Sexual Boundary Violations via Digital Media Among Students

As digital media becomes more central to the lives of adolescents, it also becomes increasingly relevant for their sexual communication. Sexting as an important image-based digital medium provides opportunities for self-determined digital communication, but also carries specific risks for boundary violations. Accordingly, sexting is understood either as an everyday, or as risky and deviant behavior among adolescents. In the affectedness of boundary violations gender plays an important role. However, it is still unclear to what extent digital sexual communication restores stereotypical gender roles and restrictive sexuality norms or, alternatively, enables new spaces of possibility. In this sense, current research points to a desideratum regarding adolescents’ orientations toward sexting as a practice between spaces of possibility and boundary violations. This paper discusses the possibilities, but also the risks, of intimate digital communication among adolescents. The main question is, how adolescents themselves perceive sexting practices and how they position themselves between both spaces for possibility and for the exchange of unwanted sexual content. For this purpose, orientations toward normalities and gender of students are reconstructed. To answer these questions, twelve single-sex, group discussions were carried out with students aged 16 and 17 at five different secondary schools in northern Germany. A total of 20 boys and 22 girls took part. The group discussions were structured by a narrative generating guideline. The analysis draws its methodology from the Documentary Method, regarding implicit and explicit forms of knowledge and discourse. It results in a typology of three types with different orientations. The study shows, that most of the students consider sexting to be a risky practice; only one type shows normality in the use of sexting. At the same time, some of the young people are interested in experimenting with image-based intimate digital communication. Further, gender differences in use and affectedness are also documented. In this way, orientations toward gender stereotypes “favor” both the attribution of responsibility to girls, and overlook the responsibility of students who perpetrated the boundary violation. The orientations of adolescents should be taken more into account in research as well as in educational programs for the prevention of sexual violence.

Lipases and carboxylesterases are involved in interspecific pheromone differences between two moth species

Moth sex pheromones are a classical model for studying sexual selection. Females produce a species-specific pheromone blend that attracts males. Revealing the enzymes involved in the interspecific variation in blend composition is key for understanding the evolution of these sexual communication systems. The nature of the enzymes involved in the variation of acetate esters, which are prominent compounds in moth pheromone blends, remains unclear. We identified enzymes involved in acetate metabolism in two closely related species: Heliothis (Chloridea) subflexa and H. (C.) virescens, which differ in production of acetate esters. Through comparative transcriptomic analyses and CRISPR/Cas9 knockouts, we showed that two lipases and two esterases induce lower levels of acetate esters in female pheromones. To place our findings in an evolutionary context, we explored the molecular evolution of related lipases and esterases in Lepidoptera. Together, our results show that lipases and carboxylesterases are unexpectedly involved in tuning Lepidoptera pheromones composition.

Protection of Human Sexual Autonomy in the Draft of Criminal Code of Ukraine: A Critical View

The article is devoted to the analysis of the foundations of the framework regulation of sexual crimes in the draft of the new Criminal Code of Ukraine. The application of critical optics to the provisions of the project problematizes the issues of protecting human sexual autonomy and understanding the zones of theoretical and practical reflection in which they are rooted. To assess the proposed reforms of the criminal code, modern ideas about sexuality as a gendered phenomenon with a deep social interpretation are applied. The appeal to international standards for protecting human sexual autonomy and combating sexual violence focuses on paradigmatic shifts in assessing the legitimacy of sexual relations, centered around the concepts of "autonomy" and "consent", and the need to improve the draft Criminal Code in this aspect. The title of the section of the new Criminal Code of Ukraine "Criminal Offenses against Human Sexual Autonomy" is offering as more relevant with modern notions of sexuality and internationally recognized standards for determining the parameters of permissible sexual communication. The author stressing that if the nature of the sexual act is understood only as a desire to satisfy the libido, then some variants of illegal sexual behavior remain outside the scope of the Criminal Code, in particular, in situations where sexual violence is used as a tool to control and convey repressive messages. The propose to base the regulation of sexual crimes in new Criminal Code not on the concept of libido, but on the approach of the Istanbul Convention, according to which a sexual act is an act that has a sexual connotation, is supporting in this article. The absence of voluntary consent as a constitutive feature of sexual violence emphasizes the fundamental importance of the concept of "voluntary consent", by which consensual sexual act differs from non-consensual and illegal. In this regard the author, analyzing the problem of legal regulation of sexual relations with minors 14 to 16 year-olds, when their sexual life before reaching the age of consent seems outwardly voluntary, suggests discussing the possibility of introducing into the draft of Criminal Code the construct "limited voluntary consent", which will take place when a person is fully not capable to express a voluntary agreement to engage in the sexual activity and to understand the nature and significance of it’s decision regarding sexual relations.