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This article seeks to analyse the problems with provision of Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) in English schools using a Foucauldian perspective. Through this analysis, I demonstrate that the RSE curriculum is used as a tool for "governing" or controlling children's exercise of their sexuality to ensure conformity with norms, behaviours and attitudes that adults perceive children should ascribe to. However, adults tend to deny children's developing agency and their autonomy to make decisions in relation to their sexual lives. This ignores the realities of children's lives, in which they are exposed to sexual knowledge and information through their interactions with others, or via the internet. Using Foucault's conceptualisation of bio-power, I argue for shifting some of the power around RSE discourses from adults to children themselves, through a children's rights-based approach. This approach to RSE will ensure that the curriculum is adequate, appropriate and effective for children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 55% of women and girls killed in 2022 died at the hands of intimate partners or family members, contexts indicative of femicide. The proportion of the remaining 45% of women and girls killed which involved sex or gender-related elements remains largely unknown. This is due to the lack of high-quality, gender-sensitive data collection tools and the few systematic efforts to more consistently and accurately document femicide. Information about femicide in marginalized and racialized communities is further affected because many of these deaths remain invisible in official data for women and girls who live – and die – at the intersections of race, poverty, ability, sexuality, and other social identities. Drawing from a recently released international statistical framework for measuring gender-related killings of women and girls, this article examines the presence of sex/gender-related motives and indicators in a Canadian sample, drawing data from publicly available information. Findings about the feasibility of documenting sex/gender-related motives and indicators generally and for specific groups of women and girls are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The T-girl is a trans feminine subject whose trans-ness is embodied sartorially in controlled environments for a short amount of time. Her trans-ness is not socially visible, her existential possibilities have accompanied the imbrication of digitality in everyday life and she escapes well-acknowledged trans feminine categories such as the Latin American travesti or the trans woman writ large. The T-girl is yet to be rigorously theorized. In this auto-theoretical psychoanalytic inquiry I propose to theorize her alongside her lovers by placing the sartorial as the de facto object of desire between them. The methodology involves culling from personal sartorial-sexual experience as well as the language around clothes found in private messages sent by trans-attracted and straight-identified men to the author, a T-girl. What does such an intimate archive tell us about the way the trans subject negotiates her desire with and through the other? Their sartorial exchanges serve as unprecedented insight into the intrapsychic mechanisms a trans subject deploys to forge a position for herself where the sartorial all but replaces the anatomical as the slippery guarantor of gender. I articulate the function of clothing in conjuring a trans-ness addressed to a 'other' interpellated to ratify the (trans-)gendering process. This turns out to be a rather primary dynamic that founds the speaking subject as such. And yet, the T-girl and her lovers may end up getting more than what they bargained for from their sartorial-sexual encounter. What becomes clear is the fundamental function of clothes not just to render the T-girl girl, but as exhilarating signifiers in the written and oral exchanges between the T-girl and her lovers. Particularly for the lovers themselves, who can be quick to slip from the position of the subject who enjoys feminine clothing in the other to that of the subject who enjoys wearing such clothing themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on mantra among gender and sexuality scholars across disciplines. Topics include long used poetry as a means of survival and sociological critique that extends beyond the confines of traditional intellectual thought; and provide "evidence" for the violence and beauty that we have personally endured in relation to gender, sexuality, race, and/or Indigeneity.

This paper reports on data from interviews conducted with parents of high school-aged teens as part of a study which was aimed at better understanding the gendered dimensions of youth sexting and social media use, and the community responses to it. Here, we outline the findings on parents' key concerns around digital and social media, their perceptions of the gendered dynamics of youth self-imaging practices, and their attitudes towards sexting and potentially "sexualized" self-images. Echoing other research in this area, parents were not overly concerned about sexting, nor sexual image-sharing or sexual media use among teens. Rather, their key concerns were more generally about the intensities and pressures of constant contact with peers in the digital era. They did, however, articulate key gender differences and socialization processes around youth self-imaging practices. We discuss the gendered cultural "attunements to sexualization" that parents negotiate in relation to social media image-sharing practices and suggest that the perspectives and experiences described can be understood as part of a broader cultural "psychologization", and often psycho-pathologizing, of youth self-images in digitally networked intimate publics that is particularly intense around the vectors of gender and sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexuality research engages with multiple disciplines and methodologies and sexuality researchers can receive a wide range of training. Though a common job duty for academics, researchers rarely receive formal training in how to establish and run a lab to conduct their research. In this paper, I walk through a variety of lab management tasks, such as selecting personnel, launching a program of research, conducting studies, and disseminating findings, and discuss ethical dilemmas that might arise in each of those in the context of sexuality research, such as befriending research assistants, conducting observational field research, and presenting negative results. I also provide specific recommendations for academics looking to establish a lab focused on gender and sexuality topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Images of masculinity are usually sexualized. Especially younger men with little experience align their sexual practice with the corresponding clichés and expectations. But what are the requirements that are being conveyed? At least among young men, traditional notions of masculinity seem to have been largely overcome, echoing more than inspiring or providing guidance. In an empirical study examining the relationship between masculinity, sexuality, and porn use, „controlled“ masculinity emerged as significant. 32 interviews were conducted with postadolescent men (18- to 25-year-olds) and flanking interviews were conducted with 17 women of the same age (Winter, 2022). The results reflect what preoccupies and burdens young men sexually, how they „create“ their sexuality, and also reveal something of the future of male sexualities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on the journey of Volkmar Sigusch. Topics include emerging as a prominent figure in sexual science, challenging societal norms and contributing to a comprehensive understanding of human sexuality; and focusing on the genesis of prejudices and marking the beginning of his academic exploration.

According to the sexually abused-abuser hypothesis, childhood sexual victimization (CSV) among males increases the likelihood of later sexual offending against children. Why CSV is related to sexual offending against children, however, has yet to be determined. To explore mechanisms that may link CSV to sexual offending, we tested the relationship between CSV and the two main risk domains: pedophilic interest and antisocial orientation. In four studies, men convicted of sexual offences against children under 15 who reported experiencing CSV were generally more sexually interested in children—especially male children—and were more antisocial than those who did not report experiencing CSV. A meta-analysis of the results across our four studies showed that CSV was moderately associated with greater antisociality, but less so with pedophilic interests. Future research should test the extent to which pedophilic interest and antisocial orientation explain the relationship between CSV and sexual offending against children among convicted sexual offenders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study followed 146 sexual offenders released from prison custody for a period of 25-years. Overall, 34% of individuals committed at least one sexual reoffense in the 25 years following release from incarceration. Most sexual recidivism occured within the first 15-years following release. The highest rates of sexual recidivism were observed for individuals under 34 years at release from incarceration, for whom recidivism steadily increased over time before peaking at 42% at 25 years. The mean age at reoffense was 42.51. Age was significantly associated with sexual recidivism at 5 years, but not at subsequent follow-up periods. These findings suggest that long)term patterns of sexual recidivism may be related to age at release. It will be important for future research to explore the characteristics of individuals who commit sexual offenses that may contribute to reoffending risk, and examine the effectiveness of policies and practices designed to mitigate recidivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on edition of Foundations featuring articles on contemporary and historical theology. Topics include Sarah Allen's review of Sarah Coakley's work on the Trinity and sexuality, Tom Underhill's analysis of the "Reformed Catholic" approach to tradition and its implications; and Stephen Steele's exploration of 17th-century responses to textual variations in the New Testament.

Concerns about sexualization of Halloween costumes appear frequently in the lay press, but systematic investigation of such costumes or the ads in which they appear is relatively rare. We coded a randomly selected sample of 1001 advertisements for child, teen, and adult Halloween costumes for 13 different markers of sexualization that we combined into overall scores for costume sexualization, model sexualization, and hypersexualization. We found that ratings of model characteristics and costume were significantly more sexualized when the model was adult and female. Significant interactions indicated that model characteristics and costumes of male models were low in sexualization regardless of age, whereas model characteristics and costumes featuring female models were rated more sexualized than those for male models, even for child models, and sexualization ratings increased with age. A measure of hypersexualization (combining costume and model characteristic ratings and adding text sexualization) showed that hypersexualization is highest in advertisements featuring female and adult models while being low for male models across all three age groups. However, hypersexualization ratings were not significantly different for teen and adult women, indicating some compression of sexualization into adolescence. Our results could be used by parents, educators, or counselors interested in media literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay I want to make the case that Edmund Spenser had a crucial impact on Melville's career, one that has been acknowledged – most significantly by Carole Moses – but never fully developed. Melville read, re-read and thought about Spenser over a number of years as the surviving copies of his work attest with their extensive markings. Like his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose mother adapted Spenser for children and who named his daughter, Una, after the heroine of Book I of The Faerie Queene, Melville turned to Spenser when he needed to think about allegory and romance. Furthermore, as Hershel Baker points out in his biography when Melville set down to write Mardi, he was acutely conscious of the change in his status, and he now had proper time to assemble his sources and make use of them. Accordingly he employed Spenser to help him make the work he had completed in Typee and Omoo more literary. In many ways, Melville is too much in thrall to Spenser and fails to escape from his influence, an influence filtered through the image of Spenser as the gothic poet of dreams, ruined castles, dark sexuality, and a landscape hovering between good and evil, beauty and barely hidden ugliness, motifs which are translated to the wandering islands in the south seas. Mardi is, in Bloomian terms, a weak reading that had to be made for the strong misreading which established the writer's identity to follow. Moby Dick has a number of Spenserian references and motifs, but it is not a Spenserian work like its predecessor. In this essay, I want to make the case that the elaborate gothic allegories and complex ornate style of Melville's mature work could only have developed after he worked out how he was to make use of the literary canon he devoured on his sea voyages. Moby Dick may be only intermittently Spenserian in style and substance but it was only possible because of the allegorically Spenserian Mardi, which paved the way for Melville's mature work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé: L'examen pelvien, réalisé au titre du dépistage du cancer du col utérin, représente parfois un défi pour les patientes vivant avec un handicap mental. Si certaines se disent à l'aise au moment de l'examen, plusieurs décrivent un moment difficile, voire d'intenses blocages. Il est souvent perçu comme désagréable mais nécessaire, voire comme une obligation. Il est décrit comme un moment dangereux où l'on perd le contrôle, associé au risque ou aux souvenirs de violences sexuelles. The pelvic exam, performed as part of cervical cancer screening, can sometimes be a challenge for patients living with mental disabilities. If some say they are comfortable at the time of the examination, several describe a difficult moment, even intense blockages. It is often seen as unpleasant but necessary, often as an obligation. It is described as a dangerous time when you lose control, associated with the risk or memories of sexual violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers literary criticism on the novel "The Distracted Preacher" by Thomas Hardy which contains sexual innuendo and subversive energy in its portrayal of trimming, fellatio, and cross-dressing. It discusses the use of innuendo and energy serves the social norms and challenge the boundaries of gender and sexuality; and through depiction of trimming, fellatio, and cross-dressing, Hardy highlights the natural human desires that are often repressed by societal expectations and norms.

The article focuses on anthropologists who assert that dress is not value free and mentions adorning bodies can indicate how person fits within social structure. Topics discussed include clothing & ornament which can serve visual signifiers of religious belief, intersection of religion, politics, dress, and sexuality, and akin to contemporary Orthodox Jewish practice.

The article presents the discussion on patriarchy was thought more dangerous than capitalism. Topics include women were slowly become acquainted with the ideas and the writers all over the world including the dramatists; and plays are typical dramas, and his themes are relating to feminine identity, religion, communal tension, sexuality and also human relationships.

This essay attempts to show how Virginia Woolf and Gustave Flaubert similarly employ sartorial allusions in their fiction to portray the sexuality of their characters. In The Waves, Woolf dresses the promiscuity of Jinny with translucent and billowing dresses as Flaubert in Madame Bovary tailors for adulterous relationships the most alluring of outfits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented on announcing a number of initiatives designed foing make Early Theatre ‘a more equitable publication venue for all scholars. Topics include medieval drama, performance studies, disability studies, premodern critical race studies, and gender and sexuality studies; and enhancing journal accessibility, and creating an updated digital initiatives plan.

Our research purpose was to assess research addressing relationships between dress and sex. Our review was focused on a 25 years span (i.e., 1990-2015) and on empirical research utilizing human participants published in refereed journals. Three main areas of research emerged: (1) dress used as cue to sexual information, (2) dress and sexual violence, and (3) dress, sex, and objectification. Our analyses revealed parents do invest their young children with sex-typed dress however sometimes children demand to wear such dress. Some women intentionally use dress to communicate sexual information but inferences about women who wear sexy dress can be misinterpreted and are sometimes negative. Observers link wearing sexy dress to violence including sexual coercion, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and unwelcome groping, touching, and grabbing. Certain items of sexy dress that reveal the body have been linked to self-objectification. The fit of the items may also contribute to the body revealing nature of clothing styles that elicit self-objectification. The use of sexual images of women and children has increased over time and viewing such images is also linked to self- and other-objectification. Suggestions are provided for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moving past conceptualizations of ‘mammy,’ this article discusses fat black female sexuality through experiences of black women in the plus size fashion world. I posit that these women, their clothing, and their bodies’ movement underneath their clothing, subvert previous notions of fatness, blackness and sexuality. By mapping a black feminist lens onto sexual script theory, I analyze in-depth interviews with plus size models, bloggers and designers to show that fat black women and their utilization of clothing both embody and reject mammy, regard sexuality as public and private enterprises of self-reclamation, and subscribe to and complicate cultural norms of fat black (a)sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses sexuality and the use of skimpy fashion in the performances of Ugandan "Afropop" musician Sheebah Karungi on topics such as self presentation and sexuality in Karungi's use of her costumes, a discussion of what "Afropop" is, and skimpy fashion in Africa.

The present study centers on interviews with 30 individuals, all of whom are engaged in coming out related to their sexualities. Among all of the themes shared across the interviews, one of the more prevalent dimensions was that of temporality. Participants shared numerous experiences (both directly and contextually) about how long coming out takes and whether or not it ever truly ends. Despite participants alluding to the point-in-time and processional nature of coming out, the broader experiences shared by participants uncovered an enduring reality-that coming out is a career. Building on the works of prior social scientists, this manuscript provides support for a redefinition of coming out as a perpetual endeavor based in the concurrent management of internal and external matters related to sexual identity formation and maintenance in a heteronormative society. More succinctly, coming out is not a process to be completed, but a career to be managed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By appropriating Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic theory in light of sexual difference, the importance of drag theory for gender and sexuality studies is resurrected through a formulation of exactly how this figural instantiation subverts: not because of disloyal repetitions vis-à-vis performativity, but because of its mirroring of the (humorous) absurdity of the Real that resists all attempts at signification and yet remains structurally intrinsic to the semantic field contra the anti-social thesis of queer theory. This claim is substantiated via an erection of a homology between the drag figure and the clown or jester, thereby entailing that drag artists are the keepers of truth in the Lacanian sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late London-based Australian nightclub sensation and fashion designer Leigh Bowery deployed a daily ritual of exhibitionist self-fashioning and applied design, which signified a tension between visual orders and performative cultures. In this article, Bowery's practices are read as the dissident tactics of a punk-era dandy, by his grotesque self-fashioning parody of the artifice and dehumanizing influence of capitalist culture in the 1980s. From a post-punk perspective, this includes debates around authenticity and artifice that permeate much of our view of pop culture at that time, in which punk is often emblemized as an unstable signifier of authenticity. For Bowery and his fashionable coterie, punk music and fashion accompanied a 'look' - which he dismissed in a piece of archival film footage as being 'dead' to choreographer Michael Clark. However, Bowery's live art and self-fashioning refused categorization, even in the archive, leading this study to conclude that Bowery enabled continuity between the experimental art movements of the early avant-garde and the infiltration of a punk aesthetic into high-fashion post-punk commercial codes. Having inspired subsequent generations of artists with a ferocity always compatible with the same ethos of punk independence, it is useful to consider whether, like the historical dandy, he animated only a fixed point in post-punk history or a process that is continually dialectical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Functioning as a socio-political resource and method of discipline and control over women's bodies and sexualities, mandatory Islamic dress in Iran has been a central feature of the Islamic Regime's policy towards women. Intended to stand as a symbolic discourse of women's social and sexual submissiveness and docility, those who resist dress codes are subjected to severe punishment as well as stigmatisation. Despite repercussions, increasing numbers of urban Iranian women are refashioning their public bodies in new styles and appearances to not only resist dress codes but to more importantly challenge the regime's patriarchal discourses regarding women. This article seeks to examine the politicisation of Iranian women's bodies and sexualities through the emergence of this innovating women's resistance movement termed 'alternative dress'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the exhibitions "A Queer History of Fashion: From the Closet to the Catwalk," on view at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City from September 13, 2013 to January 4, 2014 and "The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk," on view at the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York City, from October 25, 2013 to February 23, 2014.

Using a modified version of Goffman's (Gender advertisements. Harper Colophon, New York, ) gender display as a conceptual framework, this study examined the gendered body images of female athletes and female fashion models. We investigated sexualized female body images by comparing athletes with fashion models in Sports Illustrated ( SI) swimsuit issues. Specifically, we used images of female athletes and female fashion models from SI swimsuit issues (n = 1,099) over the past 15 years (1997-2011). The variables analyzed included four photographic image categories: photo shot location, facial expression, body display, and hand display. The findings revealed few differences in sexual portrayals between female athletes and female fashion models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central project of race-conscious progressive thought has been to establish that racial minorities have distinctive norms, perspectives, voices and cultural practices that might contribute to ‘diversity.’ The implicit presumption underlying the accommodationist account of discrimination is that group cultural differences are natural and authentic expressions of individual conscience and identity and that failure to accommodate these differences is a form of tyranny. Here, as in Michel Foucault's account of sexuality, we find a ‘repressive hypothesis’: power is exercised through censorship and repression, justice entails nothing more than the absence of repression, a willingness to let human nature take its course and embrace the mysterious and beautiful forces that already surround and define us. But what if our era is defined less by therepressionof group difference than by itsproduction? And what if – as in Foucault's analysis – the repressive hypothesis itself is one of the mechanisms by which this production of group difference is accomplished? Is there evidence for such a counter-hypothesis? In American society, human beings are sorted (and sort themselves) with remarkable comprehensiveness, precision and efficiency into a number of almost canonical social groups. You know what they are (and more importantly, you knowwho youare). By contrast, I propose that a just society should seek to speed the integration of disadvantaged and socially isolated groups, regardless of whether that requires the accommodation or the suppression of the distinctive practices of minority groups. This suggests a policy that guarantees opportunities for those minorities willing to assimilate: aggressive and comprehensive enforcement of anti-discrimination law with respect to race, ethnicity and religious faith, but not necessarily with respect to conspicuous expressive practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article explores discourses surrounding the bodies of Black1women and girls as they engage the meanings of Black womanhood in (American) society in an afterschool setting. Drawing on Black and hip hop feminisms, African American literacies, and critical discourse perspectives, the author analyzes two young girls' narratives, which reveal competing and controlling discourses of Black female sexuality. Bria's2narrative of being sexually harassed by older boys while riding the bus is favorably assessed by the community of Black female interlocutors because she projects herself as asexual. Thus, the community of Black females bestows compassion upon her. Assata's narrative shares her budding womanhood and sexuality and is evaluated negatively by the group of Black females. Although both 11-year-old girls and the community of Black female interlocutors enact critical literacies amidst dominating racist, sexist, classist, and patriarchal discourses, their resistance strategies also perpetuate the very dominance they seek to oppose. Juxtaposition and critical analyses of the differential discourses invoked by the two narratives provide insight into the lived experiences of Black women and girls in relation to dominating discourses. As Black women and girls' sexual agency, desire, and early sexualization figure prominently in larger economies of power, knowledge, and society, their embodied and societal knowledge around these issues must be mined for the purposes of self-validation and the creation of new knowledge for collective empowerment (Hill Collins, 1991). Implications for critical literacy research, pedagogy, and theory are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have shown that men overestimate the sexual intent of women based on their clothing style; however, this hypothesis has not been assessed empirically in a natural setting. This small field study measured the time it took for men to approach two female confederates sitting in a tavern, one wearing suggestive clothes and one wearing more conservative clothes. The behavior of 108 men was observed over 54 periods on 16 different nights in two different taverns. The time it took for the men to approach after initial eye contact was significantly shorter in the suggestive clothing condition. The men were also asked by male confederates to rate the likelihood of having a date with the women, and having sex on the first date. The men rated their chances to have a date and to have sex significantly higher in the suggestive clothing condition. Results are discussed with respect to men's possible misinterpretation that women's clothing indicates sexual interest, and the risks associated with the misinterpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The space offered by Internet as a place for developing new possibilities of exchange, of participation and of revindication may appear to have been "conquered" or "stolen" by women seeking to make a break with the tenets that continuously reconfirm gender stereotypes and to deconstruct those eroticpornographic images in which the body of the woman is increasingly instrumentalised. It is an attempt to present an alternative to the distorted vision of sexuality involving forms of violence and exploitation which are increasingly found in the social space in Internet. If on one hand we cannot ignore the tendency to repropose and reconfirm stereotypes linked to gender, that reinforce a dominant male culture, on the other, Internet can be recognized as a multi-perspective space made up of representations and auto-representations expressing a wide variety of points of view, in which culture and gender identity are constructed and transformed: a tool of female empowerment. Internet is also made up of female voices which live and tell. Women who navigate write, learn, create and maintain relationships. In fact, it is these women "navigators", weavers of the Web, who are experimenting with new forms of nomadism, of research, of respect for their own culture and their own identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores What role does Romanticism play in the history of sexuality? How did British and European Romantic texts and practices participate in the emergence of modern sexuality? How anachronistic is it to use the term "sexuality" when describing Romanticism? This session is open to considering such topics as (among others) the relation between gender experimentation and sexual experimentation; Romantic "sexology"