The Experiences of Erotic and Sexual Risk of Transgender Men: Exploratory Research Design

Transgender male (TM) is the minority and difficult to reach-up group. Therefore, there is a lack of research on private issues involving TM, such as sex, eroticism, and sexual risk behavior. This study focuses on TM as the research participant, based on Milton Mayeroff's caring theory, to understand the TM's erotic culture and the sexual risks behavior, to evaluate the need for subsequent sexual health care. The research method is a mixed methods research of explanatory design, which recruits participants through purposive sampling and respondent-driven sample (RDS) methods. The first stage is an online questionnaire survey. A total of 321 TMs were recruited. The time of online questionnaire is about 10-15 minutes to get a preliminary understanding of the erotic and sexual risk experience of TM in Taiwan. In the second stage, focus groups and in-depth interviews will be conducted, 2 hours of each group and interview. A total of 29 transgender man and women, and non-binary participants were recruited. The recruitment will be stop when the data are saturated. The analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data can get an in-depth understanding of sex, eroticism, and sexual risk, and violence experiences of the participants. The research results are important for improving the awareness and identification of sexual risk and the assessment of sexual health care needs of TM in health care profession. The results also serve as a reference guide for the development of care needs on sexual health care and anti-violence of transgender people, and for the implement of a gender-friendly environment for medical care.