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Messerschmidt and colleagues have pioneered work in criminology using masculinities theory, yet many researchers in the field have not engaged with the possibility that the different patterning of correlated violent, sexually risky, and antisocial behaviors may reflect a disaggregation of the category of men into multiple masculinities. This lens can help understand men's violence and enable intervention targeting. We analyzed household survey data and identified three classes of men according to their use of violence and correlated behavior. Associations between masculinity categories and other acts of violence (against women), gender attitudes, and sexually transmitted diseases showed a dose–response relationship across the masculinity categories. Structural equation modeling showed how the psychological variables mediated pathways between exposure to trauma and teasing in childhood and the more violent masculinity categories. Our analysis provides a bridge between gender analysis (with intersectionality) and the psychoanalytic in understanding men's violence. This is important for interventions to prevent men's violence against women and other men and support arguments for targeting violence prevention interventions.

BackgroundLiving with HIV is of daily concern for many South Africans and poses challenges including adapting to a chronic illness and continuing to achieve and meet social expectations. This study explored experiences of being HIV‐positive and how people manage stigma in their daily social interactions.MethodsUsing qualitative methods we did repeat interviewed with 42 HIV‐positive men and women in Cape Town and Mthatha resulting in 71 interviews.ResultsHIV was ubiquitous in our informants' lives, and almost all participants reported fear of stigma (perceived stigma), but this fear did not disrupt them completely. The most common stigma experiences were gossips and insults where HIV status was used as a tool, but these were often resisted. Many feared the possibility of stigma, but very few had experiences that resulted in discrimination or loss of social status. Stigma experiences were intertwined with other daily conflicts and together created tensions, particularly in gender relations, which interfered with attempts to regain normality. Evidence of support and resistance to stigma was common, and most encouraging was the evidence of how structural interventions such as de‐stigmatizing policies impacted on experiences and transference into active resistance.ConclusionsThe study showed the complex and shifting nature of stigma experiences. These differences must be considered when we intensify stigma reduction with context‐ and gender‐specific strategies focussing on those not yet on ARV programmes.

Data collected via semistructured interview from 24 pregnant teenagers, ages 14-17, in Xhosa, a Cape Town township, are drawn on to explore violence in the sexual relationships of South African adolescents. All but 1 of the respondents reported assault as a regular feature of their sexual relationships, including coercion, rape, & physical abuse. Men controlled the timing & conditions of sex, & the women felt powerless to resist. These experiences demonstrate how sexuality is a key arena for the display of unequal power relations between men & women in South African society, an element that health care educators need to consider in designing health & sex education programs for adolescents. 13 References. K. Hyatt Stewart

Urban informal settlements are sites of high HIV incidence and intimate partner violence (IPV). Young men in these contexts often draw on a youthful hypermasculinity that prioritize sexual dominance and displays of violence, although many aspire to a traditional masculinity, which is less violent and uses economic provision and social dominance to control women. Working with young men, we undertook a gender transformative and livelihood strengthening intervention to reduce HIV risk and IPV perpetration. We sought to understand how the wider social context shaped the project's outcomes. We undertook thirty-eight in-depth interviews and three focus groups postintervention. We conducted thematic analysis using Campbell and Cornish's conceptualization of social contexts: material–political context, relational–network context, and symbolic context to understand how contexts shaped outcomes. For the material–political context, livelihoods improved, but the continued high levels of unemployment meant that while men may have earned more they did not establish a new relationship to the economy; they still struggled to get jobs and only secured precarious and unfulfilling work. In the relational–network context, men's main partners and family were supportive of men's attempts to change, however only narrowly toward a traditional masculinity. Men's peers were major barriers to men's attempts to change. In the symbolic context, the accessibility of a "traditional" masculinity provided a resource for men to draw on, which contrasted with the youthful hypermasculinity. We argue that in these informal settlements the social contexts only enabled certain forms of change to occur for young men, limiting the potential for more radical gender equitable transformations.