous and that Sweden's law against homosexual sex was both irrational and cruel. Nyström was a physician whose work in the medical area dealt primarily with dermatology, psychiatry and human sexuality; however he was also a prolific historian, who took a staunchly anti-Christian view in his analysis of how Christianity affected European culture, especially in the area of sexual morality. In fact, much of Nyström's medical texts dealing with human sexuality consisted of anti-Christian cultural and historical commentary. The object of this "C-uppsats" is to analyze Nyström's pamphlet, Om Homosexualitet och Hermafroditi: Belysning af Missförstådda Existenser and illustrate how its defensive structure was consistent with the pattern used by the author in his other books and articles on human sexuality. Specifically, that irrational and neurotic Christian beliefs caused both mental and physical suffering and were the source of deleterious forms of morality. Additionally, this paper will also show that the solution Nyström had for the problem of negative and erroneous attitudes towards homosexuality was to replace the sodomitic view of homosexuality with one based upon a more rational and naturalistic belief system, the basis of which could be found in the pre-Christian cultures of Europe, most especially in Greece. This new conception was to be constructed primarily out of historical example and cultural analyses. For Nyström, history writing was used both as a weapon to fight the source of negative attitudes towards homosexuality, as well as a tool that could be used to build a positive cultural model which would be beneficial for homosexuals.

Male Homosexuality in Brazilian Indexing Languages: Some Ethical Questions

Studies on ethics in information organization have deeply contributed to the recognition of the social dimension of Information Science. The subject approach to information is linked to an ethical dimension because one of its major concerns is related to its reliability and usefulness in a specific discursive community or knowledge domain. In this direction, we propose, through an exploratory research design with qualitative and inductive characteristics, to identify the specific terminology that Brazilian indexing languages allow for terms relating to male homosexuality. We also analyzed the terms assigned to papers published in the Journal of Homosexuality, Sexualities and Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health between the years 2005 to 2009. From this analysis of terms and the Brazilian indexing languages, we see (1) the Brazilian context, (2) imprecision in the terminology, (3) indications of prejudices disseminated by political correctness, (4) biased representation of the subject matter, (5) and the presence of figures of speech.