Sexual Assault in Emerging Adulthood

Emerging adulthood is a period of increased risk for sexual victimization, with women being at a particularly high risk of experiencing sexual assault. Victims of sexual assault are at an increased risk for several negative consequences, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance use. Social norms and differences in dating expectations among emerging adults may create environments that promote sexual aggression. Alcohol use appears to be a risk factor for victimization among both men and women, as well as a risk factor for men perpetrating sexual violence. Although sexual assault is commonly associated with negative outcomes, research on post-traumatic growth has found that sometimes individuals experience growth following a traumatic event. Prevention programs have traditionally focused on reducing sexual aggressive behavior among men and changing social norms around assault; however, behavioral programs focusing on improving women’s skills to avoid and respond to sexually risky situations have yielded reductions in assault rates.

Sex Ed Experiences of Pupils. Toward Literacy in Sex Education

Learning about sexuality relates to each individual learner’s identity, as everyone’s experience of sex is authentic. It is naive to attempt to force sex education on pupils and see them as tabulae rasae. Unsatisfied sexual (informational) curiosity creates circumstances wherein it is easy to fall into traditional gender roles with no ability to assess them critically, furthermore not having a set of skills to see oneself and others in a non-stereotyped manner. Young people who do not have strong, positive relationships either at home or at school face the highest possibility of participating in sexually risky behavior. Improving sexual literacy through sex education has an element of interdisciplinarity, as it includes media literacy, critical thinking, ethics, human rights, culture studies, history etc. Educational sciences become a hub that connects these different disciplines so as to ensure that the process of sex education is present and it is able to develop sexual literacy.

Let’s Talk about Sex: Teaching Adolescents with Intellectual Disability about Sexuality Education

This qualitative case study explores the experiences of teachers who are responsible for teaching adolescents with intellectual disability about sexuality education at a secondary school in a special education programme in semi-rural Sarawak. The study investigates the teaching approaches to teach cognitive and social-behavioural aspects of sexuality education. It also documents challenges in teaching adolescents with intellectual disability about sexuality education. Findings revealed that cognitively, the adolescents’ comprehension and memory are greatly aided by the use of concrete materials, modelling strategy, and constant repetition; attention and focus in class are obtained by the use of multimedia and storytelling approach; and interestingly, the understanding about sexuality is affected by the language used in content delivery and classroom dialogue. In the social-behavioural aspect, the findings revealed the importance of teachers and students’ comfort when talking about sexuality, mixed gender classes, peer guidance, and the adolescents’ intrapersonal intelligence. All these aspects are key in ensuring that the adolescents are able to reach an understanding and acceptance towards learning about sexuality education. The study also discovered that limitation of teaching materials, the adolescents’ unsupervised usage of the technology, and the sensitivity of sexuality education within the local home setting are among the main challenges faced by the teachers in teaching about sexuality education. The study also uncovered how the adolescents’ limited mental capabilities particularly in the social-behavioural domain has resulted in the adolescents displaying tendencies toward sexually risky behaviours which in turn, exposed them to sexually risky situations.

Comparison of the Predictive Capacity of the Erotophobia–Erotophilia and the Attitudes Toward Sexual Behaviors in the Sexual Experience of Young Adults

The prediction of sexual behaviors in emerging adult population is important because the number of sexually active individuals is high, and many young adults engage in sexually risky behaviors. Attitudes are an effective way to predict behaviors. The attitude–behavior relation is stronger when both attitude and behavior are measured at equivalent levels of specificity. The aim of this study was to provide empirical support of the Attitudes toward Sexual Behaviors Scale (ASBS) predictive capacity for the sexual experience (number of different sexual behaviors performed) as well as to compare it with the Sexual Opinion Survey (SOS; erotophobia–erotophilia dimension) predictive capacity. Participants were 632 heterosexual young adults (57.8% were women) of Spanish nationality aged 18 to 30 years, selected by incidental and snowball sampling. Sociodemographic questions, the ASBS, the SOS, and a checklist about sexual experience were administered online. When the age and sex variables were controlled, the ASBS predictive capacity for the sexual experience was found to be greater than the SOS predictive capacity in both young men and women. These results might be explained by the higher correspondence in the sexual experience measure (specific sexual behaviors) with the ASBS than with the SOS.

Hegemonic Masculinity, Violence, and Gender Equality

Messerschmidt and colleagues have pioneered work in criminology using masculinities theory, yet many researchers in the field have not engaged with the possibility that the different patterning of correlated violent, sexually risky, and antisocial behaviors may reflect a disaggregation of the category of men into multiple masculinities. This lens can help understand men’s violence and enable intervention targeting. We analyzed household survey data and identified three classes of men according to their use of violence and correlated behavior. Associations between masculinity categories and other acts of violence (against women), gender attitudes, and sexually transmitted diseases showed a dose–response relationship across the masculinity categories. Structural equation modeling showed how the psychological variables mediated pathways between exposure to trauma and teasing in childhood and the more violent masculinity categories. Our analysis provides a bridge between gender analysis (with intersectionality) and the psychoanalytic in understanding men’s violence. This is important for interventions to prevent men’s violence against women and other men and support arguments for targeting violence prevention interventions.