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How does moving from a sexually conservative country to a liberal one alter the way international students think about homosexuality and same-sex rights, and how does this impact their communities back home? Drawing on survey data with 90 heterosexual Singaporean students studying at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, as well as interview data with 17 students and 14 of their family members and friends who remained in Singapore, this study finds that despite having a broad spectrum of prior opinions, the majority of the student participants acquired increasingly accepting sexual attitudes after their relocation. Furthermore, many of them send these new conceptions as “sexual remittances” to their originating communities, changing the values of those who remain behind. This study helps lay the groundwork for further investigations of how engagements among international students and their social networks can contribute to evolving understandings of transnational sexuality and the globalization of culture.

Given increased prevalence of direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic health tests in recent years, this paper delves into discourses among researchers at professional genomics conferences and lay DTC genetic test users on popular discussion website Reddit to understand the contested value of genetic knowledge and its direct implications for health management. Harnessing ethnographic observations at five conferences and a text -analysis of 52 Reddit threads, we find both experts and lay patient-consumers navigate their own versions of “productive uncertainty.” Experts develop genetic technologies to legitimize unsettled genomics as medical knowledge and mobilize resources and products, while lay patient-consumers turn to Internet forums to gain clarity on knowledge gaps that help better manage their genetic risk states. By showing how the uncertain nature of genomics serves as a productive force placing both parties within a mutually cooperative cycle, we argue that experts and patient-consumers co-produce a form of relational medicalization that concretizes “risk” itself as a disease state.