CJHS Abstracts: Vol 20(3) 2011

The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality (CJHS)

Volume 20, Number 3, 2011
Middle school students’ perceptions of the quality of the sexual health education received from their parents Lyndsay R. Foster¹, E. Sandra Byers¹, and Heather A. Sears¹ ¹ Department of Psychology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB This study examined predictors of middle school students’ perceptions of the quality of the sexual health education (SHE) they had received from their parents. Participants were 599 (53% girls) adolescents in grades 6, 7 and 8 who completed a survey at school. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that students’ perceptions of higher quality school-based SHE and parents’ more frequent encouragement of questions about sexuality contributed uniquely to perceptions of higher quality SHE by parents. Adolescent characteristics did not contribute uniquely. The implications of these results for parents’ sexual communication with their adolescents during the middle school years are discussed (The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 2011: 20, 55-66). Condom use among East and Southeast Asian men attending a gay bathhouse in Toronto Maurice Kwong-Lai Poon ¹³, Josephine Pui-Hing Wong ²³, Noulmook Sutdhibhasilp³, Peter Trung-Thu Ho³4 and Bernard Wong5 ¹ School of Social Work, York University, Toronto, ON ² Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON ³ Asian Community AIDS Services, Toronto, ON 4 Regent Park Community Health Centre, Toronto, ON 5 Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto, ON Prior research has shown that a large number of men who go to bathhouses engage in unprotected anal sex and have multiple sex partners. Relatively little is known about the behaviour and experiences of East and Southeast Asian men visiting bathhouses. The present study surveyed 101 men of East and Southeast Asian origin who attended a gay bathhouse in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The objective was to document their HIV-testing history, likelihood of condom use during anal sex with casual partners and to identify their reasons for using or not using condoms. Participants’ HIV-testing history indicated that 15.8% had never been tested and 23.5% were last tested 2-4 years ago or more. About one quarter of the 86 men who had casual sex in the six months prior to the survey said they did not always use a condom. Forty-three percent of the men who had not used condoms for anal intercourse on one or more occasions indicated that “Sex partner looked healthy; should be OK” and “Got carried away in the excitement of the moment” as reasons why a condom was not used. HIV prevention efforts for this population need to address issues regarding accessibility of HIV testing and the provision of accurate and culturally relevant information about the importance of condom use (The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 2011: 20, 67-74). Taking casual sex not too casually: Exploring definitions of casual sexual relationships Jocelyn J. Wentland¹ and Elke D. Reissing¹ ¹ School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON Researchers are beginning to explore the variety of casual sexual relationships that individuals engage in. These relationships, and the subtle nuances that differentiate them, have not been studied collectively. The purpose of the present study was to qualitatively examine casual sexual relationships (CSRs), ranging from a single encounter to an ongoing sexual relationship with a friend. Male and female focus group participants identified a number of implicit and explicit rules that guide the initiation, maintenance, and termination of four types of casual sexual relationships: One Nights Stands, Booty Calls, Fuck Buddies, and Friends with Benefits. Participants identified these rules regardless of gender or whether they had previous personal experience with any of these CSRs. The results suggest that each of these relationship types can be placed on a continuum of casual sex according to various dimensions, including frequency of contact, type of contact (sexual and/or social), personal disclosure, discussion of the relationship, and friendship. Participants’ shared understanding of CSRs suggests that young adults may have common cultural knowledge of these relationships and a fluid conceptualization of what constitutes a relationship (The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 2011: 20, 75-91). Category-specificity and sexual concordance: The stability of sex differences in sexual arousal patterns Kelly D. Suschinsky¹ and Martin L. Lalumière¹ ¹ Department of Psychology, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, AB The sexual arousal patterns of men and women differ in two ways. First, men’s genital arousal and self-reported sexual arousal are “category-specific”, such that different stimuli elicit different degrees of arousal. Women’s self-reported sexual arousal is, like men’s, category-specific, but their genital arousal is “category-nonspecific”, because they show similar genital responses to different sexual stimuli. Second, men’s “sexual concordance”, or the relationship between genital arousal and self-reported sexual arousal, is higher than women’s. Although these sex differences are consistent across studies, there has been little research on the stability of these differences within the same sample. In the present study, 20 men and 18 women participated in two experimental sessions one month apart, in which they listened to sexual and nonsexual audiotaped narratives while their genital arousal and self-reported sexual arousal were measured. The expected sex differences were found in both sessions; men’s genital arousal was more category-specific than women’s, and their sexual concordance was higher than women’s. Men and women did not show significantly different self-reported sexual arousal in either session. Correlational analyses revealed little stability for genital arousal category-specificity and sexual concordance at the individual level for women. Overall, the results suggest that the expected sex differences in sexual arousal patterns were stable across testing sessions. This finding lends additional support for the validity of such differences although further research is required to better understand the stability of sexual arousal patterns at the individual level (The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 2011: 20, 93-108).

Volume 20, Number 3, 2011

Middle school students’ perceptions of the quality of the sexual health education received from their parents

Lyndsay R. Foster¹, E. Sandra Byers¹, and Heather A. Sears¹
¹ Department of Psychology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB

This study examined predictors of middle school students’ perceptions of the quality of the sexual health education (SHE) they had received from their parents. Participants were 599 (53% girls) adolescents in grades 6, 7 and 8 who completed a survey at school. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that students’ perceptions of higher quality school-based SHE and parents’ more frequent encouragement of questions about sexuality contributed uniquely to perceptions of higher quality SHE by parents. Adolescent characteristics did not contribute uniquely. The implications of these results for parents’ sexual communication with their adolescents during the middle school years are discussed (The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 2011: 20, 55-66).

Condom use among East and Southeast Asian men attending a gay bathhouse in Toronto

Maurice Kwong-Lai Poon ¹³, Josephine Pui-Hing Wong ²³, Noulmook Sutdhibhasilp³,
Peter Trung-Thu Ho³4 and Bernard Wong5

¹ School of Social Work, York University, Toronto, ON
² Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON
³ Asian Community AIDS Services, Toronto, ON
4 Regent Park Community Health Centre, Toronto, ON
5 Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto, ON

Prior research has shown that a large number of men who go to bathhouses engage in unprotected anal sex and have multiple sex partners. Relatively little is known about the behaviour and experiences of East and Southeast Asian men visiting bathhouses. The present study surveyed 101 men of East and Southeast Asian origin who attended a gay bathhouse in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The objective was to document their HIV-testing history, likelihood of condom use during anal sex with casual partners and to identify their reasons for using or not using condoms. Participants’ HIV-testing history indicated that 15.8% had never been tested and 23.5% were last tested 2-4 years ago or more. About one quarter of the 86 men who had casual sex in the six months prior to the survey said they did not always use a condom. Forty-three percent of the men who had not used condoms for anal intercourse on one or more occasions indicated that “Sex partner looked healthy; should be OK” and “Got carried away in the excitement of the moment” as reasons why a condom was not used. HIV prevention efforts for this population need to address issues regarding accessibility of HIV testing and the provision of accurate and culturally relevant information about the importance of condom use (The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 2011: 20, 67-74).

Taking casual sex not too casually: Exploring definitions of casual sexual relationships

Jocelyn J. Wentland¹ and Elke D. Reissing¹

¹ School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON

Researchers are beginning to explore the variety of casual sexual relationships that individuals engage in. These relationships, and the subtle nuances that differentiate them, have not been studied collectively. The purpose of the present study was to qualitatively examine casual sexual relationships (CSRs), ranging from a single encounter to an ongoing sexual relationship with a friend. Male and female focus group participants identified a number of implicit and explicit rules that guide the initiation, maintenance, and termination of four types of casual sexual relationships: One Nights Stands, Booty Calls, Fuck Buddies, and Friends with Benefits. Participants identified these rules regardless of gender or whether they had previous personal experience with any of these CSRs. The results suggest that each of these relationship types can be placed on a continuum of casual sex according to various dimensions, including frequency of contact, type of contact (sexual and/or social), personal disclosure, discussion of the relationship, and friendship. Participants’ shared understanding of CSRs suggests that young adults may have common cultural knowledge of these relationships and a fluid conceptualization of what constitutes a relationship (The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 2011: 20, 75-91).

Category-specificity and sexual concordance: The stability of sex differences in sexual arousal patterns

Kelly D. Suschinsky¹ and Martin L. Lalumière¹

¹ Department of Psychology, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, AB

The sexual arousal patterns of men and women differ in two ways. First, men’s genital arousal and self-reported sexual arousal are “category-specific”, such that different stimuli elicit different degrees of arousal. Women’s self-reported sexual arousal is, like men’s, category-specific, but their genital arousal is “category-nonspecific”, because they show similar genital responses to different sexual stimuli. Second, men’s “sexual concordance”, or the relationship between genital arousal and self-reported sexual arousal, is higher than women’s. Although these sex differences are consistent across studies, there has been little research on the stability of these differences within the same sample. In the present study, 20 men and 18 women participated in two experimental sessions one month apart, in which they listened to sexual and nonsexual audiotaped narratives while their genital arousal and self-reported sexual arousal were measured. The expected sex differences were found in both sessions; men’s genital arousal was more category-specific than women’s, and their sexual concordance was higher than women’s. Men and women did not show significantly different self-reported sexual arousal in either session. Correlational analyses revealed little stability for genital arousal category-specificity and sexual concordance at the individual level for women. Overall, the results suggest that the expected sex differences in sexual arousal patterns were stable across testing sessions. This finding lends additional support for the validity of such differences although further research is required to better understand the stability of sexual arousal patterns at the individual level (The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 2011: 20, 93-108).

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