Life-saving or life-limiting?:Young women’s experiences of the HPV vaccination programme

Taking inspiration from my professional youth and community work background, I merge this professional scholarship (Batsleer and Davies, 2010; Batsleer, 2013; Bradford and Cullen, 2012; Packham, 2000) with that on contemporary feminism (McRobbie, 2009; Ryan-Flood and Gill, 2010; Penny, 2014; Gill and Scharff, 2013; Dubriwny, 2013) and young sexualities (Holland, Ramazanoğlu, Sharpe and Thomson, 2004; Renold, 2005; Jackson, Paetcher and Renold, 2010; Robinson, 2012). In so doing, this research project is a political feminist case study exploring the construction of young women’s sexuality in the UK through the development and delivery of a new vaccination, the Human Papillomavirus Vaccination. I interrogate the HPV vaccination programme as a feminist issue and ask; what are the diverse ways in which feminists can support, engage with, and critique the HPV vaccination programme? Methodologically I use a feminist activist lens which values and foregrounds women’s knowledge and expertise about their own bodies. A participatory orientation (Eubanks, 2009) to research was employed and based upon research conversations, ethnographic observations, young women’s diaries and analysis of documents I explore how young women’s sexualities are constructed and practiced through the HPV vaccination programme. The thesis argues that the HPV vaccine and programme contributes to the articulation of the ways in which healthcare, education and the pharmaceuticalisation of young women’s health anticipate and conjure a version of successful and appropriate (normative) femininity; women who are compliant and consensual sexual guardians who are invested in their future health and that of their (assumed male) sexual partner/s. This research has two main contributions. First, it is a feminist intervention based upon the core principles of professional youth and community work, providing opportunities and legitimacy to the exploration and learning around the HPV vaccination programme and its effects. Second, it draws attention to minority experiences through eliciting young women’s experiences and accounts and opens the possibility of listening to and learning from the accounts of young women’s vaccine-injury. The thesis details the ways in which the HPV vaccine impacts upon and affects the lives of young women and their parents. The result of this research is the production of tangible recommendations for changes to the practices of sex and relationship/s education and of administrating the HPV vaccination and programme

Paradoxical family practices: LGBTQ+ young people, mental health and wellbeing

This article will explore how LGBTQ+ young people sustain, and in some cases survive, family relationships. We develop the concept of ‘paradoxical family practices’ and use this to demonstrate the ways in which LGBTQ+ young people manage family life through everyday emotion work. This highlights: (1) how families ordinarily navigate heteronormativity and ‘issues’ of gender/sexuality; (2) the efficacy of ‘paradoxical family practices’ as a conceptual tool; (3) the value of emotion-centred multiple qualitative methods to explore the lives of LGBTQ+ young people and mental health. Findings derive from a small-scale UK study funded by the Wellcome Trust (UNS39780) and were generated through a two-stage methodology comprising digital/paper emotion maps and qualitative interviews with LGBTQ+ young people aged 16–25 (n = 12) followed by diary methods and follow-up interviews (n = 9). Interviews were also completed with ‘family members’ (n = 7)

Family Trouble: Heteronormativity, emotion work and queer youth mental health

Conflict with the family about sexual orientation and gender diversity is a key risk factor associated with poor mental health in youth populations. Findings presented here derive from a UK study that employed an interdisciplinary critical mental health approach that de-pathologized emotional distress and conceptualised families as social and affective units that are created through everyday practices. Our aim was to explore how family relationships foster, maintain or harm the mental health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ youth. Data were generated through exploratory visual, creative and digital qualitative methods in two phases. Phase 1 involved digital/paper emotion maps and interviews with LGBTQ+ youth aged 16-25 (n=12) and family member/mentor interviews (n=7). Phase 2 employed diary methods and follow-up interviews (n=9). The data analytic strategy involved three stages: individual case analysis; cross-sectional thematic analysis; and metainterpretation. We found that family relationships impacted on queer youth mental health in complex ways that were related to the establishment of their autonomous queer selves, the desire to remain belonging to their family and the need to maintain a secure environment. The emotion work involved in navigating identity, belonging and security was made difficult because of family heteronormativity, youth autonomy and family expectations and had a stark impact on queer youth mental health and wellbeing. Improving the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth requires a much deeper understanding of the emotionality of family relationships and the difficulties negotiating these as a young person

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

Education from sexual pleasure workshops with self-defining women : a commentary

In this commentary, we reflect critically on the experience of delivering community-based sexual pleasure workshops for self-defining women in order to share lessons from our practice with others working in sex and sexualities education in higher education or in practice settings. Our discussion about facilitating these workshops in informal learning spaces contributes to the literature on pleasure inclusive sex and sexualities education. Specifically, it highlights the demand for spaces which women can think critically about sexuality and pleasure, and shares women’s perspectives on these workshops. We begin by addressing the context in which we delivered the sexual pleasure workshops and describe what we did and why. Next, we share reflections on what we have learned from delivering these workshops, before concluding with suggestions about what this may mean for pleasure inclusive sex and sexualities education more broadly

Keep calm and contracept!:addressing young women’s pleasure in sexual health and contraception consultations

Clinical sexual health consultations with young women often focus on avoiding ‘risks;’ namely pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection transmission. They also typically fail to explore how contraception use can impact on the capacity to enjoy sexual relationships. In contrast, this paper argues that sexual pleasure should be a starting point for all sexual health consultations and education work with young people. Drawing on our experiences of working for a UK sexual health charity for young people we suggest that excluding pleasure from sexual health consultations creates its own risks. A pleasure deficit model not only detracts from a full and frank exploration of sexuality, which is bound up with notions of sexual subjectivity and agential practices, but can also limit concerns regarding the adverse effects of contraception such as loss of libido. Using the example of long acting reversible contraception we note there is a tendency to privilege adult/‘expert’ advice over young women’s bodily knowledge. We also indicate how silence and discomfort regarding sexual pleasure may confound contraceptive consultations, for example in the case of emergency hormonal contraception provision. Establishing sexual pleasure as a starting point will provide a broader, positive and less risky focus on sexuality and sexual health