Sexuality of People with Intellectual Disabilities: A Proposal to use the Positive Sexuality Model

The aim of this research was to determine the trends in the field of analyzing positive aspects of sexuality of people with intellectual disabilities (ID). In relation to these findings, the possibilities of applying the model of positive sexuality were presented. A literature search covering studies published between 1980 and 2020 was conducted. 19 studies were included. Researchers focus on partnerships, mainly heterosexual ones, associated experiences, plans and ideas. The results show that people with ID are able to report on experiences accompanying relationships and their depiction is relatively rich. People who do not have such experiences expect them in the future, treating them as a very important aspect of life. Referring to the model of positive sexuality, the areas of research in the population of people with intellectual disability were specified, and the theoretical justification of the model, general methodological aspects and practical usefulness were provided.

Bold Women, Bad Assets: Honour, Property and Techno-Promiscuities

In June 2016, Qandeel Baloch, a 26-year-old Pakistani social media star, was murdered. Her death sparked both public outrage and a policy debate around ‘honour killing’, digital rights and sex-positive sexuality across Pakistan and its diasporas. Qandeel challenged what constitutes a proper Pakistani woman, an authentic Baloch and a respectable digital citizen. As a national sex symbol, she failed at the gendered workings of respectable heterosexuality, and during her short lifetime she optimised this failure and public fetish as a technologically mediated social currency (clicks, hashtags, comments, likes, reposts) to build a transnational celebrity brand. I centre Qandeel Baloch’s life and afterlives to think through the economic entanglements of honour, racialised ethnicity, coloniality, sexual violence and social media at the intersections of globalised anti-Blackness and honourable brownness as a matter of global capital. Within these complex registers of coloniality, Qandeel’s life and brutal murder necessitate a rethinking of categories of racialised ethnicity (Baloch), sexual labour (racial capital) and social media (digitality) as vectors of value for capitalism and nationalism. By centring Qandeel, I define honour as a form of racialised property relations. This rereading of honour, as an economic metric of heteropatriarchy, shifts my lens of honour killing from a crime of culture to a crime of property. Women’s honour functions as a necrocapitalist technology that constructs female and feminine bodies as the debris of heterosexual empire through racialised, gendered and sexualised property relations. These relations and registers of honour get further complicated by social media currency and discussions around digital rights, privacy and freedom of expression. Honour is, therefore, the economic management of sexual morality produced through race, religion and imperialism.

“They See Sex as Something That’s Reproductive and Not as Something People Do for Fun”: Shortcomings in Adolescent Girls’ Sexual Socialization from Adults

Theorists suggest that adolescent girls’ sexual socialization can influence sexual risk reduction and positive sexuality development, although adolescent girls’ positive sexuality development is understudied. In this study, we applied a sex-positive framework to explore sexual socialization experiences among a sample of adolescent girls of color recruited from community-based organizations that serve youth with heightened needs ( n = 50; Mage = 15.62, range = 12–19; 58% Black/African American; 76% heterosexual; 58% sexually active). Specifically, we examined girls’ reports of messages about sexuality they have received from their teachers, parents, health care providers, and society at large. Participants completed brief, semi-structured qualitative interviews. Inductive thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Overall, the adolescent girls described how they navigate primarily sex-negative sexual socialization messages from adults to develop positive sexual selves. Within this narrative, we found five themes: (a) Adults deliver one-sided communication that adolescent sex is inappropriate and risky; (b) Gendered messages restrict adolescent girls’ sexuality; (c) Naive adults can’t be trusted; (d) Exclusion of same-gender sexual experiences endangers adolescents who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and with other nonheterosexual orientations (LGBQ+); and (e) Messages about sexual protection can help but may still restrict adolescent girls’ sexual choices. Implications for adolescent girls’ positive sexuality development are discussed.

Negotiating opposition to positive sexuality research, practice, and education: Insights from personal reflection

In this essay, I reflect on my academic career to share insights on dealing with challenges arising from specializing in positive sexuality. The current American bimodal political climate, a focus on consumerism in higher education, and an undervaluing of actual expertise are important contemporary social contexts that should be realized when anticipating opposition to positive sexuality research, practice, and education. Positive sexuality researchers, practitioners, and educators are encouraged to anticipate opposition, build strong support networks, apply rigor to their work, focus on common societal values, and prioritize their personal self-care.

Dyadic Invariance of the Positive Sexuality Scale in Chilean Heterosexual Couples

Gender differences in sexuality-related dimensions have long been investigated in close relationship research. An important assumption when comparing values across gender in dyadic research is that both partners conceptualize the construct under investigation in the same way. Thus, issues of measurement invariance should be considered when working with dyadic data. The aim of the present study was to test the dyadic invariance of the Positive Sexuality Scale (PSS) to assess an individual’s sense of happiness and fulfillment with his/her sexual expression. The PSS was completed by 166 Chilean heterosexual couples, and measurement invariance was tested using confirmatory factor analysis within a dyadic framework. Configural, metric, scalar, and partial strict measurement invariance were supported for the PSS original one-factor model. No between-partner difference was found in the PSS latent factor mean. The functioning of the PSS and the meaning attributed to positive sexuality were the same for both partners. Hence, variations in the PSS levels between both partners in heterosexual couples can be interpreted as true mean differences rather than measurement artifacts.

Sexual Behavior of Russian People of All Ages Amid the Pandemic (COVID-19)

At the beginning of 2021, a team of the Field Research Center of the Institute for Social Analysis and Forecasting (RANEPA) conducted two online surveys as part of the research work “Partnership and romantic relationships during the pandemic and afterwards”. The surveys deal with the issues of sexual behavior of Russian people. The topic of sexuality is tabooed no more, but remains sensitive, thus, men, people with an upper middle income, and with a higher education are more inclined to talk about sex in public. Sexual education and satisfaction with sex life are directly related to status, including not only money, profession, or gender, but mostly the presence of a permanent sexual partner. Despite the proliferation of traditional family values, it keeps being a basis for sexual well-being and a meaningful approach to intimate practices. The pandemic only reinforces the tendencies which have already been indicated: those who have a partner turn out to be more successful in their intimate life than those who rely on fleeting or casual relationships. At the same time, the quality of intimate life for many people is reduced due to subjective factors (fear and stress), as well as to objective problems and losses (loss of a spouse, illness, etc.). The affection of these tendencies in the longer term has yet to be explored. A discussion about sexuality open to all ages, requires redefinition of intimate life in terms of tenderness, care, altruism and positive communication, the search for “body language” demonstrating attention to the other than direct sexual intercourse. Positive sexuality includes three basic elements: 1) the rejection of any violence and the priority of “negotiation”; 2) acceptance of one’s own body and its changes; 3) lifelong sexual education as an experience of one's own mistakes as well as readiness for them. Such discourse on sexuality makes possible further studies of various social groups’ intimate life in Russia, making one of the factors of their subjective well-being less obscene.