“If we can show that we are helping adolescents to understand themselves, their feelings and their needs, then we are doing [a] valuable job”: counselling young people on sexual health in the Brook Advisory Centre (1965–1985)

First opened in 1964 in London, the Brook Advisory Centres (BAC) were the first centres to provide contraceptive advice and sexual counselling to unmarried people in postwar Britain. Drawing on archival materials, medical articles published by BAC members and oral history interviews with former counsellors, this paper looks at tensions present in sexual health counselling work between progressive views on young people’s sexuality and moral conservatism. In so doing, this paper makes two inter-related arguments. First, I argue that BAC doctors, counsellors and social workers simultaneously tried to adopt a non-judgmental listening approach to young people’s sexual needs and encouraged a model of heteronormative sexual behaviours that was class-based and racialised. Second, I argue that emotional labour was central in BAC staff’s attempt to navigate and smooth these tensions. This emotional labour and the tensions within it is best illustrated by BAC’s pyschosexual counselling services, which on the one hand tried to encourage youth sexual pleasure and on the other taught distinctive gendered sexual roles that contributed to pathologising teenage sexual behaviours and desire.In all, I contend that, in resorting to an emotionally orientated counselling, BAC members reconfigured for the young the new form of sexual subjectivity that had been in the making since the interwar years, that is, the fact that individuals regarded themselves as sexual beings and expressed feelings and anxieties about sex. BAC’s counselling work was as much a rupture with the interwar contraceptive counselling tradition—since it operated in a new climate, stressed a non-judgmental listening approach and catered for the young—as it was a continuity of some of the values of the earlier movement.

Egg-trading worms start reciprocation with caution, respond with confidence and care about partners’ quality

Conditional reciprocity (help someone who helped you before) explains the evolution of cooperation among unrelated individuals who take turns helping each other. Reciprocity is vulnerable to exploitations, and players are expected to identify uncooperative partners who do not return the help they received. We tested this prediction in the simultaneously hermaphroditic worm, Ophryotrocha diadema, which engages in mutual egg donations by alternating sexual roles (one worm releases’ eggs and the other fertilizes them). We set up dyads with different cooperativeness expectations; partners were either the same or a different body size (body size predicts clutch size). Large worms offered larger clutches and did so sooner when paired with large rather than small partners. They also released smaller egg clutches when they started egg donations than when they responded to a partners’ donation, fulfilling the prediction that a players’ first move will be prudent. Finally, behavioral bodily interactions were more frequent between more size-dissimilar worms, suggesting that worms engaged in low-cost behavioral exchanges before investing in such costly moves as egg donations. These results support the hypothesis that simultaneously hermaphroditic worms follow a conditional reciprocity paradigm and solve the conflict over sexual roles by sharing the costs of reproduction via the male and the female functions.

“Sexual roles” at Museu Paulista collection.

The Museu Paulista established its collection policy in 1990, at the same time as the institution's research line was as follows: I. Daily life and society (sexual roles, age and enculturation), II. The World of Work (pre and proto-industrial) and III. Imaginary (the material vectors of sense). During my master's research, after analysing approximately 617 acquisition processes, I was able to identify that the institution collects a considerable number of objects because of its interest in gender issues. However, even after 25 years of work in this area the Museu Paulista continues to consider the binary concept of gender. This results in the exclusion of references to non-binary aspects of gender and sexual diversity in the museum’s collection, as well as the removal of the institution of contemporary studies on gender and sexual roles. We must point out that the Museu Paulista is not the only one to develop its institutional policy in this way. In Brasil, at least some authors have already shown that museums are, for the most part, far removed from the discussion about gender and sexual diversity. This is one of the main reasons justifying the discussion on the international scene, in addition to the fact that 'new' identities of gender and sexuality have been the subject of intense public debate nowadays. Key words: Museology; Sexual diversity; History museum; Collections acquisition.

Gender Dysphoria in Adolescence

Background: The end phase of the development stage of adolescents should have matured themselves in understanding gender roles in accordance with their sexual roles. Gender dysphoria occurs when adolescents experience sexual identity disorders which experience confusion over gender roles that are contrary to their sexual roles, so that they tend to like the same sex. Research Objectives: To identify gender dysphoria in senior high school students in Samarinda City. Methods: A descriptive study with a cross-sectional approach to 322 students in the city of Samarinda which was taken using a non-probability sampling technique: cluster random sampling. The instrument used was the Gender Dysphoria Test from psycom, through online filling. Results: Students who experienced severe-gender dysphoria were 7.8% and mild-GD around 92.2%. More women (9.3%) experienced strong gender dysphoria than men (4.2%). There are 1.2% students who want to change their gender and 7.8% of students who do not like secondary sex characteristics at this time. Conclusion: Severe-Gender dysphoria high school students has a small prevalence, GD can occur because biological or psychosocial factors can be seen from the desire and comfort of being a different gender than it should be.

Media and the Development of Gender Role Stereotypes

This review summarizes recent findings (2000–2020) concerning media's contributions to the development of gender stereotypes in children and adolescents. Content analyses document that there continues to be an underrepresentation of women and a misrepresentation of femininity and masculinity in mainstream media, although some positive changes are noted. Concerning the strength of media's impact, findings from three meta-analyses indicate a small but consistent association between frequent television viewing and expressing more stereotypic beliefs about gender. Concerning the nature of these effects, analyses indicate significant connections between young people's screen media use and their general gender role attitudes; their beliefs about the importance of appearance for girls and women; their stereotyping of toys, activities, and occupations; and their support for traditional sexual roles. We offer several approaches for moving this field forward, including incorporating additional theories (e.g., stereotype threat), focusing more on boys and ethnic minority youth, and centering developmental milestones.

Editorial

The article introduces the issue, in which the following topics are addressed: history of the anthropology of food; food choices and prohibitions; food, cooking and identity; cooking and rituals; cooking, sexual roles and social relations; and cooking, migrations and globalisation.Résumé : L’article présente le numéro où sont abordés les thèmes suivants : histoire de l’anthropologie de l’alimentation ; choix et interdits alimentaires ; alimentation, cuisine et identité ; cuisine et rituels ; cuisine, rôles sexuels et relations sociales ; cuisine, migrations et globalisation.

A Correlational Model of Rape Myth Acceptance and Psychosocial Factors Among Medical School Students

A substantial body of medical literature suggests that different types of persons blame rape victim for the fate. Although rape myth acceptance can be a product of personal psychosocial factors, it is also a response to messages from social, family, media, and groups that propagate the legitimacy of such myths. We aimed to evaluate whether personal variables such as depression, drug use, being non-heteronormative, and inconsistent condom use could act as supportive factors for rape myth acceptance. This cross-sectional study used questions and validated instruments assessing sociodemographic characteristics, depression, drug use, and rape myth acceptance to perform a correlational model. A total of 269 medical students aged 18 and above, from the first through the sixth year at a medical school, were randomly selected and recruited for the study. Being male and using drugs significantly supported myth rape acceptance; in contrast, higher depression levels, beingnon-heteronormative, and a history of being sexually abused in childhood did not support these rape myths. What holds promise for the future, however, is that although we still live in a patriarchal society, university students can be encouraged to question their personal and sexual roles, and recreate our culture.

Women in South Africa

Gendered processes produced and sustained families and labor in southern Africa from the first hunter-gatherers through the present, but these processes were never static or uncontested. Archaeological, oral, and ethnographic sources suggest that southern Africa’s first hunter-gatherers experienced tense contestations of social and sexual roles and that the division of labor was more fluid than is normally assumed. Some 2,000 years ago new ways of life—pastoralism and agriculture—organized societies according to gender and generation, with young persons under the control of adults, and older women able to wield control over children-in-law as well as political and spiritual power. For agriculturalists, the home was a political space. During the centralization of states in the region, leaders tightened control of women, coming-of-age practices, and marriage as well as militarized age sets. After the onset of colonialism, gendered violence and contested social relations shaped and maintained a gendered and racialized capitalist society. Enslaved, dependent, and free African women’s labor unfolded in the service of white settlers along European ideas of women’s work, and a consensus emerged among officials, missionaries, and African Christian converts over the centrality of educated women converts to the making of Christian African families. Authorities enacted legislation to govern sex and marriage and to differentiate by race and culture. The developing system of migrant labor relied upon women’s agricultural work in the reserves. The apartheid state, too, intervened in social relations to control labor and produce not only racialized but also ethnicized persons in the service of separate development. Across the 20th century women shaped nationalisms, often using their association with social reproduction, and mobilized both within larger nationalism movements and specifically as women. Their political and social activism continues in the post-apartheid era.

DICHOTOMY IN ATWOOD'S WORKS

Atwood uses Blake's contrasting mythological imagery and metaphorical language in “Double Persephone”. She unveils the schizoid or double nature of Canada for man and woman in the society. She observes that Canadians came to develop ambivalent feelings toward their country. She later on nds dichotomy in Power Politics. She explores the relationship between sexual roles and power structures on exploration of personal relationships and international politics.

ATTITUDE OF ADOLESCENT BOYS ABOUT SEX EDUCATION FOR HEALTHY SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR

Adolescent period is the foundation period for anyone to give the Sex education since puberty starts in adolescent period for both boys and girls. In every human’s life sexuality is one of the important aspects. It has influence and major part through their thoughts, experiencing of pleasure, reproduction intimacy, sexual identities, sexual roles etc. In fact, most of the problems related to sex and sexuality issues among the adolescents are because of the fact that problems they have given information only from text book contents. Very often adolescents are not given education on various issues related to human relation, behaviour, sex and sexual relations. Aparajita Choudhury (2006) has discussed the importance of Family Life Education (FLE), especially in Indian Context. She says that the purpose of FLE is to change or modify individual behaviour through new information and skill, which will leads to communicating and loving more effectively. The present study aims to describe the attitude of adolescent boys about sex education for healthy sexual behaviour. Hence, for this research, descriptive design has been adopted. (Royce Singleton, Bruce. C. Straits, Margaret. M. Straits and Ronald. J. McAllister, 1988).The research findings and reviews about sex education show that there is a need to improvement among adolescent boys on sex education as more focus was given for girls’ sex education. The researcher would like to suggest three stage sex educations for an individual as a continuous sex education for life, namely child sex education, adolescent sex education and adult sex education.