Culture, Health & Sexuality最新文献

In this paper, we present data about how young adult writers respond to the criteria for, and examples of, healthy pornography. Data derive from a textual analysis prepared by four young adult writers aged 18-25 years, who were the majority of authors of this paper. They were recruited by the first author who circulated a call for expressions of interest on what was then called Twitter. The co-authors were paid A$500 to prepare 500 words of textual analysis on criteria for healthy pornography and four websites that were suggested by an expert panel as possibly supporting healthy sexual development for young adults. We then subjected these data to a meta-textual analysis to draw out key insights. Our perspectives on healthy pornography included poetry, activist writing and academic writing. The findings make clear the diversity of ideas and thoughts about this topic among 18-25-year-olds. This demonstrates the creativity of human interpretation, and how this informs the ways in which we engage with, make sense of and make use of pornography.

Religion contributes to the identity, well-being, and life satisfaction of many people globally, however, its traditional stance on infertility and assisted reproductive technologies (ART) can conflict with individuals' personal reproductive aspirations and desire for a family. As the fertility rates of certain ethnic and religious groups decline, it is essential to discuss the interface between religion, infertility and ART, to understand how to best navigate the infertility journeys of proclaimed Christians. This article contextualises this discussion in the experiences of eight Pacific Christian adults living with infertility and/or accessing ART in Aotearoa New Zealand. Participants expressed the importance of having family members or a partner with them on their infertility journey. Although their religious beliefs elicited a sense of shame and hindered their confident participation in ART services, religion also provided access to a supportive community and a strong sense of hope. Culture was another significant influence on their infertility journeys but could be burdensome and a source of internal conflict. Improving ART strategies for service engagement with Pacific communities is an important first step towards ensuring these services are accessible and responsive to individuals' cultural and religious needs.

The article utilised a perspective grounded in new materialism and agential realism to understand and explore China's jiese community (whose members commit to abstaining from masturbation and pornography). Data were collected through online ethnography and semi-structured interviews with 11 self-identified jieyou, conducted between 2021 and 2023 via the online Abstinence Bar and the Zhengqi mobile application. Study findings revealed that the occurrence of jiese behaviours and the development of an abstainer identity are not solely driven by individual agency but by dynamic intra-actions between individual subjectivity and multiple material factors. Importantly, jiese cannot be disentangled from specific material factors and contextual conditions. It emerges as the outcome of the intra-actions between technology, culture, the body, and the environment, while also representing a dynamic process of subjectivity co-constituted with these materialities within a particular context. Ultimately jiese is perhaps best understood as a condition or 'situation'. Lastly, study findings highlight how materiality not only possesses the agency to shape subjective behaviour but also that the subject, through reflection and practice, actively adapts to and reshapes itself within the constraints of materiality. This process facilitates the integration of materiality and subjectivity, through a co-constitutive and dynamic interplay.

Transgender and other gender minoritised individuals have lower human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine completion rates than the general population, and little is known about how gender minoritised young adults perceive and experience HPV vaccination. The aim of this study was to characterise perceptions of, experiences with, and recommendations to facilitate access to HPV vaccination among transgender and other gender minoritised assigned female at birth (AFAB) young adults in the greater Boston area. In 2020, in-depth interviews were conducted in Boston with a purposive community sample of 34 transgender and other gender minoritised AFAB young adults aged 18-26. Thematic analysis was used to examine participants' HPV vaccine perceptions and experiences. Participants reported that gendered representations of the HPV vaccine, lack of relevant HPV vaccine education, and previous negative experiences with healthcare led to low prioritisation of, and at times avoidance of, HPV vaccination. Participants had inadequate and at times inaccurate understandings of the HPV vaccine and called for increased education of the public and healthcare providers on HPV vaccination for this vulnerable population. Targeted interventions providing transgender and other gender minoritised AFAB individuals with culturally responsive care and tailored information about the HPV vaccine are needed.

Vaginal steaming, a practice rooted in traditional medicine and popularised in wellness culture, has gained both biomedical concern and social interest. Although often framed as medically risky or scientifically unfounded, little is known about how Black women in the USA, whose reproductive health experiences are shaped by systemic neglect, commodification, and historical trauma, perceive this practice. Guided by a Black feminist lens, this qualitative study explored perceptions of vaginal steaming among eight Black women aged 23 to 70 through semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis. While only one participant had personal experience with vaginal steaming, all offered layered appraisals of the practice. Two central themes were evident: negotiating meaning and risk; and pathways of knowledge and influence. Participants expressed mixed perspectives with some viewing vaginal steaming as potentially empowering or restorative, while others questioned its safety, cost, and medical credibility. Information about vaginal steaming circulated primarily through interpersonal and digital networks, in which women engaged critically with wellness messages rather than accepting them unexamined. Findings suggest that US Black women's engagement with vaginal steaming reflects broader processes of autonomy, collective knowledge making, and critical navigation of consumer wellness culture insights that can inform more culturally responsive sexual and reproductive health communication.

Vietnam is ranked among the countries with the highest abortion rates globally. However, there is limited data on how Vietnamese media and audience frame abortion. To fill the knowledge gap, this study analysed 198 articles about abortion from ten major Vietnamese online newspapers published between 1 January 2019 and 31 December 2024; and 888 readers' comments from those articles. Grounded in framing theory and the Health Belief Model (HBM), this study employed content analysis to explore the media and audience frames of abortion and Chi-squared tests to examine the linkage between them. The study found five dominant abortion frames in online newspapers: 'threat', 'cues to action', 'criticism', 'self-efficacy', and 'barriers'. Four dominant audience frames include 'criticism and moral judgement', 'solutions and cues to action', 'sympathy', and 'threat'. While online newspapers have incorporated nearly all HBM constructs into their framing, these frames were not frequently adopted by the audience, suggesting that HBM-related media messages do not have a direct influence on public perceptions of abortion. Practice implications for journalists and health communicators to create a more balanced and positive media framing of abortion are discussed as a means of enhancing reproductive health knowledge and minimising the incidence of unsafe abortion.

Infertility in African contexts is a socially embedded condition, intricately tied to kinship structures, gendered identities and the preservation of lineage. This qualitative study drew on interviews with eleven participants, comprising one couple, one man and six women in Zimbabwe as well as three Black African migrant women (two Zimbabwean, one Nigerian) living in Aotearoa New Zealand. It examined how perceptions of infertility are shaped by kinship connections and moral claims across borders. Guided by a relational autonomy framework, the research highlights reproduction as a sphere deeply shaped by kinship ties (hukama/ubuhlobo), principles of ubuntu and the accompanying obligations, expectations and moral judgements that arise within these social relationships. Findings highlight three key sets of issues: internalised moral scrutiny; the ambivalent nature of kin intervention; and transnational tactics - illustrating how reproduction is shaped by both personal aspirations and collective pressures. Findings shows that reproductive agency emerge through negotiated, relational processes rather than individual choice, thereby extending relational autonomy theory through an African moral lens, and demonstrating how infertility is lived, negotiated and moralised across transnational kinship spaces. The research highlights the need for policy and practice to pay greater attention to the ethical and relational dimensions of reproductive experiences.

In the context of the protracted humanitarian crisis, continuing armed conflict and large-scale displacement in Gaza, menstrual health remains one of the most neglected aspects of women's well-being. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 18 displaced Gazan women, this study explores how structural violence, poverty and displacement intersect to shape menstrual health experiences. Women reported limited access to safe menstrual products, inadequate sanitation facilities and deep-rooted stigma that intensified both physical discomfort and emotional distress. Using the lenses of structural violence and ecological systems theory, the study situates menstrual health insecurity as a critical human rights issue and a core concern of social work practice in humanitarian contexts. By engaging with debates in critical menstruation studies, the analysis highlights how the politicisation of the female body in Gaza transforms menstruation into a site of both vulnerability and resistance. Findings underscore the need for integrated social work responses that combine the provision of menstrual materials, psychosocial support and advocacy for menstrual justice within war-affected settings.

This article examines the reproductive anxieties of girls and young women in rural Mthwalume, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, which is a context marked by high fertility expectations and limited access to confidential, non-judgemental, accessible, developmentally responsive, youth-friendly reproductive health care. Guided by African feminist and social constructionist frameworks, we analyse how fears surrounding contraception, fertility, and bodily change are shaped by intersecting cultural, institutional, and gendered pressures. Drawing on narrative data from 14 semi-structured interviews and 12 focus group discussions with 48 school-going girls aged 15-18 years, we show that reproductive anxiety is not a product of misinformation but a rational, affective response to contradictory discourses that construct motherhood as both expected and shameful. The study contributes a Global South feminist perspective on reproductive anxiety and calls for contextually grounded, dignity-affirming approaches to adolescent sexual and reproductive health.

This paper examines how professional dominatrices in the Czech Republic construct symbolic boundaries in their online profiles in relation to other forms of sex work and how they sometimes construct BDSM (bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism, and masochism) services as separate (post-sexual) practices that differ from traditional sex work. It focuses on the online self-presentation of women providing paid professional BDSM services in the Czech Republic. An analysis of 70 profiles of professional dominatrices on an online platform specialising in BDSM services was conducted, and the profiles were classified using Bourdieu's theory of symbolic boundaries into four categories reflecting varying levels of symbolic differentiation. Complementing this approach, a Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis identified five key discourses as articulated in the textual self-presentations of the profiles, focusing on biopower, knowledge, ethics, discipline, and the symbolic distinction of BDSM services from other commercial forms of sexual labour. Conducted in the first half of 2025, this study demonstrates how professional dominatrices actively construct and maintain symbolic boundaries through the language used within their profiles, contributing to post-sexual discourses in BDSM services and to distinctive forms of discursive and symbolic differentiation.