Publications

Does witnessing violence between parents set young people up to repeat it in their own relationships? Using data from TRAILS, a longitudinal, multi-informant, dual-cohort Dutch study, researchers examined 522 participants who reported childhood exposure to physical interparental violence and whose romantic partners answered questionnaires about dating violence. Controlling for childhood maltreatment, hierarchical logistic regressions found no association between that exposure and either perpetration or victimization of physical and psychological dating violence in young adulthood. The pattern held regardless of sex, socioeconomic status or antisociality. The authors read this as evidence of resilience against an assumed intergenerational cycle of violence.

Nursing education can leave graduates unprepared to care for transgender and gender diverse patients, and can harm trans students along the way. This interpretive description, informed by queer theory and Hafferty's three levels of curriculum, engaged 18 undergraduate nursing students in initial focus groups or interviews, with 13 returning for follow-up. Students described cisnormativity running through every level of the curriculum, the framing of trans people as a problem to be othered, and the importance of individual educators who welcome and affirm. Their recommendations include normalizing gender diversity in coursework, accountability and representation in nursing schools, and action from governing bodies.

Little research investigates what resources are useful in helping patients to feel prepared to undergo phalloplasty or metoidioplasty, and how assessments and resources can promote patient autonomy in the process. This study sought to fill this gap by utilizing data from PROGRESS (Patient-Reported Outcomes of Genital Reconstruction and Experiences of Surgical Satisfaction), a cross-sectional, community-based survey of trans and nonbinary adults from the United States of America and Canada who had undergone one or more of these surgeries. Results revealed most participants felt prepared to undergo surgery, though the majority of our sample did not find referral letter assessments to be helpful. Peer support such as online resources/blogs were rated as highly useful, along with surgical consults.

Pandemic restrictions reshaped both chemsex and the services meant to support it. Using interpretive description, researchers interviewed eight key informants with chemsex expertise and 13 gay and bisexual men (GBM) with lived experience in Quebec between July 2020 and January 2021. Three themes emerged. Participants described the public health response as heteronormative and moralizing, deepening shame, isolation, and drug-related risk by obstructing harm reduction. They also described how already scarce chemsex-specialized services worsened, with the shift online making trusting therapeutic relationships harder. Yet online delivery also improved access to personalized, culturally sensitive care, supporting a blended in-person and virtual approach.

Comprehensive sexuality education often fails 2SLGBTQ+ people with developmental disabilities, leaving gaps that many fill online. Researchers interviewed twelve 2SLGBTQ+ adults with developmental disabilities in Alberta, Canada, about how they use social media to learn about sex, gender identity and sexuality, navigate their identities and find community. Participants described turning to 2SLGBTQ+-focused content for information that school and other offline settings did not provide, including gender pronouns, gender identity and sexual orientations. Online spaces also offered belonging and affirmation that was frequently missing in person. Accessibility and digital literacy barriers persist, but the benefits participants described were substantial and hard to replace.