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In studies of sexual risk behaviour among youth, the role of dominant conceptions of masculinity and femininity has received increasing attention. However, where research has sought to explore femininity, it has predominantly focused on adolescent girls. This paper departs from previous research by offering insights into how young women negotiate their femininity as they transition from adolescence to adulthood and encounter changing social contexts. Drawing on data from ethnographic enquiry, it argues that as young women transition out of school and into emerging adulthood, their options for negotiating different types of femininity become constrained, with consequences for engagement in sexual risk behaviours. This may to some extent explain why in some South African contexts older young women are more vulnerable to HIV infection than adolescent girls. The paper offer insights into future prospects for youth development programming seeking to reduce young women’s vulnerability to risk. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores condom use and lubrication practices among Black men who have sex with men in South African townships. Results are from 81 in-depth individual interviews conducted among a purposive sample from four townships surrounding Pretoria as part of a larger qualitative study. Awareness that condoms should be used to have safer anal sex was ubiquitous. Fewer men reported that lubricants should be used to facilitate anal intercourse. Partner pressure and partner distrust were the most common barriers cited for not using condoms and lubricants. Knowledge about condom-lubricant compatibility was rare. Condom problems were a norm, with widespread expectations of condom failure. Men’s subjectivities – their perceptions of and preferences for specific brands, types and flavours of condoms and lubricants – influenced engagement with such safer-sex technologies. However, what was available in these settings was often neither what men needed nor preferred. Findings show the need to enhance access to appropriate and comprehensive: safer-sex supplies, health services and health education, and underline the importance of efforts to develop targeted programmes relevant to experiences of men who have sex with men in the South African context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

South Africa has seen a rapid increase in scholarship and programmatic interventions focusing on gender and sexuality, and more recently on boys, men and masculinities. In this paper, we argue that a deterministic discourse on men's sexuality and masculinity in general is inherent in many current understandings of adolescent male sexuality, which tend to assume that young women are vulnerable and powerless and young men are sexually powerful and inevitably also the perpetrators of sexual violence. Framed within a feminist, social constructionist the oretical perspective, the current research looked at how the masculinity and sexuality of South African young men is constructed, challenged or maintained. Focus groups were conducted with young men between the ages of 15 and 20 years from five different schools in two regions of South Africa, the Western and Eastern Cape. Data were analysed using Gilligan's listening guide method. Findings suggest that participants in this study have internalised the notion of themselves as dangerous, but were also exploring other possible ways of being male and being sexual, demonstrating more complex experiences of manhood. We argue for the importance of documenting and highlighting the precariousness, vulnerability and uncertainty of young men in scholarly and programmatic work on masculinities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HIV-prevention and service programmes have long either ignored or overlooked lesbians. The experiences of lesbians with HIV have similarly been unrecognised and unreported. This erasure has contributed to the invisibility of lesbians in relation to HIV and related health risks. This community participatory study, based on in-depth interviews with 24 self-identifying African lesbians living with HIV in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia, focuses on their personal experiences and circumstances. Women's experiences shed light and challenge popular notions around lesbian risk. In particular among this group are lesbians who self-report exclusive sexual relationships with women. For these women, experiences of living with HIV are challenging as they struggle to understand the possibility of female-to-female transmission. While battling with their own perceptions of invulnerability and accepting their HIV-positive status, they have to deal also with wide-ranging misconceptions about risk. The paper argues that within the context of HIV, lesbians cannot be regarded as a 'no-risk' group. Health services and health providers are encouraged to respond to the health needs of lesbians living with HIV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on qualitative research undertaken during a phase-three microbicide gel trial, this paper explores female participants' experiences and perceptions of gel and condom use and the opinions of their male partners and community members. Participants were aware that condoms were effective in preventing HIV infection and that the efficacy of the microbicide was unproven. Yet, in narratives about gel and condom use, participants ascribed improvements to their reproductive health and intimate relationships with men to gel use. In contrast, condoms were believed to prevent disease, yet also embodied mistrust, were believed to contain dangerous substances and were felt to block the womb. These apparently contradictory views about condoms and gels are explored in the light of conceptions of flow and blockage. Health is achieved by maintaining a steady balance of substances within the body, while preventing fluid flow results in illness. We argue that women enrolled in the trial broadened the meaning of the gel beyond its primary intended effect of preventing HIV. Through their accounts of gel use, women 'reinvented' the gel as a substance that transformed their bodies and sexual relations. This has implications for understanding how local knowledge of health and illness intersects with biomedical knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]