James Ravenhill

University of Brighton · School of Applied Social Science

Medium secure forensic psychiatric units are unique environments within the broader “post asylum” landscape of mental health services. Length of stay is much greater and restrictions on behavior, including sexual behavior, are legally and institutionally legitimated, due to concerns regarding risk. As a result, sexuality is rarely explored with ser...

Medium secure forensic psychiatric units are unique environments within the broader “post asylum” landscape of mental health services. Length of stay is much greater and restrictions on behavior, including sexual behavior, are legally and institutionally legitimated, due to concerns regarding risk. As a result, sexuality is rarely explored with ser...

Sexuality in secure mental healthcare has been overlooked in both clinical praxis and academic research. In the UK, there exist no formal policies to inform staff approaches to managing inpatient sexuality. The limited research that has been undertaken in this field has found that often, prohibitive approaches are favoured, which may affect how inp...

This letter seeks to synthesise methodological challenges encountered in a cohort of Wellcome Trust-funded research projects focusing on sexualities and health. The ten Wellcome Trust projects span a diversity of gender and sexual orientations and identities, settings; institutional and non-institutional contexts, lifecourse stages, and explore a r...

It has been argued that gay men who live in Western societies must negotiate masculine identities against a cultural backdrop where the most desirable and locally hegemonic masculinity is heterosexual. However, contemporary masculinity theories conceptualize masculinities as increasingly inclusive of gay men. The purpose of this study was to use a...

In anal intercourse between gay men, men who are typically insertive ("tops") are often perceived as, and may identify as, more masculine than those who are typically receptive ("bottoms"). "Versatile" men, who may adopt either position, may be perceived as more gender balanced and may transcend the gender-role stereotypes associated with self-labe...

Like all other men, gay men may utilise stereotypically masculine attributes and behaviours in an attempt to accrue ‘masculine capital’, a term referring to the social power afforded by the display of traits and behaviours associated with orthodox, ‘hegemonic’ masculinity. Previous research findings suggest that gay sexual self-labels – conveying p...

“Masculine capital” refers to the social power afforded by the display of traits and behaviors that are associated with orthodox, stereotypical masculinity. Men who are concerned with their masculine identity may utilize these traits and behaviors to increase their overall masculine capital, and to mitigate “failures” in other domains of masculinit...