This thesis highlights the complex nature of students’ experiences in the sexuality education classroom. It seeks to provide insight from the perspectives of Year 10 students in two classes on their experiences of a particular sexuality education programme. The purpose of this study was to ‘give voice to’ and explore the experiences of asmall group of nine Year 10 students in their compulsory co-educational sexuality education programme. To this end, the main source of data was focus group interviews with student participants. Students were asked to participate in focus group interviews part way through the unit of work and invited to share their thoughts, feelings and perceptions of the programme. The data analysis generated themes that describe student’s experiences in relation to course content, pedagogy and classroom organisation. The analysis of students’ talk in focus group interviews also showed that gender relations and emotional safety were important features of the students’ experiences of their sexuality education programme. More particularly, it was found that students valued their exposure to this subject and felt that school was a good place to learn about sexuality education. They enjoyed social constructivist teaching approaches that were student-centred and interactive. The students expressed some dissatisfaction with the way in which their sexuality education programme was organised and being delivered. In addition, there was evidence of both male and female students being influenced by traditional, hegemonic constructs of masculinity and femininity, and also a heteronormative culture within the classroom. The findings present implications for sexuality education teaching in relation to programme development and classroom practice. They suggest that sexuality educators may need to consider the way in which their classrooms are organised, as well as the pedagogical approaches they use, as it appears these aspects have significant influence on the emotional safety of students, on relationships within the classroom and on the student experience of sexuality education as a whole.

Violence against gay men occurs every day. Stories can be found in newspapers, magazines, and on the World Wide Web reporting these incidences, yet there has been little research done from a qualitative perspective that explores the impact of violence on the lives of gay men. How do gay men make sense of the experience and the affects that violence perpetuated against them has on their lives? This research project examines the experiences of gay men that have been victims of various levels of violence directed at them as a result of their sexual orientation and identity as gay men. Using a qualitative approach, six gay men were interviewed and shared their experiences through personal interviews. The data collected within the interviews was then analyzed using Grounded Theory as the methodology. As there has been little research done on the impact that gay bashing has on gay men’s lives, the main objective of the research was to explore the experience of gay bashing with gay men that have been victims of such violence and gain a better understanding of the issues related to this experience. This research will add to the knowledge base around the experiences of sexual minority men and provide information for social workers, medical practitioners, law enforcement agencies, teachers and other service providers that will encounter gay men that are victims of violence. It provides valuable information that can be used to shape policy and practice to better assist gay men that are victims of violence. It also provides a voice to the many men whose stories are never heard and whose experiences are often discounted.

Submitted by ANA KARLA PEREIRA RODRIGUES (anakarla_@hotmail.com) on 2017-09-27T13:04:42Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1206781 bytes, checksum: ade76d7299bbbbf4bfd46035f62a833b (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-09-27T13:04:42Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1206781 bytes, checksum: ade76d7299bbbbf4bfd46035f62a833b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-21 / This work was based on interviews with transvestites residing in the city of Recife, Brazil. The initial criteria were adolescent transvestites who were serving socio-educational measures of deprivation of liberty, who later leaded on to become adult transvestites with life trajectories crossed with the criminal justice system. This research analyzed the narratives of transvestites through the paradigms of critical criminology, seeking to understand how heteronormativity, analytical data to understand the sociocultural context of transvestites, is also one of the social systems protected by the police and legitimized by the criminal justice system. The breaking of the binary sex-gender standard should be seen as a social conflict once the people who oppose it become vulnerable to invisibility, this depending also on other factors such as class and race. Queer theory, given the proper proportions, was one of the theoretical contributions to the (de)construction of the hegemonic conception of gender and sexuality. The object of this research was the life trajectories of transvestites interviewed to understand the intercurrences of the current criminal justice system, from the perspective of critical criminology. The methodology for achieving the object was through field research, with semi-structured interviews and subsequent analysis of the data. From this, it was concluded that not necessarily the transvestites had to be in conflict with the law or commit crimes for the intervention of the criminal justice system. On the contrary, the evidence is that before an illegal act, they have challenged social norms that are as silent as they are rigid and it is only possible to reach this conclusion when these norms are transgressed, because before that everything is normal data coming from the nature. / Este trabalho foi realizado a partir de entrevistas com travestis que residem na cidade do Recife. O foco inicialmente foram as travestis adolescentes que estavam cumprindo medida socioeducativa de privação de liberdade, enveredando-se posteriormente a travestis adultas que tiveram suas trajetórias de vida cruzadas com o sistema penal. Trata-se de uma pesquisa que analisou as narrativas das travestis a partir de paradigmas da criminologia crítica, buscando entender como a heteronormatividade, dado analítico para compreender o contexto sociocultural das travestis, também é um dos sistemas sociais protegidos pela polícia e legitimado pelo sistema penal. A quebra do padrão binário sexo-gênero deve ser vista como um conflito social na medida em as pessoas que o contrapõem tornam-se vulneráveis à invisibilidade, chegando esta a depender de outros fatores tais quais classe e raça. A teoria queer, dada as devidas proporções, foi um dos aportes teóricos para (des)construção da concepção hegemônica sobre gênero e sexualidade. O objeto desta pesquisa foram as trajetórias de vida das travestis entrevistadas, para compreender as intercorrências do sistema penal presentes, a partir do olhar da criminologia crítica. A metodologia para atingir o objeto se deu a partir de pesquisa de campo, com entrevistas semiestruturadas e posteriormente análise dos dados, que consistiu em confrontar as falas transcritas das entrevistas com as teorias de gênero e com os paradigmas do direito infracional e da criminologia crítica. A partir disto, concluiu-se que não necessariamente as travestis precisaram entrar em conflito com a lei, ou cometerem crimes para intervenção do sistema penal. Ao contrário disso, as evidências são de que antes de um ato ilícito, elas desafiaram normas sociais que são tão silenciosas quanto rígidas e que só é possível chegar a esta constatação quando são transgredidas, pois antes disso tudo são dados normais advindos da natureza.

Bakgrund: Transpersoner är en utsatt grupp med större risk för psykisk ohälsa, diskriminering, hot och våld än resterande befolkning, och har visats undvika och fördröja att söka vård trots behov. Stigmatisering och diskriminering från samhället i stort har även setts leda till att transpersoner fruktar att bli illa bemötta av vårdpersonal. Syfte: Att belysa transpersoners upplevelser av bemötande inom hälso- och sjukvården. Metod: En litteraturöversikt av elva vetenskapliga artiklar av kvalitativ och kvantitativ design samt mixad metod. Artiklarna analyserades efter transpersoners upplevelser av bemötande inom hälso- och sjukvården. Resultat: Resultatet bestod av tre huvudteman: Att bli sedd och respekterad, Diskriminering på grund av sin könsidentitet och Kunskapsbrist om transpersoner och deras erfarenheter. Diskussion: Diskussionen belyser hur transpersoner upplever bemötande av vårdpersonal och hur detta kan förstås utifrån Travelbees teori om mellanmänskliga relationer. Vidare diskuteras kunskapsbrist och dess påverkan på bemötandet kopplat till tidigare forskning samt en diskussion kring diskriminering och positiva vårdupplevelser. / Background: Transgender people are a vulnerable group with a higher risk of mental health issues, discrimination and a lower usage of healthcare services. Stigmatisation and discrimination from society at large have also been observed to lead to transgender people fearing to be treated badly by healthcare service personnel. Aim: To illustrate transgender persons’ experiences of meeting with healthcare professionals. Method: A literature review of eleven articles of qualitative, quantitative and mixed method design that dealt with transgender persons’ experiences in healthcare settings. Results: The results are divided into three main themes; To be seen and respected,   Discriminations on the grounds of gender identity and A lack of knowledge about transgender persons and their experiences. Discussion:The discussion illustrates how transgender persons experience meeting with healthcare professionals and how this can be understood from the view of Travelbees theory of human-to-human relationship. Further discussed is the lack of knowledge and it’s effects on the meeting in relation to past research as well as a discussion of discrimination and positive experiences of healthcare.

Violating social norms often elicits a negative public response aimed at punishing norm violators and dissuading others from following their lead. One way to understand reactions to norm violations is through the moral panic framework. This framework identifies the reactions that an emergent norm-violating social group is likely to experience. These reactions are characterized as overexaggerated, often blaming the group for the consequences of their norm violation and suggesting that the public should fear the group. I hypothesized that social attitudes towards female breadwinner relationships (FBRs), which violate heteronormative gender norms, would reflect these, and other, moral panic characteristics. However, I expected that these characteristics would be less extreme, and thus I proposed that social reactions to FBRs would reflect a kind of moral anxiety. To test this hypothesis, I conducted a qualitative thematic analysis of 94 magazine and newspaper articles concerning FBRs, and five themes emerged. First, the articles emphasized the social change that these relationships represent. Second, gender role expectations were often discussed, with many more articles reinforcing traditional gender role expectations than non-traditional gender role expectations. Third, most articles described costs of FBRs while only a minority described benefits, and most costs concerned the couple as a whole instead of either partner individually. Fourth, societal reactions to this change were often described, and most reactions were negative. And fifth, many articles offered tips for FBRs, often focused on overcoming the costs associated with such bonds. This pattern of reactions to FBRs ultimately demonstrated many of the characteristics of moral anxiety. Overall, these media articles portrayed FBRs as undesirable relationships involving stressed women and emasculated men: a stigmatizing portrayal that could dissuade others from pursuing such relationships. / Graduate / 2021-04-08

The reproduction of the gender system and gender hierarchies is a well-researched area in society. However, there is a lack of research on gender relations in Swedish churches, more specifically in the Pentecostal movement. The aim of this essay is to use qualitative content analysis to examine four Christian podcasts known in the Swedish Pentecostal movement, to discover if they reproduce and/or challenge gender roles, hierarchies, and heteronormative sexuality. The essay identified three main categories: gendered characteristics, non-normative sexuality, and family life. The findings suggest that gender is reproduced in the four podcasts on different levels, both implicitly and explicitly, for example by assigning gender-specific characteristics to men and women and explaining that women are the weaker sex that men must take care of. The pastors/preachers in the podcasts also speak in a heteronormative way, excluding other sexualities or declaring other sexualities as sinful. Finally, the podcasts express the different roles of men and women in the home and family, with women being the caregivers and men being the authoritative influences needed to lead a family. Even though the national board of the Pentecostal movement in Sweden is explicitly concerned with gender issues, the essay shows that more needs to be done to influence preachers and pastors in the movement. The churches are active in many societies and reach many children in the communities with different activities. Therefore, it is important for teachers and other adults to be aware of the attitudes and perspectives on gender and sexuality that young people encounter in their everyday lives, and the essay can provide insight into the reproduction of norms in society. The findings of the essay can help teachers to create a more inclusive and stereotype-free classroom.

Despite the expressed need for bicultural teachers, research on teacher attrition has demonstrated that a growing number of bicultural educators are leaving the classroom. Bicultural male teachers, in particular, experience high rates of teacher attrition. Schools, unfortunately, are contexts in which Latino male teachers are constantly experiencing dilemmas related specifically to both their gendered and racialized positionality as males of color. Grounded in Antonia Darder’s critical bicultural framework, this autoethnographic study explored the complex factors that drive Latino male teachers out of the classroom, through an in-depth and grounded examination of a Latino male teacher who left the classroom. The study contributes to the conversation on bicultural teacher attrition, gendered relations, and their relationship to both teacher preparation and the education of bicultural students. Furthermore, the study explored how racism, sexism, classism, trauma, and heteronormativity mitigate the experiences of Latino male teachers, and how these manifest themselves through the hidden curriculum, asymmetrical relations of power, gendered essentialism, policing of behavior, the culture of silence, conditions of isolation, and disabling cultural response patterns. The implications of such factors in the life of one Latino male teacher are carefully analyzed and discussed, in an effort to consider their significance in rethinking teacher preparation programs, with respect to the needs of Latino males. Moreover, the study offers an engagement with critical autoethnography as a significant tool of reflection in the educational process and emancipatory process of bicultural teachers.

Kroppen, i termer av kroppsliga vardagserfarenheter och unga tjejers kroppsliga gestaltning av lik- eller olikartade erfarenheter, som uppvisas inom en nätkultur på bloggar om hälsa och träning har använts som empirisk och analytisk grund. Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur heteronormativ femininitet iscensätts, förhandlas och görs normerande i populära bloggar inom träning och hälsa samt varför de konsumeras av unga tjejer. Inledningsvis redogörs för en beskrivande bakgrund av moderna västerländska konsumtionssamhället och vad det kan innebära för individers identitetsarbete. Tidigare forskning inom området berör ungas förhållningssätt till kroppen, ideal och femininitet, kulturella framställningar av normer samt medier som verktyg för identitetsskapande. En netnografisk undersökning med text- och bildanalys har genomförts av tre stycken bloggar för både publicerat material och interaktiva delar, det vill säga bloggarens inlägg och läsarnas frågor och kommentarer. Tre grundläggande teman var specifikt framträdande i den funna empirin; tämjandet av kroppen, iscensättningen av heteronormativ femininitet samt konsumtion och klasskillnader. Vidare har analyser utgått ifrån grundläggande genusteorier som berör performativitet, klass, queerteorin, normalisering och makt och stereotyper och sociomentala relationer. Resultaten visar att tjejernas föreställningar om och iscensättningen av femininitet inom nätkulturen strukturerar såväl tankar som handlingar. Deras kroppar är eller strävar efter att vara bärare av viss slags ideal heteronormativ femininitet och kroppen fungerar som medium varigenom denna kan verka. Konsumtion och markörer visar sig vara medel som möjliggör iscensättningen och den ideala livsstilen. Relationen mellan skribenten och läsarna diskuteras i termer av makt, klass och expertkunskap. Diskussioner har även förts kring vilken betydelse och mening bloggarnas diskurser om femininitet och kroppsnormer kan ha för unga tjejers föreställningar om vad som krävs för att vara kvinna ”på rätt sätt” i dagens samhälle. / The human body, in terms of everyday experiences and young women’s body staging of similar or unequal experiences that is exposed among an Internet culture on lifestyle blogs about health and fitness has based the empiric analyses. The study aims to examine how young women practice and negotiate hetero normative femininity on popular blogs about health and fitness and what conveys girls’ interest to read and interact in these type of online communities. The main questions of the study concern what type of feminine body standards are negotiated and orchestrated in blogs consumed by young women, what messages and ideals about health are conveyed and communicated through text and images, what kind of femininity do the girls strive to achieve by active consumption of and communication in blogs and why is it desirable, what enables the staging and what legitimizes the writers position as a role model and how can young girl’s health as a discursive practice be analysed and related to a broader social perspective concerning norms and ideals. The theoretical framework of the study is based on gender theories such as performativity, class, queer theory, normativity, power and social control, stereotypes and sociomental relationships. The methodology for the study is a netnographic observation of three blogs with further text- and image analysis both for published material and interactive fragments - blog posts and readers’ comments and questions. The three main themes that were specifically disclosed in the results are modifying of the body, the implementation of hetero normative femininity according to ideal images and consumption and class disparities. The results are illustrating the girls’ notions and staging of a specific heteronormative femininity among the Internet culture. The ideas about the ideal female body and lifestyle can structure thoughts as well as actions. Consumption and various types of labels and markers are used as tools for enabling the staging of the ideal lifestyle. The relation between the writer and the readers has been discussed in aspects of power, class and expertise. Further analyses and discussions has been held in terms of the theoretical framework of the study.

The aim of this essay is to investigate whether fanfiction allows for liberation by disrupting traditional gender roles and if it can transcend the binary categorization of sex. This will be done by looking at the transformation of a heteronormative relationship into a homosexual one.

For over two decades, the inclusion of trans women in women’s spaces and organizations such as transition houses has been discussed and debated by women-only organizations, feminists, trans activists, and the broader public. Drawing on an interpretive description approach, my research examines the experiences of transition house counsellors (“counsellors”) who have worked with trans women accessing residential support. My research topic and questions emerged from my experience as a counsellor and are informed by a desire to better meet the needs of trans women affected by intimate partner violence (“IPV”), and to help fill gaps in available research, information, and practical resources to help service providers meet the needs of trans women affected by IPV. Specifically, my research questions are: (1) what challenges, opportunities, and insights do counsellors experience when working with trans women clients, and (2) how do counsellors adjust and adapt their practices in response to these challenges, opportunities, and insights when working with trans women accessing transition house support? Using purposive sampling, I recruited nine counsellors who have worked with trans women accessing transition house support. Data collection involved semi-structured in-depth-interviews of these participants to gain an understanding of their experiences and perspectives related to working with trans women accessing transition house support. Consistent with an interpretive description approach to research, I analyzed my data by drawing on both my experience as a counsellor and through thematic qualitative analysis. My research finds that participants unanimously supported the inclusion of trans women in transition house settings. While the majority of participants emphatically stated that they did not respond to trans women any differently than they did to cis women, my findings show that how participants responded to trans women was informed by how well they perceived a trans client’s gender expression to match her gender identity. As such, my analysis reveals that participants’ responses to trans women was mediated by their unconscious adoption of a broader dominant heteronormative cisgenderist IPV framework that operates at both an individual and institutional level. My research therefore highlights some of the limitations that affect trans women accessing transition house support when counsellors and organizations respond to IPV through a heteronormative cisgenderist framework. / Graduate