Journal Articles

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/7915

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    Transgender healthcare, telehealth, venture capital and community
    (Intellect, 2023-07-31) Easterbrook-Smith G
    Accessing reliable and competent gender-affirming medical care is often difficult for transgender people. FOLX is a telehealth and pharmaceutical delivery start-up which launched in late 2020, primarily offering gender-affirming hormone therapy for a monthly fee. FOLX’s marketing makes extensive use of social media and online influencers, and the company frequently highlights a goal of being created ‘by and for’ transgender people. This article examines FOLX’s deployment of narratives of community, collectivity, unmet need and commercial opportunity, examining the company’s website, social media posts and media coverage and interviews with the founder. Ultimately, it argues that while the core business offering of FOLX meets a need for a marginalized and underserved population, their deployment of narratives about community support should be regarded with some scepticism. These narratives appear in some cases to co-opt community values of collectivity, mutual aid and support for the benefit of venture capital firms.
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    Sex Workers’ Online Humor as Evidence of Resilience
    (MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 2023-06-07) Easterbrook-Smith G; Benoit CM; Mellor A; Rowland DL
    Sex workers’ humor has received comparatively little attention in the literature to date, and work that does consider this phenomenon focuses on humor in face-to-face contexts. Increasingly, elements of sex workers’ labor and community building take place online. This article examines the emergence of sex work humor in online spaces, considering how this humor provides evidence of resilience within this community. The article uses a critical discourse analysis approach blended with a cultural studies lens to examine 171 discrete texts drawn from sex work communities in Australia and New Zealand. These include social media postings from peer-led organizations and correspondence between sex workers and their clients, which was profiled in news media during the COVID-19 lockdowns. The humor evident within these texts falls into three major categories: humor about clients; humor as a mechanism of discussing stigma and discrimination; and humor as an agent of activism and social change. The findings indicate that humor can be evidence of resilience among sex-working communities, that it is politically productive and effective from a communications perspective, and present the possibility that it may also contribute to resilience. The presence of humor in online sex work spaces of sociality further highlights the importance of these spaces for community building, and draws attention to additional harms created by deplatforming.
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    What discourses shape and reshape men's experiences of accessing mental health support?
    (John Wiley and Sons Australia, Ltd, 2024-04-10) Ferris-Day P; Harvey C; Minton C; Donaldson A
    The research employs a single embodied case study design with the aim to examine the discourse of men accessing and receiving mental health support alongside those who are the providers of the support. Three groups of adults were interviewed: men who had experienced mental health problems and had attempted to access mental health support; lay people who supported them, such as partners and non-mental health professionals and professionals, such as mental health nurses, social workers, clinical psychologists and general practitioners. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is used to identify discourses around three emergent themes: well-being, power and dominance and social capital. Participants seeking mental health support often referred to mental health services as not listening or that what was offered was not useful. A lack of belonging and community disconnectedness was apparent throughout all participant interviews. The study is reported according to the COREQ guidelines.