478 research outputs found
Women's rationales and perspectives on "mostly" as a non-exclusive sexual identity label
Get PDFThe sexuality labels of “mostly straight” and “mostly gay” are used by men to understand their non-exclusive sexualities, yet the value of these labels in understanding women’s sexuality has not been investigated. The current qualitative study addresses this issue by examining how women with non-exclusive sexualities view the term "mostly" to understand their sexual desires and identities and explores their experiences as women with non-exclusive sexualities. Participants were 30 cis-gendered women who indicated having gender non-exclusive desires, yet did not identify as bisexual. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted and analysed using thematic analysis. Participants reported mostly lesbian and mostly straight identities as meaningfully different to bisexual identities, citing sexual, romantic and intellectual reasons as rationales for their non-exclusive orientations. Participants viewed “mostly” as more indicative of sexuality as a fluid construct, serving to de-emphasize sexual identity labels. Participants’ narratives support the notion that sexual identity labels "mostly lesbian" and "mostly straight" are useful to understand non-exclusive sexual desires and provides support for sexuality understood as a continuum interpreted through multiple overlapping categories. Implications for the understanding of women’s sexuality as fluid and flexible and how this relates more broadly to their identity are considered
Liam Rector, 14th Annual ODU Literary Festival
No full textLiam Rector is the author of The Sorrow of Architecture, a book of poems. He\u27s also the editor of The Day I Was Older: On the Poetry of Donald Hall. He has taught at Old Dominion University, George Mason, Goucher College, and Phillips Academy at Andover. In addition, he has administered literary programs at the Folger Academy of American Poets. Currently, Liam Rector is executive director of Associated Writing Programs, which has lately taken a leading role in defending the 1st amendment. Rector has been awarded both NEA and Guggenheim fellowships for poetry
The Role of the Internet in Research on BDSM
No full textThe internet has had a transformational impact on social and sexual aspects of life. However, research in BDSM studies has not fully engaged with this social trend. In this short critical review of the existing literature, how BDSM studies has engaged with this trend is discussed, alongside the limitations of this research. A summary of the literature on the internet and sexuality more broadly is provided, before turning to how BDSM studies has focused primarily on FetLife as a way of reaching community participants. The chapter concludes by highlighting four distinct areas that future BDSM studies should develop and expand to enhance the understanding of the effect of the internet on BDSM broadly conceived and advance the field of critical BDSM studies
Liam Rector, 12th Annual ODU Literary Festival
No full textLiam Rector is the author of a book of poetry, The Sorrow of Architecture, 1984, and editor of The Day I Was Older: On the Poetry of Donald Hall, 1989, and is currently working on a second book of poems, tentatively titled The Persistence of Virginia. He is executive director of the Associated Writing Programs, located at Old Dominion University
Differences on sexual consent awareness between the general population and the BDSM community
No full textThe research question of this study is: are BDSM practitioners (i.e. self-identified kinky people) more aware of sexual consent and related issues compared to the general population? We hypothesize that:
(1) Participants with a high kinky identity score (measured with the Kinky Identity Scale by Wignall et al., under development) compared to the general population will score higher in communication on sexual issues and desires, lower in believes in token resistance, and lower in believes in rape myths. These differences will be medium to large.
(2) Participants with a high kinky identity score vs. participants scoring low, will score higher in communication on sexual issues and desires, lower in believes in token resistance, and lower in believes in rape myths. These differences will be small to medium.
(3) Participants with a low kinky identity score compared to the general population will score higher in communication on sexual issues and desires, lower in believes in token resistance, and lower in believes in rape myths. These differences will be small to medium.
This study is under ethics review
Differences on sexual consent awareness between the general population and the BDSM community
No full textThe research question of this study is: are BDSM practitioners (i.e. self-identified kinky people) more aware of sexual consent and related issues compared to the general population? We hypothesize that:
(1) Participants with a high kinky identity score (measured with the Kinky Identity Scale by Wignall et al., under development) compared to the general population will score higher in communication on sexual issues and desires, lower in believes in token resistance, and lower in believes in rape myths. These differences will be medium to large.
(2) Participants with a high kinky identity score vs. participants scoring low, will score higher in communication on sexual issues and desires, lower in believes in token resistance, and lower in believes in rape myths. These differences will be small to medium.
(3) Participants with a low kinky identity score compared to the general population will score higher in communication on sexual issues and desires, lower in believes in token resistance, and lower in believes in rape myths. These differences will be small to medium.
This study is under ethics review
Differences on sexual consent awareness between the general population and the BDSM community
No full textThe research question of this study is: are BDSM practitioners (i.e. self-identified kinky people) more aware of sexual consent and related issues compared to the general population? We hypothesize that:
(1) Participants with a high kinky identity score (measured with the Kinky Identity Scale by Wignall et al., under development) compared to the general population will score higher in communication on sexual issues and desires, lower in believes in token resistance, and lower in believes in rape myths. These differences will be medium to large.
(2) Participants with a high kinky identity score vs. participants scoring low, will score higher in communication on sexual issues and desires, lower in believes in token resistance, and lower in believes in rape myths. These differences will be small to medium.
(3) Participants with a low kinky identity score compared to the general population will score higher in communication on sexual issues and desires, lower in believes in token resistance, and lower in believes in rape myths. These differences will be small to medium.
This study is under ethics review
COVID-19 & SexTech Analyses
No full textAnalyzes subsets of data from a larger, cross-sectional survey of British residents during the UK lockdown. Survey conducted by Liam Wignall. Analyses by Cory J. Cascalheira
The Kink Orientation Scale: Developing and Validating a Measure of Kink Desire, Practice, and Identity
Get PDFKink, often referred to as BDSM, is an important aspect of a sizable minority’s sexual desires, practices, and personal relationships, yet there are few ways to assess kink engagement in a holistic manner. This study aimed to develop the Kink Orientation Scale (KOS), a novel short tool for measuring different aspects of kink sexuality. In phase one, 27 items were created and included in the initial scale based on a literature review and focus groups with kinky and non-kinky individuals. In phase two, the KOS was administered to 200 university students. Exploratory Factor Analyses (EFA) were used to determine the factor structure and dimensionality of the KOS, and we retained 18 items in the scale and identified five factors. In phase three, the 18 item KOS was administered to a kink sample of 1025 participants as a form of validation. Confirmatory Factor Analyses also identified five factors with a strong overlap to the EFA. The five factors were: kink identity; kink community; kink paraphernalia; kink practices; and sexual communication. The kink sample also provided higher scores on the KOS compared with the non-kink sample. This study shows the potential utility of the KOS in measuring kink engagement holistically
Project Triton : A study into delivering targeted information to an individual based on implicit and explicit data.
No full textThe World Wide Web is frequently seen as a source of knowledge, however much of this remains undiscovered by its users. In recent times, recommender systems (e.g. Digg and Last.fm) have attempted to bridge this gap, alerting users to previously untapped knowledge. As more socially oriented services appear on the Web (e.g. Facebook and MySpace), it has never been easier to obtain information pertaining to an individual’s interests. At present, solutions for automated data recommendation tend to be highly topic specific (recommending only a certain topic such as news) and often only allow access to the system using monolithic interfaces. This report hopes to detail the stages from research to evaluation involved in creating an extensible framework, which will operate without the need for human intervention. The framework will feature several proof-of-concept plugins residing in a custom workflow, which target information that is useful to the user. Information will be retrieved automatically through plugins involved with data gathering (such as feed processing and page scraping), while users’ interests will be obtained implicitly (for example, using header information to derive location) or explicitly (taking advantage of Social Network APIs such as Facebook Connect). Finally, Third Parties will be able to integrate the framework into their own solutions using the customisable XML API (written in PHP), so that their products can provide custom user interfaces without style constraints
- …
