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Machos and Sluts: Gender, Sexuality, and Violence among a Cohort of Puerto Rican Adolescents
Author(s) -
Asencio Marysol W.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
medical anthropology quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.855
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1548-1387
pISSN - 0745-5194
DOI - 10.1525/maq.1999.13.1.107
Subject(s) - puerto rican , human sexuality , cohort , demography , gender studies , poison control , psychology , geography , gerontology , sociology , medicine , medical emergency , ethnology
During the past decade, interpersonal violence increasingly has become a public health concern. As a result, prevention programs now aim to decrease violence among diverse populations. This article describes the beliefs and rationale for gender‐based violence among a cohort of low‐income, predominantly second‐generation, mainland Puerto Rican adolescents. Based on a three‐year (1989–91) ethnographic study, the findings describe how these young people, through the use of gender‐based social constructs such as "machos" and "sluts,” justify violence by linking it to beliefs about gender roles, sexuality, and biology, and thus perpetuate genderrole conformity, particularly heterosexual male dominance. The findings suggest that if the public health community is going to reduce genderbased violence among Puerto Rican youth, it needs to acknowledge that gender and sexuality are important ingredients that support violence and avoid a simplified and stereotypical model of culture that ignores other social factors and changes in traditional Latino gender roles, [machismo, gender, sexuality, violence, Puerto Rican]