A tale of two cities

The authors are respectively parttime professor sociology at the University of Texas (San Antonio) as well as lecturer at the medical faculty of the State University Limburg (section psychiatry) and researcher at the Research and Documentation Centre of the Ministry of Justice, Schedeldoekshaven 100, 2511 EX The Hague, The Netherlands. Dorette Courtar, a mobility programme exchange student at the University of Maastricht and the Stockholm University, assisted in the basic research. We would like to thank Paulina Loennroth and the mayor of Hulst, dr. A.A.L.G.M. Kessen, both connected to the ECAD and Paul Vasseur, Urban Weber, Suzanne Schardt, all connected to the ECDP for their information and comments.     

Characteristics of adolescent incest sexual perpetrators: Preliminary findings

Adolescent incest sexual perpetrators seen at an out-patient clinic were interviewed regarding demographic characteristics and occurrence of deviant and nondeviant sexual behaviors. Results indicate that subjects (1) committed more sexual crimes than they had been arrested for, (2) reported a very early onset of sexual behavior, (3) had additional DSM-III psychiatric disorders, and (4) reported previous sexual victimization. Recommendations for future research are made.     

Capacity building: Shifting the paradigms of practice

Capacity building is now one of the most frequently invoked of current development concepts and yet it continues to defy a shared definition of what it means in practice. Is it possible that capacity building demands such a radically new form of practice, such a radically new form of thinking, that our current approaches are doomed to failure, not because we lack adequate models or 'technologies', but because our very approach to the issue is inadequate? Arguing that conventional capacity-building initiatives have tended to focus on the material and tangible aspects of the capacity of an organisation and its people to be critically self-aware, the author outlines some fundamental shifts which would be both entailed and generated by concentrating on the practice of the development practitioner in relation to organisational development, rather than focusing on external appearances or rushing to the training manuals.     

Transgender Inclusion and Australia's Failed Sexuality Discrimination Bill

In 2013, one of the final acts of the Gillard government was to amend Australia's Sex Discrimination Act to add sexuality, gender identity and intersex variations as protected categories. This was not the first time the Commonwealth had considered anti‐discrimination legislation protecting LGBTI people. The most prominent example was the Democrats‐sponsored Sexuality Discrimination Bill, introduced to Parliament in November 1995, which included provisions to protect transgender people as well as gays, lesbians and bisexuals. The Senate referred the bill to an inquiry by the Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee, which received 436 submissions. Approximately 100 of these submissions specifically addressed transgender discrimination, some advocating for the rights of transgender Australians, and others focusing their attacks against the bill based on the transgender provisions. This article draws on the concept of transgender citizenship to examine the transgender‐related aspects of the inquiry and the debates in parliament, to understand the ways that the public and politicians framed transgender rights in the mid‐1990s. These debates are telling in how transgender issues and anxieties over gender fluidity have consistently become an easy target in wider debates about equality for sexual and gender minorities.