<p>This thesis is an analysis of how international policies on HIV prevention can be understood through a postcolonial perspective and how these prevention strategies are reflected nationally and locally in Babati, Tanzania. To gain knowledge of these aims I have focused on UNAIDS and the US’ government policies to get an idea of where the international discourse about HIV prevention stands. My empirical data in Babati is collected by semi-structural interviews with people who work with HIV prevention. I have used Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s understanding of Third World women, together with Jenny Kitzinger theory about women in HIV discourses and Karen M Booth’s view of how international policies are trying to empower women to reduce their risk of HIV infection. To assist my analysis I have focused on three notions, which are recurring in the HIV prevention discourse, these are: empowerment of women, condom use and sexual behaviour. These notions help to establish the HIV discourse and later I have compared the results with my theoretical framework and empirical findings. My final conclusion is that international policies on HIV prevention can be seen as imperialistic as they are promoting a certain change in sexual behaviour, such as reduction of partners and abstinence until marriage.</p>

Vaginismus is defined as a persistent difficulty with vaginal entry, despite a woman’s expressed wish, due to muscle tension, avoidance, and/or pain (Basson et al., 2003). The disorder is classified as a sexual dysfunction; however, there is a paucity of literature on the sexual response, sexual function, and sexual behaviour of women with vaginismus. This thesis research was designed to investigate the differential aspects of sexual health in women with lifelong vaginismus, compared to women with lifelong dyspareunia (pain with intercourse) and women with pain-free intercourse. In the first study, 45 women viewed erotic films, of which one set depicted penetration and the other did not. Physiological sexual arousal was assessed via thermography. Subjective responses to films were assessed with questionnaires. Despite significantly greater negative emotions and lower mental sexual arousal in response to erotic stimuli, women with vaginismus showed genital arousal comparable to the comparison groups. In the second study, 174 women completed an online survey. Women with vaginismus reported more sexual difficulties than the no-pain group and a restricted range of lifetime sexual behaviours and lower frequency of intercourse attempts/experiences than the comparison groups. Women with vaginismus and dyspareunia reported more anxiety during sexual activity and a restricted sexual behaviour repertoire in the previous year and month compared to the no-pain group. Women with vaginismus endorsed more negative cognitions related to penetration, specifically concerns about losing control of their body and the situation. The findings suggest that sexual function difficulties and restricted behavioural repertoire may be associated with negative emotions and maladaptive cognitions. Women with vaginismus may avoid encounters that could lead to intercourse. Alternatively, the negative response to sexual stimuli may be indicative of a more global negative response to sexuality beyond intercourse. The negative penetration-related cognitions, negative responses to sexual stimuli, anxiety during sexual activity, and reduced range and frequency of sexual behaviours of women with vaginismus provide support for the Fear-Avoidance Model of Vaginismus. The impairment in sexual functioning supports the need to move beyond the singular treatment focus of making intercourse possible to an approach that addresses overall sexual rehabilitation.

University of the Witwatersrand A dissertation submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Master of Arts by Coursework in the Department of Social Anthropology July 5, 2016 / There is a culture arising among young people in Swaziland that believes that to be young and Swazi is an ephemeral, temporary, and directionless existence, and having sex and ‘partying like a Swazi’ is desired, celebrated and the fashion. I illustrate that this construction is a reaction to the banal, routine and regulation of their social spaces. Furthermore, in addition to the spaces being limited in number, imbued within each are structures and routines that reproduce discourses that privilege performances surrounding their normative behaviour and development (including the development of their sexualities). As a result, Swazi society has excluded young people from being active agents in the very discourses that govern and inform their lives, status, agency and citizenship. Drawing from a phenomenological analysis of WhatsApp conversations combined with fieldwork in Swaziland, this dissertation explores the locality of digital space via WhatsApp in the landscape of the lives of Swazi young. The data illustrated that digital space is residual and resistive, as a reaction to the regulated and restricted spaces in their lives, in digital space young people enact performances of masculinity, secrecy and morality. As well as determined values systems and currencies around sex (and sexual status), vis a vis the exchange of social capital (nude and semi nude photos)- all of which are inherently self destructive. Lastly, in their resistance, Swazi young people are the local agents of their self-destruction / MT2017

A dissertation submitted to the School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Humanities, University of Witwatersrand in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Demography and Population Studies, October 2017 / Teenage pregnancy is noted as one of the key development challenges in sub-Saharan Africa and globally due to its adverse social, health and demographic consequences. An avalanche of studies has emerged to identify the predictors of teenage pregnancy in South Africa which indicate a persistently high prevalence of teenage pregnancy. This study intends to examine how social disorganisation contributes to the prevalence of teenage pregnancy in South Africa. Social disorganisation is defined here as family disruption, service delivery inaccessibility, community unemployment and residential mobility. The theoretical basis of the study is the social disorganisation theory propounded by Shaw and McKay (1942). The theory was deemed appropriate due to its ability to investigate unfavourable factors beyond the individual-level occurring within society. This theory has not been applied to any teenage pregnancy study in South Africa. The data source for the study is South Africa’s 2011 census. The target population includes females aged 12 to 19. The study uses multilevel logistic regression modelling allowing heterogeneity at the individual and community levels to test the applicability of the theory in explaining teenage pregnancy. Results indicate that teenage pregnancy remains at critical levels with 3.97% of teenage females having given birth in the preceding year yet incidence among 15-19 year olds is 15 times higher than that of 12-14 year olds. Family forms other than two-parented marriages and communities with high levels of family disruption increase the likelihood of teenage pregnancy. Similarly, increasing household service delivery inaccessibility predisposes teenage females to higher odds of pregnancy, as expected. However, higher community unemployment was negatively associated with teenage pregnancy as were higher levels of residential mobility, which is contrary to previous international research findings. To this end, the study provides empirical evidence of the social disorganisation determinants of teenage pregnancy in South Africa. Additionally, the study shows the contribution of certain household and community factors in pregnancy likelihood among young women locally. In light of these findings it becomes necessary for practitioners to create intervention strategies that target these factors to curb the levels and chances of teenage pregnancy nationally. Furthermore, it is vital that government and other stakeholders financially support investigation and prevention campaigns that intentionally address contextual factors to increase adolescent sexual and reproductive health. Consequently, this study contributes to the investigation of structural derivatives to determine pertinent factors in the quest to decrease teenage pregnancy in South Africa. / XL2018

Studies on sexual behaviour in Nigeria have rather been lopsided largely focussing on adolescents while neglecting the older men. This may not be unconnected with the fact that the young people are often seen as being more sexually active than the older men. In this study, the patterns and the determinants of sexual behaviour of middle-aged men were investigated. This study is based on secondary data analysis of the 2003 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey male dataset. Data collected from a sample of 633 men whose ages fall between 40 and 59 years in Nigeria were extracted and analysed to achieve the set objectives. The variables of interest were analysed by using relevant statistical techniques with the aid of SAS enterprise guide. Sexual behaviour was measured by three variables namely: current sexual activity, extra marital partnership and condom use. Also, three hypotheses were tested. The Health Belief Model (HBM) was the theoretical model used for this study. The study shows that a high proportion of men (71.2%) aged 40-59 years in Nigeria are sexually active. The study further reveals that about 12% of Nigerian middle-aged men engage in extramarital sex and 30% are in polygynous relationships (i.e. have multiple sex partners) while condom use is very low among them. Extramarital sex is more prevalent in the rural (7.05%) than urban (4.5%) areas. The study shows that the correlates of current sexual activity among the middle-aged men in Nigeria are education and religion while engagement in extramarital sexual activity is determined by ethnicity, age at first intercourse and knowledge of HIV/AIDS. Among the sexually active ones, condom use is influenced by ethnicity, marriage type and extramarital partnership. The sexual behaviour of middle-aged men in Nigeria follows the pattern described in the HBM. That is, individual, socio-economic and HIV/AIDS factors can influence the sexual behaviour of Middle-aged men. The study concludes that in addressing the problems associated with sexual and reproductive health of Nigerian, focus should also be extended to middle-aged men, instead of the narrow focus on only adolescents and youths. Further investigation, using multiple methods of data collection is also suggested.

Background and Aims: The importance of the involvement of parents in treatment approaches for Children and Young People (CYP) who have engaged in Harmful Sexual Behaviour (HSB) has been consistently highlighted within the literature. Given that HSB arises in a family context, parents are considered key agents for change where CYP remain in their care. Professionals may work with them as a means of improving the CYP's therapeutic outcomes. Despite this, little is known about their personal lived experiences and representations of meaning, which remain largely unexplored. The current study aimed to address this gap and gain a rich understanding of the experiences of parents, from their own perspective. Methodology: Semi-structured interviews were used with six biological parents who were recruited via purposive sampling from a specialist service working with CYP who have engaged in HSB and their families. During interviews, four broad areas of interest were explored: the personal psychological impact of their child engaging in HSB; the impact on the parent-child relationship; wider familial and community responses; and parental coping. Interviews were audio-recorded and their verbatim transcripts analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Findings and Conclusions: The analysis produced four main themes; 'A devastated and overwhelmed life'; 'Threatened and trying to feel safer'; 'A challenged relationship with son'; and 'Space for hope in the face of hopelessness?'. It was highlighted that parents' experiences and meaning-making appeared intimately woven with a complex web of powerful relational and socially constructed factors. The research outcomes provide valuable insights for professionals working with young people who have engaged in HSB and their families. In learning more about what it is like to be the parent of a CYP who has engaged in HSB, it is hoped that professionals will have a richer framework from which to provide support to both the parent and to their child. Implications for clinical practice, the strengths and limitations of the methodology and directions for future research are discussed.

The thesis portrays various spaces in Mumbai where certain non-normative sexualities interact in relation to the consumption of cultural or material resources with which they build their gender, identity and sexuality. In relation to it, this piece of work interrogates the hijra or the popular transvestite population in Mumbai, and the ways in which they represent their bodies. It explores linkages between these processes, and the modern consumption of beauty practices, feminization of their bodies like the consumption of female hormone tablets, and surgical measures like silicone breast implants. Through these mechanisms, the hijras embody beauty and other facets of bodily modifications in constructing their identity. These embodied practices of beauty by the hijras further charts the new meaning of the hijra body in respect to the local identification of their identity in relation to the global transgender identities. Furthermore, with regards to the body modifications and construction of identities, the research also draws attention to the transsexual identified individuals in Mumbai and the clinical discourses that are related to transsexual experience in this context. Thus, the thesis as a whole negotiates the various strands of transgender identities in Mumbai and (dis) similarities in which hijras represent their identities to the society, and claim their gender.

The thesis investigates contemporary sexual cultures through the lens of British women's experiences of buying and using sexual commodities. Sexual consumer culture offers women a comprehensive programme of what Foucault calls ‘technologies of the self': a language, set of knowledge, and field of expertise through which the sexual self learns to articulate itself in order to become intelligible. Consuming and using sexual products to achieve ‘better' sex and construct a knowledgeable and ‘confident' sexual identity form a key part of the neoliberal project of the sexual self. Sex shopping culture reproduces a ‘postfeminist sensibility' (Gill, 2007), representing a ‘double entanglement' (McRobbie, 2009) with feminism by inciting and requiring women to construct and perform their sexualities through a narrow depoliticised discourse of sexual ‘choice', ‘empowerment', and consumerism. The thesis draws upon data from 22 one-to-one semi-structured interviews and 7 accompanied shopping trips to sex shops. A central contention of the analysis is that women use a diverse range of discursive, embodied and everyday strategies in order to ‘make do' with the kinds of femininity and female sexuality that sex shop culture represents (de Certeau, 1998). The thesis investigates three key spheres of social and everyday life at which sexual consumer culture is negotiated: spaces (the location, layout and experience of sex shops); bodies (the forms of bodily ‘becoming' offered by wearing lingerie in sexual contexts); and objects (using sex toys and the enabling and disabling of possibilities for sexual pleasures and practices). Each section demonstrates the constraints, anxieties and potential pleasures of constructing sexual identities in and through neoliberal and postfeminist consumer culture, whilst at the same time exploring the potential for contradiction, negotiation and resistance evidenced in the multiple ways in which women take up the sexual identities and practices offered by sex shopping.

This thesis offers an insight into a section of the lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender community that has been consistently under-represented in research. Based on data gathered from some 400 lesbians over 60, this study presents the findings of the first comprehensive survey of older lesbian life to be undertaken in the UK. It complements existing LGBT ageing research (Heaphy, Yip and Thompson, 2003; Cronin and King, 2010; Archibald, 2010; Stonewall, 2011), which has focussed more on men than women; and provides substantial data about a population which has frequently been referred to as ‘invisible' and ‘hard to reach' (Berger, 1982; Kehoe, 1986; Deevey, 1990; Heaphy et al., 2003. etc.). As well as providing a detailed picture of older lesbian life in the UK at the beginning of the 21st century, the thesis specifically addresses the following questions:  just how ‘invisible' are older lesbians? To what extent do they feel able to respond to the more liberal legal and social climate of the early 21st century by ‘coming out of the closet,' even if they have not done so before? What might be their reasons for staying hidden?  do older lesbians conform to the ‘old, sad and alone' stereotype of the ageing homosexual (Dorfman et al., 1995), or to the contrasting view that older non-heterosexuals have built strong support networks (Kehoe, 1988) and offer positive alternative models for ageing (Weeks, Heaphy and Donovan, 2001)?  considering that most LGBT ageing research is based on samples containing more men than women, are there aspects of personal history and ontology specific to older lesbians, which have been obscured by research with a more general ‘LGBT' focus?  given the wide social, political and economic diversity of the research sample and the variety of their life experiences as revealed by the data, do older lesbians really have anything in common other than their sexual orientation? How useful is the term ‘older lesbian' as an identity category?

Contemporary theories of gender conceptualise masculinity as a socially constructed, pluralistic and action-oriented entity. Hegemonic masculinity is the dominant masculinity discourse in many Anglophone societies. Heterosexuality is the bedrock of hegemonic masculinity, and heterosexual expressions of masculinity are more socially desirable than gay masculinities. Although gay men are unable to embody hegemonic masculinity, prior research suggests that their behaviour may nevertheless be guided by its mandates. This may include gay men's sexual positioning behaviour in anal intercourse – previous research has demonstrated that gay sexual positions are steeped in gender role stereotypes. The mixed-methods programme of studies presented in this dissertation provides a greater understanding of the components of “gay masculinities”, and how positioning in relation to masculinity discourses is associated with how gay men experience their masculinity, including in anal intercourse. A discursive qualitative approach used in Study 1 identified how gay men could “compensate” for their homosexuality by displaying attributes associated with hegemonic masculinity (e.g., muscularity). It was also found that gay masculinities were notable for their diversity (Chapter 3). Using quantitative methods, Study 2 demonstrated that gay men who are anally-insertive in anal intercourse were perceived as more masculine than those who are receptive, although muscularity and a deep voice were more strongly associated with perceptions of gay men's masculinity than sexual positioning (Chapter 4). In Study 3, an experiential qualitative approach identified how gay men's beliefs about masculinity were associated with their gendered perceptions and experiences of anal intercourse (Chapter 5). Insight was also provided into the range of beliefs that gay men have about masculinity, and how these beliefs are related to how gay men negotiate their masculine and gay identities against the dominance of the hegemonic masculinity discourse (Chapters 6 and 7).