High School Context,Heterosexual Scripts,and Young Women’s Sexual Development

Adolescence is a critical period for sexual development, and previous research demonstrates that school cultures play an important role in shaping adolescent sexual behavior. However, little is known about the role of school context for developing sexual attitudes and sexual sense of self. This study explores how sexual cultures that emerge within high schools shape the sexual development of young women during the transition to adulthood. Using three waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, a sample of 9th to 12th graders in U.S. schools in 1994–1995 who were surveyed in 1996 and in 2001 when they were 20 to 26 years old (N?=?1,017), this study measures school sexual cultures using the aggregated sexual beliefs and behaviors of students within the school. Multilevel analyses are used to explore the association between these school sexual cultures and young women’s sexual attitudes (perceived obstacles to using birth control, guilt and shame about sex, and expectations of sexual pleasure) in adolescence and their sexual experiences (equal initiation of sex with partner and frequent orgasm with partner) in adulthood. Overall, the results suggest that schools play an important role in young women’s developing attitudes toward sex and contraception. High school sexual cultures are also associated with young women’s sexual behavior in adult heterosexual relationships, as young women who attended schools with students who had higher levels of religious attendance or guilt and shame about sex were less likely to report being an equal initiator in their adult relationships. However, the relatively small impact of high school sexual cultures on young women’s sexual experiences in adulthood, particularly in terms of sexual pleasure, suggests that more proximal contexts and relationships may play a more significant role in shaping their current sexual behaviors.     

using pain,living with pain

This paper presents the early findings of research into the experiences of pain for those who live with chronic pain and engage in BDSM (bondage and discipline, domination and submission, sadism and masochism), explored using a critical crip approach rooted in crip theory and feminist disability studies. The research took the form of a series of interviews with eight disabled people living with chronic pain who experience pain in their BDSM practices, developing a narrative of experiences. The majority of those living with chronic pain, or who have diagnoses of chronic illnesses causing chronic pain, are women. Chronic pain is frequently assumed to be similar to acute pain; however, thinking through pain in terms of normativity and able-bodymindedness reveals the ableist structures that underpin normative attitudes towards pain and those who are in pain. Pain is understood as dehumanising—and thus the person living with chronic pain is understood as not human, abnormal, and disabled. The disabled body, the body in pain, is a horrifying object of abjection, and the non-disabled observer assumes that to be in pain is to suffer; therefore, living with chronic pain is understood as an ontological impossibility and must be stopped. BDSM is a series of practices forming a space in which the people living with chronic pain in this study are able to engage with their somatic experience in ways that do not expect normalcy, while being disabled and living with chronic pain gives them space to explore non-normative sexual practices.     

To Buy or Not to Buy? Vulnerability and the Criminalisation of Commercial BDSM

This paper examines the interaction of law and policy-making on prostitution, with that of BDSM (bondage and discipline, sadism and masochism). Recent policy and legal shifts in the UK mark out prostitutes as vulnerable and in need of ??rescue??. BDSM that amounts to actual bodily harm is unlawful in the UK, and calls to decriminalise it are often met with fears that participants will be left vulnerable to abuse. Where women sell BDSM sex, even more complex questions of choice, exploitation, vulnerability, power and agency might be thought to arise. Does the combination of activities take two singular behaviours into the realm of compound harm? Are those who sell BDSM doubly vulnerable in a way that would justify criminal intervention? This paper argues that in imposing categories of vulnerability, the state engages in the heteronormative construction of risky sexual subjects who must be rehabilitated, responsiblised or punished. Through an examination of existing empirical studies on BDSM, the paper offers a feminist critique of the potential criminalisation of commercial BDSM and calls for more research on the lived experiences of those who buy and sell BDSM.     

Learning about “the curse”: An anthropological perspective on experiences of menstruation

Learning about menstruation typically focuses on providing education about the biology and reproductive functions of a woman. This approach ignores individual variations of experience and the social influences in managing the menstrual event. A qualitative study of 20 women was conducted to explore how women learnt about the menstruation and its effect on their lives. With reference to medical discourse and medical anthropology, three themes will be examined: pollution, rites of passage, and the concept of secrecy and social seclusion. These themes are used to explore the role of menstruation in the emergence of female identity, the forces around women that influence their beliefs, and how these women manage their bodies. Some reference is made to the effects of menstruation on a woman's physical and mental health, sexual relationships, and perceived constraints during leisure time. A more phenomenological approach to menstruation should be considered by policymakers interested in “educating” young women about menstruation, where the emphasis should be on addressing women's experiences and concerns.     

‘Porn Trouble’

In this article, I explore the emergent relationship between feminist media studies/cultural studies and the field of Evolutionary Psychology (EP). EP scholars increasingly conduct research on media and popular culture. At the same time, media/ted texts are increasingly marked by EP discourses. I take as my focus commercial women's online magazines produced in the UK and in Spain and accessed globally. Specifically, I explore a recurrent thread in their discussion forums: women expressing confusion, concern, disappointment, hurt and/or self-doubt, and asking for advice on discovering that their male partners consume various pornographies. A feminist poststructuralist discursive analysis is developed to explore both peer-to-peer and editorial advice on such ‘porn trouble’. I show how pseudo-scientific discourses give support to a narrative of male immutability and female adaptation in heterosexual relationships, and examine how these constructions are informed by EP accounts of sexual difference. The article offers empirical insights into the penetration of EP logics and narratives into popular culture transnationally. Advancing the notion of ‘postfeminist biologism’, my analysis contributes to feminist interrogations of EP's ongoing popularity in the face of sound, longstanding and widespread criticism of it as scientifically flawed and culturally pernicious.     

Zombie Law: Conjugality,Annulment, and the (Married) Living Dead

This article deploys and extends Ulrich Beck’s critique of ‘zombie categories’ (Beck in J Consum Cult 1 (2):261–277, 2001) to consider how conjugal relationships are brought into being before the law. The argument presented here is that sexual performatives relating to marriage—and especially, in this instance, consummation—continue to produce a kind of social-legal magic, even as the social flesh of their enactment is rotting. Rules concerning annulment relating to wedding ceremonies, consent, disclosure, and consummation demonstrate that certain frameworks of conjugality involve a kind of corporeal magic animating the privileged place of heterosexual marriage. Thus, rules and regulations pertaining to weddings continue to produce and protect heterogendered, sexually dimorphous bodies, even though this privileging is—or at least, is becoming—socially obsolete.     

Disrupting Identity through Visible Therapy: A Feminist Post-structuralist Approach to Working with Women Who Have Experienced Child Sexual Abuse

This article draws on feminism and post-structuralism to theorize a narrative framework for developing and critiquing therapeutic practices with women who have experienced child sexual abuse. I argue that both objectivism and relativism provide poor guides for conducting therapy and that it is only through situating our knowledges precisely that more liberatory therapy practices may be developed. This approach, termed ‘visible therapy’, is used to directly and explicitly challenge normative constructions of women, child sexual abuse and therapy. I argue that it is necessary to explicate the embedded assumptions produced through practices of abuse, and which serve to construct children's experiences of that abuse, in order to ward against their reproduction within therapy relationships. I demonstrate that it is through situating and explicating the operations of power that the authenticity of experience and identity may be questioned and women's ongoing positioning as guilty victims may be challenged. Thus, I am concerned not with who women ‘really are’ but with how they come to know and be known through practices of both abuse and therapy. This, then, is about making the tactics of abuse and therapy visible. Problems are not located within individuals, but rather within the narratives which situate both past and current relationships but which, through reiteration, obscure their own social production. I conclude that it is only when categorical identity is no longer assumed that progressive therapy practices with women who have been sexually abused can be developed and maintained.     

Living in the Era of Digital Exhibitionism

Digitally mediated communication technologies have fundamentally changed the problem of child sexual abuse. Sexually explicit images of young people that can be found online range from those documenting offline abuse including adult-to-child and peer-on-peer violence, to self-generated images including those taken within the context of a coercive relationship or those that are shared online beyond the taker's control. Online availability of these images can have serious effects on victims. It is vital to identify what victims need, how youngsters are at risk online, how self-generated images may be shared online beyond the taker's control, and how children who have been traumatized by experiences of sexual abuse (offline as well as online) can be taught to stay safe online. This article summarizes the results of four different studies exploring these issues.     

Queering the ‘straight’ line: men’s talk on paying for sex

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of interviews conducted with eight men who identified as clients of women sex workers, but who also spoke about paying to secretly explore their sexual desires for trans women and men. I draw on queer theory to approach the question of how, and to what extent, men’s paid sexual encounters functioned as sites where they could resist the constraints of compulsory heterosexuality and navigate more fluid sexual identities. Highlighting the complex nature and meanings of paying for sex, I argue that the secrecy of the paid sexual encounter provided a space for ‘breaking out’ of the confines of heterosexuality whilst simultaneously being the very thing that allowed men to stay ‘in line’ with what was expected of them within the heteronormative realities of their everyday lives.     

Perceived and Observed Maternal Relationship Quality Predict Sexual Debut by Age 15

Early sexual behaviors during adolescence have the potential to lead to unhealthy outcomes. This study explored the association between specific dimensions of maternal relationship quality and adolescent sexual debut by age 15. We hypothesized that adolescents who have poor maternal relationships are at greater risk of early sexual debut than those who have a more supportive relationship. These hypotheses were examined using both adolescents’ perception of their maternal relationship quality and observed relationship quality. A sample of 268 adolescents (142 girls; 90% European American) were followed longitudinally from age 13 to age 15. The results indicate that adolescents with sexual debut by age 15 report significantly worse relationships with their mothers compared with other adolescents. Furthermore, behavioral observations of lower maternal support and higher observed displays of externalizing affect towards the mother also were related to early sexual debut. The significance of maternal relationship quality remained after controlling for family structure, race, and socioeconomic status. These findings suggest that mothers have a significant role in the timing of their adolescents’ sexual debut.     

Family Relationships and Adolescent Well-Being: Are Families Equally Protective for Same-Sex Attracted Youth?

Existing research suggests that sexual minority youth experience lower levels of well-being, in part because they perceive less social support than heterosexual youth. Sexual minority youth with strong family relationships may demonstrate resilience and increased well-being; however, it is also possible that the experience of sexual stigma may make these relationships less protective for sexual minority youth. Using two waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we explore the links between same-sex attraction, family relationships, and adolescent well-being in a sample of over 13,000 7th–12th grade adolescents (51 % female, 52 % non-Latino/a white, 17 % Latino, 21 % African American, and 7 % Asian). Specifically, we examine whether lower levels of parental closeness, parental involvement, and family support among same-sex attracted youth explain in part why these youth experience increased depressive symptoms and risk behaviors, including binge drinking, illegal drug use, and running away from home, relative to other-sex attracted youth. Second, we ask whether family relationships are equally protective against depressive symptoms and risk behaviors for same-sex attracted and other-sex attracted youth. We find that same-sex attracted youth, particularly girls, report higher levels of depressive symptoms, binge drinking, and drug use in part because they perceive less closeness with parents and less support from their families. Results also suggest that parental closeness and parental involvement may be less protective against risk behaviors for same-sex attracted boys than for their other-sex attracted peers. Findings thus suggest that interventions targeting the families of sexual minority youth should educate parents about the potentially negative effects of heteronormative assumptions and attitudes on positive adolescent development.     

Heterosexuality and Race in the Australian Same-Sex Marriage Postal Survey

ABSTRACT

This article argues that race and class are central aspects of sexual citizenship in a Australia. It does so by investigating representations of heterosexuality that were produced and circulated during the 2017 same-sex marriage postal survey. Engaging with feminist and critical race theorists, we position same-sex marriage as not exceptional but part of a wider distribution of sexual citizenship within Australia's ongoing settler colonial history. We do so by introducing a number of illustrative examples of representations of heterosexuality produced during the survey. These representations reveal how same-sex marriage perpetuated heterosexual authority by asserting claims to authenticity and the occupation of space. We observe how heterosexuality in the survey material reproduced fantasies linking these three themes, for example, in an authentic white heterosexual family who speaks from their suburban backyard. It reveals that ceding to a bifurcated view of either progressive or conservative voices forestalls rather than advances other visions which may exceed the limited imaginings of sexual citizenship offered by the white liberal settler colonial state.     

Parenting,Communication about Sexuality,and the Development of Adolescent Womens’ Sexual Agency: A Longitudinal Assessment

Sexual agency (i.e., the ability to make decisions and assertions related to one’s own sexuality) is associated with sexual health enhancing outcomes. Given that young women are expected to act passively, rather than with agency when it comes to sexual encounters, the present study aimed to explore whether parental support, knowledge, and communication about sexuality during late adolescence contribute to an enhancement of sexual agency in a sample of young women in the long-term. Using a longitudinal design (panel study), 320 female participants who participated in three data collection waves (T1, T2, and T5) were included in the analyses (M_age?=?16.2 years, SD?=?0.50 at baseline). Mediated by the frequency of parents’ communication about sexuality with their daughters, both dimensions of parental support (emotional engagement and support of autonomy) positively predicted adolescent women’s sexual agency two years later. In contrast, parental knowledge of their children’s whereabouts was unrelated to communication and female sexual agency. Specific dimensions of parenting seem to play a crucial role in empowering adolescent girls to act agentic through communicating, emotional support, and encouraging autonomy, which in turn may contribute to healthy sexual behavior in young adulthood.     

Navigating,challenging, and contesting normative gendered discourses surrounding women’s pornography use

While there exists some empirical research on women’s use of pornography, the manner in which women do, and how they understand their pornographic spectatorship, remains under-examined. Focusing on the narratives of 26 women gained through both focus groups and individual interviews, this research explores how women who use pornography and other sexually explicit materials navigate, reaffirm, challenge, and contest normative gendered boundaries that surround women’s sexuality, sexual pleasure, and women’s pornographic use. While ‘pornography as female degradation’ is the most visible feminist discourse, the findings of this study suggest that the meanings attributed to both the experience of engaging with pornography, as well as with pornographic materials themselves, were far from wholly degrading, and in fact, served to provide pleasure, sexual self-actualization, and even corporeal validation – disrupting normative discourses of desiring and desirable bodies.     

Carnal teachings: raunch aesthetics as queer feminist pedagogies in Yo! Majesty's hip hop practice

This essay puts forward a notion of “raunch aesthetics,” theorizing raunch as an aesthetic, performative, and vernacular practice: an explicit mode of sexual expression that transgresses norms of privacy and respectability. Raunch aesthetics describe creative practices that often blend humor and sexual explicitness to launch cultural critiques, generate pleasure for minority audiences, and affirm queer lives. The author activates her formulation of raunch in analyzing Yo! Majesty, a hip hop group comprised of black female emcees who openly describe their sexual desire for women, and explores how the queer youth of color she works with have responded to their music. Working beyond the unexamined moralisms that give critiques of raunch culture their legitimacy, the author argues that Yo! Majesty's raunch aesthetics transmit queer and feminist teachings. While celebrating carnal pleasures, these artists critique heterosexism, subvert narratives about the incompatibility of belief in Christ and queer sexualities, and trouble notions concerning the emancipation of coming out of the closet and declaring a stable homosexual identity. In demonstrating how raunch aesthetics generate consciousness raising, the author discusses how her youth participants critically read and consume hip hop while negotiating unwieldy meanings of sexuality and gender presentation.     

Governing the souls of young women: exploring the perspectives of mothers on parenting in the age of sexualisation

The sexualisation of young women has emerged as a growing concern within contemporary western cultures. This has provoked adult anxieties that young women are growing up too fast by adopting inappropriate sexual practices and subjectivities. Psychological discourses have dominated, which position sexualisation as a corrupting force that infects the ‘true self’ of young women, so they develop in abnormal ways. This in turn allows psychological practices to govern how to parent against sexualisation within families. To explore this further, six mothers each with daughters aged between 8 and 12 took part in one to one semi-structured interviews designed to explore how they conceptualised and parented against the early sexualisation of young women. A Foucauldian inspired discourse analysis was employed, which suggested that the mother's talk was situated within a psychological discourse. This enabled sexualisation to be positioned as a corrupting force that disrupted the natural development of young women through deviant bodily practices (e.g. consuming sexualised goods), which prevented them from becoming their ‘true self’. Through the disciplinary gaze of psychology, class inequalities were reproduced where working class families were construed as ‘chavs’ who were bad parents and a site of contagion for sexualisation.     

The Rate of Cyber Dating Abuse Among Teens and How It Relates to Other Forms of Teen Dating Violence

To date, little research has documented how teens might misuse technology to harass, control, and abuse their dating partners. This study examined the extent of cyber dating abuse—abuse via technology and new media—in youth relationships and how it relates to other forms of teen dating violence. A total of 5,647 youth from ten schools in three northeastern states participated in the survey, of which 3,745 reported currently being in a dating relationship or having been in one during the prior year (52 % were female; 74 % White). Just over a quarter of youth in a current or recent relationship said that they experienced some form of cyber dating abuse victimization in the prior year, with females reporting more cyber dating abuse victimization than males (particularly sexual cyber dating abuse). One out of ten youth said that they had perpetrated cyber dating abuse, with females reporting greater levels of non-sexual cyber dating abuse perpetration than males; by contrast, male youth were significantly more likely to report perpetrating sexual cyber dating abuse. Victims of sexual cyber dating abuse were seven times more likely to have also experienced sexual coercion (55 vs. 8 %) than were non-victims, and perpetrators of sexual cyber dating abuse were 17 times more likely to have also perpetrated sexual coercion (34 vs. 2 %) than were non-perpetrators. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

The Role of Child Sexual Abuse Images in Coercive and Non-Coercive Relationships with Adolescents: A Thematic Review of the Literature

The objective of this article is to present a thematic review of literature that pertains to the role of child sexual abuse images in online coercive and non-coercive relationships with adolescents, synthesize and contextualize current research on this topic, and identify some of the complexities in the self-production of sexual images by adolescents and their potential use by offenders. This review examines why there is a trend for child abuse image production to be increasingly associated with adolescent self-produced sexual images and how this may be related to individual coercion, as well as changing social and Internet contexts. Practitioners need to understand the technological and social affordances offered by the Internet, particularly in relation to the ability to produce sexual images, as part of a more ecological approach to understanding online abuse and exploitation.