Massage and sexuality in nursing

This paper draws upon data from a students' massage workshop, focuses on the students' discourse as they positioned themselves as masseurs and considers relationships between nursing discourses and genderized self-hood. For some students, there was a conflation of sex and massage. Massage was more heavily laden with implicit sexual meaning for male students than for female students. The latter were able to negotiate the ambiguities of working with people's bodies in a more comfortable way. This research has implications for teaching students of nursing, particularly in relation to massage, and also nursing practice that involves care for the patient's body.