Young men experience daily struggles to live up to an American ideal of masculinity that does not leave room for emotion, tenderness, and respect for their sexual partners – and they are beginning to reject this ideal outright. In this study I give young men the space and freedom to talk openly about sex in general and their sexual experiences in particular, with the goal of ascertaining how their talk illustrates and impacts their performance of masculinity. I employed a qualitative approach, including focus groups consisting of college men of all sexual orientations, and a comprehensive survey regarding their sexual experience. The focus groups were shaped by three primary questions: to whom do you talk about sex, what do you talk about when you talk about sex, and how do you talk about sex? I analyzed transcripts from the focus groups using sociolinguistics and narrative theory, and found that the participants feel restricted by hegemonic masculinity and constrained by societal expectations for their sexual behavior. The young men in this study express their frustration via their language, both with the words they use and those words they choose not to use. Of special importance in this study is a focus on men of color, and how their experience and their language are shaped by their exclusion from hegemonic masculinity. A deeper understanding of the ways in which young men talk about sex and thus how they perform masculinity within sexuality will allow us to have a better picture of the role of language and communication in their experiences as sexual beings. With an increased understanding of the experience of young men, we might be able to help young men to feel more open about expressing themselves, to lead healthier sex lives, and to reduce rates of non-consensual sexual activity.

The present thesis is about shifting narrations of desire, changing stories of family, sexuality, and the self uttered by same-sex desiring women in contemporary Greece. It is chronologically situated from the end of the I 970s —when a feminist and lesbian discourse, mainly Western imported, emerged in Greece- up to the present, and is primarily based in Athens, the capital city, and Eressos, a summer resort on the island of Lesvos. Narrations of desire should be examined in relation to the specific socio-cultural contexts in which they appear, since they are largely depending on the specificities of each society and shaped by local cultures. In Greece this context is formed by the significance of family, kinship and the importance of motherhood, and the influence of Western imported discourses on lesbianism and same-sex sexualities. From the end of the lOs onwards, a lesbian movement began to emerge in Greece, groups were formed, articles were published, bars were opened and Eressos was established as an international lesbian meeting place. Yet, same-sex desiring women's participation in the so-called 'lesbian scene' is relatively small and they are reluctant to adopt the term 'lesbian' for their self-identification. The reason is that, although recent global and economic forces enabled the diffusion of global identities and the transformation of intimacy beyond the homo/hetero divide, the way such changes are accepted, negated and negotiated in each society is intrinsically related to traditional and more dominant stories on gender and sexuality. In Greece such stories are imbued with the imperatives of marriage and procreation. Therefore new narrations of desire and stories of the self are being uttered, but they do not claim for a lesbian identity nor do they claim for a gender deconstniction, according to the Western example. What they are about is the claim for the recognition of an autonomous desire, a desire which is independent of men or the acquisition of children, the right to be one's self and to be recognized as a whole person. Due to the importance of family and kinship ties these stories are told not in public but in the privacy of homes and usually when parents are absent. But even if daughters feel 'brave' enough to speak about their lives, desires and hopes, there are parents, -especially mothers acting as guardians of domestic order-, who refuse to listen, with the outcome that silence enhances itself as the primary means for sustaining family relations.

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The aim of this study is to critically examine the experiences of disabled gay men who have accessed Manchester's commercial gay space known locally as the 'Village'. The thesis provides an initial exploration of how, in recent years, there has been an increasing rejection of the dominant medical and deficit based conceptualisation of disability. Many academics researching in this area have proposed a model of 'thinking' about disability that explicitly rejects the notion that it arises from any essentialist biological origin and have sought to highlight how it is society that disables people and not their bodies. This change of focus from the body to society has led to the development of the specific academic discipline that is today called 'Disability Studies'. Concentrating on this discipline, the thesis critically explores the dominant model for understanding disability; 'the social model of disability' and suggests that, in relation to disabled gay men, this model may only provide limited conceptual usefulness. Following on from this, an alternative conceptualisation of disability is provided that seeks to 'propose an embodied, rather than disembodied, notion of disability' (Hughes and Patterson 1997:326). Adopting such an approach, the research, through an interpretative analysis of narratives provided by 12 disabled gay men who have spent time in Manchester's commercial gay space, explores how the participants have come to understand the space and their positions within in it. The findings of the research indicate that these men viewed the Village as a space that they are both explicitly and implicitly denied access to. The participants discuss what they see as the bodily attributes that men are required to possess in order to gain access to the space. They go on to describe how a form of 'gay obsession' with bodily perfection, youthfulness, physical prowess and sexual imagery all act as regulatory agents enforcing what many perceived to be the unattainable 'entry requirements' of the space.

This thesis discusses the relation between the Islamic tradition and sexuality, while focusing on sources of the Sunni Islam. It quotes from the Qur'an, hadiths, classical works of the Islamic jurisprudence and various fatwas. It deals with sexual aspects of the marital relationship, including the polygyny, with partners' rights and duties in the intime life and also with limitations given for choosing a partner. It also deals with allowed sexual relationship with slave-girl and forbidden sexual relationships like adultery or homosexual activities. It discusses the ritual purity related to sexual activities and menstruation and it also discusses male and female circumcision. It specifies a male nakedness and female nakedness and analyzes the right for pleasure and orgasm and discusses some sexual practices like coitus interruptus, masturbation or oral and anal sex. In case sof forbidden relationships, activities and practices it describes punishments.

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This project seeks to understand anxious and fearful responses to the Zika virus and microcephaly that began circulating widely in February, 2016. My project works to uncover racial histories embedded in the contemporary scientific and medical practice of measuring head circumference. By arguing that microcephaly is a racialized metric of civilizational and human development, I show that responses to Zika’s proliferation invoke state security because Global Northern states imagine microcephaly as a developmental, economic, and cultural lag. Dominant scientific and medical characterizations of microcephaly constitute modern, developed states as such by making political conceptions of normalcy and capacity seem natural: microcephaly is marked as “abnormal” in the scientific literature that instructs the measurement, surveillance, and diagnosis developmental and cognitive disabilities. Seemingly disparate contemporary moments and histories–among them the 2016 Rio Olympics, histories of racial purity and contamination, phrenology, and eighteenth-century racialized notions of sexuality—are inextricably linked to ideals and practices of white, bourgeois subjectivity. Like the diagnostic category of microcephaly, these ideals and practices are inherently unstable and insecure: they cannot exist nor materialize without the economic and social exploitation of racialized and disabled populations.

This study explores college students’ attitudes towards hookup culture, and how these attitudes potentially shift over their four years in college. More specifically, I examine how being a student at a women’s liberal arts college influences students’ interactions with the hookup culture, and how the education they receive shapes these interactions. I conducted in-depth interviews with 11 students at Scripps College, all in the spring semester of their senior year. I investigate themes including: pluralistic ignorance, sex positivity and female empowerment, criticisms of gendered stereotypes, and race and class dynamics within the hookup culture.