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Start date: 2020Subject: search.filters.subject.Sexual behavior

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    Examining the discursive landscape of women's sexual desire and implications for sexual subjectivity : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2025-10-28) Tappin, Jessica
    Sexual desire and pleasure can be an “awkward” subject to bring up in conversation, many choosing to ignore it completely, or relegate it to the private realm. Yet, our media landscape is filled with various representation of sex that fundamentally shape the way we can think about, speak about, and enact expressions of sexual desire. A substantial corpus of feminist research suggests that discursive representations of sexual desire are highly gendered and heteronormative. These researchers have mapped cultural and social constructions of women’s sexual desire, tracing its portrayal as, for example, absent, relational, and aligned with postfeminist discourses of sexual agency. Previous scholarship has considered how these discourses are circulated within talk, and through mainstream media. A research gap remains in considering alternative feminist media, and psychological literature as sites that circulate discourses of sexual desire. The central aim of this thesis is to determine how women’s sexual desire is constructed across three sites of discourse circulation: (a) mainstream media, (b) alternative media, and (c) psychological literature, how prevalent discourses are supported, transformed, and resisted, as well as the implications for women’s sexual subjectivity and sexual agency. Foucauldian-informed discourse analysis was conducted with each set of textual data collected from those sites. Specifically, 75 advice columns or articles from mainstream media websites, 55 articles from alternative feminist publications, and 12 published articles from psychological and therapeutic journals. Key findings from these analyses indicate that (i) an essentialist biological discourse of desire is prevalent, shaping women’s sexual subjectivity in relation to men, (ii) many discourses and sexual subjectivities on offer within the texts are highly heteronormative and restrict agency outside of a narrow prescription of appropriate desire, (iii) a neoliberal incitement for women to reflect on and work on themselves in various ways underscored much of the data, and (iiii) alternative media texts provided opportunities for resistance of heterosexual norms, along with a broadening understanding of what desire is and can be for women.
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    What counts as consent? : sexuality and ethical deliberation in residential aged care : final project report 19 November 2020
    (Massey University, 2020) Henrickson, Mark; Schouten, Vanessa; Cook, Catherine; McDonald, Sandra; Atefi, Narges (Nilo)
    This report is intended as a summary of the three-year Royal Society Marsden Fund-funded project “What counts as consent: Sexuality and ethical deliberation in residential aged care” (MAU-1723). The project was funded for the period March 2018 to February 2021. The aim of the project is to interrogate and inform conceptualisations of consent in the domain of sexuality and intimacy in residential aged care. The project completed and exceeded all recruitment and participation goals. While there is a general consensus that sexuality is an intrinsic part of human identity, intimacy and sexuality in aged care remain misunderstood and contested issues. This is particularly so in respect of older persons living with dementia. Gender and sexually diverse communities constitute a significant invisible and invisibilised minority in residential aged care (RAC), and that invisibility means their intimacy needs remain largely unknown and unacknowledged. There are cultural issues in aged care unique to New Zealand: for instance, while 85 percent of residential aged care facility (RACF) residents identify as European and an estimated 5.5 percent are Mäori, 44 percent of staff identify as other than European, including 10 percent who identify as Mäori, and 10 percent Pasifika. The dominant position in the theoretical literature on the ethics of sex and intimacy is that consent is of fundamental importance. Consent has dominated not just the theoretical discourse but also public and legal discourses about the ethics of sex and therefore carers and staff make decisions based on the management of institutional risk rather than the wellbeing of the resident. Vulnerabilisation of older persons in order to protect them, however well-intended, effectively robs them of possibilities to exercise self-governance, depersonalises them, and increases their social isolation. How sexual consent in particular is conceptualised has significant ethical implications for the growing number of elders in Aotearoa New Zealand who are living with degrees of cognitive decline. The specific contribution of this project is to interpret how aged care stakeholders (residents, families, and staff) make sense of consent, to contribute substantively to ethical theory around consent, sexuality, and intimacy, and to inform practice and policy in aged care environments. The project interrogates and intends to inform conceptualisations of consent in the domain of sexuality and intimacy in residential aged care. Our goals were: (1) to analyse how people are making decisions in practice about sex and intimacy in aged care; and (2) to use this information to inform the literature on ethical theory and discourses on consent and wellbeing.
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    Resource allocations of Ephestia kuehniella Zeller (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) in response to socio-sexual environment during immature and adult stages : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Entomology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2023) Liu, Junyan
    Animals adjust their investment in different life history traits according to their surroundings to maximise their fitness. Using a polygamous insect, the Mediterranean flour moth Ephestia kuehniella Zeller, which produces fertile eupyrene and infertile apyrene sperm, I investigated resource allocation strategies employed by males in response to socio-sexual cues during the adult and juvenile stages. I demonstrate that adult males raised their lifetime production and ejaculation of both eupyrenes and apyrenes after detecting either acoustic or chemical cues from adult rivals with combined cues strengthening such response, and that rival-experienced males could remember the sperm competition risk for most of their reproductive life. I manipulated juvenile socio-sexual settings and then examined their sperm production and ejaculation as well as survival, body and testis size, and mating behaviour. I provided the first evidence that juvenile social cues from conspecific larvae, pupae or adults had lasting impacts on lifetime sperm production and allocation. Adults from group-reared larvae, regardless of sex ratio, had smaller testes but produced more eupyrenes at emergence than from singly reared ones, and that body size and apyrene numbers remained the same across treatments. Male pupae had similar testis size but increased production of both eupyrenes and apyrenes at emergence in response to cues from conspecific pupae irrespective of sex. Late instar male larvae were able to detect cues from adult rivals and subsequently produced more sperm of both types at emergence, but adult cues had no effect on body and testis size. Juvenile socio-sexual environment had significant effects on sperm production and ejaculation during adult stage. My study indicates that after their late instar larvae were exposed to juvenile or adult rivals, adults produced and ejaculated more eupyrenes and apyrenes in their lifetime and had shorter mating latency. However, rival exposure had no effect on males’ mating frequency and longevity. Knowledge generated here enhances our understanding of how males of a polygamous insect calibrate their resource investment in response to dynamic social environment.
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    ‘Porn literacy’ as pedagogy? : key stakeholder perspectives on understanding and responding to young people's engagement with internet pornography : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2021) Healy-Cullen, Siobhán
    Youth encounters with Internet pornography (IP) have led to global concern regarding the healthy sexual socialisation of youth. A growing body of critical research recognises young people as agentic political actors in their sexual socialisation with legitimate knowledge of their own experiences, and seeks to understand their perspectives alongside those of influential adults in their lives. Grounded in social constructionist thinking, my research extends this emerging body of knowledge. I investigate how key stakeholders (16-18-year-olds, caregivers, and educators) account for and discursively construct youth engagement with IP, and explore their perspectives on porn literacy education. The central premise of this scholarship is to determine how such knowledge might translate positively for young people through sexuality education that recognises their lived realities. Key stakeholders were recruited from nine schools across the North Island of Aotearoa, New Zealand. A mixed-methods design was employed over sequential phases, comprising an online survey (N = 484), a Q-sort (N = 30), and semi-structured interviews (N = 24). Descriptive statistical analyses of the survey data provided a preliminary understanding of youth engagement with IP; a specialised software programme assisted with factor analysis for the Q-methodological study investigating perspectives towards porn literacy education; and interview data were analysed by means of a critical thematic analysis, drawing on a feminist discursive approach to sexual scripting theory. Key research findings are presented across four research articles and indicate that; (i) (gendered) youth engagement with IP is commonplace, and there are varied understandings between stakeholder groups and across genders as to why and how these encounters occur, (ii) youth take up agentic positions that suggest they are active, legitimate sexual citizens, and adults generally harbour concerns about recognising youth in this way, and (iii) the construction of childhood innocence dubiously positions youth as uncritical, ‘at risk’ viewers of IP. Accordingly, protectionist adult intervention is justified and conceptualised in accordance with this construction of youth. My research highlights dominant and alternative constructions about youth sexuality, and describes the synergies and discrepancies across key stakeholder perspectives about youth engagement with IP. Importantly, my findings suggest some youth engage with IP in a more nuanced manner than typically assumed. Through gaining a comprehensive understanding of stakeholders' perspectives, the findings of my research expand scholarly knowledge by providing practical inquiry into the potential of porn literacy as pedagogy.