Pathways to sexual decision making by Pentecostal church youths in Botswana

Background The ways church youth make sexual decisions are incompletely understood and yet important for public health interventions. This study aimed to examine personal religiosity influences on the sexual decisions by church youth from the country of Botswana, taking into account their sense of personal agency. Method Participants were 235 Botswana Pentecostal faith church youth (females = 67.2%, male = 32.8%; age range 12–23 years). They completed measures of personal religiosity, personal agency, sexual abstinence, and contraception use predisposition. We analysed the data applying Structural Equation Modelling to test five paths - personal religiosity to personal agency, personal agency to abstinence, personal religiosity to abstinence, personal agency to contraceptive use, and personal religiosity to contraceptive use. Results Results suggest that personal religiosity influences the youth in their sexual abstinence and contraception decisions through personal agency. High personal agency, but not personal religiosity, was associated with pro-sexual abstinence, and contraception use was associated with religiosity. Personal agency augmented the likelihood of both abstinence and contraception use decisions among the older church youth and with church youth with higher levels of formal education. Conclusion Church youth likely adopt discretionary sexual behaviours over the developmental period from early to older adolescents, which would make them more receptive to public sexual health messages. Personal agency appears to be an important resource for public health interventions aimed at influencing church youth’s sexual decisions.

‘Your Vagina is a Rice Paddy’

In Thailand, there is an adage that a woman’s vagina is her rice paddy wherein it is considered a natural resource she can harvest when necessary or desired. In a culture where sexual relationships are defined by norms of masculinity and femininity, women’s sexual decisions are often aimed at using this natural resource to perform femininity in culturally idealized ways. Through ethnographic work in commercial sex establishments, this chapter argues that heterosexual sex practices help women express and enact hegemonic femininities in Northern Thailand. In contributing to the literature on hegemonic and multiple femininities, the chapter contends that gender is relational and that analyses of men’s performances of masculinities are insufficient if reviewed separately from women’s performances of femininities.

A critical analysis of Gretha Wiid�s sex ideology and her biblical hermeneutics

Gretha Wiid and Angus Buchan have established themselves as the moral gurus of the Afrikaner Christian community with their �Worthy Women� and �Mighty Men� mass conferences. Wiid is also often invited by the broadcast media to participate in TV and radio talks to discuss her views on relationships and sex � she is even invited by popular Afrikaans singers to share the stage with them. Recently, Gretha Wiid was again on the front pages of popular magazines to promote her and her husband�s views on sex and sexuality based �on the Bible�. She suggests that women hand over their sexuality, their bodies and their sexual decisions completely into the hands of men. Her view is that the husband is the king, prophet and priest in the family and should be honoured accordingly. The aim of this article was to use Wiid�s public appearances and publications as a case study to analyse her statements, hermeneutic principles and procedures and to demonstrate how her interpretation of sex and sexuality is infused by heteropatriarchal biblical discourse. The purpose of the article was to unveil the hermeneutic principles �ordinary� Christians such as Wiid apply in interpreting biblical texts and how these are culturally inscribed on women�s and children�s bodies.