Sexes

Despite widespread support for comprehensive sex education (CSE), abstinence-focused education is the legally mandated standard in Florida public schools. Using a cross-sectional survey design, this study examined the relationship between sex education content and sexual knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors among 117 college students aged 18 to 25 attending predominantly one large Florida public university. Participants completed an anonymous online survey assessing demographics, sex education history, HIV/STI knowledge, sexual attitudes, and condom use. Contrary to expectations and some prior findings, there were no significant differences in HIV/STI knowledge, sexual attitudes, or condom use between students who reported receiving predominantly abstinence-only education (AOE) and those who reported receiving predominantly CSE. While challenging assumptions about the long-term effectiveness of CSE compared to AOE, the data suggest, in part, that the CSE label may be secondary to local implementation, personal experiences, and broader sociopolitical context, in influencing outcomes. Given Florida’s restrictive sex education and reproductive health policies, findings highlight the urgent need for more nuanced, context-sensitive research. Findings also emphasize the importance of evaluating not only the stated content but also the delivery, quality, and accessibility of sex education programs to better support youth sexual health.

Based on a qualitative health needs assessment with 31 diverse sex workers and 17 key stakeholders (including two mental health practitioners) in Victoria, Australia, this article adds to the emerging literature on stigma, sex work, and mental health. It does so by focusing on one element that plays a key role in determining sex workers’ experience of mental health support: whether they would disclose their sex work to a practitioner, why so, and what happens as a result. Our study finds that experiences and fears of being stigmatised by health practitioners when disclosing may prevent some sex workers from seeking professional mental health support in the first place and lead others to silence it or obfuscate; thus, potentially complicating access to safe and affirming mental healthcare. The value and role of disclosure is analysed in context by acknowledging the agency and ability of sex workers to understand, or take action in response to, their own mental health needs. Peer-to-peer support and solidarity are identified as key to sex workers’ mental well-being. Criminal restrictions on sex work are found to negatively impact sex workers’ access to mental healthcare. The findings from this study support ongoing efforts aimed at the full decriminalisation of sex work in order to improve sex workers’ access to high-quality mental health support, should they seek it, as well as the implementation of sensitivity training for mainstream mental health providers and the creation of reliable and accessible referral lists of sex worker-friendly mental healthcare providers.

Taboos differentially reinforce socially constructed gender and sexual hierarchies that affect the experiences of all people—women, men, queer, heterosexual, and transgender people. In Delhi, India, institutions of heteropatriarchy, buttressed by colonial history, reproduce and naturalize limits to the agency and economic autonomy of women and queer people. These intimate economics influence and are influenced by people making decisions regarding relationships and have broad repercussions in society. How do individuals and groups simultaneously question, remake, and enlarge gendered categories and experiences? Interviews with middle-class people are discussed in the context of scholarship that considers the social, political, and historical contexts of the region. Interview responses are triangulated with ethnographic participation in Delhi-based events that examine and confront aspects of heteropatriarchal regulation of people regarding categories of gender and sexual expression. Themes emerge regarding how people create and access knowledge, economic autonomy, relationships, and family formation. The conclusion discusses ways in which the erosion of taboos reveals changing roles and identities and how these changes affect the hierarchal gender binary, producing social tensions and paradoxes.