Social Considerations Related to Adolescent Girls’ Sexual Empowerment: A Response to Lamb and Peterson

Sexualized Violence and Neoliberal Discourse

Researchers have paid relatively little attention to the role that sexual and gender violence play in reinforcing neoliberal discourse. We address this issue by demonstrating that the portrayal of women and girls in the mainstream media, female body practices based on this portrayal, gendered sexual-agency norms, sexual harassment, and rape are not only sexualized and violent, but they also display a common set of cultural scripts drawn from both patriarchal and neoliberal discourse. We thus conclude that these images, practices, and norms are forms of sexualized violence that reinforce patriarchal and neoliberal discourse and, thus, the gender and class orders.

When Sex and Power Collide: An Argument for Critical Sexuality Studies

Attentive to the collision of sex and power, we add momentum to the ongoing development of the subfield of critical sexuality studies. We argue that this body of work is defined by its critical orientation toward the study of sexuality, along with a clear allegiance to critical modalities of thought, particularly feminist thought. Critical sexuality studies takes its cues from several other critical moments in related fields, including critical psychology, critical race theory, critical public health, and critical youth studies. Across these varied critical stances is a shared investment in examining how power and privilege operate, understanding the role of historical and epistemological violence in research, and generating new models and paradigms to guide empirical and theoretical research. With this guiding framework, we propose three central characteristics of critical sexuality studies: (a) conceptual analysis, with particular attention to how we define key terms and conceptually organize our research (e.g., attraction, sexually active, consent, agency, embodiment, sexual subjectivity); (b) attention to the material qualities of abject bodies, particularly bodies that are ignored, overlooked, or pushed out of bounds (e.g., viscous bodies, fat bodies, bodies in pain); and (c) heteronormativity and heterosexual privilege, particularly how assumptions about heterosexuality and heteronormativity circulate in sexuality research. Through these three critical practices, we argue that critical sexuality studies showcases how sex and power collide and recognizes (and tries to subvert) the various power imbalances that are deployed and replicated in sex research.

Sexualizing the Self

Self-sexualization refers to intentionally engaging in activities expressly to appear more sexually appealing. The purpose of our studies was to examine gender similarities and differences in how women and men conceptualize self-sexualization as well as introduce measures appropriate for large-scale data collection. In a qualitative study, we first established the existence of self-sexualization among women, although we were unable to document a similar construct among men. The Self-Sexualization Behavior Questionnaire for Women (SSBQ–W), developed over the course of three studies using samples from two small liberal arts colleges, demonstrated adequate internal consistency, stability, and construct validity. Discriminant validity for the SSBQ–W was demonstrated with the Surveillance subscale of the Objectified Body Consciousness Scale, the Sexualizing Behavior Scale, and the Enjoyment of Sexualization Scale. The SSBQ–W may especially be useful in addressing debates about the relationship of self-sexualization to sexual empowerment, agency, and oppression in young women. Additionally, our attempts to develop a parallel sound measure for men failed, and gender differences in item-by-item comparisons concluded that men are less likely to engage in specific self-sexualizing behaviors than women. These findings raise the possibility that self-sexualization is neither as meaningful nor as pervasive for men. In sum, our findings help to further refine how researchers and practitioners might best conceptualize self-sexualization, concluding that it is highly gendered activity that is largely confined to women and offering a measure for women that may promote further research.

Sexual education, gender ideology, and youth sexual empowerment

Sexual education plays an essential role in preventing unplanned pregnancy and the transmission of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). School-based sexual education programs, in particular, may be well positioned to address social factors that are empirically linked to negative sexual health outcomes, such as traditional social norms surrounding gender and sexuality. However, youth are seldom granted access to sexual education programs that explicitly address these issues. This study presents findings from a pretest-posttest survey of a sexual education program that did. It was designed for eighth graders (N=95) in the context of a school-community collaboration. The study assessed the links between several components of sexual empowerment, including gender ideology, sexual knowledge, and contraceptive beliefs. Findings link participation in the sexual education program to more progressive attitudes toward girls and women, less agreement with hegemonic masculinity ideology, and increases in sexual health and resource knowledge. Structural equation models suggest that traditional attitudes toward women were significantly related to hegemonic masculinity ideology among both boys and girls, which was in turn negatively related to safer contraceptive beliefs.

Parents' constructions of the sexual self-presentation and sexual conduct of adolescents: discourses of gendering and protecting

In this paper, we explore the discourses on sexuality that a sample of parents drew upon when they talked about teenage sexual self-presentation and conduct. The sample consisted of 43 parents (32 mothers and 11 fathers) of young people aged 10-19 years. Data were gathered using in-depth interviews and were analysed using a strategy known as modified analytical induction. Findings indicated that while an acceptance the traditional heterosexual script permeated participants' accounts, and protective discourses in relation to young women were brought to bear, so, too, were protective discourses invoked in relation to young men. On the whole, young women tended to be cast as sexual subjects who chose to self-sexualise and this was sometimes seen by participants as a threat to young men. We argue that the discourses that parents connoted were multiple and sometimes contradictory, and our analysis problematises the notion that conventional discourses singularly cast women as objects of male sexuality. However, the overall picture indicated that in parents' narratives, young women tended to be more heavily regulated and either viewed as needing protection from male sexual advances or castigated for encouraging them.