Discussion. The epidemic of HIV/STD among MSM is severe, and the prevalence of risk sexual behaviors was at a high level among MSM in China. The risk factors for HIV/STD and factors associated with DAI reported in this study give some insights towards designing relevant prevention programs. The simplicity and feasibility of our effective intervention, enhanced VCT, makes it possible for this to be incorporated into standard VCT procedures. Further translational research is needed to investigate its effectiveness in the real-world setting. / Introduction. Men who have sex with men (MSM) have become the main group for HIV transmission in China in 2009. There have been many epidemiological cross-sectional studies targeting MSM in China in recent years. These provide limited data compared with cohort studies, which can describe the rate at which HIV/STD are spreading in a target population. Moreover, there is a dearth of intervention studies which are theory-based with rigorous research methodology in China. Last but not least, research is needed on sexual behaviors and their determinants, including cognitions from health behavioral theories, event-specific factors, etc. / Objectives. This study investigated the prevalence and incidence of HIV/STD, as well as their associated risk factors among MSM in Nanjing, China. It also explored the prevalence of unprotected anal sex (UAI) and the associated factors, including cognitions from health behavioral theories and event-specific factors. In addition, this is also one of the first studies to examine the efficacy of a randomized control trial (RCT) designed intervention, to use enhanced voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) to reduce UAI among MSM in China. / Results. The RDS-adjusted HIV, syphilis and HCV prevalence were respectively 7.3%, 14.4% and 0.2% at baseline. Of the 397 MSM who were found to be HIV seronegative at baseline, 286 (72.0%) retested at Month 6. HIV, syphilis and HCV incidence were respectively 5.12, 7.58 and 0 per 100 person-years (PY). Recruiting male sex partners mostly at saunas was the risk factor associated with being HIV seropositive at baseline (OR=3.84) and undergoing HIV/syphilis seroconversion at Month 6 (RR=2.351RR=6.72). In the RCT study, participants in the Intervention Group reported significantly less risk than those in the Control Group (UAI with any male sex partners: 48.4% vs. 66.7%;UAI with regular male sex partners: 52.2% vs. 68.9%) at Month 6. Furthermore, Perceived Behavior Control showed a significant association with DAI with both regular (AOR=0.42) and casual partners (AOR=O.73). / Subjects and Methods. A cohort study and randomized control trial were conducted. Out of 416 MSM approached by respondent driven sampling (RDS), 397 HIV negative participants were recruited to the HIV/syphilis/HCV cohort, and they were invited to return for a follow-up visit at Month 6. A subsample from the baseline cohort consisting of 307 MSM, was randomly assigned to either the Intervention Group (enhanced VCT) or the Control Group (standard VCT). Evaluation was conducted at Month 6. Both baseline and Month 6 visits consisted of VCT service and interviewing. Statistical methods such as Chi-square test, logistic regression and Poisson regression were used in this study. / Hao, Chun. / Adviser: Joseph TF Lan. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-04, Section: B, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-179). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract and appendixes I-II also in Chinese.

In the UK, as in many western nations, there have been a number of progressive pieces of legislation enacted with the intent to eradicate discrimination on the basis of sexuality in the workplace. The pace and scale of acceptance of gay equality laws has been relatively rapid in recent years. To cite an example, in 2004 gay marriage was only legal in Belgium and Holland, whereas in 2013 it is legal in 11 countries (The Guardian, 2013). Up until this legislation came into force, the focus of previous research probably unsurprisingly has been predominately around two strands; sexual minorities’ experiences of discrimination in the workplace and the issue of disclosure/non-disclosure of a gay identity. There has been little exploration ‘beyond the closet’, in how gay men manage their identity post anti-discrimination laws combined with more liberal attitudes towards homosexuality. In particular, there has been a paucity of research on the ways gay men challenge, negotiate and conform in the two way process of managing their identities; this thesis aims to address this gap. Data were gathered from forty-five semi-structured in-depth interviews with self-identified gay men in a wide range of occupations and ages working in a seaside resort on the South coast of England. A qualitative methodology was used in order to obtain a deeper understanding of the ways gay men manage their gay identity in their interaction with others. Furthermore, by using reflexivity this thesis aims to show how the sample of respondents had modified and changed the ways they presented their gay identity throughout their working lives. In particular, the thesis aims to uncover critical incidents based upon their sexuality that respondents confronted in their interaction with others. The key findings that emerged from the data include; the identification of a range of strategies gay men deployed in how they managed their identity and dealt with discrimination from confrontation to conformity; the multiple constraints and opportunities that impacted upon the ways gay men both managed and disclosed their gay identity; the perceived incongruity around positions of authority, professionalism and a gay identity; and finally how silence was used as a form of exclusion creating significant barriers in the ways gay men could make themselves visible and use their voice within organisations. These findings considerably extend our understanding of the pervasiveness of heteronormativity in the workplace; the impact of contextual influences on managing a gay identity, and gay men’s experiences against a back drop of post-anti-discrimination laws in the U.K. The thesis will aid HR practitioners in giving them a better understanding of the dilemmas gay men face in their interactions with others in the workplace.

This thesis examines the role of historical reference in the representation of homosexuality in British literature since the late nineteenth century. The texts it examines are both literal fictions - novels, short stories and poems - and less 'imaginative' forms, such as biography, historiography and sexology: its main project is to disentangle the network of discourses facilitating and restricting representation of the homosexual past. It identifies the history of this representation as a series of moments - the turn of the century, the 1930s, the 1950s, for example - when homosexuality was redefined, and lesbian and gay traditions correspondingly reinvented. This continual reinvention was often the work of homosexuals themselves:the thesis demonstrates how historical representation has allowed lesbians and gay men to intervene in sexual debate when more obviously 'contemporary' dissident voices were being publicly silenced. Chapters I and 2 examine the invocation of historical example within the late Victorian homophile subculture, and argue that the ancient Greek practice of paiderastia provided tum-of-the-century homosexuals with an affirmative model with which to counter juridical and sexological prescription. Chapters 3 and 4 consider the extent to which Antinous and Sappho became established in the same period as homosexual icons, but were subtly reconstructed by different, sometimes competing, sexual discourses. Subsequent chapters explore the influence of literary models such as Radclyffe Hall's The Well ofLoneliness (1928) upon lesbian historical fiction and biography of the 1930s, and uncover some hitherto forgotten lesbian texts; examine the role of male homosexuality in the women's historical romance of the 1950s; and discuss the homoerotic historical fiction of lesbian authors Mary Renault and Bryher. The final chapter considers recent lesbian and gay historical fiction, and finds reflected in the genre the modem homosexual self-image with all its gender and racial tensions.

The character of James Bond which was first introduced in Ian Fleming’s first novel Casino Royale in 1953 and was then featured in 11 subsequent novels, 2 volumes of short stories, and 24 film adaptations has long been considered to be the ultimate man’s man. There is no feat he cannot conquer, villain he cannot best, or lady he cannot bed. However, in an examination of both the novels and the film, clues exist to Bond’s deeper psyche—most notably his repressed homosexuality. While much discussion has been had of Bond’s misogyny, in many ways it masks his true identity possibly even from himself. Utilizing a framework of theoretical analysis drawing upon Sigmund Freud, Jack Hallberstam, Judith Butler, Susan Sontag, Laura Mulvey, and Charles Klosterman (among many others), this dissertation will fully explore the character Fleming created. Additionally, by examining how the male gaze and camp elements have been utilized by the filmmakers in the Bond films, analysis will be conducted how those elements contribute to a “queerness” of the character’s film incarnations. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2019. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

The research is specifically concerned with the notion of the military masque as a projected extension of the history of masqueing behaviour evident in gay men's attire.The creative outcome of the project is a collection of five interchangeable masques, an animated poetic work and a series of photographic images.This exegesis therefore, seeks to contextualise the created artifacts. In doing this it posits a historical and critical framework that considers the hyper-masculine1 and its relationship to gay men's masqueing.21 In this exegesis hyper masculinity is taken to mean an exaggeration of stereotypical male beliefs and behaviors through an emphasis on virility, strength and aggression and dress codification.2 Frye (1957), in his Anatomy of criticism offers a useful definition of masque as I frame it in this thesis. The term may be understood as "a species of drama in which spectacle plays an important role and in which the characters tend to be, or become aspects of human personality, rather than independent characters" (pp. 365-7). In this respect the masque is something donned that presents a decodable identity extra to, or other than the actual personality of the wearer.

Australia had the world’s first gay film festival at the Sydney Filmmakers Co-op in June 1976, part of a larger commemoration of the Stonewall Riots in New York City of 1969. In 1994, South Africa became the first country in the world to prohibit discrimination in its constitution on the basis of sexual orientation, whilst allowing for positive discrimination to benefit persons disadvantaged by unfair discrimination. South Africa and Australia, both ex-British colonies, are used in this analysis to explore the way local Queer Cinematic Cultures have negotiated and continue to negotiate dominant social forces in post-colonial settings. It is rare to have analyses of Queer Cinematic Cultures and even rarer to have texts dealing with cultures outside those of Euro-America. This study offers a unique window into the formations of Queer Cinematic Cultures of two nations of the ‘South’. It reveals important new information on how sexual minorities from nations outside the Euro-American sphere have dealt with and continue to deal with longstanding Queer cinematic oppressions. A pro-active relationship between Queer representation in film and social-political action is considered by academics such as Dennis Altman to be essential for significant social and judicial change. The existence of Queer and other independent films in Sydney from the 1960s onward, impacted directly on sexuality, race and gender activism. In South Africa, the first major Queer film festival, The Out In Africa Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in 1994, was instrumental in developing and maintaining a post-Apartheid Queer public sphere which fostered further legal change. Given the significant histories of activism through Queer Cinematic Cultures in both Australia and South Africa, I propose in this thesis the existence of a new genus of cinema, which I term Fifth Cinema. Fifth Cinema includes Feminist Cinema, Queer Cinema and Immigrant/Multicultural Cinema and deals with the oppressions which cultures engage with within their own cultural boundaries. It can be informed by First Cinema (classical, Hollywood), Second Cinema (Art House or dual national cinemas), Third and Fourth Cinema (cinemas dealing with the decolonisation of Third World and Fourth World people), but it develops its unique characteristics by countering internal cultural colonisation. Fifth Cinema functions as a heterognosis, where multi-dimensional representations around sexuality, race and gender are used to assist in broader cultural liberation.

Human sexual behaviour is highly variable and not tightly linked to biological reproduction. However, it has not been studied as social behaviour until the last 40 years and until recently it is largely deviant behaviour that has gained the attention of sociologists. Sociology has adopted an unnecessarily antibiologistic position and consequently neglected the body. In reviewing sociological approaches to sex I draw on social constructionism, particularly the work of Gagnon and Simon (1974) and their notion of scripts; these can be interpreted as discursive structures defining sexual acts and sexual actors at both the individual and societal level. I outline a range of social constructionist positions in relation to sexuality and adopt a moderately radical but realist one that concedes some place for the physiology of arousal linking the elements of the discursive realm of the sexual in social life. Finding the basic assumptions of symbolic interactionism a fruitful base from which to approach sexual conduct I reject the concept of 'desire' as too complex and obscure to serve as a starting point in understanding the social organisation of sex. A review of the ethnographic observational studies of settings in which men have casual sex shows that beats (public places such as parks and toilets) operate in a similar manner in many countries. Commercial sex venues are more varied. They are safer and more comfortable than beats and may offer private rooms and facilities for esoteric sex such as bondage. Sex in such settings is impersonal and anonymous, costs little effort, time or money, and offers a variety of partners. Interaction is largely nonverbal. Interview studies of men who have casual sex with other men tend to undersample men who are not gay-identified, but they offer insights into men's motivations and understandings. Both kinds of research are necessary. The empirical component of the thesis is a thematic analysis of transcripts from three interview studies of gay men in Sydney done between 1993 and 1997: Negotiating Sex (n = 9), the Sites study (n = 21) and the Seroconversion study (n = 70). All involved detailed narratives of sexual encounters. The analysis takes a situational interactionist approach with a specific focus on practice. Central questions asked are: how does the setting (beat, sex venue, home) affect what happens? What does sex mean to the men, and how does this affect what they do? How do men's sexual skills, tastes and experience relate to their practice? How do men's bodies and their understandings of the body affect their practice? What do different sexual practices mean and how are they organised and negotiated within the encounter? How (if at all) do men integrate considerations of safe sex into their practice? Physical surroundings were found to have a profound effect on practice. Sex venues as cultural institutions enable patterns of practice that do not occur elsewhere. Physical arrangements within beats and venues encourage or enable particular practices, such as oral sex or group sex. Motivations for and meanings of sex to the participants varied widely; these were related to practice within the men's own accounts but not in any clear predictive way. Men's sexual skills, tastes and preferences, which were also very varied, related to their practice. Men made trade-offs between risk and pleasure. Men looked for a range of features in casual partners. Suppression of social cues restricted the range of criteria on which partners were selected, enabling wider choice. Men's bodies affected their practice most strikingly in the issue of erection or the lack of it. Understandings of the body and physiological processes affected men's interpretations of information about HIV risk. These men have a vocabulary of sexual practices within which some common practices are less salient. These practices are socially patterned in ways that benefit men with certain tastes and abilities and frustrate those with others. Safe sex considerations are routinely integrated into sexual practice but in a way that leaves room for considerable risk of HIV transmission. In conclusion I argue that conceptualising sex between men exclusively in terms of gay identity and culture is inappropriate. The outcome of the empirical work confirms the theoretical analysis that found it necessary to incorporate some physiological notions, such as 'libido', into a social constructionist view of sex. The findings and their interpretations have important implications for framing effective HIV prevention programs. Some specific suggestions are made for how this might be done.

This is a qualitative study forming half of a coursework/thesis MA in Community Education (HRD). It investigates some of the influences affecting gay men growing up in rural communities. It provides material that may be useful in developing education programs for gay men themselves, for the general community and particularly for health educators. The study illustrates and highlights these issues by presenting extracts and case studies from twenty indepth interviews with rural homosexually active men. It looks at factors affecting homosexual identity formation in rural communities and finds there are common influences of family, religion, school and role models. It also identifies and examines other influences of a rural nature, including concepts of masculinity, heterosexism and homophobia, which may have a very restrictive effect on an emerging homosexual identity. The effects of such influences are explored, revealing common issues of isolation, loneliness and lack of self esteem. The study reveals some of the particular difficulties faced by young men becoming aware of and dealing with their emerging homosexuality particularly in a rural community. Resultant behaviour is investigated and found to include for some a fairly successful integration of homosexuality into their lives, but for others there are common behaviours of denial, moving away from the community, or contemplation of suicide. The study highlights the importance of contacts with gay-identified men for support and the need to be exposed to role models with whom gay men can identify. In this respect, the influence on smaller communities of the mass media is found to be having an increasing significance Unfortunately, the study also postulates that broader and positive changes in the wider community may have served to heighten difficulties faced by rural men if such changes are not mirrored at the local level. An awareness of increasing acceptance and support for gay men in the wider community may be frustrating at least, if local support has not also developed. In fact the study finds support for the assertions by other researchers that there are links between sexuality and recent increases in rural male youth suicide. The findings support the view that sexuality may play a significant part in the contemplation of suicide by young gay men. The particular value of the study is in exploring the issues through the words of the men themselves. The extracts and case studies offer rich and varied illustrations of growing up gay in the country.

<p>This Bachelor thesis deals with the sexual identity of Egyptian women who love and have relationships with other women. I theoretically study the state of existing literature on homosexuality in the Middle East, and I do this from a gender perspective. By looking closer at four recent books on this topic I derive two main, and contradictory, theories. The first is put forth by Joseph A Massad in his book Desiring Arabs, where he rejects the existence of homosexuality in the Middle East, declaring that same sex acts in this region don’t constitute identities, as in the West. The second theory, best represented in Samar Habib’s work Female homosexuality in the Middle East, sees past and present histories of same sex love as representations of homosexuality. The empirical basis for my analysis is five in-depth interviews with Egyptian women having sexual relationships with women. Examining my material I find a negation of Massad’s theory and a confirmation of Habib’s, the women indeed describe sexual identities. I look into these descriptions and see how the women have reached this point of realizing – or coming to terms. I also study their narratives of passing, as heterosexual women, in order to avoid repression. The women’s knowledge of society’s prejudice gives the explanation for their choices of passing, but at the same time the women’s stories show a will to challenge the view on lesbian women and resist the compulsory heterosexuality.</p>

<p>Syftet med den här studien har varit att undersöka hur homosexuella män upplever våld och risken att bli utsatt för våld bara på grund av att de är homosexuella. Den metod som användes för att utföra studien var Grundad teori. Detta för att på ett öppet sätt närma sig problemområdet utan föreställningar med syftet att skapa en ny teori. En bidragande orsak till teorivalet, då Grundad teoris huvudsyfte är att skapa nya teorier, var att forskning om homosexuellas utsatthet ofta beskrivs ur en heterosexuell synvinkel och handlar om vad de utsatts för och inte hur det upplevs. I resultatet framkom en komplex bild som å ena sidan visar att intervjupersonerna anpassar sig i vissa situationer på grund av risken att bli utsatt för våld, men å andra sidan anser de inte att våldet begränsar deras sätt att leva. Våldets närvaro leder till att personerna ifrågasätter och tvivlar på sig själva men har även lett till att personerna härdats och står för vilka de är. I sällskap med andra HBT-personer känner de sig helt trygga och där existerar inget våld alls, det är utanför den ”bubblan” som våldet finns och påverkar dem.</p>