BackgroundThe World Health Organization's publication, Developing sexual health programmes, states that the media is an important source of information about sexuality. Although the media can promote awareness of sexual health issues, it also acts as a vehicle for defining and regulating sex norms. In other words, the standards of ‘normal’ sex are in part defined by the media. Accordingly, it has become imperative to analyse the media's construction of sexual norms in order to reveal how they are related to specific ideological views. For the purposes of this study, the focus will be limited to analysing the South African publication Intimacy.AimThe study aims to reveal how the sex advice articles written in Intimacy for women in regard to their male partner's sexuality reflect patriarchal and phallocentric ideologies.MethodA discourse analysis of the sex advice articles in the magazine Intimacy was conducted. It was informed by feminist theories of sexuality that seek to examine the ways in which texts are associated with male-centred versions of sexual pleasure.ResultsThe discourse analysis identified a number of key themes regarding male sexuality. These include: (1) biological accounts of male sexuality; (2) phallocentric scripting of the sex act; and (3) the melodramatic penis.ConclusionConstructions of male sexuality require the inclusion of alternative modes of male erotic pleasure. This requires texts that encourage men to explore and also to experiment with pleasurable feelings associated with non-genital erogenous zones of the body.

Health care workers are at risk of exposure to bloodborne viruses including human immunodeficiency virus types 1 and 2 (HIV-1 and -2), hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV). However, limited data is available regarding these risks to forensic medical personnel who are exposed daily to large numbers of severely traumatized bodies in South Africa, a country that has an existing and growing HIV epidemic and a high HBV seroprevalence. Because no specific prescriptions ensuring occupational safety in this regard exist for forensic medical personnel in South Africa, the prevalence of bloodborne viruses within this setting must be determined. Blood was taken randomly from 263 bodies examined at the Medicolegal Laboratory in Pretoria. Serologic tests to detect antibodies to HIV, HCV, and human T-cell lymphotropic virus types I and II (HTLV-I and -II) and to detect the presence of HBV surface antigen (HBsAg) were performed and positive results confirmed using conventional serologic assays. Serologic tests detected at least one of the four bloodborne viruses in 21% of cases. The overall seroprevalence for HIV-1/2 was 11%, rising to 19% in the sexually active reproductive age group (15 - 49 years). The HBsAg prevalence overall was 8%, rising to 9% in sexually active reproductive individuals. There was a low overall HCV seroprevalence of 1% and an even lower HTLV-I/II seroprevalence of 0.01%. Forensic medical personnel in South Africa are therefore at risk of exposure to bloodborne viral pathogens in, on average, 1 of 5 bodies autopsied. This risk is compounded by the high daily workload, traumatized state of many of the bodies, and adverse working conditions. It is imperative that occupational health safety guidelines be created for the forensic medicine discipline and crime scene attendants in South Africa.

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INTRODUCTION