In this article I review 83 empirical studies that provide insight into the secondary school experiences of trans youth. The studies show that while some trans youth have affirming experiences, the ...majority are exposed to institutionalized cisnormativity that makes them vulnerable to macroaggressions, microaggressions and violence within school settings. Trans youth's exposure to institutionalized cisnormativity was found to intersect with multiple vectors of social power, which subject some trans youth to multiple forms of disadvantage, while affording others degrees of privilege. In conclusion, the findings show that trans youth's educational experiences reflect broader structural inequalities yet defy essentialising explanations.
In this article, we demonstrate how the theory of vulnerability-in-resistance is manifest in the school experiences of trans youth in Ireland. Despite rapidly changing cultural attitudes towards ...gender and sexuality diversity and increasing visibility of LGBTI+ youth, we show that trans youth in Ireland continue to be vulnerable to marginalisation, discrimination, and violence within school settings because of institutionalised cisnormativity. We explore how this vulnerability drives some trans youth to resist the conditions of their vulnerability. Strategies of resistance include naming their experience, mobilising their voice and building networks of solidarity. Enacting such resistances invariably exposes trans youth to harm but these same actions reveal their potentiality in disrupting and fragmenting educational cisnormativity.
There is a dearth of research with LGBTQI+ youth in PE and school sport, with particularly deep silences in relation to trans youth. Drawing from a qualitative study with trans and gender diverse ...youth in second-level schools in Ireland, this paper explores how trans and gender diverse young people are negotiating PE and school sport. A total of nineteen trans and gender diverse young people participated in this study; thirteen young people participated in semi-structured interviews while twelve young people took part in three arts-based workshops. In this paper, we home in on the modalities of inclusion experienced by trans and gender diverse young people as they navigated gendered classification and ordering practices in PE and school sport. Leaning on theoretical insights into the politics of inclusion for LGBTQI+ people, we demonstrate the limited effects of supporting trans and gender diverse young people via individualising methods of inclusion when PE and school-based sport are predicated so fundamentally on an intensely policed cis-heteronormative gender binary. Ultimately, the accounts of the young people in this study steer us towards the necessity to move beyond individualist modalities of inclusion and reimagine the architecture of gender at work in PE and school sport.
Abstract
This article presents a collaborative reflective‐thinking‐writing project that draws from the authors’ experiences of co‐productive and critical inquiry with children in the field of gender, ...sexualities and education. Integrating our collective concerns regarding how childhood can be negatively framed and policed within/through RSE, we explore how these ontological boundaries might be queered through a collective engagement with the possibilities for/of RSE that is affirmative, playful and co‐produced with, rather than for, children.
Men whose sexual behaviors place them at risk of HIV often exhibit a “cluster” of behaviors, including alcohol misuse and violence against women. Called the “Substance Abuse, Violence and AIDS (SAVA) ...syndemic,” this intersecting set of issues is poorly understood among heterosexual men in sub-Saharan Africa. We aim to determine cross-sectional associations between men's use of alcohol, violence, and HIV risk behaviors using a gendered syndemics lens. We conducted a baseline survey with men in an informal, peri-urban settlement near Johannesburg (Jan–Aug 2016). Audio-assisted, self-completed questionnaires measured an index of risky sex (inconsistent condom use, multiple partnerships, transactional sex), recent violence against women (Multicountry Study instrument), alcohol misuse (Alcohol Use Disorders Tool), and gender attitudes (Gender Equitable Men's Scale). We used logistic regression to test for syndemic interaction on multiplicative and additive scales and structural equation modeling to test assumptions around serially causal epidemics. Of 2454 men, 91.8% reported one or more types of risky sex. A majority of participants reported one or more SAVA conditions (1783, 71.6%). After controlling for socio-demographics, higher scores on the risky sex index were independently predicted by men's recent violence use, problem drinking, and inequitable gender views. Those men reporting all three SAVA conditions had more than 12-fold greater odds of risky sex compared to counterparts reporting no syndemic conditions. Each two-way interaction of alcohol use, gender inequitable views, and IPV perpetration was associated with a relative increase in risky sex on either a multiplicative or additive scale. A structural equation model illustrated that gender norms predict violence, which in turn predict alcohol misuse, increasing both IPV perpetration and risky sex. These data are consistent with a syndemic model of HIV risk among heterosexual men. Targeting intersections between syndemic conditions may help prevent HIV among heterosexual men in peri-urban African settings.
•Heterosexual men's risky sex overlaps with alcohol and violence against women.•We used a “gendered syndemic” lens to explore substance use, violence, and HIV/AIDS.•We found gender norms predict violence, which leads to alcohol and risky sex.•Targeting syndemics among heterosexual men may ensure health in peri-urban settings.•This is among the first papers to offer quantitative support for syndemic theory.
Although poverty is sometimes seen as a driver of intimate partner violence victimization, less is known about how it intersects with men's violence perpetration. Food insecurity is a sensitive ...marker of poverty that may have unique mechanisms leading to men's intimate partner violence perpetration given its association with gender roles and men “providing for the family.”
Using cluster-based sampling, the team conducted an audio-assisted questionnaire in 2016 among men living in a peri-urban settlement near Johannesburg, South Africa. The aim was to examine the relationship between men's food insecurity and their use of past-year intimate partner violence, and to explore the pathways linking these two conditions.
Among 2,006 currently partnered men, nearly half (48.4%) perpetrated intimate partner violence and more than half (61.4%) were food insecure. Food insecurity was associated with doubled odds of intimate partner violence (OR=2.15, 95% CI=1.73, 2.66). This association persisted after controlling for sociodemographics, relationship characteristics, and neighborhood clustering. In a structural equation model, food insecurity retained a direct relationship with men's violence perpetration and worked through indirect pathways of mental health and relationship quality.
Addressing men's perpetration of intimate partner violence may require examination of broader structural challenges, such as food insecurity. Future interventions should consider livelihood strategies alongside relationship and mental health approaches.
In this article I examine the advancement of therapeutic penality in the UK, a penal philosophy that reimagines prison policy, practices and environments utilising psychological knowledge. Adopting a ...historical approach, I show how modern therapeutic penality is linked to the emergence of personality science in the nineteenth century and the development of the democratic therapeutic community (DTC) model in the twentieth century. I outline how at the turn of the twenty‐first century a catalytic event generated a moral panic that led the British government to mobilise psychological knowledge and technologies in an attempt to manage dangerous people with severe personality disorder. Tracing subsequent developments, I argue psychological ways of talking, thinking and acting have obtained unparalleled salience in domains of penality and, in turn, radically transformed the conditions of imprisonment.
Depressive disorders contribute to health declines among young men, but little is known about how childhood trauma alongside poverty alters depressive symptoms in young adulthood. These life-course ...dynamics are particularly under-researched in African settings.
We assessed how childhood trauma and poverty were associated with depressive symptomology among young men (aged 18–30 years). Data were collected through community-based surveys in two peri-urban, South African settlements. Validated measures assessed childhood abuse, depressive symptomology, and food insecurity. Markers of childhood poverty and young adult socioeconomic predictors were also assessed.
A total of 2,427 young men reported low levels of income, food security, and education. One-third of the sample (39.2%) reported symptoms consistent with probable depression. The majority (76.9%) reported one or more forms of childhood abuse, which was predicted by childhood hunger. Compared with counterparts without childhood trauma, those with physical, sexual, or psychological childhood abuse had a higher risk of later depressive symptoms (adjusted odds ratio AOR=2.37,2.42,2.39, respectively). A fully saturated linear mixed model showed each form of childhood trauma predicted increased depressive symptomology in adulthood, with the combination of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse strongly predicting increased depressive symptoms (coef=6.78, 95%CI=5.78–8.17). In all models, childhood poverty and adult poverty independently predicted young adult depressive symptoms.
Household poverty may be a key reason that children experience abuse and, in turn, common mental disorders in young adulthood. Structural interventions for food security, employment, and parenting are essential to break the intergenerational nexus of poverty, trauma, and health in peri-urban settings.
Abstract
Women in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) often present to the health care system at advanced stages of breast cancer (BC), leading to poor outcomes. A lack of BC awareness and ...affordability issues are proposed as contributors to delayed presentation. In many areas of the world, however, women lack the autonomy to deal with their health needs due to restrictive gender norms. The role of gender norms has been relatively underexplored in the BC literature in LMICs and little is known about what men know about BC and how they are involved in women’s access to care. To better understand these factors, we conducted a qualitative descriptive study in South Africa. We interviewed 20 low-income Black men with current woman partners who had not experienced BC. Interviewees had limited knowledge and held specific misconceptions about BC symptoms and treatment. Cancer is not commonly discussed within their community and multiple barriers prevent them from reaching care. Interviewees described themselves as having a facilitative role in their partner’s access to health care, facets of which could inadvertently prevent their partners from autonomously seeking care. The findings point to the need to better consider the role of the male partner in BC awareness efforts in LMICs to facilitate prevention, earlier diagnosis and treatment.
Lay Summary
Women in undeveloped countries are often not diagnosed with breast cancer until the disease is already very severe. Some of the reasons for this include a lack of awareness about breast cancer and difficulty affording the costs of health care or the costs of transportation to a hospital or clinic. In many areas of the world, women also do not have the freedom to respond to their own health needs without having a male family member involved. However, we do not know very much about how men may be involved in women’s health care. To better understand this, we conducted a research study in which we talked to 20 South African men about what they knew about breast cancer and how they are involved in their partner’s health care decisions. Through talking to them, we found out that many did not know about breast cancer or had inaccurate information about it. The men reported that people in their community do not often talk about cancer. The men described themselves as having a positive influence on their partner’s health care decisions, but some of the things they reported doing might stop their partners from being able to access health care independently. Overall, we think that campaigns to raise awareness of breast cancer should consider how women’s partners may be involved in their health care.
Men's perpetration of intimate partner violence (IPV) limits gains in health and wellbeing for populations globally. Largely informal, rapidly expanding peri-urban settlements, with limited basic ...services such as electricity, have high prevalence rates of IPV. Evidence on how to reduce men's perpetration, change social norms and patriarchal attitudes within these settings is limited. Our cluster randomised controlled trial aimed to determine the effectiveness of the Sonke CHANGE intervention in reducing use of sexual and/or physical IPV and severity of perpetration by men aged 18-40 years over 2 years.
The theory-based intervention delivered activities to bolster community action, including door-to-door discussions, workshops, drawing on the CHANGE curriculum, and deploying community action teams over 18 months. In 2016 and 2018, we collected data from a cohort of men, recruited from 18 clusters; nine were randomised to receive the intervention, while the nine control clusters received no intervention. A self-administered questionnaire, using audio-computer assisted software, asked about sociodemographics, gender attitudes, mental health, and the use and severity of IPV. We conducted an intention-to-treat analysis at the cluster level comparing the expected risk to observed risk of using IPV while controlling for baseline characteristics. A secondary analysis used latent classes (LCA) of men to see whether there were differential effects of the intervention for subgroups of men.
Of 2406 men recruited, 1458 (63%) were followed to 2 years. Overall, we saw a reduction in men's reports of physical, sexual and severe IPV from baseline to endpoint (40.2% to 25.4%, 31.8% to 15.8%, and 33.4% to 18.2%, respectively). Intention-to-treat analysis showed no measurable differences between intervention and control clusters for primary IPV outcomes. Difference in the cluster-level proportion of physical IPV perpetration was 0.002 (95% confidence interval CI - 0.07 to 0.08). Similarly, differences between arms for sexual IPV was 0.01 (95% CI - 0.04 to 0.06), while severe IPV followed a similar pattern (Diff = 0.01; 95% CI - 0.05 to 0.07). A secondary analysis using LCA suggests that among the men living in intervention communities, there was a greater reduction in IPV among less violent and more law abiding men than among more highly violent men, although the differences did not reach statistical significance.
The intervention, when implemented in a peri-urban settlement, had limited effect in reducing IPV perpetrated by male residents. Further analysis showed it was unable to transform entrenched gender attitudes and use of IPV by those men who use the most violence, but the intervention showed promise for men who use violence less.
ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT02823288. Registered on 30 June 2016.
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