Canadian and American population-based research concerning sexual and/or gender minority populations provides evidence of persistent breast and gynecologic cancer-related health disparities and knowledge divides. The Cancer's Margins research investigates the complex intersections of sexual and/or gender marginality and incommensurabilities and improvisation in engagements with biographical and biomedical cancer knowledge. The study examines how sexuality and gender are intersectionally constitutive of complex biopolitical mappings of cancer health knowledge that shape knowledge access and its mobilization in health and treatment decision-making. Interviews were (...) conducted with a diverse group of sexual and/or gender minority breast or gynecologic cancer patients. The LGBQ//T2 cancer patient narratives we have analyzed document in fine grain detail how it is that sexual and/or gender minority cancer patients punctuate the otherwise lockstep assemblage of their cancer treatment decision-making with a persistent engagement in creative attempts to resist, thwart and otherwise manage the possibility of discrimination and likewise, the probability of institutional erasure in care settings. Our findings illustrate the demands that cancer places on LGBQ//T2 patients to choreograph access to, and mobilization of knowledge and care, across significantly distinct and sometimes incommensurable systems of knowledge. (shrink)

Inspirée d’un cadre poststructuraliste, cette étude qualitative de « réception d’un médium » nous a permis de mettre en lumière les « lectures » que font une vingtaine de consommateurs de pornographie des notions de masculinité, de race et ethnicité, du milieu gai et du genre en lien avec la pornographie qu’ils consomment. Les résultats qui émergent de notre analyse critique de discours sont à l’effet que les lectures des consommateurs sont majoritairement dominantes, reproduisant ainsi les stéréotypes présents en société (...) et qui sont re/produits et véhiculés dans la pornographie qu’ils consomment. Les récits des participants attestent du fait que ces derniers remettent peu en question ce qu’ils voient dans le matériel pornographique ; matériel pouvant avoir certaines répercussions sur des indicateurs de santé mentale en accentuant et perpétuant certaines formes de stigmatisation chez certains groupes sociaux. Inspired by a poststructuralist perspective, our qualitative exploratory media reception study offers a critical discourse analysis of 20 male pornography consumers, focusing on their readings of masculinity, race/ethnicity, the gay world, and gender in relation to the pornography they consume. For the most part, results show dominant readings of these categories, which suggests that social stereotypes are produced, reproduced, and transmitted through the medium of pornography. Participant narratives reveal individuals who rarely question what is shown in pornographic material; the latter having potential implications for certain mental health indicators, as well as perpetuating and accentuating forms of stigmatization among specific social groups. (shrink)

In this article, we use qualitative methodology to explore how 15 low‐income women of diverse sociocultural location construct and experience health and weight gain during pregnancy, as well as how they position themselves in relation to messages pertaining to weight gain, femininity and motherhood that they encounter in their lives. Discussing the findings through a feminist poststructuralist lens, we conclude that the participants are complex, fragmented subjects, interpellated by multiple and at times conflicting subject positions. While the discourse of maternal (...) responsibility (i.e. managing personal behaviours for the baby's health) is very much in evidence in their narratives, embodied experiences of pregnancy, lived experiences of financial constraints and religious beliefs provided some with an alternative discourse and resistant subject position. Participants also had mixed emotions about weight gain; they recognized the need to gain weight in order to have a healthy pregnancy, but weight gain was also not welcome as participants reproduced the dominant discourse of obesity and the discourse of ‘feminine’ bodily norms. Based on our results, we advocate for change to recent clinical guidelines and social discourses around pregnancy and weight gain, as well as for policies that provide pregnant women with a range of health‐promoting resources. (shrink)