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In a qualitative study on masculinity, embodiment and sexuality, we interviewed men who were recreational gym-goers about their bodywork practices in Melbourne, Australia. We also asked whether the men had used performance and image-enhancing drugs (PIEDs) as an adjunct to their bodywork practices. While none had used PIEDs, all were considering, or had considered, using them. We found that participants held varying opinions on PIED use and those who used them. The literature on PIEDs noted men's concerns with body appearance and health and focused largely on individual problematic use, but non-users were not mentioned. A second issue in the literature focused on social influences on PIED use, but again with no mention of non-users. Discussion on risk reduction as a public health response did not mention non-users either. This paper, therefore, reports on non-users' thoughts on, regular exposure to, and considerations of PIEDs and other men who use them. We propose that PIEDs might more usefully be understood as an everyday, if contradictory, consideration within most men's bodywork and health practices. We argue that PIEDs constitute a discursive practice exposing a potentiality that engages non-users also and this requires new health promotion approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite public debate about alcohol and public violence among young people in Australia, the issue of masculinities or gender is rarely visible in alcohol policy. Instead, policy recommendations aimed at reducing violence focus on changing the availability and consumption of alcohol. Drawing on concepts from feminist and science and technology studies scholarship, this article analyses how "alcohol-related violence" is constituted as a specific policy object, and how it coheres to obscure men's contributions to and experiences of violence. Attention to the political effects of these policy practices is necessary for the development of more equitable alcohol policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how women think about men's bodies as objects of desire. It reports on one part of a larger qualitative study on men's bodywork practices in contemporary Australia. Drawing on material from three focus groups with 24 Australian women of varying ages, sexual orientations and backgrounds, the paper considers how women experience, understand and reflect on their desire for men and men's bodies. It also explores themes such as the connection women draw between what a man's body looks like and what it can do, how attraction is experienced, the meaning making women engage in as they think about men and men's bodies, and the broader politics of sexuality and objectification that inform their perceptions and ideas. These experiences are set against ideas in post-feminist thinking on women's sexual desire and debates on their sexual empowerment. The paper argues that these women are grappling with tensions between their personal experiences of sexual objectification and a feminist ethics relating to their active and reflexive projects of sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we analyse interview data on how alcohol policy stakeholders in Australia, Canada and Sweden understand the relationship between men, masculinities, alcohol and violence. Using influential feminist scholarship on public policy and liberal political theory to analyse interviews with 42 alcohol policy stakeholders, we argue that while these stakeholders view men's violence as a key issue for intervention, masculinities are backgrounded in proposed responses and men positioned as unamenable to intervention. Instead, policy stakeholders prioritise generic interventions understood to protect all from the harms of men's drinking and violence without marking men for special attention. Shared across the data is a prioritisation of interventions that focus on harms recognised as relating to men's drinking but apply equally to all people and, as such, avoid naming men and masculinities as central to alcohol-related violence. We argue that this process works to background the role of masculinities in violence, leaving men unmarked and many possible targeted responses unthinkable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of alcohol policy suggests women are marked out for special attention while men and masculinities are often ignored. In this paper, we employ Carol Bacchi's work on 'gendering practices' and John Law's concept of 'collateral realities' to examine how gender is constituted in Australian alcohol policy. For Bacchi, policies actively produce what it is possible for 'men' and 'women' to become. For Law, realities are constituted through methodological instruments and representational practices. We analyze the making of three collateral realities in Australian alcohol policy: gender as an individual attribute; gender as a synonym for women; and gender as confined to the domestic sphere. These collateral realities contribute to the maintenance of binary notions of gender and reinforce a straightforwardly causal role for alcohol in harms, including violence. Attention to the political effects of these 'realities' should be prioritized in the development of more equitable responses to alcohol and harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Alcohol-related violence', especially among young people participating in the night-time economy (NTE), has been the subject of intense public and policy debate in Australia. Previous sociological work has highlighted the relationship between men, masculinities and violence, but this relationship has received little attention in the research that tends to garner policy attention. In this article, we focus on the treatment of gender in Australian quantitative research on alcohol and violence in the NTE. We identify four 'gendering practices' through which such research genders alcohol and violence: de-gendering alcohol and violence through obscuring gender differences; displacing men and masculinities via a focus on environmental, geographical and temporal factors; rendering gender invisible via methodological considerations; and addressing gender in limited ways. We argue that these research practices and the policy recommendations that flow from them reproduce normative understandings of alcohol effects and lend support to gendered forms of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gay and bisexual men engage in a variety of sexual partnerships, but the most common distinction made in HIV research and behavioral surveillance is a binary between "regular" and "casual" partners. The "regular partner" category is often perceived as pertaining to ongoing coupled "boyfriend" relationships, with the literature to date rarely troubling what actually constitutes a "regular partner." Some emerging literature has identified "fuckbuddy" partnerships as a type of regular partnership requiring attention, but it is relatively new and not well understood. Currently, assumptions of the regular partner category do not capture how men perceive and conduct commitment in different sexual partnerships that could also be considered "regular," and the implications this has for HIV prevention. Drawing on in-depth interviews with a sample of 61 Australian gay-identified men, we explore a diversity of partnership types that represent unique ways of enacting commitment. We identify three sexual partnerships: "fuckbuddies," dating, and serial monogamy, each with specific issues for HIV risk and prevention. These partnerships suggest important differences in the way men conceive of and practice intimacy and sex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Alcohol‐fuelled violence' and its prevention has been the subject of recent intense policy debate in Australia, with the content of this debate informed by a surprisingly narrow range of research resources. In particular, given the well‐established relationship between masculinities and violence, the meagre attention paid to the role of gender in alcohol research and policy recommendations stands out as a critical issue. In this article, which draws on recent work in feminist science studies and science and technology studies, we focus on the treatment of gender, alcohol and violence in Australian research on 'alcohol‐related presentations' to emergency departments (EDs), analysing this type of research because of its prominence in policy debates. We focus on four types of 'gendering practice' through which research genders 'alcohol‐related presentations' to EDs: omitting gender from consideration, ignoring clearly gendered data when making gender‐neutral policy recommendations, methodologically designing out gender and addressing gender in terms of risk and vulnerability. We argue that ED research practices and their policy recommendations reproduce normative understandings of alcohol's effects and of the operations of gender in social arrangements, thereby contributing to the 'evidence base' supporting unfair policy responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When viewed over time, many gay men's relationships are not static, or firmly fixed to monogamy or non-monogamy. This paper uses in-depth interviews with 61 Australian gay men to explore how monogamy and non-monogamy are experienced over time, expectations of what constitutes the norms regarding gay men's relationships and how couples experience and practices change. Although some gay men may idealise monogamy, particularly at the beginning of a relationship, it is often experienced as temporary. Non-monogamy is often seen as a likely prospect for gay relationships owing to the social and cultural norms that operate in gay communities. These expected trajectories are reflected in practice - many relationships begin monogamously and then become non-monogamous over time. While the application of 'rules', experimentation and flexibility can facilitate change, couples may struggle to navigate new territory as their relationship structures shift. This is particularly the case when partners value monogamy and non-monogamy differently, or when one partner's values change. These findings shed light on how gay men approach change to the status of 'fidelity' within their relationships, and the tensions and opportunities that change can produce for couples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This review article provides a thematic synthesis and overview of 30 years of research into the study of men and masculinity in men's magazines. Over 100 articles, book chapters, and books were reviewed to explore how scholars have approached the study of masculinity in such magazines and identify four major areas of inquiry: the commodification of masculinity; the relationship between sexism and misogyny in men's magazines and men's attitudes towards women; the vulnerability of men to, and the role of magazines in the construction of, men's body image anxieties; and the increasing sexualisation of men's bodies. The strengths and potential limitations of these four thematic approaches are identified, including an insufficiently nuanced account of the ways in which men might actually engage with images and ideas about masculinity in such magazines; an overly singular view of male sexuality that naturalises sexist and predatory behaviour; and an overemphasis on men's bodies as sites of vulnerability, risk, or crisis at the expense of more substantive considerations of the relationship between the representation of body modification practices and technologies, and men's embodied identities. The review concludes with an overview of the present field and some suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Regular sexual partnerships among gay and bisexual men (GBM) who practice condomless anal intercourse (CLAI) have not been well characterised in terms of partnership type, HIV seroconcordance and risk of HIV transmission. Primarily sexual regular partnerships, although commonly reported by gay men, have largely been ignored in research and HIV prevention. Among regular partners reporting CLAI with each other, we determined factors differentiating romantic or committed relationships from partnerships organised primarily around sex ('fuckbuddies') and estimated the proportion of CLAI presenting risk for HIV transmission.Methods: An online, cross-sectional survey of Australian GBM was conducted. Univariate and multivariate generalised estimating equations were used to determine statistical associations.Results: Men reported on 2250 regular sexual partnerships. Over half the partnerships were romantic or committed relationships. Over half the partnerships were HIV-negative seroconcordant (54.9%), 3.1% were HIV-positive seroconcordant, 5.2% were serodiscordant and 36.8% were of unknown seroconcordance. Potential risks presented by CLAI were sometimes mitigated by protective factors, such as having a clear spoken agreement about sex with outside partners, having fewer outside partners, openly discussing HIV risk and having an agreement to reduce risk from outside partners. These protective factors were more often found in romantic or committed relationships than among primarily sexual partnerships, and were less often found in partnerships of unknown seroconcordance.Conclusion: CLAI is more common among regular sexual partnerships considered to be of a romantic, committed nature. However, factors associated with such romantic or committed partnerships can also protect against HIV transmission risk. Unknown seroconcordance, particularly lack of communication about HIV status among primarily sexual partnerships, is a key risk factor that needs to be addressed by HIV education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: How gay and bisexual men (GBM) establish partnership agreements may be affected by several factors, including age. The ability to communicate with a partner about sexual agreements has important sexual health implications for GBM.Objective: To assess differences in partnership agreements among GBM.Methods: We surveyed GBM about their partnerships using a national, anonymous online survey in 2013-14. We compared men who had monogamous partnerships with men who had non-monogamous partnerships, according to age and other factors.Results: Regarding the nature of their partnership with their primary regular partner (PRP), younger men were less likely to have an agreement of any sort and were less likely to have discussed it. Younger men were more likely to report having a monogamous partnership, but they were also less likely to report condomless anal intercourse with their PRP. In multivariate analysis of partnership arrangements, having a non-monogamous partnership with their PRP was associated with being older (adjusted odds ratio=1.03; 95% confidence interval=1.02-1.04; P<0.001). Nearly two-thirds (62.9%) of men with monogamous partnerships had a clear spoken agreement with their PRP about whether they could have sex with other men, largely regardless of age. Although slightly fewer than half the men with self-described open partnerships (46.0%) actually described it as a 'relationship', younger men were particularly less likely to do so.Conclusions: Due to less communication with partners about sexual agreements, when young GBM engage in sexual risk behaviour they may be at an increased risk of HIV and other sexually transmissible infections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Estimates of the proportion of HIV infections coming from within regular sexual relationships among gay and bisexual men (GBM) vary widely. Research surveys use various partner type categories, but there is little understanding of how men classify their partners. We conducted an online cross-sectional survey of Australian GBM exploring sexual relationships, including 2057 men reporting on 2566 regular partnerships. Just over half of the partnerships were considered 'relationships', while the remainder were non-romantic 'fuckbuddy'-style arrangements. In multivariable analysis, factors associated with considering the partnership a 'relationship' were: using a 'romantic' descriptor, partnership length, monogamous agreements, any condomless anal sex with each other, love, and commitment. The category of 'regular partner' can mask diverse partnership types, which have different meanings to GBM, associated behaviours, and HIV risks. Certain HIV prevention techniques may be more suited to particular types of partnerships. 'Fuckbuddy' arrangements need to be more explicitly acknowledged in HIV prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies have explored how young gay men negotiate opportunities for rethinking sexual and relationship life associated with gay sexual cultures upon coming out. Drawing on qualitative interview data with Australian gay men aged 18–30, this article explores a tension these participants described between a desire for monogamy as the basis to a committed, enduring and mature relationship on one hand, and sexual opportunities associated with ‘the gay scene’ on the other. We analyse these men's negotiation of this tension in the context of wider political shifts in the social status of gay men's relationships, encapsulated in a debate between those who see ‘homonormativity’ and those who see transformation in the contemporary relationship practices of gay men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly, gay and bisexual men (GBM) meet casual sex partners online and this has been associated with sexual risk behavior. How do GBM meet regular partners? This online anonymous survey of 4215 GBM included 2562 men with a primary regular partner (PRP) who were included in these analyses. Mean age of the sample was 38.1 years. 60.3 % had met their PRP at least 2 years earlier. Meeting their PRP online increased from 14.0 % before 2001 to 79.9 % in 2013-2014. At all time points, men who met their PRP online were somewhat older than those who met their PRP offline. Regardless of how they met their PRP, most men met casual sex partners online. Among GBM, meeting sexual and romantic partners online has replaced other methods, for all age groups. The population of GBM who use the internet for this purpose is now equivalent to all sexually active GBM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on gay men's relationships has neglected monogamy. Instead, it has tended to (a) emphasize HIV risk and relationship agreements between partners regarding sex and condom use with outside partners or (b) focus on nonmonogamous relationships as emblematic of relationship innovation. On the basis of qualitative interviews with 36 gay Australian men who favored a monogamous relationship as ideal, this article explores the meaning and practice of monogamy and its association with HIV risk. The authors present themes that include men's use of condoms in monogamous relationships, expectations of fidelity, and understandings of trust and security as the basis to meaningful and satisfying relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical Sexuality Studies is an emerging field of academic enquiry linked to an international network of advocacy agencies, activists, and political issues. This paper reports on the development of an advanced short course in sexuality theory and research, drawing on Critical Sexuality Studies and aiming directly at academics in developing countries working in sexuality issues. Over a three-year period, a new curriculum was developed by an international team. The course was piloted in two continents, refined, revised, and released globally under a Creative Commons licence in 2010 on a dedicated website. This paper documents the project and its progress to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emphasis on a sexualised muscular body ideal in gay social and cultural settings has been described as facilitating body image dissatisfaction among gay men. Drawing on a concept of reflexive embodiment, this paper uses qualitative interviews to analyse gay men's embodiment practices in relation to discourses and norms that can be found across and beyond any coherent notion of 'gay subculture'. The findings reveal body image to be more complex than a limited focus on subculture or dissatisfaction can account for. In particular, gay men negotiate a gay pride discourse in which the muscular male body generates both social status and self-esteem, and deploy notions of everyday masculinity that imply rationality and control to resist gendered assumptions about gay men's body image relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about the body, specifically a child's body, as a site where identity becomes contested. It is also about a surface or space where we lay claim—a site of vested interest. In April 2004, the Australian Family Court ruled that a 13-year-old child (Alex) had gender identity dysphoria and decided to allow reversible hormonal treatment. The Court ruling produced considerable legal, medical and public reflection over whether these decisions were in Alex's best interests, whether Alex was able to make such a decision at his age, and to assess Alex's competency. These debates also aimed to fix sex and gender through the deployment of a nature and nurture framework. The purpose of this paper, using the example of Alex, is to illustrate the various ways that these claims over a child's body, undermine the possibility for rethinking sex and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]