In case we haven't met ... Who am I?
What to expect from this learning resource
Welcome to this learning opportunity, designed in Adobe Creative Cloud Express (a resource free for University of Greenwich students, to use and develop!) This page comprises of the following key elements:
- Brief texts, with statements, questions, a glossary of terms and suggested further resources
- The workshop Prezi presentation, in short video sections
- Opportunities for you to critically reflect on the materials, in relation to your knowledge and professional / clinical practice, and share your ideas with others
A workshop!?
Yes!
Although this resource is on-line and originally delivered as an in-class collaborative workshop, on a number of occasions in the UK and abroad, it never-the-less requires you to work on this learning and to share your thoughts with others, e.g. your colleagues in class / on your Moodle Forum discussion zones, or even via Twitter (feel free to copy me in @David_T_Evans).
Here's a 1 minute video on how I developed this learning:
Please use each and every opportunity in this learning resource to think it through; critically reflect on the content, and relate the learning to your own professional / clinical / educational practice.
Sharing learning
- Share your learning outputs with your fellow students / colleagues
- Give them examples of how the theory and contents of this resource work for you
- Demonstrate its relevance to your own field of professional / clinical practice.
By the way!
Here's a book I recommend to you all, especially if you are doing teaching or mentoring of / for others
Griffith & Burns (2014) Teaching Backwards is a stunning text, out of which there are three key acronyms I ask you to consider for the learning presented here. The acronyms are KWL, KASH and PEE!
Check out this 2 minute video, covering 3 key acronyms used by Andy Griffith & Mark Burns, for enhancing your academic learning.
KWL & KASH are so important here!
Before you work through the video elements of this workshop, stop to think what you already KNOW on the topics under consideration: Safeguarding / Genders / Identities / Sexualities / Sexual Health.
Then consider what more you WANT to learn, e.g. from this resource.
Finally, after you have finished this session, reflect back and see what new ideas you have come up with what new learning you have achieved. Don't only tell us about your new level of learning in class / on-line / Twitter, but use this new level as a springboard, a new starting-point, from where you will go on to learn even more.
KASH stands for ...
So what are you going to get out of this learning resource?
The Intended Learning Outcomes
Here's the first of four videos, setting the scene & the ILOS (Intended Learning Outcomes)
Now some work-shop opportunities, to work through and share with others!
Epistemologies and ontologies!?!
Don't panic!
Epistemology & ontology are philosophical terms easy to describe and understand (says he!) They are important terms, not least for research in health and social care, to help us understand meanings.
Epistemology basically means 'ways we know how we know (things)', i.e. the theoretical lens we use, through which we view the world, construct and understand meanings. Ontology means the study of 'ways of being'.
Relating theory to practice
Once you've done a FFA (Force Filed Analysis) of your own, in relation to our topic, why not upload it - or take a picture to upload - and share it with your colleagues on the course, and feel free to Tweet me @David_T_Evans
In this third video, the focus will be on adapting a Force Field Analysis for your specific field of practice or place of work, especially in the context of holistic client care. You could write your ideas on a sheet of paper, to reflect upon and share with your colleagues for further discussion. You might even want to include the diagram as an appendix in any relevant assignments you are doing! It's a great learning tool, and a real case of critical analysis.
Ask yourselves this question!
In so many of the teaching sessions I present, I try to end with this practical section, considering "What difference can I make?" asked of each and every one of you. If each learner went out / back to their field of professional or clinical practice and did one good thing, based on your learning you have done here, then the world would be a better place!
As someone who has done loads of assignments, over my life time, as well as designed them and tutored others through them - marking hundreds of them, too! - then this brief video gives what I consider to be my top 5* tips on how to achieve greatness in your academic tasks.
Best wishes, in all you do!
A glossary of terms
Here are just a few terms I've added some meanings or definitions to, that may aid your understanding of issues relating to our topic in this resource. The terms are alphabetically listed:
- Affirmed Gender - the gender achieved after transitioning, e.g. "gender affirming surgeries" (never use the outdated term "sex change")
- Assigned at Birth (i.e. the gender assigned at birth, e.g. AFAB / AMAB = assigned female / male at birth)
- Asexual - Greek prefix "a" (or "an" before vowel) usually means an absence of something; here, often an absence of sexual and possibly romantic / erotic feelings / relationships / experiences. Asexual people might refer to themselves as "ace"
- Biphobia - the irrational fear and / or hatred of bisexual people / activities / relationships
- Bisexual - a person sexually / romantically attracted to people of the same and binary opposite gender
- Cis-gender - a person happy with their gender affirmed at birth (e.g. a female who uses the pronouns "she / her / hers", and a male who uses "he / him / his")
- Commercial Sex Work/er - the preferred term for people engaged in transactional (paid for) sex (the terms prostitute / prostitution might / can carry stigmatising and negative labels)
- Condomless sex - the preferred term, by many sexual health professionals, for sexual intercourse without the barrier method of condoms. "Unprotected sex" is misleading, as someone might say the sex is 'protected' if they are using contraception alone. "Unprotected" might also lead to judgementalism for people who do not "protect" themselves
- Gay - often the preferred term or identity label used by many male (and sometimes female) people with same sex attractions, behaviours / relationships and life-styles
- Gender - social and cultural meanings of sex-differentiation, over-and-above biological sex
- Gender incongruence (formerly known as gender dysphoria) is a medical term for the sometimes exceptionally painful feelings experienced by some transpeople, in relation to their identity affirmed at birth verses their affirmative gender identity
- Hegemony / hegemonic - from a Greek word meaning "power"; today, however, it is often understood in a negative way of unwanted / unacceptable / dominating power of one person over another, e.g. males over females, straights (heterosexual people) over all other sexual identities
- Heteroflexible - a person who identifies primarily as heterosexual, but might be more open to considering bicurious or bisexual sex / attractions / behaviours
- Heteronormative - the assumption that heterosexuality and its life-ways are the universal "norm", simply because they are the majority
- Heterosexism - the hegemonic positioning and privileging of heterosexuality over and above all other sexual orientations
- Heterosexual - a person with opposite sex attractions, behaviours / relationships and life-styles. Term coined around 1900
- Hetero-supremacy - a truly negative term, for hegemonic right-wing ideology (akin to 'White Supremacy' in racist terminology) of heterosexuals over (superior to) all others
- Homophobia - the irrational fear and / or hatred of gay or lesbian people / activities / relationships
- Homosexual - a word coined in the 1880s (the term never existed before then!), from Greek and Latin, meaning "same" + "sexuality". The term came out of psychology backgrounds, and hence has psychopathologising connotations in ways that heterosexuality never has. Therefore, many homosexual people dislike the term and prefer others, e.g. gay / lesbian
- Intersectionality - a term originating in Feminism (epistemology), exploring how multiple forms of social / societal, cultural and political discriminations 'intersect' and meet in, and affect, a person, especially based on gender (try Googling the term for good images)
- Intersex - a person born with varying degrees of gender and / or genital ambiguity, e.g. elements of female and male genitals and / or reproductive organs (Formerly referred to as 'hermaphrodite" (from Greek gods Hermes and Aphrodite), but this term is no longer preferred or in use
- Lesbian - often the preferred term used by many female people with same sex attractions, behaviours / relationships and life-styles
- LGB&T - acronym with the "&" as a clear indicator that the LGB (lesbian, gay, bisexual) refer to sexual orientations, whilst T for Trans implies gender
- LGBT+ - although LGBT is probably the most popular acronym, as the list gets longer (see immediately below), the "+" stands for "and all others"
- LGBTQIA - where the QIA refers to Queer (or questioning), Intersex and Asexual
- Mis-gendering - using pronouns, names or other descriptors of a person which are opposite to their (presenting) gender identity
- MSM - a truncated abbreviation from the original 1990s MWHSWM, Men Who Have Sex With Men (with a brilliant critical commentary in E. King (1993) Safety in Numbers - safer sex and gay men, London, Cassell). This includes not just those who use gay or bisexual labels / identities, but might include heterosexual males, "gay for pay" commercial sex workers etc.
- Non-binary - a person who does not readily, or wish to be, associated with either / or opposites of the male / female binary. Might also include genderfluid and genderflux people
- Pan-sexual - literally, a person whose sexual orientation is erotically / romantically open to people of all genders and orientations
- Patriarchy / patriarchal - from Greek, literally means a male ('father') ruler, e.g. of societies and cultures. In gender terms, this is often pejorative, e.g. patriarchal hegemony / hegemonic patriarchy
- Queer - a somewhat "reclaimed" term, referring to all / any non-heterosexually orientated identities or life-ways, or to heterosexual behaviours or relationships which fall outside of heteronormative requirements. Queer Theorists emphasise how Queer is prefered as a verb, not a noun (i.e. to queer something, as opposed to being 'a' queer)
- Queer-hatred - a more specific term than the "irrational fear" connotations of orientations combined with "phobia". Hatred (from Greek, as in "misogyny", i.e. a woman hater, and the hatred of racism) is more accurate than notions of fear as in homophobia or biphobia
- Sexism - the hegemonic positioning and privileging of one sex over and above all others e.g. males over females
- Sexual orientation - in sexuality studies (as opposed to Queer Theory), a person's essential predisposition for the gender(s) of persons they are erotically and / or romantically attracted to
- Sexual preference - a choice e.g. of sexual activities, as to what a person prefers sexually / erotically
- Sexuality - a relatively modern concept of what is now considered an essential and important dimension of holistic being
- Straight - usually a non-pejorative term for heterosexual
- Transgender Person - also: trans or transperson. From the Latin transire, to pass / cross over something. A person whose assigned gender at birth is at congruence with their affirmed gender / identity
- Transexual - an outdated term, now replaced with the more favourable transperson or transgender person
- Transphobia - the irrational fear or hatred of transpeople. An international phenomenon that has personal / inter-personal / cultural and institutional elements detrimental to the acceptance, the lives and well-being of people who are trans.
For more terms and greater in-depth coverage, see: J. Eadie (ed)(2004) Sexuality - the essential glossary, London, Arnold (with 30 entries by David Evans), and B. Vincet (2018) Transgender Health - a practitioner's guide to binary and non-binary trans patient care, London, Jessica Kingsely Publishers
Further resources
- Abel, K., Evans, D.T. and Agnew-Davies, R. (2011) Sexual and Reproductive Health for Mental Health Professionals, (Free e-learning course), Social Care Institute for Excellence (www.scie.org.uk) (https://sexandmentalhealth.wordpress.com/)
- Evans, A.B. and D.T. Evans, (2016) Do safeguarding concerns deter young people’s access to condoms? Issues about integrating sexual health services online, Education and Health, Vol. 31. No. 1 (2016): 3 – 8. Available at: http://sheu.org.uk/sheux/EH/eh341ae.pdf
- Evans, D.T. (2022) Banning so-called ‘Conversion therapy’ – responding to the Government consultation https://www.gre.ac.uk/articles/public-relations/banning-so-called-conversion-therapy-responding-to-the-government-consultation
- Evans, D.T. (2001) Chapter: The Stigma of Sexuality – Concealability and Course, in Mason T, Watkins C, Carlisle C, and Whitehead E (editors) Stigma and Social Exclusion in Health Care, London, Routledge
- Evans D.T. (2013) Promoting sexual health and well-being: the role of the nurse. Nursing Standard, 28 (10): 53-57 doi: 10.7748/ns2013.11.28.10.53.e7654
- Evans, D.T. (2017) Sexualities, Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory, edited by Bryan S. Turner, Chang Kyung-Sup, Cynthia Epstein, Peter Kivisto, William Outhwaite, J. Michael Ryan. Chichester, UK, John Wiley & Sons Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118430873.est0335
- Evans, D.T. (2005) Clever Dicks Do It In A Condom, Practice Nurse, October 2005, pp. 24-33
- Evans, D.T. and S. Enson, Sexual health in young people, Nursing In Practice (90): 72 – 78. Available at: http://www.nursinginpractice.com/issues/37219
- Evans, D.T. and P. Watson (2015) Spotlight on sexual health and education for Military, Veterans and Families, Education and Health 33(2),47-51 Available at: http://sheu.org.uk/sheux/EH/eh332dte.pdf
- Grey, A (1993) Speaking of sex - the limits of language, London, Cassell
- Hadley, A. and R. Ingham (2018) Teenage Pregnancy and Young Parenthood - effective policy and practice, Oxford and New York, Routledge
- Natzler, M. and D.T. Evans (2021) Student Relationships, Sex and and Sexual Health Survey, HEPI Report 139; London: Higher Education Policy Unit / Brook, Available at: https://www.hepi.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Student-Relationships-Sex-and-Sexual-Health-Survey_Report-139_FINAL.pdf
- Patterson, J. and R. Gossett (eds) (2016) Queering Sexual Violence - radical voices from within the anti-violence movement, New York, Riverdale
David Evans, OBE, is professor in sexualities and genders: health and well-being, at the University of Greenwich, a National Teaching Fellow & Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Fellow of the National Conference of University Professors. He has a professional doctorate in education (sexual health in nursing education) and is a registered nurse (teacher). David has a number of web pages and learning resources, linked here: https://en.gravatar.com/davidtevans and he is active on Twitter @David_T_Evans